Visiting unionist contradicts U.S. media account of Honduras coup

Portland unionists heard an eye-witness account of last year's coup d'etat in Honduras at a Jan. 28 talk at the SEIU Local 503 hall. Jose Luis Baquedano, secretary-treasurer of the Honduran labor federation CUTH, spoke as part of a West Coast speaking tour organized by San Francisco Central Labor Council and Portland's Cross-Border Labor Organizing Committee (CBLOC). The tour's purpose was to tell what really happened in Honduras, and appeal for solidarity.

Baquedano, interviewed in Spanish before the talk, said mainstream U.S. media accounts have provided a distorted picture, making it sound like the army-led coup was a response to a power grab by Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. Baquedano gave an alternate account.

Zelaya, a businessman, is a member of the Liberal Party, which Baquedano described as one of two elite parties that have alternated in power since a military junta stepped down in 1982. So Zelaya surprised many with a left turn after taking office in 2006. Zelaya rejected business calls to privatize the country's electricity and water systems. Instead, he moved to expropriate and redistribute unused farmland to landless farmers; raised the minimum wage for workers; cancelled gold mining concessions to foreign companies; replaced oil imports from U.S. companies with cheaper imports from Venezuela; and proposed that a U.S. military airbase in Honduras be converted to civilian use.

He also tried to convene a constitutional assembly. Honduras' current constitution was set up after a military junta handed power over to civilian rule in 1982. But Zelaya's proposal for a constitutional assembly ran into opposition from the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court. Zelaya tried instead to hold a non-binding referendum, but the Supreme Court ruled that illegal and ordered Zelaya's arrest for treason. June 28, 2009, the day of the scheduled vote, Zelaya was seized by the military and deported to Costa Rica.

In the days after the coup, Honduran labor unions took part in a general strike to demand Zelaya's return to office. The strike took the form of a refusal to work Thursdays and Fridays, but ended several weeks later after employers fired workers and soldiers repeatedly opened fire on street marches. Baquedano carries with him a folder with the pictures of 40 to 50 slain activists, and said he and his family are at risk from continued repression. CUTH, which claims 250,000 members, is the smallest of three Honduran labor federations; Baquedano is also president of the Psychiatric Hospital Workers Union in Santa Rosita, and a representative of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup in Honduras.

Honduras went ahead with scheduled elections Nov. 29, but more than half of Hondurans boycotted the polls as illegitimate. The United States is one of five countries that have recognized the post-coup government, which otherwise continues to face worldwide condemnation and sanctions from Latin America and the European Union.

The day before Baquedano's Portland talk, Zelaya's official term ended, and Porfirio Lobo, winner of the Nov. 29 elections, was sworn in. On Jan. 28, Zelaya, who had returned and holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, was flown to exile in the Dominican Republic.

Baquedano said Honduran products should be boycotted if the coup government remains in power, but for now, asked that American union members call on the Obama administration to rescind diplomatic recognition.

The Portland event, organized by the Honduras Solidarity Committee of the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC), had the endorsement of the Oregon AFL-CIO, SEIU Local 503, Machinists Lodge 1005, Painters, Laborers Local 483, AFSCME Local 88. 

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