By Daysi Flores
Octavia Butler wrote: “To rise from its own ashes, a phoenix must first burn.” A coup d’etat is certainly enough fire to make people rise. On June 28, 2009 as a harbinger (signal) of the road ahead, we woke up in the dark. In Honduras, the center of Central America, one of the first coup d’états of the 21st century was taking place. Much of the population immediately took to the streets– to read aloud the constitution of the republic and to defend not a government, but the democratic pact.
The coup installed twelve years of dictatorship and dispossession during which a countless number of human rights violations were committed. The nation deteriorated rapidly, and violence was rampant, but the stubbornness of the people sustained a resistance that did not give up. More than a decade later, in 2020 and after several attempts, the democratic pact was reestablished. That in itself was a historic event, but it was accompanied by the great achievement of inaugurating the first woman as president of the republic.
All this took place in a sea of diverse resistances: peasants, indigenous people, trade unionists, housewives… a whole country resisting, in which a resistance within the resistance emerged. In the turmoil, one group struggled to resist the coup and its successive governments, and to survive and make its own demands. They called themselves Feminists in Resistance. I was part of that group and so all women I spoke to write this article.
Feminists in Resistance, or FER, arose as part of history of a feminist organizational response in the main cities, as Mirta Kennedy rightly says, but it the constitution of FER was also a reflection of the existing political vision of women aware of the close link between advances in women’s rights and democracy, with all its shortcomings. Gilda Rivera emphasizes that we existed, worked and struggled in the context of bourgeois democracy. The coup d’état was promoted and sustained by economic and political power elites that for years seized public resources needed to ensure the livelihood of the Honduran population—one of the poorest in the continent. These elites were backed up by the intervention of the United States, which endorsed and supported the expropriations and looting.
Adelay Carias joined FER out of the need to position her own demands in the mass mobilization context of the defense of democracyShe remembers recognizing that, amid all the pain, repression, death and violence, itwas also a profound moment of inflection in the country and that it was a juncture that we had to take advantage of to position our voices, demands, desires and dreams in the midst of this movement that was emerging. For Neesa Medina, who was just a young girl at the time, FER was a space that emerged as a response to knowing that we were part of the Resistance and knowing that our starting point was feminism. By naming ourselves—Feminists in resistance– we were recognizing that the struggle against the coup d’état was immersed in the struggle against the capitalist and patriarchal systems.
How did an explicitly feminist resistance contribute to the movement to defend democracy? Neesa lists three areas: documenting, differentiating and discomforting She details them as follows:
- -Documenting: FER documented human rights violations against women throughout the mobilizations and later the regimes of repressive governments. For months (how long did this go on, dates?) they also narrated what was happening through daily bulletins, which were shared nationally and outside the country.
- -Differentiating: Not all aggressions, curfews, ministerial agreements and so on, affect women in the same way. The banning of the PAE (morning-after pill) by the coup regime is a clear example of a policy change that directly impacted women’s lives and bodies and took more than a decade to undo.
- -Discomforting (this word is not usual but is correct and it works well here): We were part of the Coordination of the National Front of Popular Resistance, FNRP. There and in other coalitions and organizations, we questioned (patriarchal?) practices in decision making, in the treatment of comrades, and in fair and dignified representation. Despite barriers, we consistently pointed out discriminatory practices and put feminist demands on the movement agenda.
Andrea Nuila, Reyna Calix and Adelay Carias agree with Gilda when they say that the contributions are also tinged with content ??don’t know what this means) and all of them mention as an example the slogan “Ni golpe de Estado, ni golpe a las mujeres” (roughly, “No blows against democracy, no blows against women”) as one of the messages that gave the resistance a feminist political character. The slogan was not only directed at the coup perpetrators as the villains of the moment, but as Reyna says, shouting the slogan in the streets, at the top of our lungs, was also a questioning of what we knew was also happening within the social movements.
Gilda notes that FER was also clear that those who were promoting the coup were oligarchic groups with a lot of power in the country and that these groups 
had international links and formed part of the most conservative and fundamentalist groups in the world that oppose advances in women’s human rights on issues such as the control over our own bodies. This acute reading of the context was only possible because women had their own collectivity within the movement.
For Mirta, Reyna and Adelay, FER’s main contribution to that moment was the visibility of the feminist movement as part of the social movement, with a clear agenda of its own and not just supporting the agenda of the social movement. The organized voices and demands of women made society as a whole to reflect on a democracy that had been built with enormous debts to women. Gilda adds that “despite these debts, it was clear that we had to go out to defend democracy, against this Coup, because what was defended was the social pact destroyed by those who were going to take over the formal institutionality and who represented the most backward and conservative forces in our country. And that is exactly what happened.”
Feminist in resistance was an uncomfortable provocation for the old ways of building movements. To walk the streets differently required a willingness to resist beyond pamphlets. And in a society so fundamentalist and co-opted by the hegemonic narrative of morality, although the silence of the media industry was questioned, the silence of women in resistance was expected. That posed complexities and challenges for Feminists in Resistance.
Neesa and Andrea see these challenges more from an internal reflection on the movement: while we were resisting in the streets, the decisions were being made somewhere else, without us and without many other people. Somehow, we remained a bit isolated, I (this is the first I, would be good to insert yourself in the story before. Or is this a verbatim quote from Neesa or Andrea?) think we did not manage to integrate completely, at the outset, perhaps because of our critical stance. It was as if the limit of Feminists in Resistance were marked (and we concentrated more on us, as a collective). I think that maybe we lost an opportunity to reach many more women.
Mirta, Reyna and Gilda coincide in their assessments of the external challenges that reflect the reality of the moment, issues such as the ruthless repression 
of the coup regime and the militarization of life. The blow to daily life, social organization, the life of the country we dreamed of, and all the work that we had built for almost 30 years with a lot of effort, was interrupted overnight by the coup. The setbacks were so profound and drastic that even today, after 16 years, we’re not even close to recovering the gains we had made before June 28, 2009.
Today Honduras is in a different situation than 16 years ago. The first democratically elected government after the coup d’état has almost come to an end and elections are on the horizon. The reading of this moment according to those who were part of feminists in resistance varies, but all agree that it is not so different from the situation prior to the coup, with some nuances.
The current context suffers from the 12 years of dictatorship that left the political, organizational, community and personal arena marked by the seemingly indelible ink of authoritarianism. As Neesa points out, it was a different context in 2009 when participating in the elections would have meant validating a flawed electoral process but the candidates still had arisen of a democratic mindset. However, according to the resistance call the few feminist comrades who planned to participate in those elections, withdrew after the coup.
For Adelay the main difference between 2009 and now is that before the coup feminists worked mostly outside the government, and with the presidency of Xiomara Castro many have been drawn into government posts. Mirta points out that historically the most visible feminists of the first generation during the first decade of the twentieth century and in the following generations, along with an important part of feminist and women’s rights movements have participated actively in elections to change power. Gilda believes we also must recognize that when women have come to power they have not achieved significant changes and in some cases, we have seen that important feminist activists are sucked in or co-opted by that model, but that does not mean that they should be politically destroyed or judged.
Andrea observes that it’s difficult to compare the contexts now and then since we are talking about different collectives and groups with different perspectives and even feminist theoretical differences. She notes that omen within the current ruling party who call themselves feminists have begun to make their own path, facing with divisions, discussions, and challenges that have to do with being in the party structure and in the dispute for power in the electoral sphere. Neesa agrees that feminist principles should be the compass, but the terrain on which those who build from within the government walk is unknown territory for many.
Reyna points out that the bipartisanship that assured that power remain in the hands of the elites has been broken and the ruling party is running a woman candidate again for the presidency, but hidden powers are still intact. For Gilda the current context is much more complex, with more contradictions fueled by a belligerent mass media operating in favor of the neoliberal economic model of looting and destruction of public goods promoted by the coup. Adelay stresses the importance of feminist struggles in all spaces, with formal political power being one of them. Neesa adds that as feminists, it is still difficult for us to define our common ground, to bring together feminists building from many spheres, understanding that the steps taken by civil society, by the government, by academia, by cooperation, and others, are temporary, transitory paths, but that Honduras needs more feminism, more feminists, in more spaces, for longer.
What is certain is that in such an unpredictable and challenging future we need to understand that all struggles, in essence, represent a struggle for power–not only for visible power, but for power in all its expressions. To confront these complex realities and make democracy a reality for our full liberation there are no shortcuts. We need to look carefully at the dynamics of power to address the most pressing issues and build bridges that will lead us to the urgency of feminist movement building and empowerment, while contesting visible powers so that, instead of giving in to fear when apparent stability is threatened by hidden powers, we can see hope on the horizon.
