Honduran singer-songwriter Karla Lara performed at the Mission Cultural Center on July 10 as part of a U.S. tour. Lara sang to a crowd of people from Honduras and other Latin American countries as well as Americans who praised her performance. Through song, she told the stories of pain that are the results of Honduras’ history of oligarchic oppression and the struggle engaged by millions of people. Her lyrics, clear and ingenious, elicited laughter and tears from the crowd. Lara spoke with El Tecolote reporters Alejandra Cuéllar and Agustin Caballero about her music, last year’s coup d’état to oust Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and her U.S. tour.
What has this tour meant to you and what is the sense of your music in the context of the recent coup in Honduras?
One of the good things about looking at my musical trajectory is realizing we’ve been in resistance for a long time now. Although some of the songs we played were born in the context of the coup, the whole repertoire of songs is from before the coup. We’ve always made music for resistance.
People tell me things like, “Karla your music has enough to it for you to be able to come here and stay a while.” My sisters tell me, “Karla get out for a bit, take some air,” but I can’t see myself outside. What gives my music meaning is that it’s coming from there [Honduras], and that it has that link. For me it’s fundamental.
For me it has meaning because it has political meaning. For me, if singing was not being done in service to what I’m doing, you can imagine what that implies.
Is there a consolidated group of artists against the coup in Honduras?
It’s been the coup that has landed us there. There have been thousands of attempts [of artist organizing] but the most recent one was two years ago. We had formed a thing called MAR, Movimiento de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras del Arte (Art Workers Movement).
[At that time] we didn’t agree with the law proposed by the Department of Culture to foment culture and arts, and in order to bring it down we had organized this movement that included all different artistic disciplines together. It had been terrific. We had gotten some victories but nothing else was happening and MAR had stayed floating in the air.
With the coup came the beginnings of the birth of the artists’ resistance. First we called ourselves Artists Against the Coup and then since we all came to bear the name of resistance, then we became ANR, Artistas en Resistencia (Artists in Resistance).
I was walking by and someone yelled, “Karla, tomorrow there’s a meeting!” I read the poster; it said the meeting was planned to define our position against the coup.
So I went and spoke to one of the organizers and said, “Is this a piñata party or what is it you’re thinking about doing tomorrow? Define our position? The ones who don’t have their position defined are called golpistas. I’m not gonna get called to a meeting to see people I can’t bear to see to define a position. The position is [already] defined.”
“Now, in terms of what we’re going to do about our position against the coup, that’s a good reason to call for a meeting. And what is this about inviting all the colors? Don’t kid me, this is not a piñata party or is it?”
Several of us reacted in a similar way.
What was the coup like?
It was just like that, the 28th of June 2009 we were all getting up to go and vote for the referendum of the fourth ballot box [which would have called for a public consultation concerning an assembly to re-write the constitution], and at the end we were all in front of the presidential house horrified.
I was going to sing that day, because since much of what I sing about deals with women’s rights; I have always been close to the feminist movement independently. In service of the fourth ballot box [referendum], we had a presentation there [at the presidential house].
The whole day before, everyone was in service of the referendum, some were going to be observers, others would be in charge of different tasks, and we all woke up [that day] confused [about what to do after we heard about the coup].
How did you hear about it?
Well I heard through a phone call because there was no radio since there was no electricity because they cut everything so that we wouldn’t find out about what was going on.
So someone called on the phone in the morning, I think it was my older sister, and she said, “Look, there’s been a coup d’état.” And I was like, “So now what? What is that like?”
I lived in a low-income neighborhood in La Vega by el Pedregal, a neighborhood with lots of pedestrian walkways, and everybody on the block was asking, “What is going on? What is it like?”
And everyone went around to buy groceries; we said we have to buy things.
And it’s like you don’t know. What is a coup d’état? I mean, what does it mean? How does it translate in your life?
I remember we went to the grocery store. We bought what we could and we went home to my sister’s and it was very confusing. And then everyone went to the presidential house and I remember my kids asking me, “Mom, what’s going to happen?” Right? You also don’t know how to explain what’s coming.
And then everyone has that need; everyone is looking for information, so you looked for the Internet, and what Internet was there? There was no electricity in the entire country — they cut it for a long time — and you could hear planes and helicopters and you felt like a little fear; [here’s] this thing and you don’t really know what it is.
And it’s that. What does a coup d’etat mean? What’s going to happen? And also the uncertainty, because not having electricity, and for no one to have lights, it’s a really shocking thing.
Everyone is asking each other, “Is there light in your house? Is there light in your house?”
Also this democracy thing, so-called “democracy,” is so recent. It’s only been since [19]82 that we’ve had democratically-elected governments so it was also like, “Damn, the military again? It just can’t be.”
What happened after the coup? Did it force people to define themselves on a certain side?
Those who say the coup divided Honduran society — I don’t believe that. What happens is that with such radically grotesque situations, what they define is pretty clear — what the struggle is about.
But one has to wonder, “Did it divide people?” This society has grown divided between the rich, and the poor and really poor and the poor who don’t realize the reason or the origin of their poverty, and what the coup does is it shakes your head so you can say, “Oh it’s true. You can get killed for thinking differently.”
Because another one of the characteristics of the resistance is that it isn’t even organized resistance. I would say that 60 percent of the resistance is people who of their own will without belonging to anything — boom — they went and there they stayed resisting.
The social movement in the country has been asleep, but asleep for year and years and the country is [now] reactivating.
The country has changed a huge deal in a year. No one could have imagined [the changes]. Before, what was it like to talk about politics in Honduras? You were either liberal or nationalist and that was that and you were nationalist or liberal genetically. If your grandfather was liberal and your father was liberal then you were liberal.
When in Honduras did you hear the word “left” like we can say now? Although they might kill us for it, we dare say it — “left”, “feminism”, “the oligarchy” — questioning that the system doesn’t work.
You see sixteen year olds getting their political schooling, questioning the system, saying it’s the system that doesn’t work, and this has only been a year. Can you imagine how recent it is?
If your partner in a protest is gay, you realize you don’t have to scream out to the golpistas [coup supporters], “¡Culero!”, which is gay in its pejorative. Because someone says, “Don’t call them ‘culeros,’ don’t insult them with that; call [the golpistas] ‘murderers’ but if you call them ‘culeros’ you are insulting me.”
And for them to have respect for sexual diversity, that is totally new.
Have you experienced censorship since the coup?
There has always been censorship from the commercial media, total censorship. It happened to me with my first album.
But I must say, we have to value the new spaces that alternative community radio has opened, and all those webs of radios on the Internet and those great Latin American networks.
And we also have to value the phenomenon of community local radio in a different dimension because people have to go through great toils to have their community radio, not just because of the problem with resources, but because, how the hell do they make it so that your radio exists with the kind of repression they live under? They are positioned in the mouth of the wolf in those small communities and there they still hold their radios. How do they do it? I don’t know.
But we have to value that space because it also shows that small Latin American towns are looking for that way of connecting, coming together and creating a new identity, and it’s also a challenge to the great transnational [media] that lies. That way we can break the media fences.