Tortilla con Sal: Interview with Margarita Murill

Margarita Murillo has been deeply involved in the rural workers movement in Honduras for nearly 40 years. As a girl she took part in the national march for agrarian reform of 1973 which met with fierce repression including the notorious Los Horcones massacre in which 12 rural workers were murdered. Back then, Margarita experienced for the first time the brutality and abuse that have always characterized the Honduran military and police. From that time to the present she became a well-known leader in the rural workers' organizations in her country. In 1987 she was forcibly disappeared by the army. The abuse and torture to which she was subjected left her with damage to her spine that affects her to this day. More fortunate than other victims of the Honduran death squads of that time, after more than three weeks she was presented to the courts and set free. She managed to leave Honduras and went into exile. In Cuba, the damage to her spine was operated on and eventually she returned to Honduras in secret. The amnesty arranged by the administration of President Rafael Callejas made it possible for her to return to a normal life working with rural communities in the north of the country. Currently she is Secretary General of the Social Forum of the Sula Valley. Margarita and her colleagues in the popular movement have been at the forefront of organizing resistance to the military coup in Honduras in the north western part of the country. As a sadistic measure of repression aimed at intimidating her and her family, the army forcibly disappeared her son Samuel, aged 23, on July 26th abducting him from the family's home in Marañon just south of San Pedro Sula. His whereabouts are still unknown. Her husband Oscar was wounded in the leg by a .3030 calibre bullet fired by the army during one of their attacks on peaceful demonstrators at the Choloma bridge between San Pedro and Puerto Cortes. In this interview Margarita talks to Tortilla con Sal about popular resistance to the military coup and the prospects of a settlement to the conflict in the short term.

TcS : We are with Margarita Murillo, one of the leaders in the north western part of the country of the opposition front against the coup regime in Honduras, mostly in the area around the city of San Pedro Sula. Now we are at around 55 days of struggle against the coup, how do you see the development of the protests and demonstrations and the resistance at a national level and, of course, most of all in your own area?

MM : Well, I think the resistance undertaken by the Honduran people against the coup d'etat via the National Front of Popular Resistance is permanent and irreversible and by people in the northern zone has been daily, permanent. From June 28th to date we haven't failed a single day carrying out activities against the coup d'etat and every day we meet, every day we set out on the marches we see people increasingly joining in. People are becoming more aware, are joining in, accepting that this was indeed a coup d'etat. People are clear that it was not a coup d'etat exclusively against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, but rather a coup d'etat against all of the Honduran people. Because the actions the President was implementing was in favour of the Honduran people and, with the coup, the people once more remain headless, without representation in the country.

TcS : Can you talk a bit about the specific actions you know about directly. For example, I understand you and your colleagues in the Front where you are working, you are organizing a very complicated area in Choloma.

MM : Yes. Along the way, during all the time that has passed since the coup d'etat, we have carried out various activities. First on June 28th we were leading the coordination of the Consultative Vote. We were in the Central Park of San Pedro and we made sure not a single voting box was captured by the army. Not like in the rest of the voting centres around San Pedro Sula where the majority of voting boxes were burned or sabotaged. They didn't let the people vote. We moved the boxes to the Central Park and as they got filled we took them away. After that we were in the Park in San Pedro Sula for five days running and there they broke us up violently with tear gas, gunshots, stones, truncheons, people in prison and people beaten up. But the resistance didn't end there. We followed a strategic plan to follow up what to do after the coup d'etat and we carried on doing marches through the populous barrios of San Pedro Sula so as to try and inform the population that there had been a coup d'etat, who had carried it out and what were the reasons for that coup d'etat.

When we began doing those marches in those most populated parts of San Pedro Sula, people joined with us. There were activities in which we would leave the labour union offices with a couple of hundred people and on returning to the Central Park there would be fifteen or twenty or even thirty thousand people accompanying us from the barrios. That gave us the chance to know that the Honduran people were aware there had been a coup d'etat and that it was a coup d'etat against the Honduran people.

After that we began the process of internal organization of the National Front of Popular Resistance in the northern zone. We have organized in the municipalities and we have organized the municipalities of Choloma, Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Potrerillos, Villanueva, La Lima and San Pedro Sula. And we have also divided the great city of San Pedro Sula into different sectors, like Chamelecón, Cofradía, Rivera Hernandez, Bordos and barrios like Soncer, Medina and Concepción. In all those barrios we have organized nuclei of the National Resistance Front and it is these that are helping us.

What happened then? Well, after we had set up all the structures for the Front in these almost 60 days of the the coup, we then began taking over the highways. And one of the main highways is at the Choloma Bridge over the River Choloma in that municipality. We have been occupying that bridge and that is a main artery because it leads to the port zone of Puerto Cortes through which comes fuel and raw materials. And we have been occupying that zone consecutively for many weeks. Then on the last Friday - because we occupied it almost always Thursdays and Fridays - we were brutally repressed by the army. People were wounded, some with gunshots and there are still people in the Catarina Olivas hospital (in San Pedro Sula) people were imprisoned and beaten mercilessly

TcS : There were reports of at least one woman who was brutally raped...

MM : Yes. A woman teacher was raped and not just raped but they put a truncheon in this woman's vagina and that is a monstrous thing to do. In fact it was two women who were raped. And the women who were taken away to the police station were mercilessly beaten. Some women were beaten even worse than were the men who were captured. Some people, including those with gunshot wounds, are still in the Catarina Olivas hospital.

TcS : How many people were shot?

MM : One is there with a gunshot wound. But of the others there are three people who were beaten unconscious with truncheons and there are the two women rape victims. Apart from them are all the people with facial and head wounds and wounds to the back. That clearance by the army was truly brutal and I describe it in those terms because we had been negotiating with the army and the police. They turned up to clear us away and said they wanted to talk to the coordinator of the movement and so I went to talk to them. As we were negotiating they told me, "Right, we give you until 12 noon to clear the street". So we said there was no problem, we were ready to withdraw and we negotiated on the basis that we were going to move away and they asked us to clean up the rubbish all our people had left and to clear away the big stones we had thrown across the road as a barricade. So we agreed and I told them that yes, before we left we would leave the road clear just as we had found it.

When I turned to go and organize people to clear the road and withdraw so we could get out of there without any violence, that was when they began to attack. I hadn't gone even ten feet from where we had been negotiating when they began to attack. The first tear gas bomb fell at my back after we had been talking, after I had gone about ten feet to organize people to withdraw the first tear gas canister landed at my back about the height of my rucksack.

So it was they who broke the deal we had agreed that we were going to withdraw. And there is a recording and a video of me negotiating with the police so they wouldn't break us up violently and there is the recording of when I said to the police chief, "we're going to withdraw, we're going to clear the road but give us a chance while we do that work and don't set the army on us. Don't let them break us up violently while we are sorting out the road." But in fact they didn't give us a chance but rather immediately began the repression.

Afterwards they said they carried out the repression because our people had begun throwing stones. But that isn't true. Our people are disciplined because we don't put louts to lead our marches. Our people are organized from different labour unions - not just layabouts. They march in the streets to protest against the coup but they are far from being people with nothing better to do. They are organized. And it is not true they started throwing stones. We were going to organize to withdraw and they were the ones who started the repression.

Of course, then people were - so as to allow the women and young people and children there to withdraw - people wanted to stop the repression, something that was impossible because our people are unarmed. They have no weapons. And the army opened fire with high-calibre weapons. Not rubber bullets but real bullets. And the repression was extreme. Armoured cars, rifles, truncheons, shields, tear gas. There was even an explosion that we believe was a grenade that fell in the middle of the highway.

TcS : Do you think the experience of that day in Choloma indicates a change in the level of confrontation between the coup regime and the resistance?

MM : Yes I think that is the lesson. They are telling us something like "Right, if you continue with the demonstrations then this is how we are going to repress them." The repression was very large scale. So we think the repression is going to get progressively more intense each time we take to the streets. We are certainly aware that the coup regime is readily disposed to repress the people. We have no illusions on that. We know they are cruel just from the fact that they grab women and rape them. Practically in public they grab then and take them off some way away from the road. From that we understand all too well that the repression is going to be even more criminal from now on.

Now, we are also conscious that the repression will continue, will be twice as bad, but we are also well aware that if we stop venturing onto the streets the coup regime will consolidate itself more. So we are not thinking of stopping the struggle. We are going to go on. We are going to stay in the streets. We're going to continue leading this struggle until the coup regime concedes power to the constitutional President of Honduras.

TcS : And how do you see the role of President Manuel Zelaya now and his behaviour up until now?

MM : I think the President of the Republic has been very objective trying to manage this via peaceful means. He's been very objective in that sense. He has accepted returning to Honduras under the Arias Plan. But we see the Arias Plan as in practice a plan completely against the Honduran people, apart from the restitution of Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and that is what they are refusing to accept. But even so we see that the President has been more than willing in the negotiations. And also we have much more respect for his courage in maintaining that position up until now and refusing other kinds of negotiations. We think he is a bulwark at this point in the struggle and our Honduran people continue leading their struggle in the hope that President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is going to be reinstated.

But also the Honduran people are firmly convinced that in reinstating Manuel Zelaya Rosales we are going to go ahead with the National Constituent Assembly which is the great objective that the Honduran people have set ourselves. There has been a rupture of the constitutional order and in violating the constitutional order the only thing appropriate is a Constituent Assembly. It's impossible to go back to governing a country that is ungovernable as a result of the constitutional rupture.

TcS : And what do you and your colleagues think, Margarita, of the electoral issue?

MM : We think, and precisely last Sunday in an assembly of 500 representatives from different organizations in the department of Cortes, we have very precise objectives. One is the short term objective of reinstating President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. Second is to arrive at a Constituent Assembly. And three is a new constitution for the Republic. And we think that if at this moment Manuel Zelaya Rosales does not return to the country before the beginning of the electoral process we think there should not be any elections.

TcS : In other words, before September 1st...

MM : Before September 1st.....There cannot be elections. And why can there not be elections? Because those elections are being run under a coup regime and we cannot accept elections run by the coup regime - firstly. Also, we are against and could well find ourselves against the holding of general elections even with the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya Rosales because that would be to consolidate the coup regime for next year. Because the party candidates running at the moment are instigators of the coup regime. In the case of Pepe Lobo and Elvin Santos. They are coup supporters. So our people right now have no electoral alternative and if we ourselves give Pepe Lobo the chance to be President of the Republic, being a coup supporter, then the coup d'etat will continue.

Suddenly one is hearing that it may be possible to form alliances between the smaller parties so as to proceed with the electoral process. We haven't looked at this in great depth but even so we still think that to do so is wrong. It is wrong to go ahead with general elections. But on that we think we still have a bit of time to work out how to consolidate our ideas and see what we are going to do after September 1st.

Really in the north-western front we are waiting for September 1st for a concrete response on President Zelaya's reinstatement and from that point on we can begin another new strategic plan so as to know what to do afterwards during those three months of the electoral process.

TcS : And do you think Margarita that the resistance is going to be able to sustain the consistency and coherence it has shown up until now indefinitely? Or is there going to come a point in which the resistance dissolves?

MM : We are working with firm objectives. It isn't a Resistance Front for the short term but a National Resistance Front for the long haul because we think the problems in Honduras are not going to be resolved just by the arrival of President Zelaya or with a change of government that general elections may bring about. We are organizing for the long term. The National Front of Popular Resistance has its long terms objectives and we have seen something in the people.

We see that the people wants and is aware of being organized, And right now the people has demonstrated the human solidarity which is something impoverished people have, because it is poor people, the real people that have been supporting the resistance. Sometimes, it annoys us and sometimes it makes us laugh to hear the accusations they make, that the coup regime makes, saying we get money from Chavez or that we get money from the FARC and perhaps we don't have a cent. If we were getting money from Chavez or the FARC we'd have plenty of money. But it isn't true.

In the North as in the rest of the country, it is the people that has sustained the resistance. The self-same organized people that has given us clothing, shoes, food, water and even money so we can mobilize and organize the Front at departmental level. Our people has been so generous and willing. In every march we go on, people in the barrios come out to give us refreshments and food. And that is a sign that this Honduran people does want the resistance to continue. Because if the people did not want us to continue in the streets, they would not be helping us. But in fact the Honduran people are helping us very firmly.

TcS : One last question Margarita, how important is the issue of impunity?

MM : We as the Front think there is going to be a chance to fight to ensure that all the crimes committed up until now after the coup will not go unpunished. Obviously, right now none of the coup leaders have been punished for all the crimes they have committed. But I do think there is going to be a moment when we as a people, I not saying when Manuel Zelaya Rosales arrives to restore constitutional order, rather that we as a people are going to demand that the crimes committed up until this point in the coup do not go unpunished. Because that would be a slap in the face for the people as if all that has happened since the coup gets treated as a forgotten time.

We know that all the crimes that happened in Honduras for decades have gone unpunished because until now we know of no punishment for those who abused human rights during the 1980s, not one is in prison. So it has been the custom for crimes to go unpunished.

Another of the questions we reject with all our energy is to have as the person responsible for State security in Honduras a murderer like Billy Joya who was one of the murderers in the 1980s and now is in charge of security for the Honduran States, for the Honduran government. For us, that means that the doctrine of State Security that was implemented in the 1980s once more returns and we think it returns with much more repression, much more vigour, because the ones directing it are the very same ones who have gone unpunished before. As a people we are certainly going to demand that all the crimes committed do not go unpunished.

ENDS

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