Seige and Fire in Honduras

7/31/09

When Clifton Ross traveled to the Honduras-Nicaragua border at the end of July, I spent an intense and slightly surreal weekend at home in Richmond, California. This is a reflection on our separate and shared experiences; I pass it along with huge thanks to our friends and neighbors.

What was that noise?

I’d been listening to Radio Globo live from Tegucigalpa. I took off the headphones to go turn off the water to the garden, and heard a loud rustling. Unnerving. Ran down the stairs, heard popping. Kids setting off firecrackers? But right by my house? Looked out the front door and saw Leslie running by screaming “Fire!” into her cell phone. Ran out and saw smoke and flames.

I turned off the water so I could take the hoses off the irrigation system, remembered the cats, dashed inside for a moment--and came back out to find two neighbors dousing the flames with my hoses, two more throwing water on the shed and the back fence. They had the fire out 10 minutes before the official firemen showed up.

This on a Saturday that started with a 5:45 a.m. call from Clif on the Honduras-Nicaragua border. The Honduran coup government had slapped a stage of siege on the southern part of the country. Thousands of people who’d headed for the border to support the return of elected president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya had been stopped at roadblocks on the Pan American Highway. They sat stranded with no access to food, water or toilets. Clif, his friend Nery and the 1,500-some Zelaya supporters who made it to the town of El Paraíso were a bit more fortunate--but they still didn’t know when they could leave.

Friday night it had rained on and off. Truckers who were blocking about two kilometers of highway let stranded Zelaya supporters (“Melenistas”) sleep in or under their rigs. A señora living by the highway gave some 60 people shelter on her broad concrete porch, and made coffee for them in the morning.

“Don’t worry,” Clif told me on the phone. “They’re taking very good care of me. The Hondurans are very kind. There’s a terrific spirit of ‘compañerismo’ here.” But despite their fierce solidarity, the situation looked dicey for the opponents of the coup. Little accurate information was getting through a near-blackout by the media--so Clif and I worked up a press release and a letter to our friends.

For the next seven hours I sat at the computer writing, e-mailing and phoning, feeling I’d dropped into someone else’s movie. Our friends responded in a heartbeat. Christy translated the press release, Jess polished the info, added links and posted it on www.freedomvoices.org. Peter alerted the ILWU. Many others forwarded the news to their friends and media contacts. KPFA picked up the release: Kris Welch tried to reach Clif during the talkies and couldn’t but read the info, and Dennis Bernstein put him on during the live coverage of the rally for democracy in Iran, drawing links between the two fights. Later in the day, I got a call from a brother in Nashville who’d worked with Vietnam Vets Against the War. He’d gotten the release from a friend who got it from an ex-girlfriend. They’d already had a few small Honduras solidarity actions there in Nashville, he said. What else could they do?

Telesur became my umbilical cord (www.telesurtv.net). Every half-hour I’d check headlines. That network and Radio Globo seemed to be the only two reliable sources on the scene. The coup government tried to shut Radio Globo down, but the people surrounded the police surrounding the station, and kept it on the air.

Every couple of hours I’d skype Clif. What were people doing in the streets? They were marching and chanting, he said: “El pueblo/unidos/jamas sera vencidos,” “Queremos justicia,” “Zelaya, Zelaya/ El mundo te aclama y el pueblo te apoya” (“The world hails you and the people support you”), and “Alerta! Alerta que camina/ La lucha popular en America Latina!” (Alert! Alert! The people’s struggle is on the move Latin America”--you lose the music in the translation). They set up checkpoints of their own, piling up boulders and branches to stop the police, burning tires, setting fire to green branches so the smoke blew at the police. And they talked politics, constantly.

“At one of the houses we visited, people told us that they didn’t have toilets, electricity or running water before Mel,” Clif said. “People keep telling me ‘He’s the first president who did anything at all for us.’ There’s a flyer out detailing ‘the 18 sins of Manuel Zelaya.’ He’s done things like raise the minimum wage, make school tuition free and give campesinos tractors.”

There, too, people were staying hooked to Radio Globo. About 6 p.m. an anonymous soldier called in to say that “a good quantity of lower-ranking officers and many enlisted me are not in agreement with the coup. They will not raise their guns against their own people.” I’d been listening to find out more when I took off my headphones and discovered the fire.

It seemed all the neighbors materialized on the scene at the same time. The guys grabbed the hoses, the families stood by looking worried and fascinated.

“We had the whole United Nations out there putting out the fire,” Nancy said afterwards: Gonzalo and his brother-in-law from Nicaragua, Rudy from Jamaica, Armando from Mexico and Abdi from Ethiopia. I didn’t even know Armando and Abdi. The flames turned our fence into standing slats of charcoal and melted the trashcans into surreal heaps. They leaped the alley to singe Doris and Mort’s fence and melt their siding.

As soon as the guys were sure the flames were out, the neighbors melted away. I went in to call Clif again, feeling drained and raw, overwhelmed and grateful at how many ways people had come together, here in Richmond and where he was in Honduras. We have neighbors all over the world.

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The situation for our neighbors in Honduras remains uncertain. If you haven't yet, please call Congress and the White House; urge them to suspend all aid to Honduras and pressure the coup government to withdraw. White House comment line: 202-456-1111; Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121

Marcy Rein is a freelance writer and editor and longtime participant/observer in various social movements.