1954 in the collective memory of the Honduran Resistencia movement

Hondurans are at crossroads, living a time couched in harsh neoliberal policies, patriarchal oversight from the US State Department and a moment of social protest promising change. Hondurans, both the US and the isthmus, are engaged in a struggle for civil and political rights as workers, as women, as citizens, as indigenous, afro-descendants, as LGBTTI, and their collective actions are reverberating beyond the nation-state. The social movement that emerged in post-2009 coup Honduras lays in the pendulum between demanding international accountability while at the same looking to the national past for historical memory of resistance. Movement leaders recall the banana Strike of 1954 as a sign for future generations about the path forward. During the 1980s many of the same leaders faced danger invoking the 1954 strike, yet after the 2009 coup mobilizations and organizing the same strike has become a living symbol of resistance and a significant and powerful memory. This paper argues that social movements have a memory and build upon each other. Exploring the 2009 resistance movement as it calls on the memory of the North Coast Strike of 1954, by young and old I will demonstrate the ways in which historical memory is crucial for the building of labor and social movements in Central America, and particularly important for Hondurans of the North Coast. The great Banana Strike marks a fundamental memory of worker power and an important challenge to U.S. capital. The memory influences new outcomes in an age of migration and new social movements.