Awakening of an occupied country THE ECONOMIC policy being followed by the Honduran government at the prompting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has given impetus to a series of mass mobilizations in Honduras, leading in turn to stepped-up repression against a trade-union movement that has been growing stronger and more political.
Honduras, the centre-piece of Ronald Reagan's counter-revolutionary chess game in Central America, is today virtually an occupied country. The presence of several thousand north American marines is promoting corruption and breakdown of the traditional economic fabric.
The 20,000 Nicaraguan contras based in the south of the country, where they have literally driven out the small coffee planters who used to constitute the population of this region, have likewise provoked an increasingly violent antagonism among Hondurans.
This situation is accelerating the growth of national consciousness, in a country that seemed to have the least national feeling in all Central America. ROBERTO DIAZ respond.
Repression, sometimes systematic, was the only response of the government. This repression did not only have the goal of immobilizing and neutralizing the professional organizations, but also destroying them.
The repression that was exercised against the trade union organizations was only one aspect of building a "national security state".
This project is the axis of the alliance between Suazo Cordova, the Reagan administration and the section of the extreme-right of the Honduran armed forces led by general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who was considered to be Washington's right-hand man in Central America between 1982 and 1984.
The blatantly counter-insurrectionary project of Suaza Cordova/ Alvarez Martinez is reflected in the measures taken against the union organizations. These include the occupation of offices by the military, placing leaders imposed by the government at the head of unions, the division of unions and union confederations, the use of the military in factories on strike and the sacking of workers' leaders in reprisal against strikes.
All this is done with the aim of decapitating the trade-union movement. This is to say nothing of the murder of trade-union leaders, their kidnapping followed by their "dis-
ROBERTO DIAZ
In spite of a notable scepticism in certain sectors, the Honduran workers movement has been following a trajectory leading it from economic demands to struggles of a political character. This is true not only for the opposition section of Honduran trade unionism, but also what is called the "official sector" of pro-government unions.
May 1, 1986, saw one expression of this evolution, when for the first time in many years International Workers' Day was celebrated jointly by the strongest trade-union organizations.
Joining together were the "official" Honduran Workers Confederation (CTH), the General Workers Union, a social-Christian tendency (CGT) and the Federation of Honduran Workers (FUTH). The latter is made up in the main of the most radical unions, which the government denies all legal expression.
These three organizations belong to the National Workers and Peasants Council of Honduras (CONOCH), a body that is a product of the aspiration for unity existing today.
The workers' banners bore slogans of an expressly political character, such as: "No to war, yes to peace" "Yankees out of Honduras, no to the 18 military accords with the USA" "Contras out of Honduras" and "Azcona's government is unpatriotic T Azcona Hoyo you are a traitor." (1)
The economic policy of Roberto Suazo Cordova's government from 1982 to 1985 has been decisive in this evolution. Like a good pupil of its American counsellors and the IMF, it implemented the well-known anti-popular economic measures that this organization recommends.
Officially it had been assured that only those recently integrated into production would be effected by these measures, such as unprofitable businesses, newly-hired workers, the not yet consolidated middle classes and above all the marginalized urban unemployed population. The measures were only supposed to affect the section of the population excluded from the production process, who moreover do not pay taxes, and those recently incorporated into production. The rest of the population was not supposed to be affected.
But the very depth of the economic crisis led the government to apply this policy equally to the organized sectors, to other layers of workers and even to the middle classes who have political influence and the capacity to appearance" carried out by paramilitary groups. Such actions have often coincided with contract negotiations.
In March 1983, near the town of El Progresso in the department of Yoro in the north of Honduras, two soldiers fired on a group of trade-union leaders, amongst whom was Dagoberto Padilla — president of the union of the agricultural company of Sula (SITRACOAS). Four trade unionists, including Padilla were murdered and three others were seriously wounded.
In March 1984, Rolando Vindel Gonzalez, the president of the union of the national electricity company (STENEE), was arrested in front of witnesses by the National Investigations Department (DNI) in the centre of the capital, Tegucigalpa. The DNI denied all responsibility.
Since then no one has seen the trade-union leader. At the time of his kidnapping he was at the head of a union commission which was negotiating a new collective agreement with the electricity company.
1. Jose Simon Azcona Hoyo, one of the four candidates of the ruling Liberal Party, won the presidential elections on November 24, 1985, with 51.5 per cent of the vote against another Liberal Party member, Oscar Mejia who was supported by the previous president, Roberto Suazo Cordova.
International Viewpoint 29 September 1986
On 9 May, 1986, unidentified individuals turned high-calibre weapons on the president of the packaging industry union (STELSA), Cristobal Perez Diaz, as he was getting out of his car opposite his house in San Pedro Sula — also in the north of Honduras.
A week before his murder, Perez Diaz, who was working with other workers' leaders in some conflicts in the United Federation of Honduran Workers (FUTH) - of which he had previously been the president for the north coast region — had led the May Day procession in his town.
In front of more than 100,000 workers the trade-union leader had accused president Hoyo's government of failing to offer any response to the concrete demands of the FUTH. At the same time, he denounced Honduras' foreign policy and the presence of American troops and Nicaraguan contras on its territory.
At the time of his death, Perez Diaz was sitting on a commission that was negotiating a new collective agreement on social benefits with the regional authorities. Workers' struggles politicized by repression
Contrary to the hopes of those in high places who have instigated the anti-union repression, its most significant impact has been to politicize the struggles of the workers movement, which has made substantial movement, wich has made substantial advances in organization.
From economic demands it has moved on to fighting to defend trade-union rights, to the demand for the return of the disappeared and the release of political prisoners.
The trade-union movement has also contributed to the formation of new humanitarian organizations - for the defence of human rights, bringing together the families of the disappeared, struggles for peace, and so on -organizations that in turn reinforce trade-union action and promise the appearance of new forms of political struggle.
One of the forms which this politicization of the Honduran workers' movement is taking is the growth of national consciousness in response to the North American military occupation and the presence of the Nicaraguan contras.
It is clear that these two foreign military forces arrived in Honduras after the country became the principal ally of the United States in Central America, and with the blessing of the Honduran authorities.
Those who worked out these plans for Honduras, as well as the Honduran officials who were party to them, knew that they had to defuse the country's various sectors of political and social opposition.
The struggle for national sovereignty, therefore, has met with official repression against all those who opposed the implementation of the plans.
The Honduran workers' movement was built precisely out of the struggles led against the North American companies which, at the end of the last century, pushed aside an incompetent bourgeoisie.
Today the workers' movement sees clearly that the foreign military presence involves the risk of a war against Nicaragua, not in defence of the national interest but in defence of the interests of the United States.
Consequently, the trade-union leaders stress the fact that the foreign policy of Honduras does not respect the principle of non-interference and self-determination of peoples. Many of them think that as the politicization of trade union struggles deepens the movement will become more unified, encouraging a full involvement of the mass movement.
The appearance of bodies such as the National Workers' and Peasants' Council of Honduras (CONOCH), which brings together unions of different ideological tendencies, points to such a qualitative leap.
The CONOCH was born of the necessity to assert the right of workers to a greater voice in government, after the elections of November 1985 that brought Azcona to power.
90
But the FUTH and its peasant organization, the National Union of Workers of the Countryside (CNTC), have political potential that scares the more traditional trade-union sectors. This explains why such elements have tried to blame the FUTH for a number of incidents arising from the May Day demonstration in Tegucigalpa seeking to discredit it in the eyes of the workers.
Another notable advance for the workers' movement is the creation of the Coordinating Committee of Popular Organizations (CCOP), closely linked to the FUTH. The emergence of this coordination favours the spread of the mobilization to other sections of the popular movement.
The CCOP is made up of organizations of workers, peasants, women and students, neighbourhood committees, human rights organizations, organizations of political prisoners and so on.
Other union federations have tried in the past to put together similar organizations, but the products of their work were wrecked by repression and by the murder of their leaders, such as Padilla.
The issue of defending national sovereignty has given a political content to the growth of the union movement of the last years. In this context, one might wonder whether the murder of Cristobal Perez Diaz, far from being an isolated incident, does not point to a new repressive offensive.
19
International Viewpoint 29 September 1986
BOLIVIA