Elections in Honduras - a Left sensing victory

Dick & Miriam Emanuelsson-Huezo, 24 de noviembre 2021
https://dickemahonduras.blogspot.com/2021/11/elecciones-honduras-una-iz…

"We have decided that the people are going to take power and the people have the conditions to do so."
(Sergio Riveras of the Libre party)

TEGUCIGALPA / 2021-11-12 / This Sunday, November 28, 2021, the people of Honduras will go to the polls to elect their president and congressional deputies.

The Central American nation is going through one of the deepest economic and social crises in the country's history, where hunger, terror, violence, drug trafficking and corruption are a "cancer" that has penetrated the entire body of society, according to the opposition.

The crisis since the 2009 coup d'état has literally thrown hundreds of thousands of Hondurans into the exodus caravans to the "north", but not because they dream of an "American paradise".

It is more about surviving in a country of hunger and terror where the media headlines are of daily massacres and assassinations. In the last ten months alone, 68 candidates or politicians have been assassinated.

From the United States and the OAS, not a whisper of protest is heard. Because Honduras is not Nicaragua, where not a single politician was assassinated during the electoral campaign that ended on November 7.

For the United States, Honduras has been and is the nation of greatest geostrategic importance in the center of the "American Beltway", with the longest runway at its air base, Soto Cano.

That is why the elections in Honduras this November 28 is one of the Pentagon's top priorities, says SERGIO RIVERA, one of the founders of the LIBRE (Libertad y Refundación) party, when we speak with him and five other members of the "Luis Alonso Morel Collective", named after legendary leader of the then Communist Party of Honduras and of the popular and labor union movement.

"In Honduras we have the Southern Command that was in Panama, and when they closed it they moved it to Honduras, turning our country into a platform of aggression that threatens regional peace.

The U.S. is making sure that there are no changes in Honduras, that the people do not rebel. That is why at this moment they are spending millions and millions of dollars and also from drug trafficking so that the people do not take power. In spite of this, we have decided that the people are going to take power and the people have the conditions to do so".

Thirty-eight killed in protests

THE NOVEMBER SUN warms us as we climb the steep mountain in Villavieja, one of the three strategic exits from the capital, Tegucigalpa, roads that were taken over in the popular uprising in 2017 in protest at what Rivera and Libre consider was electoral fraud. During the protests, which lasted two months, 38 people were killed, according to local human rights organizations and 22, according to official data.

Optimism is notorious in the ranks of Libre's militants. And the members of the "Luis Alonso Morel Collective" are no exception. Yeryn Fernández, one of the leaders of the collective notes:

"This is a collective organized since 2009. We have been fighting for 12 years in resistance in this area of the capital where we have many needs. We have been working in a structured way despite the repression and despite the dictatorship, with a dream of improvement for our communities.

The dark clouds of the dictatorship have wanted to overshadow us, they have wanted to crush us and we, with the joy of the people and the need, have moved forward.

And here we are ready and organized, stronger than in 2009", he says, pointing to the mountains where the houses reflect the misery and extreme poverty that is spreading in the neighborhoods of Villanueva and Villavieja. On election day the collective has more than 300 comrades trained and experienced in the rules of the electoral process at the polling stations, all so as to avoid any fraud.

Extreme poverty

Daniel Hernández is another comrade ready to finish the job on November 28:

"What we want now is an end to the dictatorship that is burdening us every day. Now we have a percentage of 73 percent of poverty of which, as you can see here, is a village where we are a few steps from the urban center but we still do our physiological needs in latrines.

There is absolutely no development, because here is a country where politicians have become criminals, drug traffickers and corrupt."

The collective was created in response to the military coup of June 28, 2009. In 2012, the Resistance created the political arm, the LIBRE party, Libertad y Refundación. The party was and is a historical necessity to end the dictatorship. In Honduras there is a poverty rate of more than 73 percent.

Sergio Rivera adds:

"This collective has been growing stronger in the idea that we not only need a change of president but a change of economic MODEL."

Like electoral Chile; anti-communist hunt

During the electoral campaign the National Party, a historically right-wing party has claimed that Xiomara Castro is a communist, a campaign that even the former nationalist president, Porfirio Lobo considers to be "a desperate campaign tactic".

Part of the anti-communist witch hunt of the Mational Party

Connie Suarez shakes her head: "All I can say is, what can they take from me if I have nothing? I don't have land, I don't have a house, we don't have public services. The fear that the governing party has at this moment is that power will be taken away from them and they are carrying out a totally negative anti-communist campaign, a violent campaign that incites to violence. Where does all this money come from? What they have done at this moment is to instill fear in people. But what is communism? Communism comes from community. What community does is union and unification. Their fear is that they will lose power and they will no longer be able to continue stealing. What can they take from me if I don't even have a job?

"The youth play a fundamental role in this battle. That is why we are here representing the youth, because we need studies, we need people who really believe that communism, instead of what they are making people believe, is not something bad. We are in a crucial moment in which I believe and consider and I have the conviction that Honduras will be the winner, because this November 28 we are really going to go out to the polls to vote for a real change".

Teacher Andrés Martínez speaks about the crisis in the education system:

"The schools even before the pandemic were already abandoned, they were destroyed, absolutely nothing had been invested in education.

They have reduced the education budget and passed it to the Armed Forces and the Police.

They have not created new schools, they have not built a single school, not a single school during the last 12 years that the National Party has been in power".

Exodus of Honduran migrants

Wendy Jiménez is a single mother of three children, ages 8, 11 and 26.

Her eldest son also has two children and they all live in Wendy's home, out of work after she had to close her barbershop as a result of the pandemic.

She has been one of thousands of Honduran men and women who saw no alternative but to join the exodus caravans to the North, not because they had an "American dream" but because of the need to survive:

"About six years ago I also headed to the USA.

I got as far as Mexico and took my two small children with me.

I had to do it because the need in this country has been terrible in recent years. I arrived at the Mexican border and was deported back to Honduras.

U.S. Ambassador on coup in Nicaragua

Sergio Rivera considers that the role of the US is decisive and can be fatal in the elections. He tells us how in the 2017 elections, Lieutenant Colonel Heidi Fulton, in charge of the US embassy that year, arrived at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal where she had called a press conference to inform the national and international press that the State Department considered Juan Orlando Hernández to be the president of Honduras.

"She went to give her blessing and her approval for him, that according to her, after the electoral fraud, Juan Orlando Hernandez had been elected. Currently, the US has appointed a new ambassador (Laura Farnsworth Dogu), an ambassador who was in Nicaragua, one who has been linked precisely to the military issue and who was an advisor to the Pentagon. And she, with all the preparation she has, is getting ready precisely for what comes after the elections," Rivera says with concern in his voice.

Mrs. Laura Farnsworth Dogu was ambassador to Nicaragua precisely during the coup attempt of April-July 2018, executed by extreme right-wing groups that were also financed by the different branches of the CIA such as USAID, NED, NDI or IRI. In their diplomatic legation, the main Nicaraguan coup plotters met with the ambassador, denounced the Sandinistas, who managed to crush the violent and bloody attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega.

"That is precisely why the laws that now protect the Nicaraguan nation, the sovereignty of Nicaragua, have been generated," adds Rivera.

James C. McConville,  Chief of the US Army High Command with his political adviser
the new US Ambassador to Honduras, Laura Farnsworth Dogu.

"From Honduras the US attacks Venezuela".

"Notice that in this electoral campaign they use as a central theme the theme of `communism' and they are afraid of it and they put as an example that `Honduras should not be like Venezuela, nor like Cuba', despite the fact that the human development indexes made by the United Nations show Honduras with a lower level in health care, education and human development, much lower than Cuba and Venezuela."

"The North Americans have made a strong anti-communist campaign to try to justify any invasion of any country that exercises the self-determination of the people. At this moment Nicaragua is ating to ensure respect for its self-determination. Because from Honduras and from several countries they try to criticize what they are doing internally in their country. From Honduras they attack Venezuela. From Honduras they attack Cuba. In the past, the invasion of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was initiated from Honduras".

"Honduras has a platform of aggression in Palmerola that has attacked the self-determination of the peoples of El Salvador, Nicaragua and neighboring countries. In Honduras we have the Southern Command that was in Panama. And when they closed it, they moved it to Honduras, turning our country into a platform of aggression that threatens regional peace. The U.S. is making sure that there are no changes in Honduras, that the people do not rebel. That is why at this moment they are spending millions and millions of dollars and also from drug trafficking so that the people do not take power. In spite of this, we have decided that the people are going to take power and the people are in the conditions to do it".

Honduran protesting against the US military baase at Soto Cano (formerly Palmerola).

The runway at the US base is the longest in Central America

"Put an end to the narco-dictatorship!"

"The people have conditions to do what they need to despite the government's little gifts, their packages, their bags of cement, they give them sheets of galvanized roofing , they give away everything they can. And people take them out of necessity".

"But behind the curtain they expect to vote freely. It is there then where what the polls are saying is going to be reflected, that the Libre party is going to take power, that Xiomara Castro is going to win, that for the first time in Honduras there is going to be a woman to lead the destiny of this country".

"And why not say it; for the first time in Honduras there is an attempt to are in change the order of things, to create a New Constitution where poverty will be eradicated. It is a dream of the Hondurans".

"What happens is that this affects the great interests of the oligarchy, of the extractivist interests who have taken over our natural resources, who have privatized the rivers, who have privatized the forests, who have privatized the highways, who have privatized the airports".

"Honduras is being sold oveseas at four dollars the rod, 4 dollars for a rod of land  of Honduran territory, auctioned abroad. That is an insult to our sovereignty. Other countries losing an ounce of territory go to war. But no. Honduras is giving away its own sovereignty and that makes us Hondurans indignant. That is why we are going to put an end to the narco-dictatorship"!