HONDURAS — The oligarchy, with the support of its state apparatus (army, police, prosecution, judiciary) has unleashed brutal repression against the Honduran farmworkers, from the Sula Valley to the Valley of Aguán. This includes illegal detention, prosecution, imprisonment, and eviction from the lands the farmworkers have occupied and remained in possession of for many years. There have been more than 80 deaths in recent years, all of workers defending the land they cultivate to sustain themselves and their families. However, the current situation has unleashed massive anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist sentiments among the masses.
The farmworkers have waged a heroic struggle! But, unfortunately, it has remained within the limits of the same capitalist system, leading us to a dead end. The farmworkers need to struggle to build a communist world, along with their working- class brothers and sisters in the factories and mines, destroying capitalism, money and private property. They need to struggle for the land and all production to be in the hands of the whole working class.
In the current struggle, the farmworkers confront the big sugarcane, banana and palm companies, both national and transnational. For example, the Tela Railroad Company and the Standard Fruit Company which took over large tracts of land over a hundred years ago and remain the capitalist companies that exploit the largest number of wage slaves in Honduras.
Now there have arisen at least three more landowner families, among them the Facuse family of Arab origin and the Morales family of Nicaraguan origin, who have acquired large tracts of land planted with African palm, whose profitable fruit serves to make vegetable oils and other derivatives. All of them have the full support of capitalism's laws, its banks and its repressive state apparatus.
In addition, these farmworkers did not even have the support of their own blatantly opportunistic union officials of other unions. These unions were once the largest and most militant organizations in Honduras. They led the longestlasting strike in Latin America, which for 69 days in 1954 paralyzed the Tela Railroad Company. But today these organizations exist only on paper. In view of the farmworkers' desperation, an intensification of the struggle is expected in the coming days. The balance of forces may be unfavorable for them, but we have confidence that these comrades can understand that the struggle must go beyond recovery or ownership of a parcel of land. The whole history of feudalism and capitalism shows that nothing can guarantee that this land would belong to them for eternity. Even if they won back the land, the big capitalists could again evict them.
We call on the farmworkers and their supporters to join with us and to see that only by promoting the complete destruction of the capitalist exploiter, together with their oligarchy and repressive agents, can we move to a new society, a society which guarantees the collective production and equitable distribution of food and all the things that our class needs. This is a communist society, which is the only one which will guarantee the worlds' working class a just and dignified society.

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