By Adalberto Santana on March 15, 2021
The saying goes that “when the river makes noise it is because it brings water”, and this could be applied to a large extent with the new scandals that have been generated with the accusations against the president of the Republic of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). A person and politician who is accused of having links with drug trafficking and organized crime. The accusation originates in the United States and that places the conservative and right-wing government of the National Party in the dock.
The origin of the accusation against JOH in his alleged links to drug trafficking became more evident when his brother Antonio Hernández was arrested in Miami, Florida, by DEA agents in November 2018, accused of his links to drug trafficking and for allegedly carrying weapons illegally in US territory. In his trial in the New York court (where the notorious Sinaloa drug trafficker Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán and Gerardo García Luna, the former police chief under conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, are also on trial), he was also convicted as guilty in October 2019. Especially for his links to the so-called “Cachiros” cartel. A criminal organization that originally boasted of being one of the groups that controlled transport routes in “Catracho” territory. This association was also made up of former cattle rustlers and over time monopolized the cocaine route between Colombia and Mexico. It was originally estimated that this group of narco-entrepreneurs held capital that fluctuated in the region of around one billion dollar
Let us remember that the airspace of Honduras has been the necessary and strategic bridge between South America and North America; it is estimated that more than 300 clandestine airports have operated in Honduran territory for the transfer of drugs. It should even be remembered that during Washington’s low-intensity war in Central America against Sandinista Nicaragua and insurgent forces in El Salvador, Honduras was used as a platform from which US interventionist troops operated in support of irregular counterrevolutionary groups. This was at a time when Honduran territory was materially occupied by Pentagon hawks, it functioned as an air bridge for sending arms to the counterrevolution and, in turn, for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) planes loaded with cocaine from Colombia to return to the US. These were the moments in the 1980s when these covert operations, involving the then Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, were uncovered and became known in US history as the Iran-Contra case.
“For several years, things seemed to go unnoticed, until November 1986 when the Lebanese newspaper Ash-Shiraa broke the story. And a major scandal erupted, including the possibility that the US president himself might be impeached” (https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-44041957). In May 2018, North became president of the notorious Rifle Association, one of the most ultra-right-wing groups and promoters of the sale and transfer of weapons. In those years John Dimitri Negroponte was also US ambassador to Honduras (1981-1985) and later to Mexico at the end of that decade. He was noted for collaborating with Henry Kissinger in the organization of Operation Condor (a counter-insurgency plan sponsored by the White House that coordinated the military dictatorships of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay against the left-wing and progressive forces in Latin America in the 1970s). In the Central American country, Negroponte stood out for being accused of encouraging US policy of human rights violations, encouraging the training of “freedom fighters” (anti-Sandinista groups) and supporting the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where US troops set up a clandestine detention and torture center. North and Negroponte are two characters of a terrible memory who returned to operate during Donald Trump’s administration on the Latin American stage.
So the appearance of drug trafficking groups in Honduras (the “Cachiros”), from Mexico (Sinaloa cartel) or Colombia (Norte del Valle cartel), is no coincidence in Honduran territory, and even less so in their links with the Catracho political class. It is estimated that the “Cachiros” have acquired cocaine from Colombian drug trafficking organizations. Once in Catracho territory, they transfer “cocaine to the Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican groups. The Cachiros had large business and political interests, which extended into the Honduran elite. They had important contacts in the army and the police, particularly in the department of Colón, the group’s stronghold”. (https://es.insightcrime.org/noticias-crimen-organizado-honduras/cachiros-perfil/).
At the current juncture of the new scandal of the Honduran president and the main conservative politicians in their alleged links with drug trafficking, they are inserted in a scenario where one of their main allies is no longer in power, as was former President Donald Trump. Let’s remember that when the same US president moved his embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Honduran government of JOH, along with that of Guatemala, quickly did the same as Washington.
Today, in view of the new elections in this Central American country to be held on November 28, 2021, the erosion of the conservative National Party and the figure of the Honduran president, as well as the conservative and liberal political class, are creating a scenario that strengthens the presence of the Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE) with more options of winning in these upcoming elections. This is especially true due to the presidential disrepute of the National Party and the Liberal Party, as well as the alleged links of its main figures with drug trafficking and organized crime. Added to this is the situation of ever-increasing poverty among the broad social strata of the country. Faced with this situation and the prevailing climate of violence in Honduras, the only alternatives are irregular and massive migration to the US via Guatemala and Mexico. Or else the accumulation of popular forces to bring about a political transformation of the country through elections, generating an alternative proposal that aims to reach the presidency with a popular government headed by LIBRE in alliance with social and popular organizations that make a new alternative national project viable. If preferred, with a vision based on the ideology of the great Central American hero; Francisco Morazán.
Source: teleSUR, translation Resumen Latinoamricano – English