Honduras: News & Updates

The deputy of the National Congress for the Libertad y Refundación (Libre) party, Jari Dixon, presented this Thursday a bill so that the lands in possession of the Oficina Administradora de Bienes Incautadas (OABI), become property of peasant groups in Honduras. Dixon Herrera argued that "it would be appropriate" that those lands that have been seized by the OABI and that have received a final sentence become administered by the National Agrarian Institute (INA).

In the open meeting, Quimistán was declared free of ZEDES and ratified free of mining and hydroelectric power. Amada Lopez, vice coordinator of ASODEBICOQ, was elected member of the Municipal Transparency Commission.

The country’s Supreme Court of Justice said late Wednesday via Twitter that the judge had decided to grant the U.S. extradition request. Hernández has maintained that statements against him have been made by drug traffickers extradited by his government who wanted to seek revenge against him. He denies having any ties to drug traffickers.

Watch the Recording of our first session of our four-part Honduras Solidarity Webinar Series on March 15, and join us for the remaining three sessions the following Tuesdays!

The night of March 16 in Tegucigalpa, members and sympathizers of the National Party caused riots outside the Supreme Court of Justice and set fire to the Viva Berta Feminist Camp. The camp was set up under the coordination of comrades from the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, COPINH, and OFRANEH, together with various organizations and communities in struggle. We denounce this attack whose only intention is to attack the actions of justice for women and peoples and we stand in solidarity with the comrades of COPINH, OFRANEH, as well as with the various organizations and communities that make up this space of struggle. 

As then-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández’s term came to a close in January, many Hondurans hoped he would soon be extradited to the United States, following the path of his brother, Tony Hernández, who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States on drugs and weapons charges last year. But most people doubted it would actually happen: The now-former Honduran president, notorious for corruption, has remained a close U.S. ally throughout it all. Yet, only two weeks after he left office, the United States formerly requested his extradition. Hernández may seem to be an isolated bad apple in the war on drugs, the series of U.S.-sponsored military initiatives to stop drug trafficking in Latin America. But he’s not the only major political or military official in the region who has allegedly colluded with the very drug kingpins his country has received U.S support to fight. Rather than an aberration, Hernández is a window into the contradictions of the drug war itself, and his fall from grace speaks to deeper dysfunction within U.S.-led efforts to combat drug cartels—not just in Honduras but throughout Latin America.

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.

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.