source: Peoples World
Elections taking place Nov. 30 in Honduras will decide the country’s next president and make-up of the national assembly. Current President Xiomara Castro of the democratic socialist Party of Liberty and Refoundation (Libre), in office since 2022, is limited to one term. Libre Party presidential candidate Rixi Moncada was finance minister and then defense minister in Castro’s government.
The mantra circulates that ten families rule in Honduras and hold most of its wealth. Their influence is such that left-leaning opposition forces can count on the most forceful kind of pushback.
Businessman Manuel Zelaya turned progressive politician was Honduras’ president from 2006 until June 2009, when a military coup deposed him, with U.S. help. He had called for a minimum wage, mild agrarian reform and a constituent assembly. Zelaya is now general coordinator of the Libre Party, founded in 2011 in reaction to the right-wing coup. He is President Xiomara Castro’s husband.
Xiomara Castro’s unsuccessful candidacies for president in 2013 and 2017 encountered electoral fraud and violent attacks orchestrated by the well-ensconced National and Liberal Parties. Her overwhelming electoral victory in 2021 resulted from the association of incumbent president Juan Orlando Hernández and his National Party with corruption and narcotrafficking.
Hernández and his brother, convicted on narcotics and weapons charges, are serving long prison terms in the United States. Hernández’s second term was constitutionally illegal.
Current polls give the Libre Party candidate Rixi Moncada an even chance for victory, or a small majority. A plot emerged, however, a month ahead of the voting.
On Oct. 29, Attorney General Johel Zelaya reported he had transferred leaked audio recordings, with transcriptions, to the Public Minister for investigation. Libre Party’s Marlon Ochoa, one of three members of Honduras’ National Electoral Council, discovered them.
Each councilor represents a political party. Voices on the recordings allegedly are those of Councilor Cossette López of the National Party; Tomas Zambrano, head of the National Party’s congressional bench; and an unnamed military officer.
According to Johel Zelaya, the conversations told of plans for hiring transportation companies and personnel to transfer voting results on election day, inserting agents among election observers, interrupting data transmission, prematurely announcing rightwing Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla as the winner, sowing suspicion in the media about voting processes, and announcing favorable partial results as a potential “alibi for impugning and suspending the process.”
According to an observer, “The recordings revealed … a plan to pressure external actors, notably the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, not to recognize any victories by Libre. This would turn an internal dispute into an international recognition crisis.” The report has councilor Cossette López-Osorio exclaiming, “We’ll use the tools that the people at the Embassy gave us.”
One Honduran observer says Salvador Nasralla is the “choice of the most reactionary spheres in Washington,” another that he has promised to “implement a security plan” similar to that of dictatorial Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Nasralla spent one third of the pre-election period traveling in the United States and Spain, presumably seeking support.
The Libre party on Oct. 13 announced a “permanent mobilization … [against] the bipartisan plan to manipulate the coming elections.” The Party’s general coordinator, Manuel Zelaya, declared, “We must prepare ourselves to defeat the electoral coup … They know that we already reversed the coup in 2009 and that we will never go back!”
Rixi Moncada, speaking at a rally on Nov. 9, reviewed gains achieved during Castro’s presidency, described her own program for governing, and highlighted a new twist in the coup saga. The National Election Council that day had carried out a nationwide simulation of election day processes. Only 1556 of 4362 voting locations actually transmitted voting records to a central location. Only 23.7% of biometric devices functioned. The results mirror the scenario presented by the recordings.
Moncada outlined plans: Twelve Libre Party activists from each of Honduras’s 18 departments would remain in Tegucigalpa until election day. They would constitute a “commission … our battlefront in defense of victory.” Party activists on that day would transfer voting records to the various Party headquarters where votes would be counted.
Context is important. The U.S. government has long maintained hundreds of troops and several military units at Honduras’ Soto Cano airfield. They constitute the largest U.S. base in Central America, which facilitates U.S. interventions in regional affairs, as when the U.S. government in the 1980s sent supplies to Contra paramilitaries fighting in Nicaragua.
U.S. economic interests center on the mining, tourism, and agricultural export sectors. Honduras, regional center for narcotics transfer to the United States, qualifies as a target of U.S. drug war activities, but also as staging area for military interventions, for which drug war is a frequent pretext.
President Castro has irritated U.S. officials. She cut ties with Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China and supported Venezuelan President Maduro against U.S. accusations that his 2024 election victory was fraudulent. Accusing the U.S. ambassador of meddling with Honduras’ military forces in August 2024, she mentioned cancelation of the binational extradition treaty. Reacting to U.S. plans for massive deportation of migrants from Central America, Castro in January 2025 threatened to expel U.S. troops.
Her Libre Party government scored successes: new highways, new hospitals, reforestation, subsidized electrical power, electricity for rural households, educational scholarships, loans for thousands of farmers, seeds and fertilizers for 450,000 of them, community orchards, 5000 refurbished education centers, and land redistribution.
Honduras’ murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from an average of 41.7 during President Hernández last term to 27.2 under Castro. Families living in poverty dropped from 73.6% to 62.9%. The previous government had promoted so-called “zones for employment and economic development.” Castro ended the scheme that gave control of municipalities to foreign investors and deprived residents of self-government and legal rights.
Candidate Rixi Moncada, 60 years old, came from a working-class family, taught in rural and city schools, studied law and became a practitioner and teacher of criminal law. She served the government of President Manuel Zelaya (2006-09) as secretary of labor and social security. She managed the government-owned electricity company.
Moncada indicated that, as president, she will “defend workers and state sovereignty and democratize the economic system.” She would “transform the justice system, combat impunity, reform the public ministry and strengthen the courts…[and revive] “strategic state enterprises.” She would support public healthcare and education—“without privatization.”
On Nov. 12, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau indicated the U.S. government “will respond rapidly and firmly to any attack on the integrity of the electoral process in Honduras.” At once the U.S. Embassy broadly disseminated Landau’s message.
Interviewed on television that day, Salvador Nasralla asked, “What would happen if these people (from the Libre Party) tried to steal votes?” His response: “Those ships that are soon going to take over Venezuela are going to come and target Honduras.”
“U.S. interference in Honduras’ electoral processes is nothing new,” says veteran reporter Giorgio Trucchi. Quoting activist Luis Méndez, he adds that:
“We are facing the old traditional politics, allied with U.S. interference, large corporations, and business sectors attached to the neoliberal agenda with its project of dispossession and dismantling of the public sector…. For Libre to continue governing is a setback for the geostrategic goals of U.S. domination in Latin America. We will somehow see this reflected in the elections.”
