13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance

On dawn-bright June 28, 2009, Honduran soldiers stormed President Manuel Zelaya’s home, whisking him away in pajamas and triggering Central America’s first twenty-first-century coup; within hours, tens of thousands flooded Tegucigalpa’s boulevards, and fearless women painted that uprising in thirteen blazing hues. In 13 Colors of the Honduran Resistance, feminist writer-activist Melissa Cardoza braids intimate portraits of street poet Ana, Garífuna organizer Luz, indigenous guardian Berta Cáceres, and other daring compañeras whose chants turned asphalt into ringing amphitheaters of defiance. Their intersecting identities—queer, rural, Afro-descendant, teacher, mother—prove that solidarity can outwit oligarchs and a U.S.-trained general’s iron fist. Cardoza’s kinetic storytelling, rendered into English by translator Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, drips with sweat, laughter, and gasoline-tinged tear gas, mapping how kitchen collectives, radio barricades, and clandestine song circles fused into a movement demanding Political Justice and Gender Equality. Yet the struggle continues: corporations still eye Honduran rivers, and power still rattles its sabers. Will these thirteen voices echo loudly enough to shield tomorrow’s protesters and carry liberation across borders—or fade beneath another helicopter’s roar? March beside them, feel protest become poetry, and join their vivid rebellion.