Good article on stolen election in Honduras and consequences

[Venas Abiertas]

Honduras just passed through four of the worst years of its history.

That's saying a lot. Honduran history is full of abuse and defeats for the working classes.

On November 24th, for the first time ever, presidential elections were disputed among four strong candidates, instead of the usual two.

Nevertheless, one of the usual two still managed to win, probably by fraud in the vote-counting process and most certainly by intimidation and fear-mongering beforehand. This party, a rightist nationalist party with close ties to local oligarchs and the US embassy and military, "won" with just 34% of the 61% of Hondurans who voted, or in other words with about 20% approval of the population as a whole. This same party was the one in power these last four years, the worst four years in Honduran history. And now they will rule for four years more. Their candidate was the president of the national congress these last four years and was considered to be the "power behind the throne".

Four more years of horror await the Honduran people. Four more years of being the transshipment point for 87% of the cocaine consumed in the USA. Four more years of the highest murder rate in the world. Four more years of turning over mines, beaches, and indigenous homelands to the multinational corporations. Four more years of being the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti.

I don't know how much more the people here can take. I guess we will soon find out.

Anyway, here's a decent article summarizing what happened in the elections and what could happen afterwards.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20388-banana-republic-honduras-open-for-business-after-tainted-election#.Up656ftcmx4.email

http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2013_12/2013.12.3.Honduras.main.jpg

The only consolation I take away from this is that maybe the next four years will be so bad that finally the left can win with a majority so sweeping that they cannot be denied victory and the presidency.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Interestingly, those are similar electoral statistics to the results of the 2010 general election in the uk - the winning party netted 36% of the vote from a turnout of something like 64%. If that's the situation in a country that likes to think it's a bastion of liberal democracy, what hope does Honduras have, I suppose. I don't know much about politics in Honduras, but the little I do know about the ruling party is dreadful - I can only offer commiserations for your current plight :(

[La Guaneña]

This is just terrible, compañerx. It feels like shit seeing stuff like that, I though LiBRe had this one.

If you are in Honduras as I remember, good luck.

[Venas Abiertas]

Thanks everybody for your support. Our friends in other countries are the only thin threads of hope we can cling on to. There is a palpable sense of fear here right now. Even children can feel it. There is a feeling that the misery has been building up in a steady crescendo and that we are now on the verge of something truly cataclysmic.

Death squads again roam this land. Many think that even the highly-publicised brutal murders of several young children in the month before the election were carried out by the ruling regime in order to further terrorize the population and make it quicker to submit to all-out militarization and conversion into a "security state." I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Soldiers have been everywhere the past few years but crime continues to rise. Honduras is one of the world leaders in assassinations of lawyers, journalists, indigenous and peasant leaders, and labor activists. Some of the violence seems senseless but much of it appears to be carefully calculated.

I want to remind the readers here that Honduras has in the past been a "guinea pig" for neoliberalization and US imperial schemes for domination. This was the first "banana republic", a country utilized solely as a plantation for one product destined for one market. It was the second country, after Guatemala, to be the victim of a US-backed coup d'etat. It was the second country after Mexico to be subjected to massive devaluation of its currency and liberalization of its economy. It was the first country in the 21st century to have a democratically-elected president removed by oligarchs and military, with no negative consequences to either of them. It is the target country of the push towards creating "charter cities," little capitalistic enclaves owned by giant transnationals where the country's own laws do not prevail.

Whatever the Empire can get away with in Honduras, sooner or later it tries to bring to everybody's front door. Expect more of what just happened here in the elections to show up in other Latin American and Caribbean countries. For sure the criminal narcotics and human slavery gangs, as well as desperately scared and impoverished immigrants will be arriving in even greater numbers to the wealthier nations in this continent and in Europe.

[Venas Abiertas]

A comrade has asked me for links to websites with information on Honduras. I wanted to make them public. Here are a few in English:

http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/

http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/category/5/23/46/

and in Spanish:

http://voselsoberano.com/

http://www.hondurastierralibre.com/

http://www.resistenciahonduras.net/

I repeat, whether or not you're interested in Honduras in particular or you don't think the Latin American leftist movements are "Marxist" enough for you, you should care about what happens here because the Empire uses this weak country as a laboratory to try out its latest schemes for further domination and exploitation.

Honduranization: Coming to a country near you!

[Bright Banana Beard]

I knew there was a fraudulent elections going on, despite having tons of friends from the nation and pretty much the only news they put out is calling these non-majority parties "weird, ignorant, anti-democracy as if the fraud never happened, they even went on to include one NGO organization to say the elections were ((smooth.))

[La Guaneña]

Comrade, I have been travelling and did not have time to follow the updates, except for the few seconds I got to see on TeleSur. Do you mind putting up a few lines telling us what is going on?

[Venas Abiertas]

Sorry for the delay, Coluna.

Well, since the elections last month six activists in the left-leaning LIBRE party have been murdered, the National Congress voted to grant constitutional standing to the new military police and voted to continue to charge for another ten years a special tax destined for the "security forces," and the educational system was completely overhauled, with traditional high school study programs being trashed which will cause the teachers who taught them to either lose their jobs or go back for re-training, at their own expense, of course.

The murders are for striking fear into the hearts of the opponents of the US-backed oligarchy.

Inserting the military police into the Constitution of the Republic and renewing the "security tax" are for reinforcing government control over an increasingly restless population and ensuring good returns on their investments to the transnationals.

The educational "reforms" are to break the back of the once-powerful teachers' unions, which President Zelaya reinforced during his term with greater political power and decent salaries.

Also, the chief of police during the old regime, a man named Carlos "the Tiger" Bonilla, who has been linked with the death squads, has been replaced with a new face from the same right-wing military background.

All this and the new president hasn't even taken office yet.

[SensibleLuxemburgist]

Part of the reason why Honduras has never experienced significant leftist agitation unlike its neighbors, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, is because its population has been historically conservative and shies away from radical ideologies even if those ideologies may bring hope and change to a desperate population besieged by foreign interests.

[Venas Abiertas]

Part of the reason why Honduras has never experienced significant leftist agitation unlike its neighbors, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, is because its population has been historically conservative and shies away from radical ideologies even if those ideologies may bring hope and change to a desperate population besieged by foreign interests.

This isn't exactly true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_strike_of_1954_(Honduras)

and

http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/united-fruit-company-laborers-campaign-economic-justice-honduras-1954

http://api.ning.com/files/wiCYHCuDfpRD1o2VllujAm0S2Lqetr4NxqGnrN707vhr6vQD2d ieXVMZA5ayXgE0FqLnAIiDqJu5lKhMVL4X98P9qQVfKYoG/bananastrikeLIFE1954600.jpg

The great strike of 1954 began on the United Fruit plantations and spread throughout Honduras and into Guatemala, which was the main reason for the CIA-backed coups against leftist president Jacobo Arbenz there.

Since the 1920's Honduras had the strongest and most influential labor movement, which lasted well into the 1970's. The strength of this movement, which included peasant unions, and the fact that even military dictators had to accomodate the unions' demands, is the reason why Hondurans did not see such a dire need for violent armed revolution as did their neighbors, where the ruling oligarchs made no moves at all to distribute land or adjust workers' salaries and living conditions.

There were, however, some small insurrectional groups in the mountains but they were quickly put down with the help of U.S. military advisors. Most Hondurans did not want civil war and thought that they could achieve a better society through the labor and campesino organizations.

[Venas Abiertas]

Another factor is that the US has intervened so many times in Honduran elections and has been the intellectual author behind so many coup d'etats that many Hondurans have succumbed to a feeling of overwhelming helplessness in the face of the great power of their northern neighbor. The extreme corruption that these governments have bred has also convinced many people here that any effort to improve things is futile. Well, this is a common phenomenon in many countries today.

[SensibleLuxemburgist]

Since the 1920's Honduras had the strongest and most influential labor movement, which lasted well into the 1970's. The strength of this movement, which included peasant unions, and the fact that even military dictators had to accomodate the unions' demands, is the reason why Hondurans did not see such a dire need for violent armed revolution as did their neighbors, where the ruling oligarchs made no moves at all to distribute land or adjust workers' salaries and living conditions.


Curious, yet the unions could not stop the export of mass murder by the Honduran government to Guatemala or El Salvador. At least that is what it seems had happened. Interesting, though!

[Venas Abiertas]

Curious, yet the unions could not stop the export of mass murder by the Honduran government to Guatemala or El Salvador. At least that is what it seems had happened. Interesting, though!

:confused: What mass murder did the Honduran government export to Guatemala and El Salvador?

Maybe you're referring to Castillo Armas, the Guatemalan army colonel in exile in Honduras during the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz, who led the United Fruit/CIA coup d'etat in 1954 to overthrow Arbenz?

Anyway, what do labor unions have to do with that? Just because a country has strong labor unions doesn't mean that they control the government.