Carlos Reyes, the general secretary of the Union of Beverage and Related Industry Workers (STIBYS), an IUF affiliate, was able to contact SIREL by phone from his place in hiding “somewhere in Honduras.” Far from being intimidated by police forces, Reyes is participating fully in the resistance movement against the dictatorship. The following is the short conversation we had with him.

-What is your assessment of the situation that the country is living?

-The facto government is telling the world that it is not a coup in the sense of the military seizing power and taking over the institutions. The truth is that it is a coup d’état and it was orchestrated by the ultraconservative oligarchy, which for the past year has being assailing the government: first the Supreme Court, through its leading members, then the Prosecutor’s Office, later the High Electoral Court, and the Army itself, and now finally the Executive Branch. The argument put forward to justify the coup contains an inherent contradiction, because if they claim that they have deposed President José Manuel Zelaya because he broke the law, then how can they be trying to right an alleged political crime with an even more serious violation of the law?

-Are protesters resisting actively?

-There are mobilizations throughout the country, not just in the capital. Yesterday five of our fellow workers were arrested and a member of the Telecommunications Union was killed by an army truck as soldiers erupted into the grounds of the telecommunications company. There are also numerous people injured, but we don’t know exactly how many because the Army is controlling all the hospitals.

-Tell us what happened at the protest when the police tried to take you in.

-We were at the demonstration yesterday when clashes began with the police forces. They finally ordered the antiriot groups to come after us. They began savagely beating people. One of these men hit my leg and I fell to the ground, and just as another man was about to jump me, one of his officers recognized me and ordered them to let me go. That was how I got away, but others weren’t so lucky. We know that many officers are disobeying the orders of their commanders. Yesterday, in San Pedro Sula, commanders instructed the police to take control of the area where our fellow workers were protesting, but the troops refused to obey their orders.

-How do you plan to continue this struggle?

-We are in a state of permanent mobilization to defend the rights of the Honduran people, the rights of the workers, because this government they are trying to impose, headed by Roberto Micheletti, will advance the neoliberal agenda, privatizing the public services that have not been sold yet, like water and electric power services. Labor rights will be completely trampled. Which is why we are calling on all brothers and sisters throughout Latin America to support our resistance movement.

We are also very grateful to the IUF, who has an excellent representative here, Giorgio Trucchi. He’s been tireless in his efforts to cover and report on the situation here, and we’ve introduced him to all our fellow protesters, so the IUF is present in our struggle.