Honduras: News & Updates

Xiomara Castro’s presidency in Honduras offers the Biden administration the opportunity to work on addressing root causes of migration with a partner that now seems far more reliable than in El Salvador or Guatemala. And it offers the U.S. government a chance to begin to address the harm successive U.S. administrations did to the Honduran people by accepting the 2009 coup and embracing corrupt and abusive presidents in power for the last dozen years. Making the most of these chances means supporting those elements of Xiomara Castro’s agenda that tackle corruption, empower and protect human rights activists, and deliver inclusive economic benefits for Honduras’s most vulnerable citizens. To make sure the Biden administration is going in the right direction, it must change the way the U.S. government, certainly over the last dozen years, has systematically failed to listen to Hondurans on the frontlines of defending rights.

The refoundation of Honduras took two more important steps this month. After the successful electoral win of the opposition in November, the initially divided opposition in Congress came together this month and the US officially requested the extradition of JOH for his drug trafficking ties which led to his arrest. Of course, this does not mean that the old power structures are gone, they are still in place, especially in the Judiciary. But change seems possible. This also included the announcement to demilitarize the prisons as well as the state security forces in general. There were other things to celebrate in February, especially the liberation of the Guapinol defenders after over 900 days illegally imprisoned. But the way to a Honduras respecting human rights is still long and steep. Three members of the LGBTQ+ community were murdered in the first week of February; the Minosa mining company seems to be free to ignore court rulings and go on with the exhumation of a Maya Chortí cemetery in Azacualpa; and the indigenous Lenca Tierras del Padre community faced eviction threats. Welcome to another month in Honduras.

The cooperation between States in multiple fields, including the military, is a valid issue as long as the purpose is cooperation in legitimate defense of national sovereignty, supporting the country in emergency situations or cooperating against forms of organized crime whose combat is beyond the capacity of the armed forces of the country, and as long as it is carried out in accordance with international standards and conventions on the subject, and in full respect of the laws and legitimately elected authorities of the country. Unfortunately, this is not the type of external military presence we have seen in Honduras. Throughout the history we have seen the territorial sovereignty of Honduran people sullied continuously by foreign military forces that have penetrated in total disrespect of national regulations and with purposes contrary to the welfare of the country, and the peace of the Central American region. This is particularly true in the case of the military forces of the United States of America, which on repeated occasions during the twentieth century illegitimately and illegally penetrated Honduran territory. Since 1954 the U.S. military has been present continuously, accompanied by intelligence and logistics services, particularly the CIA, under an unconstitutional bilateral agreement, without the various Honduran governments in office have enforced our laws and our dignity as a sovereign nation.

With the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro, hopes of reducing the socio-environmental and agrarian conflict in Honduras resurfaced. In fact, at the national level, various organizations have repeatedly called for the need to intervene in historical conflicts such as the one that occurred in the Valle del Bajo Aguán, department of Colón, which has resulted in the murder of hundreds of peasants, families conflicted and impoverished communities. In this article, a series of strategic challenges for the peasant movement in the current political context are identified, in the effort to move towards a democratic solution to the conflict.

The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, or JOH, was arrested last week and will likely soon face charges by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly trafficking roughly 500,000 kilos of cocaine. An Associated Press headline dubbed it a “stunning fall,” but the U.S. government provided him with significant support despite extensive evidence linking him to drug smuggling. Aside from his ties to narcotics, Hernandez was involved in several scandals, including embezzling funds from Honduras’ social security system, stealing from World Bank development programs, credible fraud allegations in his 2017 re-election, and pervasive human rights violations by the police and military. In private conversations, Hernandez bragged about siphoning U.S. aid via phony NGOs. American diplomats looked the other way as Honduras developed into a narco-state. Adding to this hypocrisy, the U.S. provided millions of dollars of aid for counternarcotics that trained/equipped a police and military bureaucracy riddled with corruption. In turn, Honduran security forces have acted viciously against peaceful protest. The reluctance to prosecute JOH had to do with international politics, not legal formalities.

The government, which was sworn in last month, also said that it would cancel environmental permits for mining operations across the country. For decades, indigenous groups have complained of legal and illegal mining in their ancestral lands. Honduras mines gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc but on Monday the Ministry of Mining described "extractive exploitation" as "harmful to the state of Honduras". It argued that mining threatened natural resources and public health as well as limiting access to water.