Support the general strike in Honduras! Down with the Micheletti government!

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The following article reflects the views of the Political Committee of Socialist Action.

On June 28, the Honduran army deposed the elected president of that nation, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, waking him in the dead of night, abducting him from his bed in the presidential palace, and expelling him to Costa Rica, where he held a press conference in his pajamas alerting the world to the coup. The army replaced Zelaya with the president of the Honduran Congress, Roberto Micheletti, a move that met with near-unanimous approval from the Congress and Supreme Court. The latter had “authorized” the coup as a legal measure taken in defense of the national constitution.

The coup-makers have acted in accord with the wishes of a Honduran oligarchy that is unified in its hatred for the unexpected populist turn of Zelaya, whom it loathes for his minimalist reform program and his association with the Chavez regime in Venezuela and other left-populist leaders in the region.

Viewed through the reckless actions of the oligarchy, the Honduran state has shown itself to be structurally incapable of weathering even minimal bourgeois liberal reforms. The unity of its state institutions in favor of the overthrow is not a sign of ruling-class strength, but an acknowledgement that it is totally alienated from the conditions of the masses in Honduras and incapable of relating to them in any but the most predatory ways.

Honduras is one of the poorest and most economically polarized countries in the Western Hemisphere, with half its population living below the poverty line. Since the military restored formal democracy there in 1983, the country has been ruled by two political parties sustained by ties to the national oligarchy.

Voter turnout in Honduras was 46.0 percent in 2005, the lowest of any national election in Central America in the past four years—significantly lower than any of its neighbors. Regional experts have attributed the high rates of voter absenteeism to the extreme indifference with which the Honduran masses regard the two oligarchic parties, which have presided over a pauperized nation with no semblance of real political differences between them.

The coup-makers have gone to great lengths to prevent the Honduran masses from expressing their discontent with the toppling of the democratically elected government. The state-run television network and another network known for its loyalties to Zelaya were immediately blacked out by the coup-makers when they seized the presidency. Zelaya’s ministers and political allies have been detained.

The BBC reports from Honduras that soldiers are blockading the highways to the capital, preventing the arrival of caravans of protesters. Jose Antonio Zepeda, president of the Central American Union Movement, recounted in a video posted on YouTube that at one roadblock soldiers shot out the tires on buses carrying peasants and union members to Tegucigalpa (the capital city). The protesters continued the rest of the trip on foot.

Despite the ruling class’s efforts, the masses have braved severe repression from the police and military to take to the streets in opposition to the coup. The BBC reported that anti-coup protests occurred in the majority of Honduras’ departments, and that protesters blocked major highways in Copan and Tocoa.

CNN quoted Oscar Garcia, vice president of the Honduran water workers’ union SANA, as saying that three major public-sector labor unions launched an indefinite general strike pending the restoration of Zelaya to power on June 30, claiming the participation of over 100,000 workers. “We don’t recognize this new government imposed by the oligarchy,” declared Garcia. “It will be an indefinite strike.” TeleSur reports that the teachers union has declared an open-ended national strike of the schools, also pending the restoration of Zelaya to power.

The Bolivarian News Agency reports a march of 4000 in Tegucigalpa July 2, and other sources put the number at 6000. A report coming out of Tegucigalpa from the Socialist Workers Party of Argentina claims that the banana workers have joined the national strike along with sections of the maquiladora workers.

In response to these demonstrations the government of coup leaders revoked the right to freely assemble at night and gave the police the power to detain anyone for longer than 24 hours without charge. There are reports that electricity has been cut to working-class districts, where anti-coup sentiments are highest. Zelaya “converted” to populism Zelaya was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the Liberal Party, one of two parties that has alternated in power in Honduras for the last 25 years. He is part of the elite of the country, having amassed a fortune as a rancher and landowner. Moreover, his populist credentials are belied by allegations that he supported the death-squads in their dirty war against the Honduran left in the 1980s.

It wasn’t until Zelaya was elected to the presidency in 2005 that he showed signs of populist conversion. Until then he had advocated for Honduras to enter into the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., and was considered a reliable tool of the oligarchy, which had endorsed and funded his candidacy.

The rift opened when Zelaya began accepting shipments of subsidized petroleum from the Chavez government, and thereafter guided Honduras into the regional trade block known as the ALBA. These initiatives, along with some domestic reforms like raising the minimum wage, established a social base for Zelaya among the peasantry and some trade unions, but fomented the hatred of the oligarchy against him.

The fact that Zelaya’s own party was complicit in his (Left) Honduran soldiers take aim at people near the presidential palace protesting the coup.

(Right) Soldiers threaten part of the crowd.

overthrow is a clear indication of how isolated he has become. Micheletti, the army’s choice to replace Zelaya, is a member of the same Liberal Party.

The immediate cause of the coup is being widely attributed to Zelaya’s plan to reform the Honduran constitution, which opponents contend was simply a maneuver by Zelaya to stay in power beyond the oneterm limit specified under the current constitution.

Zelaya was deposed from office on the eve of a nonbinding national referendum that he had proposed as a means to measure popular support for a constituent assembly. Based on what he presumed would be a clear victory on that vote, Zelaya was planning to hold a legally binding second referendum during the upcoming November presidential elections.

Though Zelaya was noncommittal as to what type of constitutional reforms he proposed, the call for a constituent assembly had attracted the attention of Honduran farmers, workers, and leftist radicals. The oligarchy’s false cry of “dictatorship” was only a cover for its real pervasive fear that a constituent assembly could lead to numerous reforms (driven by involvement of the masses) that would curtail its economic and political domination of Honduras.

The Honduran oligarchy attempted to obstruct the referendum prior to the coup through various institutional means—from legislating against it in the Congress, to issuing a ruling from the Supreme Court declaring it unconstitutional, to instructing the army brass to refuse Zelaya’s order to conduct the vote. Zelaya responded, in turn, by firing the defense minister and the senior military commander, and then leading a dramatic march of peasant farmers and unionists to an airforce base to seize the ballot boxes that had been suppressed by the military.

Within days the Supreme Court reinstated the senior military commander and issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya that military personnel “served” to the president on the night that they overthrew his government. A bastion of the U.S. military U.S. officials—both civilian and military—were well aware that a coup was being plotted within Honduras, as they had been participating in high-level discussions between the Honduran Congress, military, and president in the weeks leading up to the overthrow. But the American government did not use its immense power—as Honduras’ leading trading partner and as a major donor of military and civilian aid—to prevent the coup from taking place. The claim by an anonymous Obama administration official that the army broke off the talks is convenient to the U.S., but otherwise impossible to verify and therefore unreliable.

Despite statements by President Obama expressing disapproval for the coup, his administration continues to quibble over whether the term “coup” is applicable to the nighttime abduction of the Honduran president by the army. “There is a process that we need to follow (continued on page 11, in “Father Gerard Jean-juste: a Haitian Hero Dies”)

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12 Socialist Action july 2009 The Honduran coup-makers have acted in accord with an oligarchy that is unified in its hatred for the unexpected populist turn of President Zelaya.