presidents-of-honduras

"On Monday, February 28, the newly inaugurated government of progressive President Xiomara Castro declared Honduras a country free of open-pit mining as a measure to protect its environment. In this regard, the government announced the cancellation of the approval of extractivist exploitation permits. According to a statement from the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Mines (MIAMBIENTE), the decision was taken as a part of the 2022-2026 government program and in accordance with the principles of climate justice, respect and protection of natural resources. “The approval of extractivist exploitation permits is canceled, as they are harmful to the State of Honduras, which threaten natural resources, public health and limit access to water as a human right,” said the MIAMBIENTE. The initiative, which placed the protection of the environment above the interests of the transnational companies, was celebrated by environmentalists and social organizations across the country."

"Xiomara Castro won Honduras’s presidency pledging to tax wealth, expand the welfare state, and end the country’s “failed neoliberal model.” Her win was also a defeat for the US, which backed a coup that overthrew her husband Manuel Zelaya 12 years ago... Iraq is still in flames, Henry Kissinger will probably live to 100, and the world’s nations are pockmarked with the irreversible damage of countless capital - driven military coups. Yet as Xiomara Castro’s win in Honduras should remind us, it’s not a hard-and-fast rule that the world’s many wrongs are destined to never be righted. This past week, the socialist Castro won the Honduran presidency in a landslide, ending twelve years of right-wing rule in the country and becoming its first female president in the process. That Castro won on a platform to tax wealth, create a new welfare payment for the poor and elderly, and overhaul the country’s “failed neoliberal model” is significant enough. But Castro’s win is also a symbolic reversal of the US-backed right-wing coup that threw her husband, Manuel Zelaya, from power twelve years ago."

"Before the vote, many were anxious: Upscale businesses boarded their windows in anticipation of violence...Instead, unease turned to celebration as it became clear Castro would win...It wasn’t clear that Castro had a chance to win until several other opposition candidates decided to support her... When I interviewed Manuel Zelaya in 2019, he said that the weakness of the Honduran left was that it lacked the organizational capacity of the National Party, something that would only be overcome if the opposition parties united. Two years later, just downstairs from where we spoke, his wife walked out to a crowd of thousands and a flutter of camera lenses to announce her victory in the presidency....The Castro government won’t have it easy: Corrupt networks have been entrenched for decades and permeate every branch of government. Hilary Goodfriend, a journalist and doctoral researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told me that the 2009 election of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the leftist guerrilla organization turned political party in El Salvador, is an important precedent."

"I heard repeatedly that people hope the Castro administration will provide an opportunity for the United States to alter its relationship with the country, which many Hondurans say remains asymmetrical and exploitative. “The US continually dictates whatever goes on in this country,” said Audrey Majomar Lomas, a business owner from Tegucigalpa. “Nothing gets done without the embassy’s approval.”... For anyone who opposed the National Party—and it wasn’t just the left; the last 12 years of misrule created enemies across the political spectrum — the election of Castro was an emotional event. On a roundabout in front of a gas station the night of November 29, more than a hundred residents parked their cars, danced, waved red (Libre Party) flags, and sprayed each other with champagne bottles. It was a scene that repeated itself on the streets hundreds of times across Tegucigalpa over the past week.... Jalvin Sandoval, a teacher from Tegucigalpa, smoked a cigarette on the hill above the party, overwhelmed by the National Party’s defeat: “All of this right now grows out of the suffering we’ve lived through since the coup d’état. They humiliated the people, they mistreated them. This vote [for Castro] was for all of the deaths since then.” he said through tears. “I finally feel free.”"

"In Honduras’ presidential election on Nov. 28, Xiomara Castro and her allies among the country’s political opposition ousted the ruling National Party, which has spent the past decade using corruption, violence and vote-buying to entrench itself in power. For Castro’s coalition, just making it to election day meant facing down targeted assassinations, engineering a fragile consensus among opposition factions to back her candidacy and convincing disillusioned voters that turning out was worth it, even if the elections might be rigged. But in retrospect, winning the election might have been the easy part for Castro and the opposition—at least compared to what comes next. Castro has promised to rebuild democracy and the rule of law and to fight corruption, but after 12 years of National Party rule, she inherits a thoroughly gutted state. Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in power since 2014, repurposed the courts and electoral council to tilt the playing field against opponents. The feared Military Police harassed government critics and killed dozens of opposition protesters. And according to testimony from the drug-trafficking trial of HHernandez’s brother—now serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison—cartels penetrated all levels of public office. As Castro’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 27 approaches, the new president faces a daunting question: How do you rebuild democratic institutions in a mafia state?"

"Castro’s challenges... are not historically unprecedented. Since 2000, pivotal elections have brought down undemocratic governments and ushered opposition parties into power in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and while none of these countries bears an exact resemblance to Honduras, their transitions yield clues... three issues became stumbling blocks: tackling corruption, reforming the security forces and keeping pro-reform constituencies united. By learning from the past, Castro might steer clear of these other post-authoritarian governments’ mistakes.... The dilemma isn’t so much building democratic institutions as rebuilding them — often under the shadow of entrenched corruption and organized crime. Moreover, elected autocrats know how to linger... after losing office, they tend to keep control of political parties... to sabotage institution -building and thwart justice, while appearing to play by democratic rules.... After the election, Hernandez published an executive decree that turned virtually the entire appointed executive bureaucracy into permanent career positions—a bid to keep his party plugged into power that, although unlikely to succeed, is sure to generate confusion. Meanwhile, the National Party’s delegation in Congress, ...proposed legislation to set up a special unit within the intelligence services and set aside $10 million to fund it. Ostensibly, the unit and funds will be used to set up security details for state officials leaving office, but government critics warn the program amounts to a scheme to make off with cars, houses and public money. Before election day, the National Party... altered Honduras’ law on money laundering, enabling judges to dismiss charges against 10 suspects in corruption cases tied to the Hernandez administration."

"During her inaugural speech, Xiomara Castro said that she will work from her presidential office so that justice is done in the case of Berta Cáceres, an environmentalist murdered in 2016, and for whom the perpetrators were sentenced in 2019. During the campaign, Castro placed the protection of human rights as one of the priorities on her agenda, which also includes the issue of the rights of migrants and minority communities. The new president promised the release of political prisoners and defenders of the environment, she also spoke of relief for a million underserved families who will no longer pay for electricity. Xiomara Castro’s inaugural speech reproached the previous administrations for the high indebtedness with which they left the state coffers."

"Honduras' new leftist president on Wednesday intervened to halt a court-ordered eviction of an Indigenous community from their ancestral lands following violent scenes of the attempted forced removal by police earlier in the day... Castro, sworn in January 27 following a dozen years of the country being run by the right-wing National Party, is the country's first female president. She is also the wife of Manuel Zelaya, Honduras's former progressive president who was in power from 2006 until 2009 when he was ousted in a Washington-backed coup."

"What would you do if people came into your house and beat you and beat your family, and then this aggressor wanted to sit down with you and say, “OK, be nice, and stay out of the country”? Imagine, they have violated President Zelaya's’s rights. They have invented accusations of crimes against him, when they never presented any order of arrest. They took him out, tied up, transferred him to another country, and now they sit him down to negotiate with the criminals."

"This important act reflects the will of a people demanding unity, especially within the opposition, in order to defeat the dictatorship... I want a social pact with every sector, the productive sectors, with business, with workers, with teachers, with farmers and campesinos, with the informal economy and small and medium-sized businesses"

"For 12 years the people resisted, and those 12 years were not in vain. God takes time but doesn't forget. Today the people have made justice."

"We are going to build a new era. Out with the death squads. Out with corruption. Out with drug trafficking and organized crime. No more poverty and misery. To victory! The people will always be united. Together, we are going to transform this country... (speaking November 28, 2021)"

"The economic catastrophe that I am inheriting is unparalleled in the life of the country and its impact on the lives of the people is reflected by an increase in poverty of 74% making us the poorest country in Latin America. This number by itself explains the caravan of thousands of people of all ages fleeing to the north, Mexico and the United States, looking for a place and a way to survive, regardless of the risk to their lives.” ... Having economic resources to invest in people is one of the fundamental missions of my mandate. The transversal axis of the next budget that I will send to the national congress will be transparency and anti-corruption. It is impossible to find another moment in our history so full of sabotage to our country, but I did not come today to elaborate a story full of complaints, nor to deduce historical accounts of the past. The justice system will take care of that... We are committed to our proposal for democratic socialism so that the events that have embarrassed us will never be repeated. The refounding of Honduras begins with the reestablishment of respect for human beings, the inviolability of life, the security of citizens, no more death squads. No more silence in the face of femicides. No more hit men, no more drug trafficking, no more organized crime."

"We are going to concentrate our greatest efforts on 4 sectors permanently demanded by the citizens: Education, health, security and employment. They will be the real anchors to progress. Education will be an objective of supreme priority. Effective tomorrow, we start the dialogue with the teachers for the return of our children to in person classes. The government will not be alone, but will accompany the voice and opinion of the people through popular consultations... As part of my first decrees, I order that more than a million families who live in poverty and consume less than 150 kilowatts per month from this day no longer pay the bill for energy consumption. Electricity will be free in their homes.... Our vision of the world puts the human being before the rules of the market. We have the best disposition and spirit of dialogue. No more violence against women. I go with all my efforts to generate the conditions for our girls to fully develop and live in a free country. Honduran women, I will not fail you. I will defend your rights, all your rights. Count on me. To victory. Forever."

"In Honduras’ presidential election on November 28, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya could make history in an already historic year: Her victory would make her the first woman to lead the nation since it declared independence from Spain 200 years ago. Castro has proposed some big changes for the crisis-stricken country, including a referendum to propose rewriting the constitution, switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China, and the creation of a UN-backed anti-corruption commission similar to Guatemala’s once successful CICIG. For many, however, the self-described “revolutionary” Castro would be far from a fresh start. Before he was removed in a 2009 coup d’état, her husband had brought Honduras closer to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and much of the business establishment still fears that the Zelayas want to pick up where they left off. In her campaign, Castro is trying to strike a more moderate tone in meetings with private sector leaders. As for what she wants to repeat from her husband’s presidency, she points to the reductions in poverty during those years. “Most of her policies,” said economist Roberto Lagos, “are related to reducing poverty and inequality. This message is connecting with voters.”"

"Castro, 62, declared herself the winner in a speech before a crowd of jubilant supporters late on Sunday, and promised to form a government of “peace and justice”. ... Supporters across the nation took to the streets to celebrate, including in the capital, Tegucigalpa., where people gathered along one of the main boulevards to party. “We are celebrating because the corrupt are no longer going to govern Honduras,” said Oliver Pindel, 50, a doctor who danced while draped in a Honduran flag... Castro’s apparent victory was the opposite of what many had expected... On the campaign trail, Castro promised to “pull Honduras out of the abyss we have been buried in by neoliberalism, a narco-dictator and corruption,” and victory would be seen as a repudiation of the culture of impunity in government."

"Leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro appears poised to become the country’s first woman president, putting an end to over a decade of right-wing neoliberal rule... Xiomara Castro’s apparent victory in Honduras is seen as a blow to Washington, which has embraced successive right-wing governments despite widespread accusations that Honduras has become a narco-military regime. In April, a federal court in New York sentenced the brother of the Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to life in prison for drug trafficking. Prosecutors also accused the president of being a co-conspirator in state-sponsored drug trafficking. This all comes as Hondurans continue to flee the dire social and economic conditions at home."

"Thousands of jubilant voters have been flooding the streets of cities across Honduras to celebrate the apparent electoral victory of leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro... Castro, who is part of the leftist Libre Party, is in position to become the first woman president of Honduras, and the overwhelming show of support for her candidacy is a repudiation of the conservative forces that — with backing from the U.S. government — carried out a coup in 2009 and seized power from democratically elected leftist President Manuel Zelaya, who is Castro’s husband. Hondurans across the country are celebrating the end of the Juan Orlando Hernández regime and marking the beginning of a new democratic era in the country.... “[Castro] is a righteous woman, a decent woman, a woman who is concerned for the well-being of Honduras, not just a select group of people, but the entirety of the Honduras people,” Erodito Vásquez, a Libre Party voter in the Suyapa neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, told Truthout."

"As Zelaya’s spouse, Castro was thrust into the political spotlight after Zelaya was whisked away in the middle of the night by the armed forces to nearby Costa Rica. She became one of the most visible faces of the anti-coup resistance that sprang up in response to the rupture in the country’s constitutional order. Despite months of daily street protests, the coup was consolidated thanks to violent repression and the efforts of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed the election of Lobo in a vote held barely five months after the coup, despite widespread condemnation of the conditions in post-coup Honduras that ensured the vote could not be free or fair.... “Democracy remains very fragile in Honduras,” said Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot in a press release. “This is a country that saw the military kidnap the president at gunpoint and fly him out of the country just 12 years ago, and there was very strong evidence that the elections of four years ago were stolen.” With memories of U.S. support for the 2009 coup still present in the minds of the vast majority of Libre Party supporters, as well as memories of the role played by the U.S. in sustaining Hernandezin power, relations between Washington and Tegucigalpa under a Castro government are likely to be complicated. However, with Hondurans representing the largest nationality crossing the southern U.S. border seeking asylum and U.S. President Joe Biden’s stated commitment to addressing the flow of migration from Central America, Washington will likely be forced to accommodate itself to the new government in Honduras."

"Hernández has studied U.S. politics since his stint in a master’s program at the State University of New York at Albany. He grew up on a small coffee farm in the city of Gracias, near the Salvadoran border, one of 17 children. As he came of age politically, he came to believe that winning over the United States was a necessary survival skill."

"The stakes are higher for Hernández than perhaps any other world leader. Not only are the political and economic fortunes of his country inextricably linked to the United States but Hernández is one of the few sitting presidents ever to be implicated in drug trafficking by the U.S. Justice Department. He has not been charged, but prosecutors have described evidence against him in multiple indictments.... Every year, thousands of pounds of cocaine transit through Honduras on the way to the United States. According to the Justice Department, some of that cargo is trafficked by Honduran officials — an allegation the Trump administration mostly ignored while officials praised Hernández’s counternarcotics and anti-migration efforts."

"Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez was, up until his arrest by the DEA just over a year ago, a ruthless, powerful, and murderous cocaine trafficker in Honduras. He facilitated the shipment of large loads of cocaine by bribing Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, then president of the Honduran National Congress and now the Honduran president. Hernández Alvarado instructed Fuentes Ramirez to report directly to convicted co-conspirator and former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, the president’s brother. Now Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, one of the criminal conduits between Honduran officials and drug traffickers, faces a possible life behind bars.”"

"In or about 2013, FUENTES RAMIREZ paid a bribe of at least approximately $25,000 to Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado (“JOH”), who was at the time the president of the Honduran National Congress, and allowed JOH to access millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine from FUENTES RAMIREZ’s laboratory. In connection with negotiations relating to the laboratory, JOH told FUENTES RAMIREZ that he was interested in access to the laboratory because of its proximity to Puerto Cortés, a key shipping port on the northern coast of Honduras. JOH also told FUENTES RAMIREZ that the Honduran armed forces would provide security, and that Óscar Fernando Chinchilla Banegas, the Attorney General of Honduras, would help protect FUENTES RAMIREZ’s drug trafficking activities. JOH instructed FUENTES RAMIREZ to report directly to JOH’s brother, Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado (“Tony Hernández”), for purposes of their drug trafficking partnership. Finally, JOH told FUENTES RAMIREZ that he wanted to make the DEA think that Honduras was fighting drug trafficking, but that instead he was going to eliminate extradition and “stuff drugs up the gringos’ noses,” referring to flooding the United States with cocaine."

"Facebook allowed the president of Honduras to artificially inflate the appearance of popularity on his posts for nearly a year after the company was first alerted to the activity. The astroturfing – the digital equivalent of a bussed-in crowd – was just one facet of a broader online disinformation effort that the administration has used to attack critics and undermine social movements, Honduran activists and scholars say. Facebook posts by Juan Orlando Hernández, an authoritarian rightwinger whose 2017 re-election is widely viewed as fraudulent, received hundreds of thousands of fake likes from more than a thousand inauthentic Facebook Pages – profiles for businesses, organizations and public figures – that had been set up to look like Facebook user accounts. [Facebook]...began investigating Hernández’s Page because he was the beneficiary of 90% of all the known fake engagement received by civic or political Pages in Honduras. Over one six-week period in 2018, for example, Hernández’s Facebook posts received likes from 59,100 users, of whom 46,500 were fake. She found that one of the administrators for Hernández’s Page was also the administrator for hundreds of the inauthentic Pages that were being used solely to boost posts on Hernández’s Page."

"Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in power since 2014, repurposed the courts and electoral council to tilt the playing field against opponents. The feared Military Police harassed government critics and killed dozens of opposition protesters. And according to testimony from the drug-trafficking trial of Hernandez’s brother—now serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison—cartels penetrated all levels of public office.... For countries like Honduras, the dilemma isn’t so much building democratic institutions as rebuilding them—often under the shadow of entrenched corruption and organized crime. Moreover, elected autocrats know how to linger. Even after losing office, they tend to keep control of political parties, which they use to sabotage institution-building and thwart justice, while appearing to play by democratic rules... Just a day after the election, Hernandez published an executive decree that turned virtually the entire appointed executive bureaucracy into permanent career positions—a bid to keep his party plugged into power that, although unlikely to succeed, is sure to generate confusion...Meanwhile, the National Party’s delegation in Congress... Before election day, the National Party bloc also altered Honduras’ law on money laundering, enabling judges to dismiss charges against 10 suspects in corruption cases tied to the Hernandez administration."

"We see that things are changing in Central America (the fast growing presence of China). I think the United States has been a bit late to see it."