Date: Jul 01, 2019
In light of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras, we wish to share this powerful piece, which was first published in Spanish (“Los mismos, diez años después“) on Radio Progreso’s website on June 29.
The beneficiaries of the coup are those celebrating the contracts with multinational companies and are putting the model cities into action today. They are the ones who have used the state not only to the advantage of their businesses but to turn the state into their own most formidable business.
The beneficiaries of the coup are the ones who receive lots of congratulations from high officials of the U.S. government and are currently placed as role models and examples to follow, which is why some of them, among the most conspicuous representatives of the highest oligarchy, have been chosen as Latin American business leaders.
The beneficiaries of the coup are now preparing to pursue control of the state and the economy through a public-private alliance that ultimately leaves all of the advantages for the transnational corporations, the biggest winners of the coup.
The beneficiaries of the coup are the ones who are now getting ready to intensify the privatization of public goods and services. Water, energy, rivers, roads, health, education, mining, land, and all that has to do with national, local, territorial, human, legal, community, and social sovereignty has been put at the service of supply and demand, and particularly at the service of the earnings of those who nine years ago promoted, sponsored, endorsed, and blessed the coup.
The beneficiaries of the coup, the same people who sponsored it, are those who during this time, nine years later, have controlled all of the institutional channels to pursue the indefinite control of the state through re-election, which they used as a legal argument to stage the coup nine years ago.
The beneficiaries are very well identified. They are the same ones who were behind the assassination of Berta Cáceres, and the crimes against the Lenca and Tolupanes indigenous groups, women and journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders in general. They are the same ones who promote privatization and the model cities. They are the same ones who looted Social Security and public institutions. They are the same ones who have conspired with drug traffickers and organized crime. They are the same ones who have handed over national sovereignty. They are the same ones who continue dealing blow after blow since the coup.
Those same people are the ones whom Honduran society has to face, as a necessary step to recover the homeland that remains deeply wounded, and which can only be healed by the dignified struggle of the people who are determined to turn this pain of the homeland into a mobilizing force towards the construction of popular and national sovereignty.
