Declaration of the Fourth International on the political situation in Honduras

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Declaration of the Fourth International on the political situation in
Honduras

Fourth International



One week after the coup against President Manuel Zelaya, the popular
mobilizations continue and could defeat it. International solidarity
must be broadened.

Once again, Latin America is at the centre of the international news.
Once again, unfortunately, a military coup d’etat affects one of its
countries: Honduras.

Some thought we had entered a new era in Latin American political
life. Social relations would be allayed. Democracy would be the norm.

Once again when their interests are at stake, the oligarchy and Army
chiefs, even under ’democracy’, overthrow Presidents and repress the
popular movement.

The Honduras lives under the domination of an intractable oligarchy
organized between conservatives and liberals. Balancing between them
is an army equipped and assisted by the United States and steeped in
the internal security doctrine. A political model, originating from
the 1982 Constitution, has been set up out of several periods of
brutal dictatorship when all political parties were prohibited. In the
1980s class violence continued and the death squads continued to
assassinate opposition activists in their hundreds. The country was
the basis of US operations against the liberation process in Central
America and the recycling of Argentine torturers.

Today, the fascistic right presents the overthrown President Zelaya as
a dangerous radical whereas he is a liberal oligarch forced to make
concessions in a context of a social upheaval which has become
unmanageable. In April 2008, the people demonstrated massively against
rising prices. Zelaya signed an agreement for an exchange of
agricultural products against oil with Venezuela and entered into the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. This cooperation allowed him
to finance some social programmes without however giving him the
support of the three trade union confederations and the popular
organizations participating in the Popular Bloc of Honduras, who were
not convinced of a genuine break.

The Honduran people are violently affected by the blockages of a
deeply inequitable society where national wealth is cornered by a
minority and granted to multinational companies (mining, oil, water,
and forest resources). Landless peasants continue to be shot down by
the goons of the big landowners. Already sapped by poverty which
affects 80 % of the population and dependence on the economy of the
United States, the country was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in
October 1998. The Free Trade Treaty concluded in 2005 with the United
States amounted to an abandonment of the country’s sovereignty.
Another equally harmful treaty is being negotiated with the European
Union, with the aim of completion in July. For their part, the social
movements demand the setting up of a constituent assembly, an
inconceivable idea for the oligarchy, the United States and the
multinationals.

The words of Obama are one thing, the links the US politico-military
apparatus and the top brass of the Latin American armies another.

No clear condemnation of the coup was issued by the United States,
which equated the two camps. The putschists were in permanent liaison
with the US embassy to defeat the popular consultation. If Yankee
imperialism is to keep its influence in this key stronghold the Obama
administration will, faced with this brutal and clearly unforeseen
coup, find itself in an uncontrolled situation which bodes ill for a
refoundation of relations with Latin America.

This coup follows that of April 2002 in Venezuela, defeated through
popular mobilization, and that of Bolivia in 2008, defeated through
the determination of Latin American governments not to see a new
Pinochet emerge. This crisis is revealing of the polarity of the
political-ideological currents that compete in the region. There is no
question for the reactionary bourgeoisie of seeing the processes
independent of imperialism promoted by the
Venezuela-Ecuador-Bolivia-Nicaragua-Cuba axis extend. There is no
question of leaving the initiative to the popular movements that
everywhere resist the reconquest of the continent by multinational
companies with the endorsement of their lackeys. We see the US
manœuvre promoted with the approval of the Latin American oligarchies:
the possible return of President Manuel Zelaya in return for impunity
for the putschists - who completely control the institutions of the
Honduran State - and especially the abandonment of the main demand of
the national front against the coup, the installation of a national
constituent Assembly.

What the putschists and their allies had not bargained for is the
extraordinary resistance of the Honduran popular movement that decades
of repression have failed to silence and which now takes courageously
to the streets.

The putschist regime (employers, oligarchy, the Church hierarchy and
army) is hit by total diplomatic isolation, deprived of international
funding and Venezuelan oil. Some of the employers seek a crisis
resolution negotiated with the United States. No goods are going
through the borders thanks to popular blockades and the neighbouring
countries have closed their borders.

In playing the card of the threat of supposed invasions at the
Nicaraguan border supported by Venezuela, the putschists hope to find
an echo within the country, highly polarised as it is, via media which
are completely controlled, and to justify the repression. They also
hope to regionalize the crisis. Therefore, only popular resistance in
Honduras and the international solidarity of peoples will put an end
to this coup.

Executive Bureau of the Fourth International

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