Communist Party of Honduras

(CPH, Partido Comunista de Honduras), a party founded in 1927 by the existing Marxist groups in the country; it ceased to exist in the early 1930’s as a result of governmental repression. In April 1954 it was reestablished at the First National Conference of Honduran Marxists. The conference adopted the party rules, elected a central committee, and passed a resolution on publishing a newspaper. The party has operated underground from the beginning. In May 1954 the largest strike of working people in the country’s history, which won them the right to establish trade unions and also a number of economic concessions and forced the government to adopt labor legislation, was organized by the party. As the mass action by the working people was going on, the CPH grew numerically, gained strength organizationally, and consolidated its ties with the masses.

The First Congress of the CPH (June 1958) discussed and approved the Central Committee report on the international and domestic political situation, elected new leading bodies, approved the rules, and adopted the appeal to the people For a Free, Sovereign, and Independent Honduras. The second expanded plenum of the Central Committee of the CPH (October-November 1961), which was broadened with nonmember participation, adopted a party program and discussed the agrarian problem, questions of work among the peasantry and youth, and means of achieving unity of action of the popular forces of Honduras. The fourth broadened plenum of the Central Committee of the CPH (1966) worked out measures to strengthen ideological and organizational work among Communists. The plenum expelled from the party the leaders of an antiparty grouping that had arisen in 1966 and was attempting to lead the party away from Marxist-Leninist positions.

When an armed conflict broke out between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, the CPH strove to give the popular actions an anti-imperialist direction, whereas the government exploited the conflict to reinforce nationalist sentiments. The Communists demanded the normalization of relations with El Salvador and charged the ruling circles with fanning the conflict in the interests of US monopolies and domestic reaction.

The Second Congress of the CPH (April 1972) approved political theses, adopted a new program and rules for the party, and elected new members to the leading bodies of the party. The congress analyzed the economic and political situation of Honduras and defined the new tasks in the struggle to end the domination of American imperialism and reactionary circles of the bourgeoisie and the landlords and begin an anti-imperialist, agrarian, democratic revolution. The congress stressed the fidelity of the CPH to Marxism-Leninism, proletarian internationalism, and the resolutions of the international Conferences of Communist and Workers’ Parties.

Delegations of the CPH participated in the international Conferences of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1957, 1960, and 1969 in Moscow). The CPH approved the documents adopted at the conferences.

The CPH is built according to the principles of democratic centralism. The party’s supreme body is the Congress; between congresses, it is the Central Committee. The general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPH is D. Ramos Bejarano. The party’s central organ is the newspaper Voz Popular.