The coup continues in Honduras, even as the so-called international community rushes to whitewash it by endorsing elections that, rather than solving the crisis, have deepened it.More people have been killed, raped, tortured and terrorized since the sham elections took place and the fraudelent results were accepted.  This photo essay documents moments in the week surrounding the 'elections' and is best viewed by clicking on the first photo and scrolling through as a slide show.  If you would like to use one of these photos, please contact me directly at tyshipley@hotmail.com. There is also still time to sign the petition against recognition of the coup regime.

It is perhaps fitting that my time in Honduras should end right where it began – facing a lineup of police in riot gear in front of the Brazilian embassy where the elected President of the country remains in exile. There is much that can be said about what Honduras was like under Zelaya – it certainly was no paradise for the millions of people who struggle to survive from day to day – but it was not a police state.

Honduras today is like an Orwellian nightmare. A façade of calm as soldiers patrol the streets with automatic weapons; a theatrical production of democracy in a state that no longer has a functioning code of law; a discourse of peace that so completely fails to convince, it almost seems like it is intended to mock its victims. Indeed, one placard yesterday read, “2 + 2 = 5? Do not insult us, golpistas.”

And Canada is already falling all over itself to recognize the ‘elections’ as fair, free and legitimate.

No doubt the United States will follow suit – it appears the North American strategy on Honduras is to have Canada jump in first and take whatever heat comes from it. We don’t care, evidently, that our already souring international reputation (as a result of the occupation of Afghanistan, our participation in the 2004 coup in Haiti, the brutality of our mining operations in Central America, etc) will be even further damaged by playing along with a lie that is painfully obvious to most of Latin America. Then when the road has been cleared, Prince Obama will give his blessing and everyone will go home and forget that any of this ever happened.

But Hondurans cannot go home – their home has been stolen. In a literal sense, their homes are not safe. Police raids on private residences are a daily occurrence; warrants rarely provided or obviously faked, protocols on human rights of people who have been proven guilty of nothing patently and brutally ignored, people involved in the peaceful resistance targeted and terrorized ruthlessly. It is the heliotype of a totalitarian state, everything we are led to believe our governments oppose and, indeed, everything we are said to be fighting against in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And in the larger sense, the country they call home has been taken from them. Even according to the official numbers, barely 10% of Hondurans voted for Porfirio Lobo (Pepe Robo - Pepe the Robber - as the walls call him) on Sunday. There are nearly 8 million Hondurans, and only 1.7...

It was a relatively quiet day in Tegucigalpa. Terror will do that.

Oh, there were people in the streets – protestors filled the square in front of the Congreso, for the 103rd consecutive day. Organizers in the Frente Popular de Resistencia met to determine what they would do about the pending pantomime elections. Leaders of the five main human rights groups in Honduras delivered an official denunciation of the coup elections to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE). The Movimiento de Mujares Visitacion Padilla, a feminist organization associated with the Resistance, amassed a crowd of many dozens of courageous women to demonstrate outside a police station where one of their leaders had been detained overnight.

Merlin Equiqure, one of the founders of a feminist movement that has been on the front lines of the coup resistance in spite of a powerfully patriarchal social structure, remains under arrest tonight without the possibility of bail - why? Because she was caught with a can of spray paint. The paint was used – as photo evidence has clearly demonstrated – to decorate placards and props for a piece of street theatre the group put together for the international day against violence against women. Her organization, in collaboration with the growing feminist movement in Honduras, has been tirelessly denouncing the fact that women have been particularly victimized under the coup regime – a pamphlet from a related organization wrote, “we are victims of sexual abuse, they beat our breasts, hips, buttocks and vulva; they put batons in our crotch, they threaten us with rape and other types of sexual aggression in a clear demonstration of contempt of this society towards the body and the integrity of women.” Merlin’s group, named after a famous woman who struggled for women’s rights in the 1920s, is made up of over 6000 predominantly young women – some of the women I spoke to this morning were teenagers - demonstrating courage I could never dream of exhibiting myself. In a piece of tragic absurdity that brought me to tears, one of their community leaders is now facing a trumped up prison sentence where she will likely face the very same sexualized violence that she has been so tirelessly fought to expose and denounce.

But women’s bodies are not only being used by the golpistas as objects for desecration and humiliation in prison cells; they are simultaneously being used...

As I sit facing a wall of blue-uniformed TSA officers wearing ominous blue latex gloves, I can’t help wondering if it was a coincidence that the most militarized departure gate at Miami International Airport was the one shipping people to the most militarized elections in Central America.

Perhaps most striking about the five-hour delay that held me in Miami on my way to Tegucigalpa was the extent to which Hondurans going home were not fazed by the police dogs, machine guns and full-body searches that punctuated our wait.  What seems so intimidating to the handful of international visitors on our flight is old hat for people who have been living under an oppressive military coup for over four months. 

But despite their desensitization to dramatic demonstrations of coercive force, the Hondurans I am flying with are by no means at peace.  “Tegucigalpa is not very safe right now and I worry for my family,” said a young man waiting with me.  “We need all of this to end.”  And it did not appear to him or his friend that the elections were going to be the end of anything.  According to the second man, “the international presence is so important, because (the coup regime) will do anything if they can get away with it.”  Both individuals asked to remain anonymous and expressed uncertainty about their own approach to the election; they were flying home for the specific purpose of participating in their democratic process, but doubted the legitimacy of any election held under the auspices of the coup.

Indeed, now that I have arrived in Tegucigalpa and begun speaking to people here, I’m struck by how complicated their experiences of the coup and their approaches to the elections truly are.  The organized resistance has called for a boycott of the elections, but people in Honduras are aware that they could face serious, perhaps even violent, consequences if they do not vote.  Some workplaces will punish employees that do not vote; other people fear that they will be subject to police violence if they do not have a finger dipped in ink on election day. 

Despite that fear, there seems to be little doubt in the minds of people here that whenever the state is shutting down the press, there is something they are trying to hide.  The people I spoke to in the airport were deeply troubled by the consistent and continued repression of free...