In solidarity with their compatriots in Honduras, who have poured into the streets of this Central American country in their hundreds of thousands, Hondurans living here have repeatedly rallied in San Francisco’s Mission District to protest widespread fraud in the Nov. 26 Presidential election.
“This new electoral coup calls for a strong international response,” Porfirio Quintano, of Bay Area Hondurans United against the Dictatorship told a Dec. 28 rally at 24th and Mission. “Look what’s been happening. Since the US-backed 2009 coup in Honduras, and their 2004 coup in Haiti, the US imperialists have been complicit in the ouster of elected presidents in Paraguay and Brazil, as well as their constant intrigues against the elected government in Venezuela.”
“It’s clear that Washington has zero respect for the votes of the people of Latin America,” he added.
The Nov. 26 Honduran presidential election pitted incumbent strongman and US favorite, Juan Orlando Hernandez, against challenger Salvador Nasralla from the Alianza coalition, which was winning by a 5 per cent margin with 71 per cent of the votes counted. This was announced by the TSE electoral tribunal, which then abruptly stopped the count and declared Hernandez the winner.
“They have stolen the votes from us,” Nasralla said at a Dec. 10 march. “This country will be ungovernable starting now.”
Quintano said popular anger at the stolen election is broader and more powerful today than after the coup in 2009. “Then the protests were mainly in the larger cities. Today the movement is everywhere in Honduras, including little villages in the countryside. Today all the people are involved in this fight.”
David Welsh was part of an International Action Center delegation to Honduras soon after the 2009 coup. He was also an international observer during the 2013 presidential “selection” of Juan Orlando Hernandez.