Precarious Solidarity: Report from Honduras, November 2012Katherine Borland and Allison Fish

The Ohio State University

Introduction

International solidarity conjures ideals of cross-border collective action in the service of social justice. Relying on international networks, solidarity activists deploy a repertoire of actions and discourses in an effort to change domestic and foreign policy by bringing attention to situations of social injustice. The engagements often simultaneously exhibit a profound distrust of the state and of the current international human rights bureaucracy. In this essay we examine how international solidarity functions within the Honduran Solidarity Movement, a North American network, by analyzing the dynamics of a November 2012 delegation to Tegucigalpa. This delegation to Honduras is a unique international solidarity collaborationthat was designed to provide international human rights observers for the Honduran primary elections.

Although both hosts and guests experience the solidarity delegation as a form of moral support that allows them to continue what is clearly a precarious activist existence within their own national contexts, we identify distinctive vulnerabilities that apply independently to Northern and Central American participants. North American Solidarity groups typically align with grassroots movements that espouse an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist agenda. They are attracted to their hosts, members of the most left-leaning tendencies within the newly formed LIBRE party, because they believe this party represents a grassroots revolutionary movement to refound the Honduran state. In contrast to their hosts, however, North American delegates come together as a group only for the delegation and their subsequent actions on behalf of Honduran social movements are entirely volitional. This makes post-delegation collaboration among thevisitors unlikely.

The Honduran hosts, on the other hand, have organized themselves into a party, but by pursuing the electoral option, they currently prioritize anticorruption over what they perceive as more difficult “cultural” issues, such as violence against women and sexual minorities. They use the primary elections both to educate the North American delegates about Honduran electoral procedures and politics and recruit them to build a much larger international delegation to observe the 2013 general elections. They depend on the continued organizing of the international delegation to materialize an

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international presence for 2013 that will, they hope, protect against or at the very least denounce fraud. As members of the most radical tendency of the LIBRE party, they work to convince their North American allies of the party’s revolutionary potential despite critics that assert feminist, LGBTQ and indigenous rights have been ejected from the platform. We conclude that even among seasoned activists, solidarity is a precarious enterprise requiring constant attention, reflection and analysis if it is to be sustained. Ultimately, by focusing on the electoral campaign, both groups are engaged in a struggle that might through its very performance legitimate an outcome they would oppose.

Introduction to Contemporary Honduras

One of the least well studied of the Central American countries, Honduras is bordered by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Givenits strategic location in the region and its history as a “banana republic” Honduras served in the 1980s as a United States base for counter-insurgency operations elsewhere in Central America. Closely monitored and controlled by the US, Honduras passed for much of the 20th century as one of the most politically stable, if questionably democratic, countries in the region.1

Today the population of Honduras exceeds 8 million and the country is marked by some of the most severe wealth differentials within Latin America with more than half of the population living on less than two dollars per day. Despite increasing urbanization more than 74% of impoverished Hondurans live in rural areas where the primary means of subsistence remains agricultural. While a few of the rural poor do have access to land on which they might grow crops for their own consumption or sale, many only have recourse to day labor as a means of support. Land distribution figures reflect the dismal realities of this significant wealth inequalities showing that more than 70% of the population has access to less than 10% of the land, whereas, the wealthiest 1% of the population controls more than 25% of the land. Between ten to twenty families control most of the wealth of the country. This translates directly into political power that is backed by the military.2

The stark contrast between the rich and the poor has, in the pastseveral years, led to an increase in grassroots level activism that calls

1 See Dario Euraque, Reinterpreting the Banana Republic (1996).2 See Tanya Kressen, Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food, and Democracy in Northern Honduras (2013).

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upon the Honduran state to democratize access to land, food, education, healthcare, and other basic resources. Manuel Zelaya, a member of a family tied to the ruling oligarchy and elected to the presidency in 2006, had begun responding to these popular calls for redistribution of resources when he was unceremoniously forced from power and sent into exile in Costa Rice in June of 2009.

The Events of June 28th, 2009 and Official Responses to the Honduran Coup

In the early morning hours of June 28th, 2009 more than 100 soldiers stormed the presidential residence of Manuel Zelaya in the Honduran capitol of Tegucigalpa. Wearing only his pajamas, Zelaya wasforcibly extracted from his home by gunpoint and flown to Costa Rica. In the immediate aftermath the Honduran military and Zelaya releasedcontradictory statements to international channels regarding the events on that morning.

The Honduran military claimed that Zelaya planned to improperlyuse his presidential powers to hold a referendum that the Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional a few months beforehand. This referendum concerned an assessment of public opinion regarding revisions to the Honduran Constitution that would, among other reforms, potentially allow an extension of Zelaya’s presidency.3 Based upon Zelaya’s insistence that the referendum take place on June 28th in spite of the Supreme Court decision forbidding it, military command claimed that they were required, in defense of the state, to remove him from power.

Zelaya, in contrast, denounced the Supreme Court ruling on the matter of the referendum as the product of corruption favoring the Honduran oligarchy, and he labeled his forced removal from Tegucigalpa an anti-democratic coup d’etat. Zelaya asserted that the coup was a blatant power grab by the elite-controlled military who were concerned with the President’s recent left-leaning reforms. These reforms included raising the national minimum wage, favoring campesinos in land disputes, decreasing military influence, and joining the Bolivarian Alliance.

3 The referendum was to be a non-binding survey of of Honduran public opinion regarding the advisability of redrafting the 1982 Honduran Constitution, which had been continuously amended since that time. The referendum, in and of itself, would not have resulted in any changes.

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Within hours of Zelaya’s removal several influential political figures within the international community denounced this action as anillegal coup with President Obama issuing a statement strongly condemning what he saw as a “terrible precedent” for the region. While US foreign affairs officials had been concerned about the legality of Zelaya’s June 28th referendum, initially they argued that the referendum did not justify the forcible removal of a duly-elected state leader.4 European Union, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations concurred. On June 30th Zelaya appeared before the United Nations General Assembly, which quickly issued an unanimous decision calling for his immediate reinstatement as President of Honduras.5

Despite this initial international outcry against the military-backed coup, the tide swiftly turned for unexplained reasons. Within a week the United States and many other countries reneged on this position with President Obama citing non-intervention in Honduran affairs as a goal. Since this time, the United States government’s official position has been to remain silent on the events of June 28th, 2009 in Honduras and has officially recognized the Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo administration which came to power in November 2009 in an election widely recognized as flagrantly corrupt.6 Moreover, the US State Department has restored aid to the military and police in spite of close to 300 assassinations of opposition leaders, journalists, human rights workers, women and gays by state forces since the coup.7

North American graduate student, Jordan Levy, who was working on his Masters thesis in San Lorenzo during and immediately after the coup, described the post-coup situation among ordinary Hondurans

4 Cooper, Helene and Mark Lacey, “In a Coup in Honduras, Ghost of Past U.S. Policies” in New York Times. June 29th. 5 “UN Backs Honduras Leader’s Return”, BBC web news at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8127503.stm. June 30, 2009. 6 See Borland, Katherine. “Reflections of an Activist Ethnographer” in APLA News Column of Anthropology News. December 2012. Despite the official stance of the United States federal government, an informalconversation with members of the US embassy in Tegucigalpa indicate that individuals feel otherwise. Specifically, the wife of one US embassyworker, herself a US citizen, said, “Really? We [the US state] doesn’t recognize there was a coup? That is what we call it around the dinner table!” (personal contact, Nov 19th, 2012).7 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/were-witnessing-a-reactivation-of-the-death-squads-of-the-80s-an-interview-with-bertha-oliva-of-cofadeh

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residing outside of Tegucigalpa as one of epistemological uncertainty.8 Once power and communications were restored, San Lorenzo residentsbegan to piece together what had happened with limited information. In the months that followed they expressed their political allegiances not by discussing the coup outright but by labeling what had happenedas either a “coup” or as the restoration of democracy (as the coup-controlled media were vigorously contending). Generally, Hondurans residing in the United States did not engage the conflict; in fact, the most forceful opposition to the Honduran coup in the United States came from CISPES, a Salvadoran organization with roots in the 1980s Sanctuary movement.9

The Formation of the Honduran Resistance and the Emergence of LIBRE

Internally, protests against the coup began almost immediately as Hondurans from all walks of life took to the streets in marches that called for Zelaya’s return to the country and presidential power (Figure 1). In the initial days various grassroots movements that had existed prior to the coup organized marches and other forms of opposition independently of one another. However, as Honduran activists and the general public took to the streets a sense of common purpose emergedamongst previously independent civil and human rights movements until a formal unity emerged in the shape of the Frente Nacional de Resistancia Popular (FNRP), also called La Resistencia. Almost immediately, state and military response to protestors became violent and the first death occurred on July 5, 2009 when Isis Obed Murillo, a 19 year old protestor, was shot and killed by military police responding to an event near the international airport in downtown Tegucigalpa.

For his part Zelaya refused to remain in exile and made several dramatic attempts to reenter the country, behavior that galvanized thepopular resistance. Eventually, Zelaya sought sanctuary in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Surrounded by militants inside the embassy, he rallied crowds of supporters in the streets below with dailyspeeches from the balcony.

As the FNRP developed into a more coherent, unified and organized bloc the movement called its first assembly in early 2011

8 Honduran Political Culture and the 2009 Coup—Experiences from San Lorenzo. MA Thesis Anthropology, University of Western Ontario. This division in how the coup was defined mirrors in interesting ways the “war of interpretations” over the causes of femicide and drug-related murders in 9 Perla, Hector. 2011. Monseñor Romero's Resurrection: Transnational Salvadoran Organizing, NACLA 43:25-31.

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and formally decided to work towards the refounding of the Honduran state through a peaceful movement predicated on popular organizing and popular education. At a March, 2011 assembly the FNRP decided to form and field the LIBRE party, a third party option in a system that traditionally alternated power between the Liberal and National parties, both controlled by Honduran elites. The new party secured enough signatures to be formally recognized on October 30, 2011 and the institutionalization of the popular resistance was complete.10

However, LIBRE does not transparently represent the popular resistance struggle in Honduras. According to Gerardo Torres, a spokesman for the party, it is “a union of [five] parties that have an electoral strategic alliance” (11/17/12). LIBRE is a socialist-democratic coalition of five internal currents, or interest groups, that are committed to the redistribution of wealth in Honduran society.11 This basic platform challenges the long-standing distribution of both economic and political power in Honduras.

In the more than three years since the coup the people of Honduras have experienced increasing civil disorder, human rights violations at the hands of state actors, and general rise in crime and physical violence. Human rights organizations have documented the illegal detainment of more than 4,000 people related to the resistance, several of whom have been murdered or “disappeared”. Particular targets of state-sponsored violence and murder include opposition journalists, LGBTTI political figures, campesino activists, and human rights workers. Honduras is now the “most dangerous country in the world” and Tegucigalpa has a murder rate that stands at 92 people for

10 Gerardo Torres, personal contact, November 17, 2012.11 These currents include; (1) 28 de Junio, a group which represents Zelaya’s Liberal compatriots in resistance, (2) FNRP which represents the grassroots movements, (3) 5 de Junio which represents groups thatpromote Keynesian economic platforms, (4) POR which represents hardline social democrats, and (5) MRP which is a catchall group of people who do not identify with the other four currents. Torres cautioned that these currents cannot be understood simply according to ideological positions since ideological overlap between currents and diversity within currents is considerable (Gerardo Torres, personal contact, 11/17/12).

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every 100,000.12 Violence against women is also rising, and femicide has been increasing by 30% per year since 2009.13

It was in this context of social upheaval and political change that the primary elections took place in Honduras on November 18, 2012. Inthese primary elections, similar to primaries in the United States, each political party selects the candidates who will run on the ballot in the general election. Given the youth of LIBRE and the desire to field a unified front, the resistance selected only one presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the wife of the deposed president. The primary objective of LIBRE on election day was to demonstrate popularsupport for the party and for Xiomara by registering 500,000 or more votes. Liberal and National party primaries were more contentious since both were fielding multiple candidates for president.

The Formation of a North American Solidarity Delegation

Human rights abuses and the impressive Honduran Resistance that emerged in the wake of the coup quickly drew the attention of North American solidarity networks. In the past three years many individuals and members of these organizations have traveled to Honduras to participate in protests against the coup, act as witnesses to the unfolding political turmoil, and to support the formation and legitimation of the LIBRE political party. Concerned about the ongoing crisis, a colleague and I joined an international human rights delegation to observe the Honduran primaries. We were interested both in learning more about the Honduran Resistance and in studying the practices of North American solidarity networks. We prepared questions as we headed to the field: Who volunteers and with whom dothey interact in Honduras? What do international volunteers and Hondurans think solidarity work accomplishes? How does the work of the delegation continue after the in-country experience? In short, we wanted to know how contemporary international solidarity works in Honduras.

The involvement of North American activists in Honduran politics grew out of Central American solidarity activism that emerged during the 1980s as an anti-interventionist movement opposed to U.S.

12 According to a recent CNN (3/28/2013) report, San Pedro Sula in Northern Honduras is the current “murder capital of the world” with 169 murders per 100,000 residents or three murders a day. These figures reflect the country’s serious problem with drug trafficking, but government officials also use the drug trafficking problem as a cover for state repression of opposition groups. 13 Creek 2013. http://www.resistenciahonduras.net/

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military influence in the region. These North American activists aimed to make visible the human rights atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed Contra in Nicaragua and by U.S trained and funded repressive forces in Guatemala and El Salvador. Arising out of preexisting progressive and religious peace networks, the Central American solidarity movement achieved significant visibility and support in the U.S., delivered over a million dollars of humanitarian aid to the region, harbored countless refugees, and successfully pressured the U.S. Congress to cut military aid to the Contras. With the electoral defeat of the Sandinista government in 1990 and the signing of peace accords inEl Salvador in 1992 and Guatemala in 1996, the immediate threat of U.S. military intervention in Central America was removed.

In the wake of these changes the solidarity movement itself changed. Some groups disbanded. Some pursued development work in the Central American communities where they had established ties. Others shifted their focus to liberation struggles in other regions. Some organizations drew on their regional networks and began packaging delegation experiences for potential activists. This work intersected in various ways with the education and/or service objectives of North American religious congregations and university-based academic and student life programs. Antipoverty volunteer delegations drew attention to structural violence but also risked forming clientelistic relationships with their hosts. Fact-finding delegations worked to understand and support emerging anti-imperialist political movements but ran the risk of devolving into political tourism. In short, the solidarity practices that had been successfully deployed in the political struggles of the 1980s hardened into symbolic forms that had both benefits and drawbacks.

With this framework in mind, we joined a delegation of more than30 international volunteers from North and Central America to Honduras to observe the primary election and provide accompaniment to LIBRE voters at the polls.Our delegation was jointly sponsored by the Arizona-based Alliance for Global Justice (formerly Nicaragua Network) and Toronto-based Rights Action, both of which have offices in Washington, D.C. It included a large contingent from the Marin County Task for on the Americas (MCTA), which began as part of the Sanctuary Movement in 1985, and included one elderly, U.S.-based Honduran. In addition, two independent activists from the bay area, a representative from the Chicago-based La Voz de Los de Abajo14, and a theology professor and

14 This group developed from La Comité en Solidaridad con los Damnificados en Centro America, which had formed to provide relief for victims of the 1998 Hurricane Mitch. Thus it had direct ties with

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two students from North Carolina were present. For the election monitoring we were joined by four international graduate students from the Peace University in Costa Rica, a coalition from El Salvador of four Salvadoran activists from the Popular Movement for Resistance October 12 (MPR-12) and CRISPES, and four North American women from the SHARE Foundation and US-Salvador Sister-Cities.15 The majority of US delegates were retirement age; those arriving from other Central American locations were mid-20s to early 30s.

In the United States, a national umbrella organization, the Latin American Solidarity Committee (LASC) and its regional offices periodically connects the different solidarity groups and organizations through conference calls and joint actions. All the groups that we interviewed support the SOA-Watch, which has been demonstrating annually outside Fort Benning in Georgia since 1990 in the longest- running antimilitarism protest in the United States. The Honduras Solidarity Network, which was formed immediately after the 2009 coupfunctions as an umbrella for twenty groups who support the Honduras Resistance Movement specifically. In Ohio, the Cleveland-based Interreligious Task Force on the Americas (IRTF) is tied into this network. MCTA member Roger Harris noted that our particular delegation was explicitly partisan and primarily made up of activists. In that way it differed from other, similar delegations to Latin Americancountries that focus primarily on education, such as those sponsored by Global Exchange.16 Harris explained that the various organizations that make up the network are nonsectarian. They don’t recruit people to their organizations; rather, they attempt to collaborate with one another and encourage novice delegates to collaborate in the global struggle for social justice.

The North American solidarity groups rely on one another to put together delegations and members of different groups join delegations organized by other groups. However, most groups had not had an active presence in Honduras before 2009, because historically, Honduras had been the center of US hegemony in the region, a fact that obscured to outsiders the grassroots activism with which they might have allied. Harris explained that a previous MCTA-sponsored delegation drew on their longstanding relation with journalist Andres

Honduras rather than evolving from 1980s era solidarity and sanctuarymovements. 15 All these organizations emerged out of the 1980s-era El Salvadoran revolutionary and solidarity movements.16 Harris pointed out that even Global Exchange engages in a kind of political partisanship by sponsoring delegations to Cuba in opposition to the US government ban on travel to Cuba.

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Contreras, who works with Democracy Now in Español, a North American alternative radio and T.V. broadcast, to organize their 2010 visit. Having joined Zelaya in the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras when he took up residence there, Contreras became a minor celebrity in the resistance himself in addition to being well-informed about and well-connected with elements of the resistance movement.

For the November 2012 Primary Elections Delegation Rights Action in-country staff member Karen Spring provided the logistics. Originally stationed in Guatemala where she cultivated relationships with social justice activists, organized itineraries and provided logistics and translation services to visiting delegations, she relocated to Tegucigalpa shortly after the coup, where she remained from 2009-2011, cultivating contacts with Honduran leaders in the social movements.17 AFGJ director Chuck Kaufman, who does not speak Spanish, explained his organization relies on groups like La Voz de los de Abajo, which had preexisting connections with the indigenous rightsmovement in Honduras before the coup, and Rights Action, which cultivated connections with the resistance after the coup, for in-countrycontacts.

Solidarity groups organize the following kinds of activities: delegations to Latin American countries, speaking tours for Latin American activists, protest actions, rallies and teach-ins in the United States and Canada, and sometimes, material aid to organizations and communities under attack. The members produce blogs, written reports, newsletters, letters to congressmen, powerpoint presentations and other forms of communication that work to, in AFGJ director, ChuckKaufman’s words, “expose and oppose” the negative effects of U.S. foreign policy in Honduras and Latin America generally.

What solidarity means to North Americans

Both groups and individuals see their international work as intimately connected to the social justice work they carry on in their home communities. For instance, Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of La Voz de Los de Abajo, works with inner-city youth and the mentally ill in Chicago. Last year, in addition to bringing attention to the Honduran human rights crisis through his blog,18 he supported the Chicago teachers’ strike and repeatedly occupied a clinic in the style of Honduran grassroots movement occupations that was being shut down

17 In the past year she has split her time between graduate work in Public Health in Vancouver (a move she regrets) and work on behalf of Rights Action in Honduras. 18 hondurasresists.blogspot.com

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on Chicago’s South Side. The IRTF in Cleveland honors their own martyrs in all of the programs they sponsor—two of the four nuns who were raped and murdered by the Salvadoran military shortly after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 were from the Cleveland area. They also form part of the Cleveland Jobs for Justice coalition that supports workers’ rights locally and internationally. Located in Arizona, the AFGJ has created a campaign and a series of teaching modules on issues surrounding the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. These activists understand solidarity as participation ina mutual struggle that extends beyond borders and unites activists working for the structural transformation of society. They support Honduran activists because they view them as offering an analysis thatnot only coincides with but informs their own struggles for social justice.

North American activists on this delegation assumed a common understanding of solidarity and a common purpose. However, the delegation did not provide a space for the temporary collective of activists from disparate regions and movements to discuss or debate what they were hearing from their Honduran counterparts or how they would translate their understanding into acts of solidarity. Only two members of the delegation, Matt Ginsberg Jaeckle and Charlie Hinton actively processed and publicized reports of human rights violations and of our delegation activities during and immediately following the delegation. Each deftly deployed a repertoire of communication forms and an analysis that was well-polished from frequent use. The other delegates appeared satisfied with their work and willing to allow their reports to speak for the group. However, these two activists were most strongly motivated by ties with specific groups, the organized indigenous and LGBTQ communities, which suffer from multiple forms of oppression. These are the groups that are most likely to lose power within the unified Resistance as the electoral process moves forward.

At 29 Matt was one of the younger activists in the delegation. Hehad been immersed in Honduran realities since he was a teenager. Dissatisfied with humanitarian service that treated the symptoms but failed to attack the causes of poverty, he embraced a solidarity perspective early on:

Ideally at least solidarity is an understanding of a shared faith, a shared commitment to a political project that impacts people on both sides and stemming from that, a commitment to leveraging whatever services and networks people have in the service of that project. I think that it can mean an array of thingsdepending on the people on each side, it could mean calls to police stations, it could mean sharing news, it could mean bearing witness,

it could mean sharing information, it could mean raising funds, it

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could mean any array of things, it could mean lobbying congress.Those are the things we traditionally think is solidarity.

Given this definition, Matt is aware of a contradiction in the practice of solidarity that has to do with the relative privilege of the North American volunteers in comparison to the groups these volunteers visitand support outside the United States. In other words the privileged volunteers witness and denounce the abuses being perpetrated on other communities and bodies who lack protection.

Matt has been thinking about initiating a form of solidarity based more on commonalities—organizing delegations of activists in the Chicago teacher’s union to connect with Honduran teachers in the Resistance or delegations of Chicago inner-city youth to connect with Honduran youth in the Resistance. The aim of this solidarity, however, appears to be directed toward strengthening the North American partners:

Solidarity on the one hand is solidarity with some specific cause in some specific part of the world. But on the other hand, at the end of the day what’s holding back the liberatory process in Latin America and other parts of the world? It’s the United States and its continued imperial reach into these different regions and willingness to use force and other means of manipulation. What’s our best chance of defeating that is building a strong-- it’s an overwhelming task in some sense--is building a strong social

movement in the U.S. that’s able to really dislodge the powers that be.

A lot of communities are struggling right now particularly in the economic crisis to sort of build grassroots power and forge alternatives to what’s led us to this crisis in the first place, and I think that linking that up and having a common discourse between that and those communities in Latin America that have been trying to do this for so long—that’s also a form of solidarity and I think has the potential to be a really powerful form.

From this perspective, Latin American solidarity partners provide models for the kind of analysis and action that Matt currently finds lacking among communities facing similar problems in the United States.

Matt’s opposition to U.S. intervention in Honduras and elsewhere,leads him to identify the goal of solidarity not merely as “exposing and opposing” injustices perpetrated by the U.S. in collusion with Honduranelites, but also to attack the structures in the United States that negatively affect U.S. and Honduran realities. However, he realizes

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that this project is an “overwhelming task.” In his evolving ideas aboutsolidarity, Matt identifies the precarity of his own position as a North American when compared to the currently vibrant and unified resistance in Honduras. The overwhelming nature of the struggle in the United States leads him to despair, whereas participating in a delegation to Honduras reenergizes him:

So going to Honduras and realizing, you know, I don’t have anything to complain about in that context. Folks with way less resources that aren’t facing a couple arrests or you know a few criminal charges, but are facing assassination attempts and burningdown of radio stations and fleeing from their homes and loss of lovedones, they’re losing them on the daily, on the weekly, and they’re still, not only are they still surviving and persisting and being resilient and fighting back, but they’re still visionary is the most

important thing away from that. They’re still dreaming of what’s beyond this and refusing to give up and insisting that the only mistake that’s bad is one that you’ve already made and that we just need to go back into it and make new mistakes as long as those mistakes we’re making are new, we’re getting ourselves closer to an eventual point of being able to rupture with the system, so that gives me hope and energy and excitement about returning to

the local work and just plugging back into it.

Matt is particularly influenced by Berta Cáceres, the indigenous leader of COPINH with whom he has worked for many years, and whom he regards as a political mentor. He contrasts COPINH’s refusal to compromise their demands for a system based on life rather than death with Chicago-area activists’ willingness to settle for what’s winnable in their local struggles. In Chicago, Matt’s insistence on keeping the end goal in mind leads others to brand him as crazy, whereas when he interacts with COPINH in Honduras, he realizes he is not crazy. In fact, he is not radical enough.

Like Matt, Charlie Hinton articulates solidarity as a struggle based on a common opposition to a system of oppression. Charlie has been a life-long activist in civil and gay rights in the United States and a participant in a number of solidarity efforts in Central America and Haiti since the 1980s. Like Matt, Charlie’s personal circumstances in the United States are precarious. In his political work he focuses on Haitian Solidarity and addiction counseling in the California prisons. Additionally, he has also worked for 17 years for the Inkworks collective in Oakland, a worker-owned cooperative press that produces only social justice publications. These life choices have meant that at age 67, he is financially unable to retire. His strained economic circumstances have also prevented him from regularly participating in

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international delegations. His most recent trip was to Haiti in 2004. Nevertheless, Charlie is so impressed with the Resistance that he is contemplating taking a leave of absence and moving to Tegucigalpa forthe months leading up to the November 2013 election. When we askedCharlie to define solidarity he responded this way:

This is what I said on the radio last night. The United States is the source of the misery of a lot of the people in Latin America. It’s our military and our corporations and our State Department policy that drives the decisions that affect their lives and have them killed and tortured and put in jail, but also the military budget is more than 50% of the budget of the United States, and so by fighting militarism and fighting the militarism from the U.S. in Latin

America is—that’s the difference between solidarity and charity, because charity you just give to somebody, but solidarity, you understand their struggle as part of your struggle. Even though the dynamic[s] of being a North American in Latin America and a North American in North America are different, and there’s all kinds of power dynamics, it’s still ultimately, if we can detain the military monster in the U.S.—they’re trying to cut my social security and my Medicare so they can buy weapons to send to Honduras, it’s a direct connection, and that’s what we try to draw.

Charlie emphasizes how U.S. foreign policy negatively affects his own security in the United States, making his life more precarious. He gestures at the difference between his power/privilege as a North American in Honduras and his lack of power/privilege in the United States, registering the potential contradictions involved in effecting solidarity across lines of (national) privilege. However, like Matt, Charlie is much more interested in identifying a common enemy and a common basis for the struggle in international solidarity. He also admires the analysis of members of the Honduran Resistance, in comparison to that of North American activists working in similar fields:

Gerardo Torres came [to the Bay Area] and started talking about LGBT participation in the Frente here, and I met Erick19. I really see Erick as doing a continuation of the Gay Liberation work that I have been trying to do all my life. And I feel enormously thrilledto see him and the LGBT people he worked for trying to

19 Erick Martínez is one of two LGBTQ candidates running with LIBRE for congress in 2013. He replaces another gay rights activist and journalist also named Erick Martinez, who was assassinated in May 2012 after declaring his candidacy. A transgender woman also won theprimaries and will be a LIBRE congressional candidate in November 2013.

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integrate LGBT people into the Frente and into a broad left movement, and that’s what we attempted unsuccessfully to do inthe Bay Area in the1970s, and it’s one of the reasons that I feel so drawn to working here in Honduras.

The Honduran LGBT movement, then, offers Charlie a second opportunity to engage in gay liberation as he had envisioned it in the 1970s. Since then, he believes the North American gay rights movement has lost its radical edge by embracing a social mainstreaming project—recognizing gays in the military and gay marriage—rather than challenging patriarchy, militarism and capitalism. Both Matt and Charlie are inspired by radical elements within the Resistance—COPINH and the LGBTQ community. They recognize the importance of these groups participating in a broader movement. However, their vision of the revolutionary movement is belied by the marginalization of the grassroots movements to one strand of the LIBRE party and the further marginalization of groups facing multiple forms of oppression within that strand.

What the Hondurans want from the solidarity activists:

The delegation, however, was focused on observing the primary elections and much of the time leading up to election day was spent learning about the Honduran electoral process, hearing from LIBRE candidates, and understanding our role as volunteer human rights observers.20 Whereas communications from AFGJ prior to our arrival intimated that we would be accompanying voters--reporting abuses or acting as a deterrent to violence simply by being present and visible, we learned from our hosts that local human rights workers and party organizers did not expect major disturbances during the primaries.21 Instead, we were asked to familiarize ourselves with the Honduras system and learn about the LIBRE party in order to recruit and prepare for what our hosts envisioned would be a much larger international

20 There was a long and short delegation. The long delegation arrived several days early and made two visits to communities outside Tegucigalpa to learn about grassroots struggles: Copinh in La Esperanza and the struggle against Canadian operated open pit miningin the Siria Valley. The short delegation arrived two days before the elections by which time the group concentrated their work almost exclusively on electoral issues in Tegucigalpa. 21 As voluntary human rights observers, we were locally sponsored by COFADEH, the committee of the families of the disappeared in Honduras, which has been operating since 1981. COFADEH provided us with badges and AFGJ produced t-shirts that identified us as human rights observers.

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observer team during the 2013 general elections. Having made the decision to move their struggle from the streets into the political arena,our hosts were eager to demonstrate LIBRE’s strength and its viability as an alternative to politics as usual in Honduras. At the same time, they remained doubtful that the political elites would allow a democratic process to unseat them, given the fact of the 2009 coup. They identified the role of international supporters that we were charged with recruiting as guaranteeing by their presence compliance with electoral laws or as denouncing violations during the 2013 elections.

During our orientation on the day before elections, Gerardo Torres, a journalist and a member of Los Necios22 who works as a spokesperson for the LIBRE Party, provided the delegation political orientation and analysis. He characterized the party goals and aspirations as follows:

We were working for the refounding or refoundation of Honduras.It’s another way to talk about a revolution. People are afraid to talk about a revolution so we call it something else. In a revolution you stop what’s going on, you bring it down, and you build somethingnew. We were also clear that we were a peaceful movement. That was a big discussion, because at that point we had over 200 people killed by the regime, but still we decided that the people of Honduras weren’t ready to start a violent movement and we had to create a couple of organizations to let people participate in politics. So we decided to be peaceful. We believe in popular organizations and political education. So the other thing was that we were anti-imperialist, not only from the US but the EU and the big companies that apply imperialism just the same as any state. We were also against patriarchy, against the cultural conception that only men over 35 years old, wealthy men can make political decisions.

So we started 3 movements: the youth movement, the biggest inthe history of our country, the women’s movement, and the sexual diversity movement. And it was the first time that the left in Honduras decided to do this. We are a very machista left, and we decided to try to change it. It would be a lie to say we are there, but at least it’s a goal to stop being.

In his discourse, Gerardo both asserts the radical and inclusive nature of the Resistance and emphasizes the need adopt a more mainstream discourse. The people of Honduras are not ready to take up arms; they

22 A university marxist group. The name means the imprudent ones, the stubborn ones, the ill-behaved. Los Necios is a grassroots organization involved in the FNRP coalition.

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are not comfortable with the word revolution. He claims anti-patriarchy as an objective of LIBRE and implies both a space for feminist and LGBTQ issues and an expansion of the traditional left as a consequence. But he almost immediately qualifies this statement by recasting LIBRE’s anti-patriarchal character as aspirational. In this wayhe provides a picture of the party that North American supporters, all of whom are leftists and the majority of whom are women, could approve.

We also heard from LIBRE mayoral candidate Maria Borjas, a former policewoman who spoke about the corruption within the force and the injustice of the Mano Dura policy in the absence of work and recreational opportunities for youth. She also recounted an assassination attempt on her person that she had avoided by sheer chance. Ana Castillo, a member of Los Necios and a LIBRE candidate for congress provided logistical information for our election observation; Jari Dixon, a public prosecutor also running for Congress on the LIBRE ticket provided background on the electoral process and helped us understand the ballot. On the morning following the elections we met with Humberto Rios, international relations officer for the LIBRE party and Gerardo Torres for a preliminary analysis of the election results. Gerardo emphasized at that meeting that the party representatives did not want us to come away from our delegation experience thinking of LIBRE as the best of bad options, but rather as the best option. It was important that we believe in LIBRE’s revolutionary potential.

The Complexities of Solidarity

Despite the seeming agreement over the definition and purpose of international solidarity activism, there appears to be points at which both individual activists and particular rights movements differentiate themselves. These separatist moves become particularly visible and pose acute problems for the cohesion of both local and international solidarity as the Honduran popular resistance movement transforms into an institutionalized and legitimate political party, LIBRE. In particular, we noted that Honduran activists invested in causes associated with minority groups facing multiple forms of oppression (e.g., the LGBTII community, indigenous peoples, and feministas) spoke of an increasing disaffection with both the FNRP and the LIBRE party. In some cases, such as that of the LGBTII activists, disillusionment was expressed in vague, yet cynical, terms regarding Honduran society’s ability to change regardless of politics. In other instances, especially that of the feministas en resistencia (feminists in resistance), activists spoke of a potential formal break with the LIBRE party and separation from the FNRP movement. Moreover, it appears

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that disaffection amongst Honduran minority group activists reverberated amongst their North American counterparts in interestingways.

Splinter Groups Amongst the Honduran Resistance

Feministas En Resistencia23

As members of the North American delegation, our initial impression was that the Honduran resistance had built and maintained a cohesive identity that was reflected in a unanimous support of the LIBRE political party. This impression, which came from pre-delegation email correspondence with North American organizers and reading materials provided by the Alliance for Global Justice, was further reinforced during the first two days of the delegation when we met with the several resistance activists who held formal positions in the LIBRE party.

It was not until the evening of the second day when we met with two young feministas, Lianna and Carolina, that the first fissures between the resistance and feminist grassroots activism became visible.

The meeting with the feministas lasted approximately half an hour and began with Lianna tracing the history of the Honduran women’s rights to the suffrage movement of the 1940s. We were told that this movement had been revitalized in the 1980s and 1990s as women’s rights organizations and academic centers formed throughoutthe country. As the feminist movement matured over the next two decades, it focused on educating women and raising popular consciousness about women’s rights under three themes; (1) violence against women, (2) women’s political and economic participation in Honduran society, and (3) women’s reproductive rights24. During this time period many of the feminists found participating with other left-leaning activists of Honduran society difficult. Specifically, many

23 Information for this portion of the paper comes from a discussion with two members of the Feministas en Resistancia at the Hotel Cadetur in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on November 17, 2012. Both authorswere present at the discussion.24 Given the devoutly Catholic nature of Honduran society, access to women’s reproductive health services is limited in the country and both abortion and the morning-after-pill are illegal. Access to prescriptions for birth control pills, which, if used in high doses can be used as morning-after pills, are also highly regulated and limited. The feministas would like to see access to these types of services increased.

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women’s rights activists felt that the other interest groups occupying this space did not consider the feminists to be a legitimate social movement and downplayed the significance of their agenda. For this reason, Honduran feminists, prior to the coup had started to separate themselves and create their own spaces for protest independently.

According to Lianna, the 2009 coup offered the chance to rethinkthe separation of women’s rights from that of other Honduran social movements as the feminists took to the streets to participate in the collective resistance. [Figure 2] As the resistance to the coup deepenedthe feministas realized the need to organize and stand in solidarity with other Honduran social rights movements. Lianna explained:

We had to form ourselves not just [around] specific rights, but about the defense of human rights as a whole network. We needed to link ourselves to other organizations, COFADEH…. this has allowed us to collectively mobilize across social movements. For example, the peasant movement in the Aguan, which is a peasant[‘s rights] issue, but also a specific problem that is facingwomen there [in the Aguan Valley].

From Lianna’s perspective the feministas struggle applies to all other social movements because women are members in those groups facing hardship. As such, these women’s issues are also feminist issuesand the unified resistance allowed the feministas to appreciate this better.

Despite the initial welcoming of the feministas into the broad-based resistance in 2009, Lianna and Carolina related that they have had a problem finding adequate space within LIBRE and feel that manyof their issues are being ignored. In particular, they are concerned that several important figures in the resistance and in LIBRE have been accused of violence against women (e.g., rapes, pedophilia, physical abuse). According to Lianna the LIBRE leaders, “have forced us [feministas] to be quiet saying ‘for now the wider struggle is more important, so the struggle of the women will have to wait’.”25 This has

25 The disaffection of feminists from the Ortega-controlled Sandinista Party in neighboring Nicaragua provides a stark example to the Honduran feministas of the what may be ahead. In the late 1990s, Ortega’s step-daughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez accused him of having sexually abused her as a teenager. Ortega subsequently entered into apact with his political rival Arnoldo Aleman, who was facing corruption charges, that gave both men immunity from prosecution. Since that time, Ortega has occasionally attacked feminist NGOs in Nicaragua, accusing them of being agents of foreign governments working to

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understandably alienated many feministas who have, “realized institutions [of the resistance] weren’t responding for the needs of women when it comes to violence … it was non-existent. As if we, the feministas, had done [or] accomplished nothing in the rights of women.” This lack of interest in women’s rights was especially concerning for feministas given that violent crimes against women, such as murders, had more than tripled since 2009. Moreover, Lianna asserted that political persecution of women’s rights activists have alsoincreased recently, citing five assassinated feministas and several who had fled the country in fear of their safety.

In addition to concerns of violence against women, the feministasalso take issue with what they understand to be LIBRE’s systematic and symbolic disempowerment of female candidates within the party. In particular, the feministas are critical of Xiomara Zelaya’s selection as LIBRE presidential candidate and feel that she is simply a puppet standing in for her husband, the deposed President Manuel Zelaya. In support of this argument, Lianna pointed out that most campaign pictures showed Xiomara with her husband and that, “she is much smaller than he is [in the picture]… never before has there been a spouse on candidacy posters… [S]he is just running because Mel can’t right now.” Moreover, despite the presence of several women’s candidates on the LIBRE ballot, only one, Sara Elisa Rosales, is a feminist committed to issues of women’s rights.

The Honduran Stonewall: LGBTII Rights and the Diversity in Resistance Movement

“We are running a marathon, not a sprint”– Jose Palacios (Cleveland, 2/9/13)

Despite Charlie Hinton’s interest in the gay rights struggle in Honduras, the November delegation was unable to meet with a representative of the sexually diverse community while in country.26 However, a Honduran activist in the sexual diversity movement, Jose Palacios, subsequently visited Cleveland Ohio in February of 2013 on a solidarity speaking tour and we were able to attend his talk. Palacios described the trajectory of the Honduran Gay community organizing asmoving from an apolitical interest in things like beauty pageants in the 1970s to an increasing understanding of their need to make common cause with other grassroots social movements fighting repression.

destabilize his regime. 26 Charlie Hinton did have the opportunity to meet individually with Eric Martinez and other members of the GLBTII movement on the nightof the primary election in November.

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According to Palacios, the sexual diversity movement first formally emerged in the 1980s under the pall of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.27 Like the Honduran feminist movement, LGBTII organizations formed, primarily in response to health and violence issues facing the sexually diverse communities. 28 However, these NGOs were not legally recognized until the 1990s. At the turn of the millennium, the Honduran sexuality rights movement continued to mature until June 28th, 2009 (also the 40th anniversary of New York’s Stonewall riots) when the Diversity in Resistance struggle formally emerged in the wake of the coup d’etat. Palacios explained the shift in this way:

We have to change the culture … it will take a long time… [I]t is better but not equal. And we know it is not equal, but [we are] trying to improve that. So we are trying to convince others that itis not just our rights, but it is also about their rights. Why do black people have to ask for their rights? Or women have to ask for their rights? In Honduras we must accompany the struggles of the feminists and they are fighting our struggles as well. If youwant social justice you have to fight for everyone’s rights.

The shift from the broad-based resistance in the streets to the formation of the LIBRE party, however, has left LGBTII activists cautiously optimistic. Palacios confesses:

Well, we [the Diversity in Resistance Movement] expect that [LIBRE will represent our rights], but we do not know that. So we are trying to put the LGBT interests in the LIBRE platform and in the platform of the other parties… We [also] have a transgender candidate in the [LIBRE] Steering Committee but that is just one seat out of 20 people so… All of the social movements are represented in the Steering Committee. We don’t know if for sureXiomara [the LIBRE presidential candidate] will represent our interests.

Palacios indicates that the LGBTII strategy is to infiltrate other party platforms as well as LIBRE to push their concerns. He is not confident that Xiomara, or other leaders within LIBRE, will represent their

27 Honduras has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in Latin America. 28 In addition to facing a lack of acceptance or understanding in Honduran society, many members of the Honduran LGBT community, especially gay men, were murdered by the military due to the perceived health threat associated with the “gay plague” of HIV/AIDS.

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interests going forward primarily because of prejudices held within Honduran “culture”. In Palacios’ view the refounding of the state, whichGerardo Torres had described as offering the possibility of social revolution by another name, may in actuality fail to deliver its utopian vision, especially to those within the sexually diverse community. Since this mainstream LIBRE vision may fail to address the aspirations of LGBTII activists, the Diversity in Resistance Movement has mobilized, and spends significant energy in connecting and finding acceptance within the two conservative political parties. This move is concerning in that it signals a return to individual rights movements from the powerful and inspiring broad-based social justice coalition that appeared in the early days of the resistance.

Future Research: The Space of the Indigenous Resistance

The sentiments of LGBTII and feminista activists indicate a shared anxiety regarding the institutionalization of LIBRE and there is evidence this is a concern of indigenous groups as well. While we were unable to talk with any members of Honduran indigenous groups or local indigenous activists, one of the North American solidarity workers, Matt Jaeckle-Ginsberg, has been affiliated with an indigenous organization for over ten years. During the November delegation Matt spent time with members of COPINH, an indigenous rights organization, and in our interview relayed concerns that they had shared with him regarding the transformation of the FNRP into LIBRE. According to Matt,

Every time something radical and exciting comes up, somebody jumps in and tries to … take away its radical edge, and actually that’s kind of what COPINH, … think[s] is happening with the LIBRE Party. There was something so exciting and radical and unbridled about the resistance that popped up there, the powers that be flipped out, “Well what do we do, let’s offer them a spaceas a political party and allow Zelaya back into the country and demobilize the more visionary and radical elements of the resistance”. So I think that’s—we’re up against a very powerful and a very smart enemy and I think folks underestimate the intelligence of the enemy that we’re up against. So cooptation, repression, lack of resources, mission stagnation, all of that, I think is the biggest obstacles, and division… Which is sad in the Honduran case because the resistance was actually, they weren’tjust talking, I was able to see it with my own eyes, people came from very machista union backgrounds were sitting there shoulder to shoulder elbow to elbow with feministas and indigenous people and Garifuna. Which isn’t to say that overnight deeply internalized patriarchy disappears, but there

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was an opening that there had never been. And the fact that that opening was used to codify something in the FNRP and … that the party that has formed out of that is moving away … in the interest of political expediency is a sad thing. But only sad to an extent and if we rely on the [LIBRE] party and the more middle of the road elements … for inspiration. If we look at the other sectors, they’re continuing to come together more and more.

Matt’s discussion of COPINH’s concerns indicate an awareness that the work of solidarity and social justice is not finished simply with the legitimation, or even the potential electoral success, of the LIBRE party.In fact, the legitimation of LIBRE, for members of COPINH, carries the potential to neutralize radical intervention and re-establish status-quo power differentials. For COPINH (and the feministas and LGBTII movement) rather than representing success, LIBRE may indicate the neutralization of the nascent revolution of the resistance. This demonstrates the precarious position of Honduran groups suffering multiple forms of oppression within a broad-based social justice movement and, as such, points to future areas of inquiry.

LIBRE Response to Internal Critiques

The day after the elections the delegation gathered with GerardoTorres, Ana Castillo and Humberto Rios29 who together provided an analysis of the available electoral results. In general, they asserted that LIBRE had shown enough strength at the polls for its candidates tobe contenders in the 2013 elections. In contrast to the picture he had constructed two days earlier, Gerardo now emphasized LIBRE’s non-revolutionary character. He explained that Xiomara had put together abalanced team, some from the oligarchy and some not, who would be able to draw voters from the other parties in the general elections based on their anti-coup identity. He concluded by saying that the roleof groups like Los Necios who form part of LIBRE is to push the party to the left as much as they can. Pointing to the central weakness of the electoral strategy itself, he remarked, “If LIBRE wins, and if they are not allowed to win, then it is a big problem we have to solve and fast.” This, according to Gerardo, will be where international observers will becrucial to protecting Hondurans in their democratic struggle.

Members of the international delegation applauded their hosts several times for engaging in this very difficult struggle, and one

29 Rios is responsible for LIBRE’s international relations with other Latin American countries.

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delegate publicly admired the rapidity with which the Resistance had succeeded in organizing a viable electoral alternative to business-as-usual. However, the congratulatory mood was quickly dispelled when Charlie, seconded by MCTF director, Dale Sorenson raised the critiques of the party they had heard from the feministas two days before. Gerardo’s response was initially dismissive. To the challenge that the party lacked female candidates, he pointed to Xiomara and Ana Castillo. To the allegations that party members had been accused of violence against women, he acknowledged that Felix Romero Mendes, a popular radio personality who gives space to LIBRE candidates, had been convicted of incest many years earlier. “So that is his problem, not our problem,” Gerardo concluded. He continued:

The most dangerous attacks that we receive are from our compañeros and compañeras. Right? So if you went back to the United States thinking that we support rapists, then there is no way that we could make an international solidarity movement. And the people that are going to lose are not Felix Romero Mendes. They are the LIBRE party and the people of Honduras.

Ana Castillo added that one radical feminista, Sara Elisa Rosales, sits on the political committee of the FNRP, a position from which she has been critiquing the party. Rosales is running as a congressional candidate, but Castillo added, “if the people that are elected are mostly men, then that is not any party problem, that is the culture problem.” Gerardo added that the party had made a decision that 50 percent of their candidates would be women, but had experienced difficulties from both genders in their base in carrying this out. Once again, Ana labeled this a “culture problem”. Finally, the two pointed toMaria Borjas, with whom we had met, who was running for Mayor of Tegucigalpa. Gerardo noted, “She is a woman, and she is running for mayor, and she is not a feminist, but she has fought for women’s rightsfor the last 30 years. So yeah. Who has the authority to give you a badge and say you are a feminist and you are not?”

As outsiders to this definitional struggle, North American delegates were not in a position to judge whether the marginalization of women and feminist issues was a function of the party or of Honduran culture, but LIBRE supporters’ claim to be antipatriarchal hadbeen severely challenged both by the feminists’ accusations and LIBRErepresentatives’ responses to those accusations. In response to Gerardo’s question, one had to ask, What party has the right to claim they are anti-patriarchal and then dismiss the feministas? At the very least, the illusion of a united struggle upon which solidarity is based was temporarily disrupted.

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Analysis: Efforts to Change Honduran Culture

At the core of the Resistance and associated international solidarity movements is a deeply held belief that local social, economic, and political realities produce an unacceptably precarious existence for the vast majority of Hondurans. This reduction of the Honduran citizen to a state of “bare life”30 is what has prompted local and foreign activists, working together over the last three years, to establish functional networks through repeated interactions. These interactions, we argue, are partly rooted in a shared, yet amorphous, definition of “solidarity”. “Solidarity”, thus, comes to function as an undefined term that produces a space through which activists, who come from separate communities that, despite sharing similar ideological investments, have very different goals, can productively band together in common cause. During the course of this work activists tacitly agree to focus on a shared understanding of the “big picture” while implicitly agreeing to misunderstand one another’s particular aims.

The silent arrangement amongst variously situated solidarity workers appears to have functioned effectively in the immediate wake of the Honduran coup, when the vast majority of the Honduran population was “’fighting against a project which is basically based on death and domination, [thus, Hondurans couldn’t] be fighting for a slower death, [they had] to be fighting for a completely alternative vision that’s based on life.”31 It is this alternative vision that produced the revolutionary impulse of 2009 in Honduras. However, in the transition from the FNRP to the LIBRE political party, mainstream Honduran society appears poised to return to an acceptable-if-still-problematic “democratic rule of law” status. As this move takes place, the specific issues faced by the edges of Honduran society fall outside the narrowing focus of the LIBRE platform and this produces varying levels of dissatisfaction and cynicism amongst activists championing these causes.

International solidarity activists recognize these tensions, but arenevertheless drawn to the movement based on the earlier collaborative enactments of the Resistance. Like their Honduran counterparts, they long for an uncompromising and all-inclusive progressive political option. Coming from a place in which vibrant

30 See Giorgio Agamben. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995). 31 Matt Jaeckle-Ginsberg quoting Berta Cáceres (personal contact, 11/21/2012).

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social movements are lacking, organizing is difficult and compromise isthe order of the day, the North American activists are attracted to the unity and militancy of the anti-coup struggle. Nevertheless, as they arerecruited to support the electoral process, it behooves the North American activists to engage in greater critical reflection within and a greater understanding of their own loose coalition. Clearly, the most active members of our November coalition privileged and were concerned with the “cultural” issues of feminista, GLBTII, and indigenous communities. In their eagerness to support the LIBRE project, the larger delegation may participate in the silencing of the groups they most passionately support. As leftist Resistance activists, such as Ana and Gerardo, insist on the distinction between Honduran politics and Honduran culture, GLBTII activists, such as Jose Palacios identify this same logic as the root cause of the violence GLBTII people face. Meanwhile, North American solidarity activists are operating as ifno conceptual space between Honduran politics and Honduran culture exists. Without ongoing reflection on the effects of the institutionalization of the Honduran Resistance on minority groups (e.g.the feminists, LGBTII, indigenous, and Garifuna communities), the North American solidarity activists will become complicit in their silencing. Figure 1 Honduran Resistance Movement 2010

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Figure 2 Feminists in Resistance

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