Tucson, AZ – In the early hours of June 28, 2009, Honduran soldiers snatched President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya from his home and removed him from power in a coup d’état with tacit support from the U.S. What followed was a brutal dictatorship that murdered, disappeared and oppressed Hondurans. In close collaboration with criminal cartels, the Honduran power elite implemented neoliberal policies, while violence and drugs plagued the country. It should come as no surprise that waves of Hondurans poured out into caravans headed north to seek asylum in the U.S. only to be met by the cruel denial of President Trump and U.S. troops on the border.

From day one, the Honduran people resisted the coup and the robbery of the progressive agenda and constitutional reforms underway with Zelaya. A mass movement, led by the National Popular Resistance Front, built the organized resistance from 2009 to now, against the dictatorship of Presidents Lobo and Hernandez, their military apparatus and death squads. After 12 years with hundreds of murdered and disappeared activists, tens of thousands of detainees and arrests, as well as two massively fraudulent elections in 2013 and 2017, the Honduran people brought back a Zelaya to the presidency, Mel Zelaya’s wife Xiomara. She was elected with over 53% of the vote on November 28.

Moving from a strategic military operation base in the 1980s, in the U.S.-sponsored terror campaign by the Contras in Nicaragua, Honduras can now expel U.S. imperialism’s SOUTHCOM and continue the process of lifting the talons of the Yankee eagle out of Latin America.

Honduras is analogous to similar developments in Bolivia and Peru, where mass movements delivered important blows to U.S. imperialism by electing progressive leftist presidents, and joins Nicaragua, which just re-elected Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

Newly elected President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya gave her victory speech saying, “We will not rest one moment. We will give our soul, life and heart to be able to guarantee a different homeland, a just homeland, an equitable homeland, a free, independent Honduras, able to respond to the many needs of the people.” She concluded, “Today I want to say from the depths of my heart so that the Honduran people feel it: No more war! No more hate! No more death squads! No more corruption! No more drug trafficking and organized time! Until the final victory, united, the people, together we are going to transform our country!”

#TucsonAZ #Honduras #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #XiomaraCastro