Solidarity with the Honduras resistance!

It is now nearly two months since an illegal, unconstitutional, brutal military coup deposed the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and installed an illegitimate coup regime. The 13 Honduran oligarch families and their U.S.-trained Honduran generals found Zelaya too friendly with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Too friendly also with Honduras’ poor. He was ousted.

That was only the beginning of a long struggle. Starting that June 28 coup day, a mass movement began to grow to confront what most Hondurans call the “de facto government,” that is, the illegal coup regime. Whatever differences had existed among leftist parties and organizations of workers, peasants, women and Indigenous peoples, they have now come together to form a coordinated, unified, if unarmed, fighting front. Its name: the National Popular Front of Resistance Against the Coup D’état, which groups together all those who want to oust the coup leaders and bring back Zelaya.

Two months of de facto government has meant two months of Washington maintaining its relations with the coup regime, two months of facing the army and police in the streets, two months of illegal arrests and beatings of activists, two months of the military firing teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition at the people. But the National Front is still out in the streets. It is still mobilizing strikes and public meetings. It is still taking action.

On Aug. 22 their assembly decided to move once more. The next day thousands sang revolutionary and resistance songs for hours, along with progressive artists from around Latin America. Some thousands more marched Aug. 24 in Tegucigalpa, the capital, in conjunction with visits of delegations from the International Criminal Court and the Organization of American States.

The OAS delegation is supposed to be negotiating a return of the legal president under a compromise deal that leaves the coup-makers and their bosses unpunished and takes away some of the little power the elected president had before he left. Nevertheless, the coup leaders and their oligarch bosses have rejected this deal. So the struggle continues.

Honduran taxi drivers, teachers and other unionists who have been striking on and off, the farmers who have blocked crossroads on the highways, the women who have marched in the streets, the Afro-Hondurans and Indigenous peoples—all are giving an example to the people of all Latin America and to the workers and oppressed people in the United States about how to carry out a prolonged struggle against a heavily armed oppressor. They should not be alone.

They aren’t. In Mexico City from Aug. 20 to 24, the Sao Paolo Forum, a discussion group of 520 delegates from 32 countries, representing 62 leftist parties and movements of Latin America and observers from other parts of the world, made solidarity with the Honduran resistance a central point on its agenda. The people of Latin America, their most progressive leaders, and all those who don’t want military “gorillas” running their countries on behalf of U.S. imperialism stand with the Honduran resistance to the coup.

To the North, in the United States this Aug. 28, protests now endorsed by the Sao Paolo Forum have been called in at least 10 cities in solidarity with the people of Honduras. (Click on Action Alerts at iacenter.org.) We must show the Hondurans on the second-month anniversary of the coup that right here in the belly of the imperialist beast there is solidarity with the resistance and opposition to the coup leaders and their backers in the U.S. ruling class.