Honduras

“Vote? Me? No way? For what?”  said the young man, almost spitting out the words. “What is there to vote for in this election?”

All over Honduras, youth “in resistance,” women in resistance, artists in resistance, lawyers in resistance, well-dressed and blackberried political party leaders in resistance, campesinos in resistance, are saying no to these November 29th elections. While the word “resistance” may conjure up images of masked guerrillas, this image is totally misleading. As I could see in a trip this week to Tegucigalpa, it is, so far, in general an extraordinarily peaceful, civic resistance.

After months of a virtual standstill in Honduras between democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and regime leader Roberto Micheletti, we might be seeing the end of what one writer called, “The Little Coup That Couldn’t.” On October 29th, Honduras’ defacto leader Roberto Micheletti agreed to step down, allowing the Honduran Congress to decide whether President Zelaya would be returned to power. But, the fate of democracy in Honduras still remains to be seen.

“If that kind of barbarity can be directed against the highest-ranking person in the country, what will happen to the rest of us?” asked the activists at COFADEH, the Committee of Families of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, right after the June 28th coup that sent President Manuel Zelaya into exile.  Now the answer to that question can be seen in COFADEH’s hard-hitting October 22nd report, “Statistics and Faces of Repression.”

Despite the Micheletti government’s announced intention following international and national pressure to lift the state of siege, the notice has not yet been published in the official gazette, and rights violations continue.  The de facto government issued a new decree allowing the government’s telecommunications agency to revoke licenses for radio and television stations that transmit messages that promote “social anarchy,” ensuring that censorship can continue.  Police continued excessive use of force against protestors, and some protestors remain in detention. Meanwhile, hopes for dialogue increased as the Organization of American States negotiators arrived, but no end to the crisis is yet in sight.