Honduras: Bravo for Xiomara

By Ángel Guerra Cabrera on December 8, 2021

The resounding electoral victory of Xiomara Castro in the Honduran elections is a political feat and magnificent news. The standard bearer of the Libre Party and its allies did not merely defeat an ultra-liberal and surrenderist political party, it was much more than that. The people of Honduras bent the arm of a corrupt and repressive regime, installed through the 2009 coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya by the oligarchy and the military, in alliance with the United States government.

With a turnout of 68.55 percent out of a voter roll of 5 million 182 thousand 425 voters and with the counting almost concluded, Xiomara obtained 1 million 709 thousand 81 votes, for 50.63 percent of the total and maintains a lead of more than 14 points over her closest contender, Nasry Asfura of the National Party. A consequence of her victory is that it breaks with the traditional Liberal-National dominance. Her vote is the largest for a candidate to the Executive in the history of Honduras, with some 500,000 votes above the previous highest figure. Libre won the two main mayoralties of the country, the capital Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the most important industrial and commercial center.  However, in order to repeal the framework of neoliberal laws benefiting a small political and economic elite, the president-elect and her allies need a majority in the legislature. By the way, there are already numerous accusations of alteration of voting records for deputies by the still governing National Party, which, in addition, bought loads of votes when it saw the overwhelming victory of the Libre Party approaching.

Xiomara, Zelaya’s partner, emerged as a popular leader in the street battles against the coup. While her husband was in exile or taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy after his clandestine return to the country, she was the central figure of the anti-coup resistance in the streets, where she won important recognition from union leaders, peasant organizations and social movements, native peoples and the simple people of the town, who now, together with the lesbian and gay movement, have rallied in support of her candidacy.  Since then, once as a presidential candidate and once as a vice presidential candidate she was the victim of two major electoral frauds in 2013 and 2017. The latter denounced by the UN and even the OAS. Only the unconditional support of Washington was it possible to enthrone again in the presidency Juan Orlando Hernandez, an individual over whom countless allegations of drug trafficking and money laundering formulated by US prosecutors themselves weigh on him. The most blatant corruption has been normalized in Honduras to such an extent that, for example, the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party in these elections had just served a sentence in the US for money laundering after pleading guilty.

It is worth remembering that the Honduran oligarchy and army have been creatures and organic instruments of the US power since the end of the 19th century and a large part of its military and political strength depends on this. Therefore, Washington bears, at the very least, the moral responsibility for the 2009 coup. Remember that Honduras was the seat of John Negroponte’s viceroyalty in the eighties, used as a center of activity of death squads, launching pad for the US war against the Sandinista revolution and the insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala, epicenter of the Iran-Contra scandal, operated from the Soto Cano air base by CIA agents Felix Rodriguez Mendigutía, who ordered the assassination of Che Guevara, and the arch-terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.  Precisely in that base is located Joint Task Force Bravo, of the US Armed Forces Southern Command, the place where Zelaya, after being imprisoned in his house in the early morning of the coup, was taken in his pajamas by Honduran military, who then illegally transferred him to Costa Rica. The Iran-contras consisted of taking arms in CIA planes to his pupils of the Nicaraguan counterrevolution, who then returned to the US loaded with drugs, to be sold in that country by the intelligence headquarters to buy more weapons.

Xiomara receives a plundered country, highly indebted, undermined by drug trafficking and insecurity, with institutions of justice at the service of the oligarchy. These are the reasons why they Hondurans emigrate en masse! A sector of industrialists affected by neoliberal policies joined the alliance headed by Libre and contributed to the already elected vice-president Salvador Nasrrallah. This agreement ensured Xiomara’s comfortable victory, but implies postponing very heartfelt demands such as the Constituent Assembly. The new government will need a great deal of political guts, mass mobilizations and warm international solidarity to achieve the inclusion, social and environmental justice and the defense of sovereignty that it has promised.

Source: Pupilia Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English