By Laura Carlsen
On the morning of June 28, women’s organizations throughout Honduras were preparing to promote a yes vote on the national survey to hold a Constitutional Assembly. Then the phone lines started buzzing.
In this poor Central American nation, feminists have been organizing for years in defense of women’s rights, equality, and against violence. When the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was forcibly exiled by the armed forces, women from all over the country spontaneously organized to protect themselves and their families and demand a return to democracy. They called the new umbrella organization “Feminists in Resistance.”
On August 18, Feminists in Resistance sat down with women from the international delegation for Women’s Human Rights Week, which they organized to monitor and analyze human rights violations and challenges for the organization. One after another they told their stories in a long session that combined group therapy and political analysis—a natural mix at this critical point in Honduran history and the history of their movement.
Miriam Suazo relates the events of the day of the coup. “On the 28th, women began calling each other, saying ‘what’s happening?'” At first no-one really understood the full extent of the coup, she says, but networks mobilized quickly and women began to gather to share information and plan actions. Independent feminists and feminists from different organizations immediately identified with each other and with the rising resistance to the coup. They began going out to rescue those who had been beaten and to trace individuals arrested by security forces.
For some, the shock of waking up to a coup d’etat wasn’t new.
“This is my third coup,” relates Marielena. “I was a girl when the coup in 1963 happened. Then I lived through the coup in 1972. We lived in front of a school and I saw how my mother faced the bullets, we thought they were going to kill her … Later in the university in the 80s I lived through the repression with many of the women here … So this has revived the story of my life.”
There is a saying in Honduras about the Central American dirty war that “While the United States had its eye on Nicaragua and its hands in El Salvador, it had its boot on Honduras.” For the older women who remember the terror of that time when over 200 people were disappeared and hundreds tortured and assassinated, the current coup stirs up deep fears. Gilda Rivera, director of the Center for Women’s Rights in Tegucigalpa, says, “I’ve had a messed-up life. I knew the victims of Billy Joya in the 80s … Now I’ve been to the border twice, I’ve lived with a curfew over my head. I wake up alone, terrified.”
The older women agree that they have grown and their movement has grown since the 80s.
Marielena notes, “Today’s not the same as the 80s because there’s a popular movement that the coup leaders never imagined … What Zelaya has done is symbolize the popular discontent accumulated over the years.” She recounts the August 5 battle for the university where she works and the surprising participation of students. Her story is echoed in variations by many of the women present.
Although they battle nightmares and long-buried trauma, these women also see a new hope for the resistance this time around and for their own fight for women’s rights. The repression and fear has strengthened their resolve. “Sure, I’m afraid of dying but I’m not losing hope,” Gilda says. “I see hope in the faces of the people at the marches. And the solidarity from women, from all of you, keeps me going.”
For Jessica, events this year brought to mind the contra war of the 80s. “I never imagined that my daughters would have to be in a situation like this,” she says. As a mother who has lived through the period before Honduras began its incomplete transition to democracy, and the period when democracy was merely a word that belied a much cruder reality in the country, she worries. “I told my daughter not to go to the march. She said, ‘Mom, what about my autonomy?'”
“My little girl—she’s 18 now, but she’s still my little girl—ended up going with me to the march. It was really gratifying for me that we went together.” These women know in their bodies and their hearts the costs of resistance. They also know that the costs of not resisting are far greater.