July 5, 2009

Late afternoon, with heavy rain. Everyone within hearing is tuned into Mesa Redonda, the national political commentary program, which is having all day special coverage as we await President Manuel Zelaya's arrival in Tegucigalpa, within the next half hour. In recent days the heat has felt like being hit on the heat with a hot frying pan, a physical weight of heat and light pressing down on us. The heat and rain has unleashed the usual seasonal flu, and several therapists have been out sick with fevers and diarrhea. Two of our friends were quarantined in a neighborhood that had two cases of swine flu. Telesur is on in the background as we wait for events that all of Latin America is watching closely—golpistas as well as the people who have been building what is being called our second independence.

We just saw Honduran soldiers open fire on a crowd of demonstrators; the people had pushed through, as they thought, into the airport, but it turned out to be an ambush. Zelaya's plane is 20 minutes out. The reports are coming in via satellite cell phones. Chavez has just said, the dignity of the Americas is on that plane. As I write it's being announced that two people have been killed. We're seeing the crowds, the teargas, hearing the shots and shouting via cell phones and the TeleSur reporters' cameras, which get interrupted as they move around and sometimes lose their signals.

Telesur reporters are talking with Zelaya on his plane, telling him what's happening and transmitting his messages to the people, which those who can get Cuban radio, or watch Telesur online can hear and pass on. I'm sitting here with tears running down my face, typing. Zelaya continues to talk about reason and peace and the rights of the people, in the face of barbarism and violence, says “In the name of God, in the name of the people, don't take part in a massacre.”

The national police chief has just said he's withdrawing his forces from the airport and is holding the army responsible for the shootings. One of the dead was a 16 year old boy. The shots came from army snipers on rooftops. .

People are uploading video from their cell phones onto the internet, which Cuban TV is monitoring and broadcasting. There are also independent radio broadcasts via internet.

The army has parked vehicles on the runway so that the plane can't land—and the air force is threatening to intercept them if they don't leave—to shoot down a plane carrying a head of state and the Secretary General of the UN.

For tense minutes Leah and I sit holding hands, watching Zelaya's plane circle, soldiers massed on the airfield, lying down in combat positions with their guns at the ready, the trucks positioning themselves on the runway. Zelaya is on the phone again, saying what he sees below him, saying that the pilot is telling him they can't land without risking a crash. He says if he had a parachute he'd jump. The reporter tells him what's happening on the ground. She tells him that when his plane came into sight the people burst into cheers. He says they'll try again tomorrow and the next day and the next, until they find a way to get him back into the country.

Minutes later: Zelaya's plane has turned away. Nowit's Hugo Chavez on the phone saying that at one point he and Zelaya and Fidel and Daniel Ortega were all on the phone together. He calls on the soldiers of Honduras to stand down, not to stain themselves with their own people's blood, and also talks about class struggle in the hemisphere—how the people of Latin America will not allow the military, representing the oligarchies, to retake the continent, that what happens now is about the future of our children and grandchildren. He says the yanqui empire is responsible for this coup-- not Obama, he says, but Obama is a prisoner of the empire.

What a high adrenaline day! Chavez says the pilots managed to outwit the Honduran air force and approach by an unexpected route, so that they were able to circle the airport. The army trucks had to scurry to get out onto the runway.

By the time you see this blog, most of this will be old news, though I don't know how much of the detail you'll get. What's so intensely powerful, so different for me, is that I'm watching revolutionary media, commentators who don't belong to any corporate board, who belong heart and soul to the liberation projects unfolding in our Americas. It's immediate, unmanicured, incredibly courageous. Telesur reporters, already kidnapped once by the gorilas, are back on the ground, reporting from within the range of the soldiers' guns, broadcasting via different technologies minute to minute as things change-- sometimes voice only via cellphone, sometimes live footage via satellite, sometimes via internet. As soon as the coup happened and we knew there was a news blackout, Radio Havana increased its signal strength toward Honduras, knowing that Hondurans would have to rely on outside radio broadcasts for news. Honduran students in Cuba call their relatives and friends, report what's happening to Cuban TV and it's broadcast back to Honduras. Zelaya and Chavez are both frequently on the phone with the Telesur crews. Cuban TV broadcasts phone reports from leaders of the popular movements all over Honduras with minute to minute updates. Sometimes the people on the phones are running as they talk. They send messages to their people in other places. Everyone insists on non-violence. In between the live reports, including bits of cellphone video from marchers, there are commentaries on the distorted coverage by CNN, and statements by important Latin American political and cultural figures. They talk about the School of the Americas, the school for golpistas. About the attempted coups in Venezuela and Bolivia.

One of the remarkable things is how the demonstrators themselves, as well as Chavez and Zelaya, keep saying to the soldiers, “You belong to the people, don't shoot them, don't attack your own families, your own future, reconsider, your job is to defend your people, not harm them.” Zelaya says, “I forgive you, but history will not.”

CNN continues to support the de facto government, which they recognize, although no government in

the world does, broadcasting Micheletti's claim that not a drop of Honduran blood has been spilled-- but I saw the blood.

Now Zelaya has retreated, and soon we hear that he's in Managua. His repeats that his place is among his people, supporting their struggle to defend their democracy. Chavez hasjust corrected the reporter-- the plane that carried Zelaya was not Venezuelan, he says. It belongs to ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America, an alliance of countries committed to regional independence and democratic development. Honduras joined under Zelaya, and Ecuador became a member just last month.

The overwhelming emotion I feel is of being where I belong, a part of my continent, which is the most hopeful place on earth at this moment in history. No-one here is confused about what this battle is about. People are highly educated, and well informed and radical, and everyone knows this is the war of the rich against the poor, the savage rebellion of the elites against a government that dared to impose a minimum wage, provide school lunches, lower costs for farmers and worst of all, at the request of the citizens, to put on the table a revision of the constitution that would allow the people of Honduras to participate in real ways in the running of their country. The people who brought about this coup want to turn back the clock to the age of dictatorships. From one end of the continent to the other, people have said no, so loudly and forcefully that even the United States has had to publicly denounce the de facto thugs. Cubans, who have been under attack for fifty tears, understand very well that, as people all over Latin America have been saying all week, “Today we are all Hondurans.”