Translated declaration of struggle from Honduran coordinating organization
translated from Spanish by La Voz de los de Abajo,
lavoz@rojo.net, Chicago
Declaration from the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance (La Coordinadora Nacional de la Resistencia Popular), Honduras.
February 5, 2004
National Coordinator of Popular Resistance
Public Declaration
To the Honduran People:
The government of Honduras continues working to benefit the capitalists and international investors to develop campaigns that emphasize the great achievements and gains made by the rich as if they were of the entire population, a population that is living in the poorest and most uncertain conditions.
The government over which Ricardo Maduro presides celebrated the two-year anniversary of his administration with new blows to the economy of the poor, with hard hits to salaries and to the labor security of the working population and signing agreements with the International Monetary Fund; which ratifies the servility of the politicians and public officials to the politics of the international capital.
Meanwhile, the government hits the poor without compassion through decrees and increases on fuel prices and products of general use. The government has deepened its emphasis on politics of persecution towards the young population in the popular barrios, while it hypocritically praises the successes of our migrant compatriots, the maquiladora economy that exploits thousands of maquiladora workers, and tourism that is based on expropriating and privatizing natural resources and coastal beaches by displacing thousands of people off their land.
Last year we organized many mobilizations and sent many letters to the President of the Republic, but Maduro, and his people did not listen to us. On the contrary, the government continued to emphasize privatization by taking more extreme measures to worsen lives, repression, invalidating popular organizations and radicalizing its servility to the imperial politics of the government of the United States.
That is why, today, we retake the journey of mobilization and resistance that we began last year. Should we resign ourselves and submit to a tyrant, lying, anti-national, anti-popular government or do we resist until we make them listen to our demands so the clamor of the poor can be heard? With the mobilization of this day, we begin the public and organized struggle of resistance on which we will concentrate during the year. The National Coordinator of Popular Resistance salutes the Honduran people declaring this year, the year to be designated for unitary and popular struggle in memory of and commitment with the fiftieth anniversary of the glorious banana hunger strike of 1954.
We salute and give a combative and fraternal welcome to the community organizations, unions and social organizations that in this day will integrate into our national and unitary struggle. We open our doors to all community, popular and union bases organizations that want to become part of the popular and organized struggle. From this day we continue our struggle for our fundamental demands:
1. We fight for the abolition of the Law for Drinkable Water and Sanitation and we fight for the passing of the law we presented last year in the National Congress.
2. We fight for the preservation and defense of the forests and natural resources threatened by the predators of natural resources and transnational miners.
3. We fight for the respect of the achievements of the workers and employees of the State, its collective wage, its statutes and contracts.
4. We fight to have the material and intellectual murderers judged for the assassinations of the peasants that defended their right to land.
5. We fight against the approval of laws that regulate the land in favor of the great landowners and demand a true and deep process of agrarian reform.
6. We fight to gain true reforms for a democratic political participation of the citizenship and so that justice stops being an instrument to assure impunity for politicians and government.
7. We fight for the freedom of the imprisoned popular leaders like Julio Brigido Alvarado and other peers such as Marcelino and Leonardo Miranda Espinoza, indigenous Lencas, and members of COPINH.
8. We fight against the policies of subordination from the government to the international financial organisms and against the imperial policies expressed in the Free Trade Agreements and the FTAA.
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