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Honduras

Restoring The Land Rights Of The Garifuna African People Of Honduras

May 31, 2023 Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
The ages-long severe oppression of descendants of West African slaves in Honduras has yet to receive wide attention. The Garifuna African people in Honduras are increasingly being denied their lands and livelihoods by the Honduran government and the multilateral institutions of the Global North. The plight of the Garifuna African people and their fight to restore their lands and livelihoods should no longer be left only to them to face, especially considering their small population of about 300,000. Continental Africans and those in the diaspora should raise awareness about the case. The Garifuna people are a part of Africa.

The Country Is Not For Sale

May 12, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. , , , ,
On May 3, Democratic U.S. lawmakers urged the U.S. Trade Representative and State Department to eliminate investor-state dispute settlement provisions from current and future trade deals and to intervene on behalf of Honduras against a U.S. company's nearly $11 billion claim against the country. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, 33 lawmakers said that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems in trade deals constitute a "problematic corporate handout" that violates countries' sovereignty and democratic rights. ISDS mechanisms enable multinational corporations to sue the governments of foreign trading partners for profits they claim have been forfeited as a result of domestic policies designed to protect workers, consumers, and ecosystems.

Honduran President Castro Warns Of Destabilization Attempts

April 27, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, on April 21, warned of a conspiracy against her government by the same conservative sectors that staged a coup d’état against former President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. President Castro alerted the Honduran people that these sectors are now trying to destabilize the current democratically elected government. “There is a conspiracy that is being formed and this has to be made clear to the Honduran people. Just look at who are the figures that are coming out, the same ones that contributed to a coup d’état in 2009. These same figures, who enjoy impunity, today are once again trying to destabilize a government elected by the people,” President Castro told local media following the event celebrating the 92nd anniversary of the Honduran Air Force (FAH).

Taiwan Separatists Lose Key Ally, Honduras Recognizes China

March 18, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
The government of Honduras has announced that it is breaking formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro had pledged during her 2021 campaign that, if she won the election, she would recognize China. This March, she fulfilled that promise. This means that just 12 United Nations member states have formal diplomatic relations with the so-called “Republic of China” on the island of Taiwan. The other 99.51% of the global population live in countries that formally recognize that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China.

Open Letter To US Ambassador: Stop The Assault On Honduran’s Human Rights

November 2, 2022 Adrienne Pine, Popular Resistance. , , ,
In 2009, a military coup in Honduras carried out by a School of the Americas-trained General replaced then-President Manuel Zelaya. Despite massive popular opposition, citizens were unable at the time to revert it, thanks largely to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s enthusiastic support for the overthrow of the democratically-elected President Zelaya. In the 12 years that followed, Honduras descended into a neoliberal narco-dictatorship, with both of the post-coup presidents installed following violent and fraudulent elections (rubber-stamped by the United States) currently facing major drug trafficking charges in U.S. courts. Just as harmful as the transformation of Honduras into a narco-state, was the aggressive U.S.-led push to implement dramatic neoliberal reforms, accompanied by massive U.S. investment in militarization to repress opposition to them, in the name of “security.”

US Pressuring New Left-Wing Honduras Government

November 2, 2022 Sarah Lazare, The American Prospect. , , ,
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, who took office in January, promised on the campaign trail to abolish special economic zones known as ZEDEs (“Economic Development and Employment Zones” in English), where private investors have outsized power to shape labor laws, judicial systems, and local governance. These zones have garnered fierce opposition in Honduras for undermining the basic tenets of democracy. In April, she achieved a major win when the Congress of Honduras unanimously voted to repeal the law that allows for ZEDEs, and to abolish the current ones, though the latter has to be ratified next year. But the forces who want to keep ZEDEs in operation are retaliating, and they’ve found allies on Capitol Hill.

Labor Against Empire: Voices From The Honduran US Embassy Strike

October 6, 2022 Popular Resistance. , , ,
For the last 3 months, more than 1,000 Honduran construction workers building the new United States embassy in Tegucigalpa have been striking against Alabama-based mega-prison contractor B.L. Harbert and their ultimate employer, the U.S. State Department, to demand safe working conditions, job security and fair compensation in compliance with Honduran labor law. Join the DSA International Committee and DSA Labor for a bilingual webinar to hear directly from the striking workers in Honduras, co-sponsored by US- and Honduras-based solidarity organizations. We seek to create opportunities for relationships to grow between the striking workers, Honduran civil society, and solidarity organizations around the Americas, and for workers in Honduras and the United States to hear directly from each other.

Workers Strike In The US And Honduras Against Capitalist Exploitation

October 3, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Last week, more than 1,000 fast food workers at San Francisco International Airport went on strike for three days over low wages, health benefits and pensions. They had not received a raise in more than three years and many worked multiple jobs. Workers building the new US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras have been on strike off and on since early July over a new contract that deprives them of fair compensation and violates Honduran labor laws. They are being fired and police are violently repressing their pickets. Clearing the FOG speaks with Ted Waechter of UNITE-HERE Local 2 in San Francisco and Honduras expert Adrienne Pine about worker struggles in the US and abroad and the need for solidarity and greater militancy to fight an economic system that values profits more than people.

Workers Building New US Embassy In Honduras Are On Strike

September 15, 2022 Judy Ancel, Labor Notes. , , ,
The Biden administration has pledged that “the United States will work with governments to strengthen ... the enforcement of labor laws, promote decent work, and support workers in exercising their freedom of association and collective bargaining rights,” as one of four pillars of its strategy to address the root causes of migration from Central America. In Honduras today the U.S. has an opportunity to practice this with the 1,100 workers it has hired to build a new embassy. But it’s blowing it. Instead, police have been called in to bust a strike that’s been going on at the construction site in Tegucigalpa since early July. Of course, the State Department and U.S. Ambassador Laura Dogu all deny that there’s a problem with the treatment of the workers, and they’re pressuring the Honduran government to criminalize the strikers rather than enforce Honduran labor laws.

From Resistance To Governing Power In Honduras

August 22, 2022 Gerardo Torres and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, Convergence. , , ,
A month after the coup d’état I was delegated by the new Front Against the Coup d’état to go to the U.S. to make known what had happened in Honduras. I had been working around international representation and communications in two formations, the National Coordinator of Popular Resistance and the Bloque Popular (Popular Block). These were spaces for coordination amongst the social movements that were confronting the impacts of neoliberalism, specifically the struggle against the Free Trade Agreement, which was impacting everything related to our agricultural capacity. Small and mid-sized Honduran producers had no possibility of competing against the big North American companies who were subsidized by the U.S. government and who generated a completely asymmetrical and unjust competition amongst producers.

¡Viva La Solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads The Way

July 29, 2022 Ben Hayes, Islington North CLP, and Arise Festival Volunteer, Labour Outlook. , , , , , ,
Hundreds joined international guests, solidarity campaigners and elected representatives for ¡Viva la solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads the Way: a session organised by Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America as part of this year’s Arise Festival. Chairing the event, Arise’s Sam Browse went through examples of electoral successes and resilience in the face of aggression by the region’s left, and emphasised the importance of international co-operation amongst progressive forces: “those winning gains in the fight for a better future are an inspiration to us all”. Secretary of the Presidency in Honduras Rodolfo Pastor outlined how the country faced “a dark period of history” following the coup against elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, with those who took power implementing “repression to benefit a small elite at the expense of our natural resources and the rights of the majority”.

New Documents: US-Trained Special Forces Involved In Drug Trafficking

June 12, 2022 Karen Spring, Honduras Now. , , ,
Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Members of the former Honduran elite police unit, the COBRAS, worked with the ‘Los Grillos’ criminal gang to steal drug money and shipments, according to newly released U.S. court documents. Los Grillos, together with the special forces police unit are involved in selling and stealing drugs “through police operations” and according to Honduran press reports, act as contract hitman. The U.S. DEA document (see below) dated July 13, 2016, was recently filed in the case against Ludwig Criss Zelaya Romero, a convicted drug trafficker and former Honduran police officer. Zelaya Romero is appealing his sentence after pleading guilty in April 2018 to conspiracy to import cocaine and use and carry firearms in connection with a drug trafficking conspiracy.

Honduras Repeals Colonialist ZEDEs

May 5, 2022 Kawsachun News. , , ,
President Xiomara Castro fulfilled a major campaign promise last week when she signed the decree to repeal the ZEDEs law. We spoke to Honduran Vice Minister for Agrarian Reform, Rafael Alegría, on this important victory for the campesinos and social movements of Honduras. Rafael is a historic leader of the international peasants movement, La Vía Campesina. Having been at the forefront of years of struggles in Latin America, he’s now a strong anti-imperialist voice with the Partido Libre administration. Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante sat down with Rafael in Managua, where he and other movement leaders participated in commemorative events marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of La Vía Campesina.

US Turns On Honduran Narco-Dictator Juan Orlando Hernández

February 20, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. , , ,
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.

Long Before US Extradition Request, Hondurans Cried, ‘Get Out JOH!’

February 18, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
On Tuesday, Honduran national police arrested JOH from his residence in the capital Tegucigalpa. It came a day after the US government requested JOH’s extradition by the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice for allegedly conspiring to traffic drugs in the US. On Tuesday morning, Supreme Court judge Edwin Ortez formally accepted the extradition request and issued an arrest warrant for Hernández. Hours later, Hernández was handcuffed by officials and moved to a high-security detention center.
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