Tegucigalpa, June 29, 2024 – The Honduran president recalled this Friday the coup d’état against then-president Manuel Zelaya. 15 years after that unconstitutional event, she highlighted how the popular resistance took to the streets.

During the CELAC Social meeting, President Xiomara Castro emphasized the struggle that her people have waged and called on not forgetting that “we are resistance”.

“Fifteen years ago, they prevented the consultation of the fourth ballot box with a coup d’état. It is impossible to forget that while the military raided our home and kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya using brutal force of arms, a group of treacherous judges and lawmakers imposed a dictator who repressed and murdered our people and looted the state coffers”, she recalled.

At the same time, Castro referred to the response of the people who “with popular resistance” took to the streets. “They chased us, surrounded us at the Brazilian embassy. They subjected us to torture. We suffered repression, exile, but we started a revolutionary process that has brought us here today: victorious and determined to achieve new victories”, she said.

She also stressed that “the Partido Libre, the revolutionary vanguard of the Honduran people, is the hope for this process of re-establishment of the nation,” and at the same time recalled that “the Fourth Ballot Box was an unprecedented democratic, popular exercise that served as an excuse for coup-mongering and imperialism to carry out the worst crime against humanity in our history.”

“They imposed a narco-dictatorship on us, looting through public-private partnerships: draconian contracts and privatizations. That dictatorship killed, assassinated, and plundered public resources. They abandoned healthcare, education, security, and surrendered to the arms of capital that impoverished our nation”, she pointed out.

“Greed and indifference prevailed even during the pandemic and hurricanes Eta and Iota. They sold and privatized our territory with concessions that were nothing more than a private fiefdom to be exploited by economic groups at the expense of national sovereignty,” she added.

To confront that reality, the government of Xiomara Castro responded with “dignity and transparency in the face of corruption, dispossession, and looting by the coup plotter right,” she expressed.

“In the prosecution of corrupt individuals and seizures, I restored respect to the public function of the State, I ordered public finances, and today the single treasury account of the State allows us to have our accounts up to date”, Castro emphasized.

In addition to those series of actions, the president highlighted the halt of the privatization of the national electric company and the gradual restoration of rights for the working classes, underlining public enterprises and directly combating crime and corruption as victories of her term.

From the platform and “surrounded by the International Community, the blood of Honduran martyrs, as well as the resistance of the Partido Libre“, the Honduran president greeted “those who dared to impose truth in a world dominated by media manipulation” and recently released Julian Assange.

On the other hand, she said: “I condemn the genocide against the Palestinian people. I condemn the 60 years of blockade against the people of Cuba, the blockade against our brotherly people in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Nicaragua. I appreciate the message of support from President Nicolás Maduro,” she asserted.