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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen08262009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/carlsen08262009.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">August 26,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Catalyzing a New
Movement <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Coup and Honduran Women
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By LAURA
CARLSEN <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">O</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>n the morning of June 28, women's
organizations throughout Honduras were preparing to promote a yes vote on
the national survey to hold a Constitutional Assembly. Then the phone
lines started buzzing.<br><br>
In this poor Central American nation, feminists have been organizing for
years in defense of women's rights, equality, and against violence. When
the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was forcibly exiled by
the armed forces, women from all over the country spontaneously organized
to protect themselves and their families and demand a return to
democracy. They called the new umbrella organization "Feminists in
Resistance."<br><br>
On August 18, Feminists in Resistance sat down with women from the
international delegation for Women's Human Rights Week, which they
organized to monitor and analyze human rights violations and challenges
for the organization. One after another they told their stories in a long
session that combined group therapy and political analysisa natural mix
at this critical point in Honduran history and the history of their
movement.<br><br>
Miriam Suazo relates the events of the day of the coup. "On the
28th, women began calling each other, saying 'what's happening?'" At
first no-one really understood the full extent of the coup, she says, but
networks mobilized quickly and women began to gather to share information
and plan actions. Independent feminists and feminists from different
organizations immediately identified with each other and with the rising
resistance to the coup. They began going out to rescue those who had been
beaten and to trace individuals arrested by security forces.<br><br>
For some, the shock of waking up to a coup d'etat wasn't new.<br><br>
"This is my third coup," relates Marielena. "I was a girl
when the coup in 1963 happened. Then I lived through the coup in 1972. We
lived in front of a school and I saw how my mother faced the bullets, we
thought they were going to kill her … Later in the university in the 80s
I lived through the repression with many of the women here … So this has
revived the story of my life."<br><br>
There is a saying in Honduras about the Central American dirty war that
"While the United States had its eye on Nicaragua and its hands in
El Salvador, it had its boot on Honduras." For the older women who
remember the terror of that time when over 200 people were disappeared
and hundreds tortured and assassinated, the current coup stirs up deep
fears. Gilda Rivera, director of the Center for Women's Rights in
Tegucigalpa, says, "I've had a messed-up life. I knew the victims of
Billy Joya in the 80s … Now I've been to the border twice, I've lived
with a curfew over my head. I wake up alone, terrified."<br><br>
The older women agree that they have grown and their movement has grown
since the 80s.<br><br>
Marielena notes, "Today's not the same as the 80s because there's a
popular movement that the coup leaders never imagined … What Zelaya has
done is symbolize the popular discontent accumulated over the
years." She recounts the August 5 battle for the university where
she works and the surprising participation of students. Her story is
echoed in variations by many of the women present.<br><br>
Although they battle nightmares and long-buried trauma, these women also
see a new hope for the resistance this time around and for their own
fight for women's rights. The repression and fear has strengthened their
resolve. "Sure, I'm afraid of dying but I'm not losing hope,"
Gilda says. "I see hope in the faces of the people at the marches.
And the solidarity from women, from all of you, keeps me
going."<br><br>
For Jessica, events this year brought to mind the contra war of the 80s.
"I never imagined that my daughters would have to be in a situation
like this," she says. As a mother who has lived through the period
before Honduras began its incomplete transition to democracy, and the
period when democracy was merely a word that belied a much cruder reality
in the country, she worries. "I told my daughter not to go to the
march. She said, 'Mom, what about my autonomy?'"<br><br>
"My little girlshe's 18 now, but she's still my little girlended
up going with me to the march. It was really gratifying for me that we
went together." These women know in their bodies and their hearts
the costs of resistance. They also know that the costs of not resisting
are far greater.<br><br>
For the new generation of feminists, the catalyst came with the
confrontation in front of the National Institute of Women on July 15. The
day the coup-appointed head of the Institute was installed, Feminists in
Resistance gathered to protest the takeover of "their"
institution. Lesly says, "The police used their billy clubs, they
grabbed me by the neck. I was filled with so much rageI was drowning in
it." Many women in the organization experienced a turning point in
their lives that day. Adelai explains, "(The Institute) was my turf,
something that belonged to me, and they attacked us there. That was a
direct assault on our condition as women … What they did there really
affected me personally."<br><br>
Despite a lot of suffering, the women in the Feminists in Resistance
meeting agree that the exhausting dynamic of constant mobilizations and
repression has deepened their commitment. Their movement has also come
together and developed closer ties to the general movement. When word got
out that the feminists were being attacked at the Women's Institute,
demonstrators from the entire demonstration of the National Front against
the Coup immediately marched to the Institute to defend the women and
show their solidarity.<br><br>
Although the Front leadership continues to be mostly male, men in the
movement have publicly recognized the contributions of the feminist
organizations and women in the resistance. From recovering the wounded,
to marching day after day, to developing analysis and strategy papers,
women's organizations have played a critical role in opposing the
coup.<br><br>
At a meeting between leaders of the Front and Feminists in Resistance
earlier in the day, Salvador Zuniga, a leader of the Civic Council of
Popular and Indigenous Organzations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Front,
recognized that women have been among the most active and courageous in
the resistance movement. He pointed out that the feminist movement is at
the center of the rightwing reaction that led to the coup.<br><br>
"One of the things that provoked the coup d'etat was that the
president accepted a petition from the feminist movement regarding the
day-after pill. Opus Dei mobilized, the fundamentalist evangelical
churches mobilized, along with all the reactionary groups," he
explained.<br><br>
The unprecedented role of women in the nation's fight for democracy opens
them up as a target for repression. Zuniga concluded in no uncertain
terms, "What I can say is that the feminist compañeras are in
greater danger than any other organization. This has to be made
public."<br><br>
Besides being at the receiving end of the billy clubs and pistols along
with the rest of the movement, women suffer specific forms of repression
and violence; their bodies have become part of the battleground. Human
rights groups including the Women's Human Rights Week international
delegation have documented rapes, beatings, sexual harassment, and
discriminatory insults. Army and police units routinely shout out
"whores!" and "Go find a husband!" at the more and
more frequent confrontations between the women and the coup security
forces.<br><br>
It's precisely that step out of the private sphere that makes these
dangerous times so exciting and energizes the women of the organization.
Many report being driven by the adrenaline of knowing that this time they
are the ones defining their history. They ride a roller coaster of
emotions, often pitching from euphoria to despair in a single day. But
one constant is the satisfaction of binding in a political project with
other women who understand the full scope of what they demand and share
the contradictory feelings storming inside.<br><br>
The budding movement has come together in the heat of the coup as
Feminists in Resistance faces some major challenges, the first to defeat
the coup that now enters Day 54 on the resistance calendar. As the
rightwing consolidates power and its own perverse brand of
institutionalism, they feel like they're looking down the barrel of a gun
as far as their rights and safety are concerned. Rumors circulate that
the coup will dismantle the Institute for Women. Congress is about to
initiate obligatory military service, meaning that mothers throughout the
country will be compelled to protect their children from forced
induction. Their freedom of expression, freedom of transit, freedom of
assembly have all been curtailed under the coup, along with everyone else
who opposes the regime, except for them the physical enforcement of
reduced liberties is accompanied by acts of sexual violence and
threats.<br><br>
Big questions are on the table at the meeting of Honduran and
international feminists. How to fight for a necessary return to
institutional order at a time when the vulnerability and insufficient
nature of those institutions has been exposed? How to avoid relegating
women's demands to a lower plane in a period of acute political crisis?
How to break through a media black-out that's even more impenetrable if
you're against the coup and a woman? And how to simply hold your work and
family together while spending hours a day in the streets and in
meetings.<br><br>
Bertha Cáceres is a leader of COPINH, a leader of the Front, and mother
of four. In her political work she has integrated her specific demands as
a woman and believes that organized women must be front-and-center in the
resistance against the coup.<br><br>
"First, because (our struggle as women) means confronting a
dictatorship based on different forms of domination. We've said that it's
not just destructive capitalism, not just the racism that has also been
strengthened by this dictatorship, but also patriarchy. So we think our
resistance as women means going a step further, toward a more strategic
vision, a more long-term vision in fighting for our
country."<br><br>
She points to a national constitutional assembly as a fundamental goal
for women. "For the first time we would be able to establish a
precedent for the emancipation of women, to begin to break these forms of
domination. The current constitution never mentions women, not once, so
to establish our human rights, our reproductive, sexual, political,
social, and economic rights as women would be to really confront this
system of domination."<br><br>
The women of Feminists in Resistance have no illusions that this will be
an easy task. In addition to the challenges above, the movement is in
transition to a new stage of nationwide local organization and long-term
strategizing, at the same time as it faces increasing repression and
human rights violations. The question of the elections slated for
November has created another deadline for definitions of September 1,
when candidates must be registered and President Zelaya has sworn to
return to the country. Feminists in Resistance has a clear position to
boycott any coup-sponsored elections, but some other parts of the
movement and the international diplomatic community have been more
ambiguous.<br><br>
What's certain amid these rapidly changing national scenarios is that
Honduran women have built a movement that, despite little media attention
and the barriers of a male-dominated society, has garnered international
support from women around the world and respect from the general
resistance movement. Their organization will continue to play a central
role in what happens next in Hondurasa key determinant of the course of
democracy throughout the Hemisphere.<br><br>
<b>Laura Carlsen</b> is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico
City. She is currently in Tegucigalpa as a member of the international
delegation of Women's Human Rights Week in Honduras.</font><font size=3>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>She can be reached at:
(lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).<br><br>
<br><br>
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