On June 28, elected President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup backed by the Honduran elite. Since then, a mass resistance movement of the poor majority has brought the Central American country to a standstill and the coup regime very close to defeat. Pedro Fuentes is international secretary of the Brazilian Party Socialism and Liberty (PSOL). He wrote this article from Honduras on September 29.
1. "Blood of martyrs, seeds of freedom" was the slogan at the burial of Wendy, who died as a result of tear gas this weekend. All "awakening has its price and Honduras has awoken", an activist from a Communist Party background involved in the resistance told me at the ceremony, held Monday afternoon (September 28).
Using Marxist terms, the comrade said that in Honduras, this awakening has meant that the movement has taken "a qualitative leap forward".
"This is not the first person we have brought to the cemetery. Officially, six comrades have already been buried, but there is an unknown number of people who have disappeared, of people that have been taken away and have not appeared, and people who they say have been killed for being criminals in clashes with the police."
2. On Monday, the government began applying the decreed state of siege. Radio Globo and Channel 36 [which oppose the coup] were closed. The military entered into their offices and looted them of all equipment.
That same day, the gathering of the resistance, which has been set every morning at the Pedagogical University, was weak. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the protest was encircled by troops, there was no sense of vacillation or fear.
On the contrary, the comments had a radicalised tone, arguing that more energetic measures had to be taken. There was even talk in the corridors of the need to move towards more direct actions.
The protest was able to march to STYBS [the union of beverage workers]. It was a reflection of the general sentiment of rejection against these measures among a broader section of the population. Not just by the great mass that is against the coup, but also those sections of the middle class that reject the authoritarianism symbolised by the shutdown of these media outlets.
The mass rejection of the regime and the political parties that support it is constantly visible. They talk about the "corrupt ones" — a common term for politicians.
The procession to the cemetery was short but the sympathy of the people was enormous. The cars and trucks, especially those carrying workers, saluted, beeped their horns and stopped to raise their fists in solidarity.
3. The fact is that, even though the resistance has not been able to maintain daily and permanent mass mobilisations on the streets, popular support has been increasing.
An eruption of the masses occurred on September 15, Independence Day. That day, tens of thousands came out onto the streets.
Moreover, there are permanent strikes by academics and others. Teachers are on strike two days a week.
Some public buildings have been occupied and, until today, the occupations of the National Agrarian Institute has been maintained — headed by Juan Barahona. This comrade is one of the most charismatic leaders, together with Carlos H. Reyes, an independent presidential candidate.
A very large, broad vanguard has been forged in these 90 days since the coup. It is made up of workers, neighbourhood organisations, unions such as those of beverage workers and teachers, and peasant organisations with an important weight and history of struggle.
This is a vanguard that has not kneeled down in the face of repression, that has suffered the break-up of road blockades, and suffered the day that the protest was broken up outside the Brazilian embassy, where the repression was savage.
A young motorbike rider, no more than 22, showed me his back covered with marks left by the successive beatings he received in those confrontations, as he stood next to his proud partner.
A nurse with a Liberal Party flag told me how, in the first few days, she organised a health workers front in Tegucigalpa: "We began with 10 nurses, but we spread out to assistants, medical workers and dentists with which we became a large organisation."
This organisation counts on a clinic that is at the service of the sick and injured among the resistance.
It is worth recalling that throughout the two decades that followed the revolutionary upsurge of the 1980s, Honduras was the country where the social movements have been the strongest in leading strikes and struggles. Together with this vanguard, a radicalised section of Zelaya's Liberal Party has brought new activists, that emerged after the coup, into the fold.
These are the sectors that make up the National Resistance Front against the Coup D'etat (FNRG). The FNRG has maintained revolutionary democratic mobilisations for more than 90 days — and show no signs of having been defeated or stepping back.
4. The state of siege decreed by the coup regime has been aimed precisely at heading in the direction of a classic totalitarian regime (such as the dictatorships of the '70s in Latin America) in order to hold back the revolutionary democratic mobilisation underway and to strengthen the regime.
The institution that appears the most intact is the army, which has not given any signs of fissures. It is the military that has remained most intact following the process in Central America with the formal end of armed conflict. It enjoys a strong relationship with the upper level of capitalist class and the US Armed Forces.
But Micheletti's state of siege decree backfired, because the parliament and all presidential candidates rejected it. The decree indicated the intention of Micheletti to stay in power and an end to the elections planned for November 29.
During a press conference early on Monday afternoon, Micheletti, together with a group of parliamentarians, had to backtrack. This does not mean that they will end the shutting down of radio and TV stations and the ban on protests, but it shows that as a political strategy, the siege decree has failed.
This situation demonstrated the contradictions and incapacities of the dominant classes and the regime. Less a regime, it is more a conglomerate of sectors with different positions in the middle of a political crisis.
Even though all of them are against the resistance and the drift by Zelaya towards "Bolivarian" policies, they are divided in how to confront this.
Their "exit strategy" is the scheduled elections, but the question is how to get there. With less than 60 days to go in the election campaign, there is no way how.
The only thing that exists is the TV campaigns — but there are no electoral campaigns on the streets.
The bourgeoisie has to change this situation. But this is impossible via the baton and the state of siege. Not only because there will be no possibility of electoral campaigning, but also because this has only thrown more wood into the fire.
This is not the only problem. The other, and bigger, one is that the legitimate president Manuel Zelaya is in the middle of the capital, Tegucigalpa, in the Brazilian embassy. To this we could add the international isolation of the regime.
5, Today, all the sectors supporting the coup have begun to talk more forcefully about the necessity of a "national dialogue" towards the elections.
Dialogue with Zelaya is only possible if he is reinstated as president. But this solution is impossible for the bourgeoisie as its policy has been to break with Zelaya's government. Zelaya talks of dialogue, but at the same time talks of "homeland, restitution or death".
In the current context, after nearly two weeks of Zelaya being inside the Brazilian embassy and more than 90 days of mobilisations, allowing one single day of Zelaya in government, given the absolute fragility of the regime, is too adventurous for the dominant classes
The possibility of a dictatorship typical of the '70s, as well as Zelaya's return, has been closed off for the bourgeoisie. This seems to point towards the fact that the dialogue of which they speak would mean a provisional government of national unity without Zelaya and Micheletti — something difficult to achieve.
This is the framework of the political crisis in the upper spheres. It has other important factors — the international isolation of the regime and the deepening of the economic crisis that has taken the country to the brink of collapse.
Each curfew means more ruin for the people — especially the middle class and small shop owners.
6. There are minority sectors of the left that do not understand that the principal demand is the reinstatement of Zelaya. The difference between the revolutionaries and the opportunists is that, in order to return Zelaya to power, it is necessary to continue and deepened the direct action of the people. In other words, a consistent democratic struggle that clashes with the regime.
The slogans of the resistance are clear: No to elections organised by the coup regime; for the restitution of Zelaya; and a constituent assembly, which has transformed itself into a slogan of the masses in the face of this crisis.
The problem for the resistance is that the intense mass actions, even though they have fractured the regime and placed it in crisis, have not been strong enough to bring it down. (This is a situation that is very similar to those experienced by the revolutionary processes in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where popular insurrections opened the path later on to very progressive solutions via overwhelming electoral victories).
The existing accumulation of forces and the deepening of the crisis leaves this possibility open. As the crisis worsens and becomes unsustainable, the possibility of a more general uprising is on the cards. And with it, a new Zelaya government in a totally different context of rupture with the old regime — like what has occurred in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador.
7. In any case, it would be an error to underestimate the possibility that the dominant classes will divert this process. A section of it, which is attempting to break the international isolation, has adopted a position of attempting to reach out to the most right-wing sectors in the continent. This includes the corrupt president of the Brazilian senate, who has come out attacking Brazilian president Lula's position of supporting Zelaya.
He is not the only one. The meeting yesterday (September 28) of the Organisation of American States [which involves the governments of the entire Americas minus Cuba] demonstrated that the US is also changing its position to one of directly attacking Zelaya, Lula and [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez for their "adventurism".
The possible plan that the US is seeking to implement, which will be difficult, is to maintain the status quo with a provisional government of national unity without Zelaya or Micheletti, which organises elections.
This reveals the important of maintaining at all costs the demand to reinstate Zelaya. Support on the international level should be towards the forces and countries that defend this position.
8. It is clear that whatever occurs in the next few days, nothing will be the same again in Honduras and our continent. The people have awoken; they have taken a leap forward.
The revolutionary process is marching forwards. If not now, then sooner or later, it will be expressed in a new political power, as has already happened in other Latin American countries.
New leaders have been forged in this resistance, but so has a change in the consciousness of the masses and new forms of organisations. There is a rupture with the old parties, the FNRG, and in particular the Popular Bloc that draws together the most militant sectors, have emerged as an alternative for sections of the masses.
All of this has to flow into a new mass revolutionary political organisation. Various sections of the FNRG have already proposed this. It is necessary to ensure that this force is a crucial player in future events.
9. Latin American militants, anti-imperialist and socialist organisations are faced with the great challenge of collaborating with this process.
Honduras today is our political capital in order to advance the class struggle. Because of this, solidarity is fundamental. We have to ensure that October 2 (called as an International Day of Solidarity) is a massive day of support for the Honduran resistance, through all our means, including economic.