General News

Honduran-born UFTers protest coup, violence in home country

by Michael Hirsch

Oct 15, 2009 11:53 AM

The June 28 coup in Honduras that toppled the elected Manuel Zelaya government and more recently closed independent media outlets critical of the coup in the name of maintaining “peace and public order” is meeting fierce resistance — and not just at home. New York’s Honduran population, including a number of UFT members, is mobilizing for democracy, too.

At a Union Square vigil on Sept. 28, the day after a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on the Central American nation, seven Honduran-born UFTers joined hundreds of Honduran nationals and supporters in urging the American public to reverse what Christina Flores, a retired teacher from PS 46 in the Bronx, called “a state of siege.”
“We’re concerned that even our usually informed colleagues don’t know what’s going on,” said Flores, as she joined in chanting “No al golpe, sí a la democracia! (No to the coup, yes to democracy!)”

In the first military coup in Central America since the Cold War, Zelaya, a leftist, was ousted from office by the army. The Honduran Congress replaced him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

Lucy Pagoada, a bilingual teacher at the HS for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture in Queens, urged U.S. educators to back the Honduran opposition, given that both of the nation’s teachers’ unions there oppose the coup.

Pagoada said teachers, who have been on strike for three days a week (forfeiting all pay) since August, were among the military’s first victims. English teacher Roger Abraham Vallejo was shot in the head when police attacked a protest march in Tegucigalpa.

The Center for the Investigation and Defense of Human Rights in Honduras counts at least nine political killings since the coup and thinks the real number is much higher. Pagoada said coup opponents were urging people to respond nonviolently and employ “weapons of reason.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten wrote to the chargé d’affaires at the Honduran Embassy in Washington on Aug. 9, urging “a just resolution to the current crisis — through dialogue and diplomacy, not violence — where the original will of the Honduran people will be acknowledged and respected.”

Honduran government troops also attacked the Brazilian Embassy, where ousted President Zelaya took refuge after returning to the country from forced exile. Troops cut the Brazilian embassy’s power and water and used gas to evict personnel — something the U.N. Security Council has since condemned. The illegal government also expelled Organization of American States observers from the country.

Phones were blocked and Internet access closed down, something Pagoado attested to after fruitlessly trying to reach her sister.

Micheletti continues to defend the moves as necessary to prevent Zelaya supporters from inciting “violence.”

Coup plotters claimed Zelaya wanted to extend his presidency beyond constitutional limits by pushing for voters to call a constitutional convention allowing the term-limited president to run for re-election. That’s preposterous, Pagoada said, given that the convention date coincided with precisely the national elections in which Zelaya would not have been eligible to run.

Many speculate that the coup plotters’ real fear was that a constitutional reform proposed by Zelaya would reassert national control over Hondutel, the nation’s telecom system. Micheletti, the company’s former CEO, supported the system’s privatization.

They also ascribe the coup to fears by the nation’s landowning families that a new constitution would not favor the nation’s entrenched oligarchy and the corporations that it controls. The same sectors of the Honduran population opposed Zelaya’s moves to raise the minimum wage and empower workers, peasants and other civil groups.

Pagoada said the Hondurans want President Obama to withdraw his ambassador and suspend trade and $150 million in U.S. aid.