Sep
International Meddling, Politics
Honduran Government Forces Attack Musicians and Peaceful Protesters
Post-coup repression in Honduras reached a new low last week with the targeting of a concert of the band Café Guancasco, a musical favorite of the coup resistance movement. It took place on September 15, anniversary of the independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire. For the second year in a row, the holiday became a focal point for the Honduran resistance to the June 2009 military coup against the movement to rewrite the country’s constitution and against then-president Manuel Zelaya. This September 15th saw massive anti-regime marches in the capital of Tegucigalpa and the country’s second-largest city of San Pedro Sula, where a midday concert by Café Guancasco was attacked by the police and military.
-Jesse Freestone, The Real News
Cafe Guancasco’s Plea to the National and International Community
September 25, 2010
(Translation thanks to www.quotha.net)
On September 15 we were victims of the most troubling military aggression of recent months. The people of the city of San Pedro Sula were brutally attacked during a concert that we had begun to perform in the central plaza, and now the news has circled the world that one man was killed, dozens wounded and thousands of dollars of equipment destroyed.
We can still see the faces of the hundreds of children who crowded up to the stage to shake our hands and take a picture with us in the middle of the crowd. It is frustrating that the very next memory is seeing these faces covered by a cloud of toxic smoke that encompassed the entire area within minutes.
Perhaps the dictator Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the military leaders who govern him were not thinking about what kind of audience would show up at a popular music concert. Maybe their bourgeois tradition has led them to forget that it is the youth and the children who take on as their own the artistic proposals that reflect the historical moment, or perhaps more simply, fascism has encrusted their brains to the extent that their sin is idiocy.
Although we understand that they are puppets of an ambitious bourgeoisie and a murderous United Statesian imperialism, we hold them responsible for every tear and for every drop of blood spilt.
Police officers destroyed our the tools of our work and the equipment of the company that had made the event possible. The damages have been assessed and are greater than 30,000 dollars. Still, the violated human lives and the memory of Efraín López [a street vendor who died during the attack] are what fill us with indignation.
We also denounce numerous acts of intimidation and threats against some of us, as well as against other people dedicated to making art. From this moment, we hold the police and the state responsible for any physical harm that comes to any of our members.
In name of Café Guancasco we call upon the men and women who work in art in the entire hemisphere to come out against this dictatorship that has directly attacked the art and free expression of our people. We have received dozens of letters of support expressing solidarity, but we must create a whirlwind of voices in order to ensure that they will not darken our dreams again.
As such, we invite you to join us this October 21 (Day of the Honduran armed forces) to repeat our plan of singing for the people of San Pedro. Let this day herald the start of a new era, the day of artists in resistance armed with ideas! Let it be the biggest concert our nation has ever seen!
We ask for economic, artistic and logistical help from all people, national organizations, the international community and artists from all over the world in order to make this a reality. We wait for you in this land, so that together we can recuperate the hopes that they have tried to rob from us.
If they thought they would silence our voices with the din of their rifles, they will see instead that it is we who will silence their gunshots with our song.
We thank you for your economic support and for helping us to resolve our material losses, with it we are confident that we will be able to settle our accounts and buy new instruments. We provide you with the necessary information for depositing money into the bank accounts we have set up for this purpose below.
Finally, we would also like to express our gratitude for the thousands of messages that have come to us from all over the world. Café Guancasco has been a song of love in times of hatred, because we comprehend that love amidst so much injustice is the most revolutionary act of all. And this is how it has been from the start; we are with the people, offering our lived to sow a seed in this great nation that Morazán taught us how to build.
Long live the National People’s Resistance Front!
Long live art in resistance!
Click here for information about how to contribute to Café Guancasco’s cause.
