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On Oct. 26, the media announced an agreement between
ousted Honduran President Manual “Mel” Zelaya
and the right-wing coup-makers who overthrew him. The agreement will
restore Zelaya to power (pending the Honduran
congress’ approval) and pave the way for peaceful late November
elections.
The agreement was brokered by the Obama
administration’s representative Assistant Secretary of State for
Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon and is being widely lauded by
bourgeois figures in politics and the media as a qualitative
breakthrough.
“It is a triumph for Honduran democracy,” stated ousted
Honduran President Zelaya. “[It’s] an
historic agreement,” crowed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
For the people of Honduras, who have risked life and limb
to oppose the coup through the use of strikes and mass mobilizations,
this is indeed a victory, because without their struggle the Honduran
ruling class wouldn’t have felt it necessary to come to any kind of
accord with Zelaya.
By practically shutting down Honduran society, the
resistance forced international powers to declare that they would not
recognize the victor of the November elections unless Zelaya was returned to office. This in turn forced
the national bourgeoisie of Honduras to at least
maintain the appearance of allowing the restoration of Zelaya.
The negotiations between the coup-plotters and the
democratically elected Zelaya administration
had not reached any success previously because they couldn’t agree on
restoring Zelaya to power. Under this new
agreement, both sides have agreed to abide by a congressional vote on
the matter. The Honduran congress will likely approve the new agreement
so as to guarantee diplomatic recognition of the November elections,
but it is entirely unclear when they will do it and what type of
power-sharing arrangement Zelaya will be
forced into.
Either way, Zelaya will only
serve until January, and it is widely believed that he will only serve
in a very limited capacity. All in all, this is political theater at
its highest form. The Micheletti coup
government claims they have made a major concession, even though they
don’t actually believe the congress will restore Zelaya
in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, the United States and Zelaya can both save face, claiming to have forced
a concession from the coup government.
But it was the masses that forced the concession (limited
as it is), and it will be the masses that will have to bear the burden
of the right wing’s continued domination of Honduran politics.
The proposed constituent assembly, for which Zelaya was supposedly deposed for supporting,
cannot even be discussed until after January, as part of this new
agreement. The constituent assembly proposal is very popular among the
Honduran people, which is the second poorest country in all of Central America. The
masses see the constituent assembly as a means to break the right-wing
stranglehold over Honduran society that has existed for decades.
The only group that still seems to actively demand a
constituent assembly is the National Front of the Resistance to the
Coup d’Etat, which has coordinated the largest
and most recent mobilizations and strikes in Honduras against the
coup.
The National Resistance Front recently released “Communicado Number 32.” The communiqué states,
“We reiterate that a National Constituent Assembly is an unrenounceable aspiration of the Honduran people
and a non-negotiable right for which we will continue struggling in the
streets, until we achieve the re-founding of our society to convert it
into one that is just, egalitarian and truly democratic! At 125 days of
struggle, nobody here surrenders!”
This portion of the communiqué reflects the revolutionary
sentiments of the masses of poor Hondurans, represented in the National
Resistance Front by campesino and union
organizations.
These Hondurans have not fought against the coup and
ensuing police terrorism only to give up the struggle because Zelaya will be restored in a limited capacity. They
aspire to re-found the entire society, as they
clearly understand that no matter who is elected president of Honduras, the military
and ruling elite will still wield the vast majority of institutional
power.
Regardless of whether or not Zelaya
is restored, regardless of who is elected, the masses of Hondurans need
to stay mobilized and organized. Any “peace” that is reached without
real fundamental change in Honduran society will ultimately mean more
of the same.
As Malcolm X once said, “You can’t separate peace from
freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
And Hondurans will not know freedom until the oligarchy is
overthrown. To do that they must organize independently of the
capitalists and stay mobilized regardless of what crumbs are thrown
their way. Even the constituent assembly can be manipulated by the
capitalists and turned into a dead end, which is all the more reason
for the masses to keep flexing their social power. To the extent that
they demobilize or maintain illusions in the bourgeois institutions of
government they will be defeated.
Zelaya is no longer
prominently supporting the constituent assembly, and hasn’t since the
coup took place. Although the masses view this new agreement between Zelaya and the coup-plotters as a victory, it must
be noted that it has come at a certain time, in a certain form, and to
perform a certain function: to break the mass movement and restore
faith in the bourgeois institutions of Honduras. While the agreement
that has been reached is certainly a result of the masses’ valiant
struggle against the coup; it is only the beginning of the path to real
democracy and social justice.
The poor peasants and workers of Honduras aspire to change
their country into a society that is “just, egalitarian and truly
democratic” from the corrupt, highly stratified dictatorship that it is
today, and this aspiration will lead them to a confrontation with
capitalism itself. They would be well advised to be armed with the
ideological tools of Marxism and organized into a politically
independent group that truly represents the workers and poor peasants
of Honduras.
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