UPDATE 12/12/09: A blog is being created by the AAA for open debate. This will be available for a month, after which the membership will be asked to ratify the resolution. See http://quotha.net/node/624 for additional information

UPDATE (12/6/09). The resolution passed the business meeting, in one of only a few meetings in the association's history to reach quorum. It now goes to the membership for ratification. A friendly amendment was added, and while I don't have the exact wording, it urged the Obama administration to join the majority of Latin American countries in condemning the November 29th elections as illegitimate.

The following resolution was accepted last week for consideration at the annual business meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Please ask any and all anthropologists you know to commit to attending the Business Meeting, in order to ensure the quorum (250) required for a vote. Click on image below to download fliers for distribution.

Date: Thursday, December 3rd
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Grand Ballroom Salon H, 5th Floor, Philadelphia Marriott
RSVP: Anthropologists who will be at the meetings, click here to RSVP on the Facebook event.

WHEREAS on June 28th, 2009, democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup in an operation led by a School of the Americas-trained military general; and

WHEREAS a resistance movement comprised of hundreds of thousands of Honduran citizens has daily and publicly protested the usurpation of Honduran democracy since that date; and

WHEREAS reports from Amnesty International and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and from Honduran Human Rights agencies CIPRODEH and COFADEH each detail numerous targeted assassinations, hundreds of injuries inflicted by police and military on unarmed citizens, and thousands of arbitrary detentions; and

WHEREAS violent state repression has particularly targeted already politically marginalized people like indigenous people, Garifunas, women, transgender people, public school teachers and other workers, and the poor, who together comprise the vast majority of Hondurans; and

WHEREAS anthropology has a longstanding relationship with and obligation to bear witness to the human rights and lived experiences of such persons; and

WHEREAS freedom of expression has been severely curtailed through the assassinations of journalists, the sabotage and closure of media outlets, the revocation of constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and the press; and

WHEREAS the government put in place by the coup has threatened and physically attacked university students, faculty including the rector of the national university, researchers and independent institutions including the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History; and

WHEREAS elections overseen by the same military that has committed a large number of the above-mentioned atrocities are not a sufficient means to address the vast damage that has been done to Honduran democracy and infrastructure; and

WHEREAS the U.S. government has refused to officially recognize the actions of June 28th as a military coup and has neither acknowledged nor condemned the human rights violations committed by the de facto government; and

WHEREAS ongoing state-sponsored violence destabilizes the entire region; and

WHEREAS consequently, destabilization and official hostility toward intellectual endeavors of any sort, particularly those engaging marginalized groups, make it more difficult and dangerous for anthropologists to conduct research in Honduras;

Be it moved that the American Anthropological Association supports Hondurans who have resisted and continue to resist the June 28th military coup and subsequent repression and economic exploitation by the de facto regime; condemns the role of the Honduran military in the coup d'etat and its aftermath and U.S. financing and training of said military; supports Hondurans' calls for the elimination of the Honduran military; and urges President Barack Obama and members of the US Congress to:

Acknowledge and condemn the human rights violations that have been committed by the de facto government in Honduras since the June 28th, 2009 coup d'etat; and

Give support to the progressive forces in Honduras that are striving to create a real democracy and are worthy of the support that they have not received from the international community; and

Work with allied countries to find a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis in Honduras.

Submitted by:
Rosemary A. Joyce
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences
Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley

Adrienne Pine
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20016