Chanting “They fear us because we are not afraid,” Hondurans of all walks of life, colors, shapes, and sizes, including workers, students, housewives, teachers, feminists, lesbians, gays, transgendered people, Garifuna, Lencas, Tolupanes, campesinos, came together in the summer of 2009 to oppose the coup d’état.1 They established the National Front Against the Coup d’État in Honduras—renamed the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) after the November 29 elections—a large, broad-based coalition with a presence throughout the country’s regions. The resistance, as it is popularly known, is the result of a dynamic, inter-generational convergence between “new” and “old” social movements: Newer groups that push for the inclusion of marginalized people, including women, youth, indigenous peoples, Afro-Hondurans, and LGBT people, have joined the resistance, building strong links with older, more traditional unions and campesino organizations that focus on material needs and have a larger working-class membership.
The leadership of the FNRP (contraelgolpedeestadohn.blogspot.com) was initially led by traditional-sector men. But groups like the Garifuna Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) and indigenous Lenca-led Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), along with feminist and LGBT groups, joined the leadership—representing a radical step toward moving people on the margins to the center. In the past, the “new” movements have not always been natural allies of the traditional sectors of labor and other male- and mestizo-led groups. Yet the traditional social movements passed down the mobilizational tools and vision of what a just society should look like to younger leaders and activists, and they were indispensable in creating and defining the spaces for protest. On the other hand, without the newer social movements, the more traditional sectors would not be questioned and forced to reassess their strategies. The golpistas have unwittingly created an opportune moment for popular sectors to consolidate a powerful oppositional movement.
The presence of women at all levels of the resistance is profound and unmistakable. Early on, women leaders founded Feminists in Resistance, a national coalition whose members include representatives from all the women’s groups in the country as well as from non-women-identified groups. In its first communiqué, the group made clear its intervention within the mostly male-led resistance leadership, but it also reflected a commitment to create a united front, bringing together many organizations that had never collaborated before.2 Feminists in Resistance demanded and earned a place for women as leaders, not just as workers and protesters, and the traditional movements recognized they could not do without them.3
During the coup, Honduran LGBT groups like the Arco Iris, Asociación Kukulcan, Red Lésbica Cattrachas, Colectivo Violeta, and Comunidad Gay Sampedrana, quite visibly joined the resistance. This certainly sets off the movement as unique in Honduran history, challenging the more traditional movements to consider and incorporate people of non-normative sexualities within a framework built around defending constitutionality and human rights. To this day they have been the most vocal human rights defenders against national police and military. While most of these organized sectors exist in the major cities, Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, the work of HIV prevention has spread throughout the nation via other partner organizations such as women’s groups, campesino groups, and women’s projects within labor unions.4
The resistance has also been notable for its inclusion of Honduran ethno-racial minorities. The role of Garifuna people in the resistance has been bold. These historically marginalized coastal communities, often seen as a thorn in the side of developers near the country’s northern beaches, have also found a place in the leadership of the FNRP. So too have the Lenca community of indigenous campesinos, representing the interior regions of Intibucá, La Paz, Lempira, Valle, and Santa Bárbara. In both cases, their organizations descend from various older movements and larger federations focused on land rights and have a history of collaborating with labor federations, particularly in opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Another powerful sector within the resistance is composed of marginalized, working-poor urban neighborhoods and rural villages, which have organized resistance committees throughout the country.5 Formations of small fronts in towns or neighborhoods acted in local ways to protest the de facto government. For example, community members defied the government-imposed curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., marching outside in the pitch darkness with banners displaying the name of their town or neighborhood together with the words “en resistencia.” Yelling and banging pots and pans, they photographed themselves and later uploaded and e-mailed them worldwide. These acts, called la buyaranga (the noise-making), made it clear to all Hondurans that the silence was broken.
These developments indicate that Honduras is entering a new period of organizing, marked by a realignment of national left and progressive movements and an openness to previously marginalized sectors and communities. Political differences continue to exist and will exist, and all of these organizations and their memberships are in constant flux, redefining each other as the resistance matures into a long-term effort. Like most of the international community, the FNRP refused to recognize the elections in November and views the new administration of Porfirio Lobo as a continuation of the coup government of Roberto Micheletti. One of the movement’s clearest and most resounding demands has been the convening of a constituent assembly to redraft the ironclad Cold War constitution of 1982. The FNRP hopes to institutionally include marginalized sectors in the government through the legal means of reestablishing the constitution. Resistance activists see this as the ultimate end of an irreversible process of awakening Hondurans to their national reality.
Suyapa G. Portillo Villeda is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University’s history department and is a visiting fellow at Pomona College. A native of Honduras, she is writing a dissertation on the Honduran banana strike of 1954.
1. Special thanks to Eileen Ma, Arely Zimmerman, Ismael Moreno Coto, Iris Munguía and Indyra Mendoza for valuable feedback and input. Any errors are mine. The chant comes from “Nos tienen miedo,” a song written by the Mexico-based songwriters Liliana Felipe and Jesusa Rodríguez.
2. “Violaciones a los derechos humanos de las mujeres después del golpe de estado en Honduras,” Feministas en Resistencia, November 25, 2009.
3. Ibid.
4. Sadly, transgender women (travestis) are the one component of the resistance that has been targeted perhaps more than any other. According to Human Rights Watch, 17 travestis were killed in hate crimes from 2004 to May 2009 in Honduras; between June and December 2009, 19 transgender women and gay men had been killed, 11 of them transgender women. “Not Worth a Penny”: Human Rights Abuses Against Transgender People in Honduras (Human Rights Watch, 2009), 3.
5. Father Ismael Moreno Coto, presentation for Honduras Justice Tour, Los Angeles, 2009
