05 July 2009 /International Bureau / Statement No: 45

The Honduras army organised a military coup last week to overthrow the elected government of Honduras, arrested the president of the state Manuel Zelaya and sent him to exile.
The military coup in Honduras was replied with the great anger of the peoples, and particularly of the Latin American peoples who have witnessed great pains including tortures, massacres and forced disappearances during the period of military juntas carried out one after another in the 1970s and 1980s with the support of the USA.
Zelaya, the president of Honduras from the Liberal Party, and his government developed a close collaboration with the popular governments of Latin America based on the axis of Venezuela-Bolivia-Cuba. In this context, they joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). They put some limitations for the foreign monopolies in the country. Contrarily to the traditional pro-US policies, they adopted a foreign policy based on the relations with Latin American states and by this way they tried to follow a relatively independent way of capitalist development. Finally they tried to take steps for assuring their power through Constitutional changes. All these facts caused a great contradiction among the government and the army in and conflicts for the political power in Honduras.
The Latin American states with whom Zelaya had developed a close collaboration, first of all the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez strongly reacted against the military coup and commented that it was a message of the USA to them.
This coup of the Honduras army does not only target the government of Zelaya but also aim at eliminating the achievements of the struggle of the Honduras people. This coup reflects the attitude of the imperialists and of the Latin American collaborator bourgeoisies to the increasing popular movements in Latin America, to the steps forward taken by the governments due to the pressure of these movements and to the continental policies of the popular bourgeois governments in Latin America that are concrete in the formation of the ALBA.
The fact that the USA, the UN and many more countries have condemned the coup shows that a classical long-term military junta form of political power is much too tight for now for the present international political circumstances. However, at the same time it is an expression of the level of sharpening and polarization in the class struggles in Latin America. The attacks of the organised and armed fascist forces in Bolivia and Venezuela, the mass massacres of the states, a recent example of which was displayed in Peru against the resistance of the Amazon people, and the increasing role of violence in the mass movements that had appeared in Peru once more are the important hints about the future of the popular resistances throughout the continent that encourage the whole world.
As the MLCP, we express our solidarity with the people of Honduras. We struggle in a region where military coups and attempts of military coups are not foreign to peoples. Every day another attempt of a military coup is brought into open and the struggles with the demand to judge those responsible for the military coup in 1980 is increasing every passing day. From such a region and a political environment, we share the anger of the people of Honduras and we greet their resistances against the coup. We call upon all progressive, revolutionary and communist forces of the world to defend the peoples of Honduras through actions and to condemn the putchists.