[Matt Ginsberg-Jackle interviews Gerardo Torres about how the
Honduran left assembled a broad front following the country’s 2009
coup, built power over 12 years, and then won the presidential
election last year. ]
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FROM RESISTANCE TO GOVERNING POWER IN HONDURAS  
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Gerardo Torres and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle
August 19, 2022
Convergence
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_ Matt Ginsberg-Jackle interviews Gerardo Torres about how the
Honduran left assembled a broad front following the country’s 2009
coup, built power over 12 years, and then won the presidential
election last year. _

Honduran President Xiomara Castro, flanked by Gerardo Torres (right)
and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle (left), as she shakes hands with U.S. Rep.
Corey Bush., Roderico Yool Díaz, www.iximchemedia.com

 

In 2009, the first time Gerardo Torres and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle met,
Torres had come to the United States representing the National Front
of Popular Resistance that came together in Honduras after the coup
that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya. Today Torres serves as Vice
Foreign Minister of Honduras and international liaison for the LIBRE
Party. LIBRE—_Libertad y Refundación_ (Freedom and
Re-foundation)—grew from the post-coup resistance and took power
when Xiomara Castro de Zelaya won the 2021 presidential election.
Ginsberg-Jaeckle interviewed Torres for Convergence.

MATT GINSBERG-JAECKLE: Recently we saw each other again in the
Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa. This time we weren’t in front of
it being gassed and I wasn’t there to document any human rights
violations. Instead, I was accompanying a delegation of leftist
Congressmembers from the U.S. visiting you and President Xiomara
Castro. We arrived just before the extradition of the ex-dictator Juan
Orlando Hernández and a few days after this new government had taken
power. 

So what happened between those two moments? How is it possible that
now we are talking about a Honduras filled with hope when in that
first moment everything seemed so difficult and dark?

GERARDO TORRES: Well, thanks so much for this interview. Really you
gave a good summary of what happened. A month after the coup d’état
I was delegated by the new Front Against the Coup d’état to go to
the U.S. to make known what had happened in Honduras. I had been
working around international representation and communications in two
formations, the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance and the
_Bloque Popular _(Popular Block). These were spaces for coordination
amongst the social movements that were confronting the impacts of
neoliberalism, specifically the struggle against the Free Trade
Agreement, which was impacting everything related to our agricultural
capacity. 

Small and mid-sized Honduran producers had no possibility of competing
against the big North American companies who were subsidized by the
U.S. government and who generated a completely asymmetrical and unjust
competition amongst producers. We signed this free trade agreement
with the U.S. not to sell our products in the U.S. but to be crushed
and made subservient to the U.S. producers, who found in Central
America a giant market and in addition very cheap labor. 

So we came from those social, grassroots, organized sectors. At the
beginning of the government of President Zelaya, we were against his
positions because he came from the Liberal Party. The Liberals and the
National Party had always alternated in power, except during
interruptions by the military dictatorships. When the coup d’état
happened, we came together with the people from the Liberal Party who
decided to support President Zelaya and declared themselves
“Liberals in Resistance.” 

The first trip when we met in 2009, everything was very new. We had a
Resistance Front without resources, a population that was not prepared
for taking on a commitment like that. Twelve years later it is
organized as a political party and a people’s government of
solidarity. Receiving you here in Tegucigalpa was a pleasure and an
honor. It marks two moments in a process that was long, that was hard,
and that thankfully was victorious thanks to the organizational
capacity and will of the Honduran people to change more than 200 years
of history and get behind a new party, put a woman in the presidency,
and put an end to more than 200 years of conservative two-party rule
and give space to a political initiative that openly calls itself
socialist and democratic.

Tensions of Building A Broad Front

MGJ: What was the political vision of the social movements, of the
Left in Honduras, in 2009 as it started to ally with or at least find
spaces in common with the “Government of Citizen Power” under
Manuel Zelaya? What was it about that vision that threatened both the
oligarchy in Honduras as well as its allies in other countries, in
particular the U.S.?

GT: Well, I think the first thing that brought us together was the
rejection of the military dictatorship. Even those of us who were very
young or who hadn’t been born during the military governments
already had knowledge and were clear that a military dictatorship was
not what we wanted for the country. The other thing is that also, as I
mentioned to you there was a left social, grassroots, organized
movement that was confronting neoliberalism above all and we were very
clear about that. 

We believed President Zelaya’s proposal precisely because he spoke
about a more participatory economy and democracy, more grassroots, not
so concentrated in big capital and in the political elites. The
poorest, who are the majority of the Honduran population, could have
direct participation in the economy and in making decisions. 

We who come from the Left and who are socialist came to agreements
with the Liberals. We built a party that takes up many of the historic
values of liberalism, Republican Liberalism, based on quality
education and equality of opportunities, and adds our values, which
have to do more with more equitable distribution of wealth and of the
economy, a bigger share of participation for the peasants and workers
of the country. 

Until now there had never been a party that was able to bring together
all of those sectors, the progressive, socialist, left,
anti-capitalist. Now LIBRE under President Xiomara Zelaya and with a
candidacy as strong as hers has been able to put an end to that
historic hegemony of the conservatives and make way for the
progressive forces. For the first time in Honduras there is a party
that is not capitalist in character and that is historic. And in
addition, it’s a party that declares itself anti-patriarchy,
anti-colonial, and that proposes a development from and for the
localities.

Building a Political Instrument for Governing Power

MGJ: Talk to me a little more about the formation of the LIBRE party,
because it hasn’t been easy at all. It took place under a military
dictatorship, repression, waves of assassinations, and also in a
context of a lot of debate within the movement itself, no? There were
those who believed conditions existed for party-based political
participation and those who didn’t. There was also all of the
difficulty of how to build something that both breaks with the
two-party system but also brings along an important part of their
base, that part of the traditional parties that was separate from the
party elite. Talk to me a little about that process.

GT: Well, I think we proved the belief that the conditions weren’t
wrong. The conditions were there because we put it to a test and we
have taken power via elections. But those who said the conditions
weren’t there also reflected an historic lack of confidence in the
political parties. It wouldn’t have been the first time that the
social and popular sectors by falling into the logic of elections lost
their principles or diluted their political formation. 

Conditions for creating a political party were generated also by the
organizational capacity of the people. In 2013 we won an election, but
they stole it from us, and they stole it from us because we didn’t
have the knowledge and preparation to defend the triumph. In 2017 we
won again, and they stole it from us by killing a lot of sisters and
brothers. 

And in 2021 they didn’t steal it from us not because they didn’t
want to but because they couldn’t. Because we had a much greater
organizational capacity, because we had been able to build a popular
backing that was overwhelming, with a difference of over 21%. In a
country where more than 50% of the population never voted, that day
68% voted, and despite the fraud that we know of in inflating and
buying votes, we still won by over a half million votes over the next
candidate, who was the ruling party candidate. So taking political
control in Honduras through elections was a job of over 12 years of
work without rest. 

The party is socialist. It is democratic. And our idea is to create
those values through collective construction of those values. We
don’t have a manual that we brought from another country to say,
this is socialism. We are building our own version of it,
understanding that we have a pretty conservative and gringo-leaning,
liberal DNA, and to sew in values like solidarity, like
anti-imperialism, like social justice, requires a process of
consciousness-raising and collective work. 

The Challenges of Governing In a Moment of Crisis

MGJ: This is not an easy moment to be able to carry out a
transformative vision. There is inflation in all countries, the wars,
the rise in the price of everything. The judicial power in Honduras is
still controlled by people from the ex-dictatorship. There’s a need
to build, to assure that everyone is moving together, and the Party
doesn’t run too far out in front of people nor wait too long to be
able to satisfy the major demands of the sectors of the population who
have been the pillars of the resistance. So how can you take on the
challenges of this very difficult conjuncture in a way that keeps the
coalition intact that allowed LIBRE to take power?

GT: Look, the easiest way to say this to you is to say in this moment
this country is an absolute disaster. Totally, everywhere you look it
is a disaster, because it was held hostage for far too long by a group
of people that was never interested in the country, just in enriching
themselves and their families. This government that we took over was
made for corruption. It was made to strengthen the most powerful, and
if we wanted to make money here, we just have to go talk to the
sectors who have always had power, come to an agreement, they pay
really well, and call it a day. 

This country doesn’t have a minimal level of education, this country
doesn’t have quality healthcare, it doesn’t even have healthcare
in some of its states. Here poverty is at 74%, three out of four
Hondurans don’t earn enough to cover their basic necessities. Here,
there isn’t electricity, there isn’t water, there isn’t food,
there isn’t work. 

Xiomara Castro ended the Special Development Zones (ZEDEs) [areas
designated for control by foreign corporations that had become a
flashpoint of popular protest]. They are annulled, prohibited, and
anyone can come and sue, it doesn’t matter, the decision has been
made. Xiomara Castro decided that energy is no longer a business for a
few private companies but a public national good that has to be
guaranteed to all Honduras. She also decided to raise the healthcare
budget by a billion, the education budget by a billion, and she
didn’t increase the armed forces spending but instead increased
schools and hospitals. 

Xiomara Castro is talking about a new agrarian reform like what this
country lived through in the 1970s, which the CIA pointed as a
communist project in disguise. She is talking about 1.7 billion
Lempiras [Honduran currency] for small producers, she is talking about
immediate urgent assistance for the 2,000 poorest villages in the
country, regardless of which political party controls them. Xiomara
made a state decision based on social indicators and not political
favors, which is what had always happened in this country, the mayor
who was a friend of the ruling party got the support. 

This is a poor country, a hungry country, held hostage by violence. We
already captured the head of the cartel, [ex-dictator] Juan Orlando
Hernández, and we have now sent him to New York to face trial for
links to drug trafficking. Why can’t we do it here? Because the
Supreme Court and the Attorney General have not changed, it is still
the same apparatus for justice and criminal investigation that was
part of the old regime. We cannot trust that apparatus until there is
a change, as there has been in the executive and legislative
branches. 

But we captured the head of the cartel, and now we have to advance in
the area of security. We have spoken with the armed forces and the
police. We told them, ‘For 12 years, your main job was to persecute
and repress the people who were seeking change in this country. Not to
combat crime or drug trafficking. Now your priority is not to
persecute or repress or torture the people, but your work now is to
take care of the forests, take care of the rivers, take care of our
sovereignty, combat drug trafficking, fight extortion, and bring calm
to the Honduran people.’ 

That’s why we are in the government, because the people want a
change. And sometimes the people criticize us because we aren’t
bringing the change fast enough and that’s good. As a public
official your role isn’t to make excuses for yourselves but to seek
solutions, and if they talk shit about us 24 hours a day that’s OK,
because that’s the job for those of us who stepped up. We’re not
here to get rich or for personal benefit but to put forth our best
energy and efforts to make changes for Honduras.

Lessons for the U.S. Left

MGJ: To close, what is your call to the social movements here in the
United States? If you were the Commander in Chief of the progressive
forces of the U.S., what recommendations would you make?  What would
be the primary task you would propose, thinking about what would most
benefit the possibility that the dreams of that noble people in
resistance in Honduras are able to become reality?

GT: I think the best way of doing this is to have coordination with a
series of clear principles. I think that every portion of power that
we can have is important as long as we don’t lose our principles. We
started with 30 congresspeople, that’s what we started with, and
with 25 mayors. 

And sometimes they have criticized us, those of us who have taken up
positions in the state, in NGO’s, in foundations, obviously there is
a difference, because if you’re in that role you have some
possibility and if you don’t you have limitations, but if the person
in the role  is in collective communication with their sisters and
brothers and there is a common project, I think any position of power
is important. 

I think that the universities, the unions, organized women, organized
youth, every space of organization should have debates but should be
unified in some part. If we hadn’t had the National Front of Popular
Resistance or the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance, this
would never have been possible. If we didn’t have a party where,
despite our differences, we can debate together, it wouldn’t be
possible. Because the atomized struggle, in individual nuclei, may be
faster but it is weaker. 

So our party is trying to stay in permanent communication with the
social sectors of the country, because it is very simple:  We as a
government can’t change this country ourselves, we as a party
can’t take the power of the country ourselves. We sit down – even
with those who swore we were their enemies, some sectors in the
center, who are on the right, who saw LIBRE as a socialist threat,
repeating all of the lies and prejudices of the Cold War that I
mentioned before. If we are the political structure that wants a
change, we have to demonstrate it by talking with people and reaching
agreements. 

Politics, at the end of the day, is portions of power. If you become
president of your grade, that’s a portion of power, if the other one
is president of the union and the other president of the party, all of
them have a portion of power and all have to be able to understand
that portion of power as a bigger project. 

The problem with portions of power is if you start to fight with your
comrade over that portion and you forget who your true enemy is. The
enemy is the system of exclusion, the system of poverty. If, in the
U.S. you came to the agreement that the enemy is the system of
exclusion, I think it will be possible to find a point of coming
together. 

Here there are anarchists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, but we
were all clear that we had to defeat the regime of Juan Orlando, and
that’s what we did. And now we agree that we have to get this
country out of poverty. So I can’t nor do I try to have my criteria
be imposed on others. I have to know where to pressure and where to
stop pressuring out of respect and care for the collective project,
which is the most important thing that we have – the collective
space of construction.

Gerardo Torres is Vice Foreign Minister of the Government of Honduras
and International Liaison for the LIBRE Party. He was an activist
throughout the whole process of resistance after the coup d’état of
2009, and part of the process of forming the LIBRE party and the
various alliances against the dictatorships that followed the coup. He
served in the International Commission of the Resistance Front, and
later in the leadership of LIBRE’s youth front. For the last seven
years he has been the party’s International Secretary and director
of its institute for political and ideological development.

Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle is a Chicago-based organizer, translator and
interpreter. He is a member of La Voz de los de Abajo, one of the
founding organizations of the Honduras Solidarity Network. He has been
accompanying Honduran social movements for over two decades, doing
support work alongside assassinated indigenous leader Berta Caceres
and her organization COPINH, leading human rights observation and
electoral monitoring delegations and organizing speaking tours and
solidarity efforts in the U.S. in support of Honduran social
movements. He is also the translator of _13 Colors of the Honduran
Resistance_
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a book of short stories by feminist writer Melissa Cardoza about women
who joined the resistance to the 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras. In
Chicago, he serves on the board of the grassroots organization he
co-founded, Southside Together Organizing for Power, though most of
his current political work is helping build the left independent
political project United Working Families in the largely immigrant and
refugee neighborhood where he, his wife Victoria and their
one-year-old son Harvey live.

Convergence is a magazine for radical insights. We produce articles,
videos, and podcasts to sharpen our collective practice, lift up
stories about organizing, and engage in strategic debate — all with
the goal of winning multi-racial democracy and a radically democratic
economy.

* Honduras
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* Left Electoral Strategy
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