source: Honduras Now
In the weeks leading up to the 17th anniversary of the 2009 coup in Honduras, dozens of social movements and grassroots organizations are coordinating press conferences, collecting signatures, blocking roads, and demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court. All of these actions aim to denounce a series of laws that promote and prioritize large-scale private investment in the agribusiness, tourism, and energy sectors, which they claim are returning Honduras to the narco-dictatorship that followed the coup (2009-2022). The resistance of these movements is directly linked to the intensification of US intervention in Honduras.
Seventeen years after the 2009 coup in Honduras, it is difficult to underestimate the catastrophic impact that US President Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement have had on the country. Following Trump’s blatant interference in the 2025 elections, Honduran drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández was pardoned and released from prison, and all political forces with progressive positions or sympathies are under political attack. This includes representatives of Honduras’s electoral institutions, the Attorney General, and the President of the Supreme Court, who have been removed from office through threats of dismissal or through direct impeachment proceedings. The National Party, with the support of the Liberal Party, has returned to power and reestablished its traditional alliance. They are not only reinstating their conservative, pro-business policies, but also the very figures who participated in and were instrumental to the growth and structure of the corrupt narco-dictatorship from 2009 to 2021. In other words, the new government is reversing the significant progress made during Xiomara Castro's administration (2022 to 2026) and strengthening the power of oligarchs, organized crime, and transnational capital.
Meanwhile, social movements are mobilizing to halt the avalanche of harmful laws passed by Congress. Following the massacre of 20 farmers on May 21, 2026, in Rigores, Colón, the National Congress pushed through the Law for the Strengthening and Protection of the Agro-industrial Sector as a false and manipulated solution to land conflicts. The law prioritizes agribusiness over small-scale and subsistence farming. Furthermore, it prioritizes transnational rights over the territorial rights of Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, and peasant communities, which are protected by agrarian reform laws and international treaties. Other laws and reforms, such as the new definition of “terrorist association” in the Penal Code and the proposed privatization of the National Electric Energy Company (ENEE), will encourage further state attacks and the criminalization of community leaders and social movements, and will hand over public assets and infrastructure to corporate interests.
As Trump's interference in the elections demonstrated, Honduras remains a key country in the United States' imperialist plan to reassert its dominance in Latin America. In May, Hondurasgate and Diario Red released 37 audio files featuring various Honduran political figures, including convicted drug trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández. Among numerous scandalous revelations, the leaks describe an international and national plan to attack progressive forces and support right-wing powers throughout Latin America. Hernández, a longtime US ally during his presidential terms (from 2014 to 2022), is a central figure in the plan despite being a convicted drug trafficker who received a pardon from Trump, while the United States continues to attack and bomb fishing boats in the Pacific and Atlantic under the pretext of "combating narcoterrorism."
Since the FBI's involvement in police operations in Honduras, such as Kristi Noem's visits to Tegucigalpa as part of the newly created US initiative "Shield of the Americas," the US presence in Honduras is now even more evident than in the years following the 2009 coup. But despite the growing global reach of the MAGA movement and US efforts to further consolidate its power in the region, the social movements that the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) has long supported continue to organize and resist.
- The peasants who form the base of the Agrarian Platform and the National Center of Rural Workers (CNTC) continue to recover the lands that were taken from them by large landowners and agribusiness companies.
- The Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) works to build ancestral health and education centers, and demands that its land rights be respected, in accordance with the rulings issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
- The indigenous Lenca communities, together with the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), are leading extraordinary efforts to demand justice for Berta Cáceres and confront international financial institutions in foreign jurisdictions.
While these are just a few examples of how “the struggle continues” 17 years after the 2009 coup, these organized struggles are not merely sparks of hope, but active ways in which Honduran groups are building alternative futures. They demonstrate how resistance, though harsh, dangerous, and difficult, continues on this anniversary of the 2009 coup. As a network formed 17 years ago, the HSN continues to denounce US imperialism and call on everyone to resist in solidarity with social movements in Honduras and around the world.
