The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup

A story of resistance, repression, and US policy in Honduras in the aftermath of a violent military coup.

This powerful narrative recounts the dramatic years in Honduras following the June 2009 military coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, told in part through first-person experiences, layered into deeper political analysis. It weaves together two broad pictures: first, the repressive regime that was launched with the coup, and the ways in which U.S. policy has continued to support that regime; and second, the brave and evolving Honduran resistance movement, with aid from a new solidarity movement in the United States.

Although it is full of terrible things, this is not a horror story: the book directly counters mainstream media coverage that portrays Honduras as a pit of unrelenting awfulness, in which powerless people sob in the face of unexplained violence. Rather, it’s about sobering challenges with roots in political processes, and the inspiring collective strength with which people face them

“If you’ve any interest at all in Honduras, U.S. foreign policy, Central America, why so many Central Americans are migrating north…or in a powerful, informative, and extremely good read, do pick up Dana Frank’s book, The Long Honduran Night. It’s a surprisingly readable book that tells not only the tragic story of another failed state and the forces that continue to work against establishing real democracies in Central America, but also inspires in its stories of everyday people— in Honduras and the United States— who work against difficult odds to create change, often by placing their lives at risk.” María Martin, independent journalist

“Free from academic jargon, conversant with modern Honduran history, and steeped in passion, this testimonial book is the best primer, in English, about the coup, and resistance to it, that destroyed Honduran democracy on June 28, 2009. Dana Frank not only registers her solidarity movement and legislative initiatives in the U.S. on behalf of the multifaceted resistance to the coup and defense of Human Rights, her keen outsider’s eye brings the novice gaze of contemporary Honduran political life into the country’s cities and villages, its valleys and mountains, as well as into demonstrations and street marches, conversations in cabs, radio stations, and more. Almost ten years after the coup, Frank’s book transits seamlessly between the social fabric and intimate lives of hundreds of Hondurans she has met personally during her many years in the country. Frank manages this while referencing key historical processes and their current legacies, an important and necessary feat on its own, but also valuable because it informs the current plight of Hondurans who flee their country into the U.S. seeking asylum in the aftermath of 2009 coup.” Dario A. Euraque, Professor of History and International Studies, Trinity College

“The Long Honduran Night breaks the deafening silence that has followed recent American intervention in Honduras. It graphically documents the awful legacy of this intervention.” Stephen Kinzer, award-winning author and foreign correspondent

“Dana Frank has written a searing portrait of a nation in crisis, a book that is startling, enraging, and humane all at once. Her most important accomplishment is never losing sight of the hardships and treachery that ordinary Hondurans have had to endure these last several years, nor the dignity with which they have survived it all.” Daniel Alarcon, Executive Producer of Radio Ambulante, author of At Night We Walk in Circles

"I congratulate and thank Dana Frank for giving us this book and for documenting the role of the United States in the long night of terror that we have lived in Honduras since the 2009 coup d'etat. Her contribution to historic memory stands as our witness." Bertha Oliva, general coordinator, Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras

Dana Frank is Professor of History Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America (2005; repr. Haymarket 2016); Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism (Beacon, 1999); Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (Cambridge, 1994); Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments (City Lights, 2007); and, with Howard Zinn and Robin D. G. Kelley, Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Beacon, 2001). Her contribution to Three Strikes has been reprinted, with a new introduction, by Haymarket Books as Women Strikers Occupy Chain Store, Win Big (2012). Since the 2009 military coup her articles about human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras have appeared in The Nation, New York Times, Politico Magazine, Foreign Affairs.com, Foreign Policy.com, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, The Baffler, and many other publications, and she has testified before both the U.S. Congress and Canadian Parliament.