Above photo: US Vice President Joe Biden with Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández in 2016.
Washington ordered the extradition of Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) for drug trafficking.
But the Obama-Biden and Trump administrations spent years supporting him as he stole elections, and he rose to power thanks to a 2009 US-backed coup.
The US government has turned on the right-wing former dictator of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, after it spent years supporting him.
Hernández is the latest in a series of brutal authoritarians who were key US allies until they outlived their usefulness, from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo to Panama’s Manuel Noriega.
This February, the United States requested the extradition of Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández on charges of trafficking cocaine and guns. Local authorities arrested him on February 15.
Hernández, who is popularly known by his initials JOH, served two terms in office, from 2014 to 2022. It was widely known that JOH used drug money to fund his presidential campaigns, and blatantly stole the 2013 and 2017 elections in broad daylight.
But while he was committing these crimes, Hernández enjoyed staunch support from the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations.
In fact, JOH only came to power in the first place because a 2009 US-sponsored military coup removed Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing president, Manuel Zelaya.
Washington overthrew Zelaya because he had been friendly to Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chávez, and he had integrated Honduras into anti-imperialist regional bloc the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA).
Following the 2009 coup, JOH’s right-wing National Party ruled the country with an iron fist. From 2010 to 2014, Hernández served as president of Congress. He was then catapulted to head of state through flagrant electoral fraud.
The 2013 Honduran elections were plagued by massive, systemic irregularities. And it was clear to the world that JOH stole the election in 2017, but the US State Department still congratulated him on his “victory.”
And the United States did more than just endorse JOH’s clearly fraudulent elections. Washington also approved billions of dollars of loans to his corrupt regime, which Hernández and his wealthy oligarchic backers promptly stole, trapping the country in unpayable odious debt.
Why? Because under JOH, Honduras was Washington’s closest ally in Central America. The country is home to the largest US military installation in Latin America, the Soto Cano base.
And, until his final few years, Hernández obediently served US foreign-policy interests, recognizing unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “president” of Venezuela.
Honduras’ US-backed JOH narco-dictatorship creates refugee crisis
After the US-backed 2009 coup, violence and organized crime skyrocketed. Honduras turned into one of the most dangerous countries on the planet.
As of 2021, Honduras still has the second-highest murder rate on Earth, surpassed only by its neighbor El Salvador.
Under JOH, Honduras also became the poorest country in Latin America. Poverty rose to a staggering 74% of the population.
This deadly combination of violence, organized crime, and poverty took a heavy toll on the Honduran people. It fueled large waves of migration north toward Mexico and the United States, unleashing a refugee crisis.
This Washington-created refugees crisis in turn provoked domestic problems in the United States. Politicians from both major parties recognized that something had to change.
US turns on its once loyal asset JOH
By 2019, Juan Orlando Hernández became a further liability for Washington. His brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández was convicted in a New York federal court for trafficking nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine and machine guns into the United States.
Tony Hernández had been a congressman in JOH’s National Party, and used drug money to fund the right-wing party and rig elections for his brother.
The imprisonment of Tony Hernández, along with the increased US pressure on Honduras to halt northern migration, created a conflict between JOH and his sponsors in Washington. The once loyal US ally began to implement independent policies.
Honduras started to vote against US interests in the Organization of American States (OAS). Looking for new allies, the JOH government even improved relations with its neighbor Nicaragua, whose leftist Sandinista government is Washington’s top target in Central America.
By 2021, top US politicians and corporate media outlets tried to distance JOH from the US government by depicting him simply as a “Trump ally.”
JOH certainly was a Trump ally, but he had long benefited from bipartisan support from Democrats as well.
The Obama administration enthusiastically supported the Honduran narco-dictator. In fact, as vice president under Obama, Joe Biden worked closely with JOH.
Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s Central America policy, and Honduras was crucial in its plans.
JOH praised Obama publicly for his neoliberal strategy to bring more corporate investment to the region, called the “Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle.”
Biden repeatedly met with JOH, and the narco-dictator tweeted, “Thank you Vice President Joe Biden for supporting Honduras.”
When JOH’s right-wing National Party was overwhelmingly defeated by the left-wing Libre Party and its candidate Xiomara Castro in a November 2021 election – the first truly free and fair vote since the 2009 US-sponsored coup – Washington threw its former asset under the bus.
After JOH left office on January 27, 2022, the Biden administration saw an opportunity to make an example out of a former ally, to try to cynically show the world it is supposedly dedicated to fighting corruption.
This February, Washington officially turned on JOH, first revoking his visa and then ordering his extradition to the United States.
Long history of US government support for corrupt dictators and drug lords
Juan Orlando Hernández is the latest in a long line of repressive dictators that the United States supported and cultivated, only to later throw under the bus.
His story echoes those of numerous right-wing Latin American autocrats, from the Dominican Republic to Panama.
Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo oversaw one of the bloodiest regimes in the history of the region, killing, imprisoning, torturing, and disappearing tens of thousands of people, principally leftists and Haitians.
Trujillo enjoyed staunch US support for decades. But by 1961 he had outlived his usefulness, and the CIA was involved in assassinating him.
Closer to Honduras is the case of Panama’s former president Manuel Noriega, a former longtime CIA asset who was later overthrown in a murderous US invasion.
Noriega once collaborated with the CIA to help Washington fund its war on leftist revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
But he later became too independent from the United States. Noriega began to challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests in the region, working with Libya and Cuba, and challenging US control over the geostrategic Panama Canal.
So Washington turned on its former ally. The United States invaded Panama in 1989, killing at least hundreds of civilians, with some estimates saying thousands lost their lives.
Over in West Asia, the history is very similar. Before he became public enemy number one in the 2003 invasion, or in the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq’s authoritarian leader Saddam Hussein was an erstwhile US ally.
The CIA helped orchestrate the Iraqi Baathist coup that Saddam later rode to power. After the putsch, the CIA even gave the aspiring dictator’s allies a list of Iraqi communists to kill. They were promptly murdered.
In the 1980s, the United States supported Saddam’s Iraq in its war on the new revolutionary government in neighboring Iran. The CIA even helped Saddam use chemical weapons on civilians.
Some of the world’s most notorious drug dealers have also benefited from the backing of US spy agencies.
Mexico’s infamous drug kingpin El Chapo Gúzman, the head of the feared Sinaloa Cartel, was reportedly protected by the CIA for years.
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar collaborated with the CIA, too. His son Juan Pablo Escobar said the US spy agency used the cocaine smuggled by the leader of the Medellin Cartel in order to fund its war on socialists in Central America.