US got scared – voices of resistance in post-coup Honduras (2)

Members of the resistance in Honduras tell MintPress how a US-backed coup and the neoliberalism it brought with it have negatively impacted their country by plunging it a host of insoluble problems and trapping the people in misery.

Stay with us for the second part of a 3-part report by Washington-based journalist Alexander Rubinstein, who formerly worked for Sputnik, titled: “US Got Scared – Voices of Resistance in Post-Coup Honduras”.

MintPress News first covered a conference held by the Liberty and Refoundation Party, popularly known as Libre, on June 27, just one day prior to the anniversary of the coup. The party emerged in the wake of the coup, with Manuel Zelaya as its figurehead. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the First Lady of Manuel Zelaya, is herself a force in Honduran politics: she was neck-and-neck with JOH in polls leading up to his first election in 2013, an election also mired in fraud allegations. She told MintPress at the conference:

At the exact moment when we were beginning a process… of reforming and transforming our people and our countries, giving citizens a real opportunity to participate, to feel they’re a part of the process and not just a tool — that’s when the U.S. got scared.”

She continued, on the topic of the US-backed coup: “Today the Honduran people are stronger. Today we understand — along with many sectors that were indifferent to the coup but are now with us in this fight — that on that June 28 when they perpetrated the coup d’état, taking their president out of the country, along with everything else we’ve lost, the people understand that the coup d’état wasn’t done so everything would remain the same. They did it to harm the vast majority of the people.”

Xiomara Zelaya spoke at length about the significance of Libre in the struggle in Honduras, and about the debt she personally owes to the people of her country. She said: “Libre comes from the streets. Libre comes from a fight. Libre comes from men and women who — many of us had never really had the chance to come together and truly see each other. Libre comes from the blood of martyrs; from the men and women that died by our side, who we saw fall, who were assassinated. Libre comes from a popular demand, it comes from the need for a political space that makes possible an electoral fight that can bring us to power. Libre stands for the hope of Honduran people.”

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya continued: “Libre stands for the unity that will allow us to reach a better future for ourselves. As a member of Libre, there is a huge commitment — and it’s a commitment that we can’t put aside, because we feel the pain of our people as if it were our own. The support that we’ve received — and the blood that’s been spilled — what that tells us is that we have a duty to repay the people for everything they’ve done.

“In particular, I say this as Xiomara Castro, as someone whose husband was forced into exile, whose husband was forced out by a coup d’état, and has confronted military forces. But, right alongside me, there were people I’d never met. Men with no shoes, housewives who came out to show solidarity with us, who came out to feed my family, who came out to protect us as we slept, in those few moments we could rest. You can’t put a price on that. There is no way to give back to the people all that they’ve done for us, and that’s why we’re here. And that’s why we keep fighting.

“Because we know we have a commitment, and we won’t give up until we achieve the real change that our society and our people are demanding.”

At the Libre conference, MintPress spoke to the eldest daughter of Berta Caceres, Oliva Caceres. As MintPress has previously reported, over 120 Honduran activists have been killed since 2010, making the small nation the world’s deadliest place to protect the environment. Berta Cáceres, one of the slain activists, was the winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Leaked court documents prove three of the eight men arrested for the murder of Berta Cáceres are linked to the School of the Americas (now rebranded as WHINSEC), a US-run military training academy and breeding ground for human-rights abusers throughout Latin America. One of the graduates accused of murdering Caceres was the head of security from 2013 to 2015 for the company behind the dam she was opposing. An international conspiracy “to control, neutralize and eliminate any opposition” was uncovered in connection to her murder.

Olivia Caceres told MintPress: “The men who killed her were gunmen, former army captains, guards from DESA, and high-ranking soldiers like Major Mariano Díaz Chavez. Soldiers, like the ones who shot her, are hitmen that are linked to organized crime in our country.”

Olivia Cáceres continued: “My mother was murdered by state-backed killers who were protecting the energy company DESA. The company directly ordered Berta Cáceres’s murder. Its board of directors — we all know it’s made up of members of the Atala Zablah family, whom we can mention by name. It’s a very powerful family, both politically and economically powerful here. It’s among the 17 Most Powerful Families in Latin America according to a survey by Forbes magazine. And that was who gave the order to murder Berta Cáceres.

“They used soldiers and national police who persecuted, harassed and finally murdered Berta Cáceres in a major operation that was carried out on January 1st and February 22nd. However both attempts failed. And on the third try they managed to kill her on March 2nd at 11:45 at night. They entered her room while she was sleeping.”

Olivia Caceres was careful not to isolate her mother’s murder from the political context in the country, telling MintPress: “We believe there won’t be justice for Berta until the criminal structure that assassinated her is dismantled…She was murdered by a whole criminal structure that we…have decided to expose for criminal conspiracy.”

She went on to call for international solidarity with the struggle in Honduras, saying: “We’ve been knocking on every door in this country for more than three and half years and we still haven’t gotten justice. We believe that what the Honduran people need, and what Berta’s cause needs, now more than ever, is international solidarity.

We’re calling out a murder that reflects the whole situation — the social injustice and inequality, the violence, repression, the targeted assassinations by a dictatorial regime that’s involved in drug trafficking. Berta’s murder reflects the whole catastrophe: the poverty, the impunity.”

The National Party of Juan Orlando Hernandez has been in power since the coup d’etat. Carlos Eduardo Reina, Secretary of Popular Power in the Libre party, talked to MintPress News about how the coup reshaped the government.

The coup first took out the president, but then installed a coup regime that makes electoral fraud, that takes away the votes, the energy, different things from the government and the people; they privatized it. A huge oligarchy wants to own the country and take the country’s riches from the people.”

“The thing is that in Honduras — it’s a very little country — and the only thing that supports the government is the army. And the army receives orders from the north.”

Eduardo Reina argued that if Honduras was given the opportunity of free and fair elections, it would also give them “the opportunity to take away the dictatorship.”

Dr. Marco Girón, a member of the “movement for the defense of health and education,” explained the neoliberal process in depth, saying: “In Honduras, when neoliberalism was introduced no one believed that water would be privatized, that our electricity would be privatized, Or our healthcare, or education. But all of that changed… They’ve privatized and diminished state institutions. They also got rid of the Honduran Institute for Families and Children, IHNFA, which was in charge of child welfare, including providing homeless children with food, and a roof over their heads. This is how neoliberalism has progressed, steadily shrinking the state, although we still need all the things it provided.

“First went the custodial staff at hospitals — which, before, were state-run — but since they were custodians, no one cared. Then they started privatizing different sectors. They started privatizing the medication; then came fake orders, empty boxes that never made it to the hospital. The Anti-Corruption Council states that the health budget is approximately $14b lempiras [$572m USD]. It’s one of the lowest in the world. And 50 percent of it is stolen. These are preventable deaths to our population. It’s the same with the education system.”

Dr. Girón argued that the pro-public healthcare and education marches will continue until “these executive and legislative decrees are rescinded. That’s where the genesis of the problem is: the privatization laws. That’s the neoliberalism they’re imposing on us. It’s all there, that’s why the struggle continues, and that’s why the education and healthcare workers stay in the streets. And they’ll stay until the repeal of these awful privatization laws — which are imported from abroad, and which will only bring us more poverty, illiteracy, diseases, and even death.”

Andrea Chavarría, an 82-year-old former teacher, is known popularly as the “Grandmother of the Resistance” in Honduras. She spoke to MintPress about what the presidency of Manuel Zelaya meant for organized educators, saying: “When Commander Manuel Zelaya Rosales took power, teachers got our first victory — after it was taken from us. Here in Honduras, struggles are won in the streets. When teachers started taking to the streets, our president Mel Zelaya — who has been one of the best presidents who we’ve ever had — he received us in the Presidential Palace. He let us right in through the front door. And we were going to take it by force, right? He received us, he opened the gates. And we formed a commission, then he hopped on a truck and said, ‘It’s approved.’”

Chavarría continued: We were demanding a permanent contract, health insurance, vacations, a bonus… They approved them, we finally had benefits. They’ve taken all that from us. Now the students are sitting on gravel, the parents have to pay for cleaning services, for security, for learning materials, because the government doesn’t provide anything…The teachers, as we say here in Honduras, are cornered. We have no privileges. The privileges we had earned in the streets were taken from us. Same goes for the doctors.

“Since I was a young woman, I’ve always defended my rights because I thought of myself in the present, not the past or the future. Today’s youth are the present of Honduras. Despite my age and health problems, I stand with them and support them because they tell me ‘grandma, you give us strength. If you can do it, why not us?’ I applaud those youth, those college students from MEU (University Student Movement) because they’re valiant, and to me the youth is the present.”

AS/SS