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Summary
Many are thinking about and watching what is going on in Gaza and Israel. The parallels of North American support for a dictatorship in Honduras and the strategics of transnational resistance provide hope and inspire action from all of us to stop the bombing of Gaza and the murder of innocent people.
This episode announces an upcoming campaign as ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández’s trial in New York is set to start in four months. Then Karen shares a panel presentation she participated in mid-September called Nonviolent Resistance to Overthrow Dictatorships & Occupations organized by World Beyond War as part of their #NoWar2023 conference. The presentation shares some of the ways that people can act to change global issues and abuses from their own cities and towns around the world. #FreePalestine #AnotherWorldIsPossible
For the full panel presentation, World Beyond War’s #NoWarConference, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlGdq6s8HmZoqi6T1YEftxGtnaxjBKq1G
Coming soon. ‘US and Canada-backed Narco-State on Trial in New York’ campaign: A campaign to hold the U.S., Canada & the “international community” accountable for 12 years of support and legitimization of Honduras’ drug-trafficking President and Narco-State.
Campaign launch January 2024. Trial in New York currently scheduled for February 5, 2024. More information and to donate to support the trial campaign, go to hondurasnow.org.
IG: @HondurasNow
X/Twitter: @HondurasNow
Thanks for listening!
Transcript
Karen Spring:
In four months, in February 2024, the ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, and two other Hondurans, will be tried in a US court for drug trafficking and weapons related charges.
The buzz around the trial will be huge. The bad guys will be paraded around and make the headlines. The US DEA will look like the drug war saviors, and the US and Canadian governments will talk about the rule of law, human rights, and punishment for those that abused their power.
But the biggest and most important element of the story will be missing. For 12 years, the US, Canada, and international community maintained full relations with military-backed drug-trafficking regimes in Honduras. Starting largely with their support for the 2009 military coup, the US, Canada, international financial institutions made deals with Juan Orlando Hernández and his National Party by signing free trade agreements, creating a favorable business climate for US and Canadian companies, and conducting joint military, police, and drug war operations. For years, the US and Canada lied and covered up their knowing support for a corrupt narco state.
When ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández goes to trial in four months, the Honduras Solidarity Network and this podcast, Honduras Now, will be campaigning to ask, where is the political oversight and legal accountability for the US and Canadian role in legitimizing and supporting Honduras’s narco state under Juan Orlando Hernández? I hope you will join us in this campaign to be launched in January, one month before the New York trial begins in February 2024.
Welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. I’m your host, Karen Spring. In each episode, I will be sharing human rights stories from Honduras and connecting them to global issues and North American policy. Thank you so much for listening.
Welcome back, everyone. It’s great to be back after such a long break. Thank you for hanging in there, to all my listeners and supporters.
In late September, I was invited to speak at a conference organized by the global nonviolent World Beyond War movement and organization. I know that war and conflict are on a lot of people’s minds with what is going on in Palestine and Israel. The recent escalation had not begun when the panel that I participated in took place. But I spoke alongside activists fighting dictatorships and occupations in five conflicts around the world.
Today, I thought I would share my presentation as a way to inspire action and hope, especially with what’s going on. I want people to know that there are always ways to get involved in international issues that seem so far away, without leaving your own city or town.
Although in my presentation, I’m speaking specifically about Honduras, the solidarity model that I outline, and that has been used time and time again, by activists around the world, can certainly be applied to support efforts to stop the bombing in Gaza and the murder of innocent people.
The panel was titled “Nonviolent Resistance to Overthrow Dictatorships and Occupations”. It’s so relevant for what is going on today. I will link to the full panel and presentation in the show notes.
Ivan Marovic:
Let’s cross the Atlantic now, and let’s turn to Karen Spring, who co-coordinates the Honduras Solidarity Network. And the coup d’etat in Honduras in 2009 that ousted President Zelaya, and all the repression, everything that happened after it. You know, it’s been a while, and some people may have even, how shall we say, started forgetting it, because so many other coups have happened in the meantime. Let’s go back and see how that violence and repression progressed over the years, and how did the Honduran people, how did the community, nonviolently respond to it? Karen, please.
Karen Spring:
Thank you so much, Ivan. And thank you to World Beyond War for inviting me. It’s such a privilege to be part of a panel with such inspiring people.
My name is Karen Spring, and I’ve been living and working in Honduras for 14 years. I’m a Canadian activist, actually. And I’m the co-coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network.
And I’m going to share my screen and explain a little bit about what the Honduras Solidarity Network does. So the Honduras Solidarity Network is an informal network of over 30 organizations from across the United States and Canada. And we formed basically in response to the 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras. And our focus, our concern, when we were formed, is that, and a lot of other speakers have touched on this, is that of the external support that dictatorships and post-coup regimes can receive from the United States and Canada. And so we focused on the role of the United States and Canada, and the way that they were propping up a dictatorship in Honduras.
And so my role as the co-coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network meant that I was living and working in the country, and I was working, and I still work with communities that are fighting, like, to protect their territories, to protect their rivers, the Honduran social movement that basically was organizing constantly, they were protesting in the streets constantly, to basically denounce the role of and overthrow the dictatorship, and denounce the role, of the way the dictatorship was using such violent tactics against the Honduran people. And so my role was to help document what was going on. It was to make the connections between what the Honduran organizations were saying about how the US and Canada were supporting the dictatorship. And so I really focused on human rights, I focused on militarization and the policies from Canada and the United States that were propping up the dictatorship. And, again, amplifying the voices of the Honduran social movement in spaces in Canada, the United States, and in other parts of the world.
Dictatorships are never just on their own. They receive such tremendous support from key international actors that prop them up, and prop them up for very specific reasons. And so I just wanted to say that the Juan Orlando Hernández regime or dictatorship in Honduras received so much unconditional support from Canada and the United States. For example, as you can see on the screen, Juan Orlando Hernández was backed by the United States through the Biden administration, through President Trump’s administration, and then in Canada, by the Canadian government. And you can see the picture of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
And so we know that dictatorships have to maintain their power and their control and their influence. And they’re backed by these powerful actors. And so we kind of use the hypocrisy of the United States and Canada, who are saying that they stand for human rights, they stand for democracy, they stand for the right of the Honduran people to determine their own future. And we use that against them to say, how can you possibly say that when the Juan Orlando Hernández regime is repressing the Honduran people, when they’re committing gross human rights violations. And so we tried to call out the hypocrisy of our own governments in the United States and Canada to support what the Honduran social movement was doing, and what they were saying. And what they were saying was, this dictatorship is in power because of the US and Canada, because they’re promoting their economic interests in Honduras.
So after the coup in Honduras, we saw, like we see around the world, how these sorts of shocks, you know, the coups, the repression, basically usher in these liberal policies. So in Honduras, the neoliberalism was expressed through privatization, it was expressed through the US and Canadian governments and companies, like mining companies, for example, receiving tremendous economic benefits from this dictatorship in Honduras.
So mining companies that were based in Canada were able to mine in communities that they couldn’t mine in prior to the dictatorship. We saw tourist companies stealing the lands of Honduran people, Indigenous communities on the north coast of Honduras. We saw energy companies, construction companies, so many foreign companies that were strategically benefiting from the dictatorship. And so, as the Honduras Solidarity Network, we tried to stop those companies, we tried to stop our governments from solely promoting their economic interests, while they were basically backing up a dictatorship that was massively repressing the Honduran people.
And so I just want to talk about all the ways that the Honduran social movements and communities and the Honduran people basically inspired us as a global network to support getting rid of the dictatorship in Honduras, and stopping our governments from supporting a dictatorship. So the Honduran social movements, after the 2009 coup, they formed endless protests in the street. And I was in almost all of those protests, sending out the information globally about the fact that there were thousands of Hondurans in the street protesting. And it was kind of funny, because, at times, you know, and other speakers sort of alluded to this too, that we would start with a small group, and it would grow and grow and grow. And Hondurans starting joking that our daily protests were like exercise, an exercise club, that we’re getting together to walk in the streets, you know, regularly, and every day to basically show that they were against the government, and that they were against the coup d’etat and the rise of the dictatorship.
The Honduran social movement created nationwide coalitions, and to organize, and to invite new communities into the resistance. And so, for example, you know, maintaining 12 years of resistance to the dictatorship in Honduras meant that people got tired, and they had to take a break, or they had to go into exile, because it was too hard. But always with the understanding that they were trying to organize more people and get more people into the resistance. And so what Honduran social movements would do is they would organize a space, and when that space, so, for example, I’m gonna use an example of one that formed, The Platform of Indigenous and Popular Movements in Honduras, they would form, and then when that space got tired, or kind of got a little stale, they would sort of, they would end that space, and we’d create a new one, and they would invite new people in to participate in that movement. And so the idea was, as people had to leave, or people got tired, and like, you know, the resistances rise and fall in terms of their energy, there was always new people to join. And that’s really what kept the resistance alive over 12 years of this dictatorship, after the coup in Honduras.
And, you know, often when the dictatorship, because they wanted to maintain their relationships with these powerful international allies, and these multinational corporations, that were backing the dictatorship, what the Juan Orlando Hernández dictatorship would do is they would hand out concessions of rivers to foreign companies. And so Honduran communities would say, OK, fine, you want to hand out our rivers and our territory to foreign companies, fine, go ahead and do that legally. But when you, when these companies try and come to our communities, and try and start mining, or they start wanting to build these dams on our rivers, we’re going to be waiting for you. And we’re going to basically stop you from being able to access our river. We’re going to maintain protest camps 24 hours a day, for months and months, that basically blocked the access road of these, the machines, you know, sent by these foreign companies to build their dams, and they would block their access to the river. And so that’s a picture, over to the left, of people basically showing that they would protect their rivers, and that they would not allow dams to be built on them.
And then just endless protests, like I mentioned, and you can see the pictures. And also another huge important part, and basically what the Honduras Solidarity Network tried to do is basically promote transnational solidarity with the Honduran social movement that was inspiring so much resistance, and inspiring us in Canada and the United States to stop the dictatorship.
So my partner, about eight years into the dictatorship in Honduras, became a political prisoner. And he was sent to a maximum security prison, he was sent to prison by the dictatorship, as were 22 other political prisoners, as were so many people that were resisting the dictatorship over the years. And we also, with the social movement in Honduras, the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Honduras, we formed transnational solidarity links, and we demanded the release of the Honduran political prisoners, as one of many expressions against the dictatorship, to show what the dictatorship was doing.
And so, as you can see, at the top of the screen, there’s a billboard that says “Free Political Prisoners in Honduras”. That billboard was erected in a small tiny community in Ontario, Canada, to basically say, you know, Canada says they stand for human rights, they have these political prisoners imprisoned in Honduras, they need to release the political prisoners and demand that the dictatorship release the political prisoners, and that Canada needs to stop supporting this dictatorship in Honduras. And so the political prisoner campaign was just one of many that were happening all around the world.
And I’m going to talk a little bit more about what was happening globally to support this incredible resistance in Honduras. So, for example, we were inspired, the Honduras Solidarity Network, to basically send out urgent alerts. When people were arrested in the social movement in Honduras because of a protest, what we would do is we would bombard the police stations, where the people were being arrested, with international phone calls saying, Why are you arresting this person? Release them immediately! You have no reason to do this! You know, we’re calling from Canada, the United States, and Europe. We are concerned about the human rights violations. Release these protesters. And often we were quite successful at getting these protesters released, along with the people in Honduras that were also doing the same thing.
We would do congressional work and parliamentary work in Canada and the United States, basically building relationships with elected officials in our communities in our own countries, telling them to call on our governments to stop supporting this dictatorship in Honduras. We would bring Honduran groups up to the US Congress so that the Honduran groups could say in their own words, on their own terms, what they wanted foreign governments to do, which was often suspend support for these dictatorships, stop sending weapons, stop training the military violent repression of our people. We would conduct press conferences, speaking tours, around Canada and the United States, so that Honduran groups could share their resistance and share their inspiration with communities in North America. And we also got legislation proposed in the United States to call on the US government to stop sending military aid and training Honduran military forces while they were violently repressing and killing members of the social movement in Honduras.
And so, this is just like some of the examples of the incredible resistance. We managed to, and I say “we” because I feel, even though I’m a Canadian activist, I feel like I was very much a part of the solidarity actions that were happening, part of the resistance. You know, I was inspired by what was happening in Honduras. And we managed to basically get rid of the dictatorship in Honduras.
And I just wanted to share really quickly some of the lessons that we learned from that. And some of the speakers already really eloquently talked about some of these lessons, and I’m just going to name some of the ones that I sort of have drawn out is, getting rid of the dictatorship is not easy, it’s so hard. And violence and repression takes its toll. It’s hard, you have to push through it, you have to get your community to push through it. And it’s difficult. And people need to take breaks from it, you know, they need to go into exile, they need to find new ways to resist. But, and it pushes you to your limits. And that’s OK, I feel like that’s just something that happens. And it’s also what is required to sustain such years and years of resistance to topple a dictatorship.
Another thing that’s difficult is that divisions within social movements happen. You know, as you’re building movements against a dictatorship, no one really knows what causes the dictatorship to fall. Nobody knows what is the action that sort of tips the glass, and causes the dictatorship to fall, or achieves a victory. And so we have to always acknowledge that this is a collective action, that there’s always people that are doing all of these little things, you know, all around the world. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that. And the dictatorships will fall. It just sometimes takes a long time. And Ramy said, you know, these are slow processes, but you just have to stay consistent over time.
So some of the good things that we learned, the great lessons that, you know, I learned, is that transnational solidarity, building solidarity across borders, is so important. You can get solidarity from all corners of the world. You know, when my partner was in prison, and I had to work a year and a half, like full time, every single day, to try and get him and 22 other political prisoners released from prison, I had people in Germany calling me saying, we did a bake sale in our local community, and we fundraised some money for the political prisoners. Can we send the money to you to help them fund their legal costs? And so I was just so inspired, this small group of people around the world did a bake sale. They baked cupcakes and squares and sold them in their local market to raise money for the political prisoners in a country that is so far away, across the Atlantic, from where the Honduran movement was resisting.
And as people already mentioned, creativity and art inspire. Resistance is contagious. You know, if people are inspired by the fact that you’re in the streets every single day for months, that, you know, a billboard is erected in a community far away in support of the Honduran movement, people are inspired by that. And it’s so important to promote it, and to share these creative forms of resistance.
And like I already mentioned, we know that we will achieve our goals, the dictatorships will fall, and they have to fall, and the importance of just staying consistent over time. Small actions every day will bring down a dictatorship, whether the dictatorship likes it or not.
And then, just to close my presentation, I just wanted to share the Honduran context of how we were able to topple a dictatorship in Honduras. It was a 12-year dictatorship. The dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernández was toppled. The Honduran people went to the polls, and they elected the first ever woman president in Honduras, in the elections of 2021. I want to say that you can’t just elect a new president and the dictatorship immediately falls, because that’s not true. Remnants of the dictatorship remain. And so, you know, the international solidarity and the resistance continues. I don’t want to say that, you know, just overnight, you can topple a dictatorship. It’s a process. And so, you know, even though we were able to get rid of the one person, the dictator, the structures of the dictatorship remain, and those have to be dismantled over time.
I want to say that the ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who imprisoned my partner, and who imprisoned so many other people, and killed so many activists, is now in prison himself, facing drug trafficking charges, because he not only used his dictatorship to maintain his political power, he used it also to run a drug cartel at the same time, while receiving significant support from Canada and the United States. He is now in prison, facing life in prison, for being involved in transnational drug trafficking networks. That’s not to say that I’m in favor of prisons. I do not believe in prisons. But I think that it’s very telling that dictators end up facing, you know, what they themselves subjected their people to. I really, truly believe that.
And I wanted to say that all 22 Honduran political prisoners were released, including my partner, who holds up the piece of paper in his hands in that picture in the bottom corner, celebrating his freedom, and that all legal charges against him are finally dropped.
And so that’s my presentation. Thank you so much, and I look forward to continuing this conversation.
Thank you so much for listening. Show notes can be found at HondurasNow.org, and more information about the campaign to put the US and Canada on trial for backing and legitimizing a narco regime in Honduras, not to mention all of the other regimes they back around the world, will launch in January 2024. Find more details in a few weeks on the podcast website. Until the next episode about the Aguán Valley, I hope that everything around the world will get better. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.