Reportback From Zelaya's Return To Honduras

[roody]

Written by Lisa Sullivan

This past Saturday, Fr. Roy Bourgeois and I accompanied President Manuel Zelaya back to his native Honduras, almost two years after a military coup led by SOA graduates removed him from his country at gunpoint. The short flight we took with him, from Managua to Tegucigalpa, was a journey packed with laughter, tears, songs, nerves, hugs, and decades of history.


Above all, this was an epic Latin American journey, a brief Latin American freedom ride of sorts. It was a moment to display to a world that does not often look this way, a loosely woven cloth of Latin American sovereignty and integration. As the only U.S. citizens invited to be part of a small group of international accompaniment, Roy and I felt extraordinarily privileged to be sharing this moment with our Latin American sisters and brothers.

--snip--


Almost as significant as the return itself, was the form in which it was negotiated: by two nations who put aside conflicts that often seem more imposed from without than created from within. Blood brothers bound by their claim to Simon Bolivar, the Latin American liberator who was born in Venezuela and died in Colombia and dreamed of a united Latin America, these two nations unexpectedly unleashed a lightning bolt of hope that was felt the length and breadth of Latin America.

http://soaw.org/about-us/partnership-america-latina/212-delegations/3709-reportback-from-zelaya-return

[Peace Patriot]

1. K&R! SOA Watch is a great source on LatAm! Their report is stunning!

Not only is this the first I've heard that Xiomara Zelaya is running for President in 2013--something I was speculating about the other day and that I think is wonderful news--but this report captures the entire event and all of LatAm history in recent times and over the last half century in its description of the people on the plane as it descended into Honduras

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This was the emotion (LatAm brotherhood) that dominated the group of 30 or so Latin American diplomats, ministers, social leaders and former presidents who prepared to board the plane with us in Managua. Uruguayan ambassador Julio Miguel Baraibar leaned over and whispered to me “ this is not just the journey of Mel Zelaya home after a coup, it is a journey of each one of us. And, because it was negotiated by Venezuela and Colombia, it is a journey of Latin American unity”. Baraibar himself had spent over a decade in exile from his country’s military dictatorship, an experience not exclusive to him in that group....

As the plane began to approach the Toncantin airport suddenly a crowd of hundreds of thousands lining the airport gates became visible through the clouds, most donning red shirts. Even those in small farms dotting the landscape and on winding streets down below us looked up, waving wildly. As the plane descended, we burst into a song that we all knew too well, “De pie cantar, que el pueblo va a triunfar……“El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!”. Descending lower and lower the chant in the airplane swelled: Venezuela: PRESENTE! El Salvador: PRESENTE! Argentina: PRESENTE! until each of our countries had been named. Finally: Honduras PRESENTE! That cheer was punctuated by massive cheers from the crowd that rose above the screech of the brakes.

--from the OP (my emphasis)

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A regionwide achievement! Latin America has been born! And what a difficult birth it has been--and what a magnificent achievement!

[gbscar]

2. I've criticized certain uses of SOA Watch for specific reasons, but this was a good report (nt)

[rabs]

3. Very good and interesting read.

thanks roody.

K & R