Honduras

Xiomara Castro, candidate of the Libre party (Freedom and Refoundation Party), the main force in the opposition coalition, has won the elections in Honduras. The regime established by the 2009 coup has been overthrown. With 40 percent of the votes tallied, Xiomara is ahead with 53.61 percent against 33.87 percent for Nasry Afura (nickname ‘Papi a la orden’ – ‘Daddy of law and order’) of the National Party, the candidate representing the continuity of the coup.

This is an abbreviated version of a longer statement by the comrades of Izquierda Marxista Honduras (Marxist Left) regarding the forthcoming elections in the country. On 28 November, the new president will be elected, in addition to 128 national deputies, and 20 for the Central American parliament. This comes at a time of deep social, political, economic and public health crisis, after years of attacks on the oppressed and exploited classes. What is the way forward?

The first Honduran cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the early hours of Wednesday, 11 March. Just under a month later, infections in the country already number in the hundreds. The coronavirus is spreading so rapidly that the government has adopted "emergency measures" to try and contain the pandemic. However, the state is not prioritising the people’s wellbeing. As a result, the measures taken are insufficient and largely inapplicable to most Hondurans' lives.

Sheltered in the darkness of the night, in the early hours of 28 June 2009, hundreds of soldiers entered the presidential residence and captured José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the legitimately elected president of Honduras. While still in his pyjamas, he was forcibly exiled to Costa Rica. A letter by Zelaya was issued, in which he resigned the presidency in order to avoid further bloodshed. The ousted president denied the letter was his.

The military has entered the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) to brutally repress students who protested against the illegitimate government of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). At least eight students have been injured. This attack comes a few days after a group of US Marines entered the Central American country, evidencing the support of US imperialism for this coup government. The authorities of the university, similarly, have been accomplices of the coup government, but the repression has taken shape in such a brutal way that even the University Council has had to condemn it.

The class struggle is intensifying in Honduras as the dictatorship increases the level of repression. Just yesterday, our comrades on the ground were witnesses to an attack on the main university campus of UNAH (National Autonomous University of Honduras) in the capital of Tegucigalpa. Since the armed police have refused to repress the people, the military was sent into the university and fired live rounds on unarmed students, injuring four. As the comrades state, this is a clear violation of “the university’s autonomy and an attempt against the lives of the

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In Honduras, a mass movement is reaching insurrectionary proportions and threatens to bring down the illegitimate government of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). Protests against planned privatisation of public healthcare and education, which began at the end of May, have recently been escalating. The past week in Honduras has seen a significant broadening of the protest movement out from the health professionals’ and teachers’ trade unions to the wider public.

A Marxist student comrade of the Progressive Youth Alliance, Rawal Asad, remains in jail on the charge of sedition, having had his bail hearing rejected. In addition to continued protest in Pakistan against this injustice, messages and photographs have been pouring in all week from all over the world demanding our comrade's release.

We publish here a joint solidarity statement from the comrades of Bloque Popular Juvenil (El Salvador), Izquierda Marxista (Honduras) and La Izquierda Socialista (Mexico) to the thousands-strong migrant caravan travelling from Central America to the United States. The migrants have been met with prejudice, attacks by the media and state repression – their plight expresses the suffering of a whole region, plagued by the policies of American imperialism and oligarchical rule.

The struggle of the masses, opened after the elections in Honduras, is only comparable to the strike of 1954 and the movement against the coup d'état in 2009. It is one of the greatest instances of class struggle in the history of the country. This can only be explained by the great contradictions concentrated in society, which have placed the country on the verge of revolution. In spite of all that revolutionary impulse, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) has just been sworn in as president, although he was met with protesters demanding his resignation. This is a highly discredited and weak government that will be subjected to the pressure of the workers, who can prevent JOH from completing

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Salvador Nasralla, the opposition candidate, travelled to Washington on Monday, 18 December, to meet with representatives of the OAS, the State Department and human rights organisations, to look for a solution to the post-electoral conflict in Honduras. In another clumsy move, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), on Sunday afternoon, 17 December, declared right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) of the National Party (and current president) as the winner. Clearly this has been a fraudulent election.

El día de ayer, domingo 17 de diciembre, el Tribunal Supremo Electoral dio el resultado oficial de las elecciones presidenciales del pasado 26 de noviembre en Honduras, el cual dictaba como presidente reelecto al candidato del partido Nacional: Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). La lucha de las masas en las calles del país desde que se realizaron las elecciones ha sido masiva y combativa, la gente ha montado barricadas, tomado carreteras, se ha movilizado de manera decidida como el pasado 3 de diciembre, exigiendo un resultado justo que beneficie a Salvador Nasralla y a las fuerzas progresistas de la política hondureña, exigencia que se expresa en la consigna generalizada, incluso a nivel

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Salvador Nasralla, el candidato de la oposición, viajó a Washington para reunirse este lunes 18 de diciembre con representantes de la OEA, del departamento de Estados Americanos y organismos de Derechos Humanos, para buscar una salida al conflicto post electoral en Honduras. En otra burda maniobra, el Tribunal Superior Electoral (TSE), en la tarde del domingo 17 de diciembre, declaró ganador al derechista Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) del Partido Nacional y actual presidente. A todas luces ésta es una elección fraudulenta. La Alianza contra la dictadura ha llamado a movilizarse de inmediato en todas las plazas públicas del país (una acción que quedó rebasada por los acontecimientos), en

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The comrades from Izquierda Marxista, supporters of the IMT in Honduras, are participating in the mass insurrectionary movement against electoral fraud and repression. They need all the solidarity we can raise in the international workers' movement but also financial help to produce political material and to deal with security issues. Please donate generously.

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