Who are the members of the Resistencia? What do they want?

Who are the members of the Resistencia? What do they want?

Through my conversations and occasionally heated exchanges with different folks, I have managed to identify many types of people and organizations who belong to the “Resistencia”.  I think understanding the heterogeneity of the “Resistencia” helps us understand the motivations behind what they want and why they behave the way they do. Certainly, there are many just and critical queries and issues raised by some members of the “Resistencia” –they cannot be dismissed as just a band of malfeasants anymore- but at the same time, I will and cannot excuse the behavior of some of its members. This list is not exhaustive and I do welcome feedback on this list.

Certainly, I am not taking the route of Mr. Anibal Delgado Fiallos in yesterday’s La Prensa who seems to point out only the good persons and issues in order to defend the “Resistencia”. Quite lopsided column I might add, as it does not reflect the whole movement. Mr. Delgado Fiallos proposal of differentiating the Resistencia as a political group versus a pressure group (“grupos facticos de poder” pardon the pun…) is quite intriguing and may be the difference between a legitimate expression of some groups in society or one that degenerates into protest groups without meaning.
 
The problem to me is that I cannot tell honorable persons from those who aren’t in a demonstration, rally or when they do not want to establish a dialogue. Much less when riots break or people's property is destroyed. Even more, it is not easy to have a dialogue with those people who call other people “golpistas” without even trying to understand what the other people are saying. Applies to both sides of course...

Here is the list.

1) Persons and organizations interested in social justice issues and who are disenchanted with the lack of response and interest from the political parties and the “elite”.

Obviously, any thinking Honduran person has to be appalled and shamed by the poverty, illiteracy and food insecurity levels (and other social justice ills) we currently have. Furthermore, this situation has not been made any better by the callous attitude of many of the people in power and those who are members of the higher income classes in Honduras. Living a life in Tegucigalpa, as if it is where Rodeo Drive, certainly is quite hard to defend, when we have people who have barely anything to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I am the first one to defend people’s right of enjoying the fruits of their hard work. Another story of course is when these gains are illegally obtained (or charged to “Casa Presidencial”??).  A sobering lesson I did learn while living in The Netherlands, was that people there were austere no matter what their wealth was, while having strong social justice concerns, quite a bit a cultural attitude,but indeed…a different world and something I hope we can learn from ourselves.

2) Persons who are not “Zelayistas” but who deplore the procedures by which he was deposed and illegally exiled.

That later is one argument by the way that I do concede to the “Resistencia” as it is unconstitutional to expel a Honduran citizen from Honduras. The military who took this decision have indicated that they knew it was illegal and were ready to face the legal consequences from their actions. The reasons why the military send Zelaya to Costa Rica are well known. The (quite) unnecessary maneuver by some people who sent Zelaya to Costa Rica of producing a “resignation” letter did not help much and in fact has been exploited by the Resistencia to defend his restitution. A quite shallow argument I might add as it only proves the actions of the specific person who produced the letter.

3) Persons who are “Zelayistas” at the core (I suspect these are very few in reality) and who want Zelaya back in power.

Many of these of course are Zelaya’s own Cabinet and other government officials who will benefit from staying in the bureaucratic machinery. Some of them are "true believers" who where captivated by the "heaven on earth" rhetoric of Zelaya, not thinking it through as it was based on achieving an impossibility and one  which was dependent on the flow of resources from Venezuela....Hey, getting 100 clunky new tractors for free is an example of Zelaya's improvisation, never mind that Venezuela did not donate tillage, planters or other agricultural implements with the tractors, and putting his close friend and ally, Mr. Milton JImenez in charge of the whole operation, a lawyer by training, did not help much either.

4) Persons and organizations who want to impose a socialist government based on the ones in Cuba and Venezuela and to destroy the Republic by calling for a National Constitutional Assembly and support joining the ALBA group of nations.

This group may include people who honestly believe that the Constitution is at the heart of our problems. Never mind that the constitution can be changed –and has been changed repeatedly- and that these persons usually are not able to indicate which article(s) is(are) problematic and much less why. BTW, here is Ricardo Trotti's report on his blog on Mrs. Patricia Rodas, Zelaya’s ex-Foreign Affairs Minister, still preaching for the need to install the National Constitutional Assembly. These statements in spite of Zelaya’s signature of the San Jose agreement and the Guaymuras/Tegucigalpa pact where Zelaya swears to forego this fight.  Anybody troubled by the double talk? I am...

5) Persons who oppose anything and everything

Here I group those who have very little or nothing to answer why they opposed the removal of a person who wanted to destroy the Republic and who wanted to perpetuate himself in power.

6) Persons who sought (and obtained) monetary gain and/or political exposure/gain

From the 40 million lempiras who were illegally extracted from the vaults of the Central Bank of Honduras around June 26, under direct orders of the Minister of the Presidency, on black suitcases to the different contributions made by European NGOs and other supporters of the Resistencia, to continue “the fight against inequality and the illegal removal of Zelaya”.  Some of these folks already abandoned the “Resistencia” and joined the Elvin Santos campaign (for example see Mr. Eduardo Maldonado who has a radio talk show program).

7) Persons who saw an opportunity to introduce chaos and mischief for their own purposes or for the heck of it

All the way from street and organized gangs to common criminals who saw an opportunity to let go of their destructive instincts. Certainly, these folks did a lot of the looting and property damage.

8) Persons and organizations who wanted to protect gains –and promises of gains- made by Zelaya and his acolytes

It is not surprising to me that the Teacher’s Union and many of the Unions are supporting Zelaya. Protecting the "estatuto del docente" became a rallying cry. Interesting to note that Teacher's Union repeatedly organized strikes and protests against Zelaya as he would not cancel their salaries. Furthermore, after Mr. Zelaya, in an irresponsible manner increased minimum salary by 60% without even making an assessment on this act’s impact on the small and medium size enterprises, I would suspect that the beneficiaries of this would indeed try to protect this “gain”. Never mind that it introduced more unemployment and put small and medium size enterprises in a tough spot to pay this huge increase, while putting the country as a whole in a disadvantage, as we cannot compete with other countries for much needed sources of employment.

9) Persons and organizations who oppose what they perceive the events of June 28 to be a “coup-d’état” as a matter of principle and who do not want these to happen again in our countries

In many ways, these people do have a strong point. We certainly do not want to encourage any coup-d’état but at the same time we do  not want to encourage the "disguised as quasi-legal" attempts for overtaking democratic institutions and turn them into ‘socialist and revolutionary’ dictatorships. Note the pattern that Zelaya was following up to June 28 was exactly the same script that Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and originally Venezuela, undertook. An initially legal capture of government, followed by strategic changes to the laws and constitutions, ending with a overhaul or derogation of the Constitution to allow a permanent stay in power (or re-elections ad nausea). This is something we need to work on in order to strengthen democracy while at the same time ensuring its survivability over time.