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Hondurans commemorate 3-year resistance

Published Jun 27, 2012 9:25 PM

In cities across the U.S. and Honduras on June 28, a National Day of Action will commemorate three years of resistance to the coup that removed Manuel Zelaya Rosales from the presidency of Honduras. These actions come at a moment when Washington has engineered another coup against a legally elected leader in Paraguay, Fernando Lugo.

Lucy Pagoada, delegate to the Honduran Resistance (Front for National Resistance of the People, FNRP) and member of the Libre (Liberty and Refoundation) Party, spoke with Workers World about these events.

“The U.S. government kidnapped and exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s legally elected president, in 2004, plunging Haiti into repression and more poverty! We must not leave Haiti out of our analysis of U.S. imperialism.

“The Haitian coup was followed by the military coup and kidnapping of Manuel Zelaya Rosales in Honduras on June 28, 2009. Then in 2010 there was the coup attempt against Raphael Correa in Ecuador, which the Ecuadoran police fomented. Now we have the ‘Parliamentary judgment,’ a coup against Paraguay’s popular and legally elected President, Fernando Lugo.”

U.S. imperialism, said Pagoada, “used Haiti and Honduras as experiments to advance the interests of imperialism against the weaker countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. The U.S. attacks popular leaders and controls the international press reportage. In the countries afflicted, the coup-plotters control the press. Resistance radio stations in Honduras were closed down, and Lugo has just reported that a radio station in Paraguay has also been silenced.

“When we demonstrate on June 28 at 4 p.m. in Times Square to oppose the illegitimate government the United States and the Honduran oligarchy have created, hundreds of thousands will be taking the streets of Honduras.” As the condition of the poor has deteriorated and violence against the people has escalated, resistance has grown.

This is happening now in Paraguay. Fernando Lugo said, “I call on people from the countryside, the youth and all citizens to resist until we are back in the office we unfairly had to leave.” Lugo has symbolically created a parallel cabinet, attacking the legitimacy of the government that replaced him. (Russia Today, June 26)

Pagoada noted, “Aristide, Zelaya and Lugo all promoted reforms to improve the lives of the poor people. In every case the U.S. lied to legitimize the removal of legally elected presidents. Each coup was followed by repression and resistance. In Honduras that resistance has grown into the millions, and the Front for National Resistance of the People and Libre will be forming a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the constitution.”

On July 1, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya will announce her candidacy for president of Honduras.

Pagoada added, “Our slogan is ‘Ni perdon ni olvido’ — ‘Neither forgive nor forget’ — what the coup has done, who they killed and tortured. The imperialists and the oligarchies everywhere in Latin America are very afraid of peoples’ power.”