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Summary
It’s almost been one year since President Xiomara Castro took power in Honduras. As President Castro has tried to fulfill her campaign promises, her government has been met by opposition from the U.S.
This episode shares a presentation given by Karen Spring to the Rochester Committee on Latin America (ROCLA). Karen describes important reforms that the Castro government has implemented and describes the U.S. opposition to each.
To watch the full presentation, go to ROCLA’s website: https://rocla.org/events/reform-in-honduras-and-us-opposition/
Transcript
Karen Spring: On December 7, I was invited to speak to the Rochester Committee on Latin America, or ROCLA, based out of Rochester, New York.
I have not spoken much about President Xiomara and her government since they took office in January of this year. This is because it has been nice to breathe a bit and give some time for the new administration to settle.
But as it’s been settling, US opposition has as well. Led largely by the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, there has been significant opposition to even small changes that President Xiomara’s government hoped and still hopes to implement.
And the US opposition is obviously one major element as to why the new administration has not been able to achieve its proposed changes thus far. But it’s certainly not the only one. The government has also made mistakes. Honduran grassroots and social movement activists have claimed that the government is continuing some of the practices from previous governments. This has been unfortunate and disappointing to see.
But today I want to highlight the US opposition to the small changes that President Xiomara has been somewhat successful at implementing. In many ways the discussion about President Xiomara’s ability to push forward her campaign promises in Honduras is very timely in the broader Latin American context. Most recently, in Peru, there was a coup against the weak government of President Pedro Castillo. Now I’m not as familiar with the ins and outs of President Castillo and his political agenda. But I think Peru, like Honduras, is another example of the de facto power that global economic interests and the national elite have and hold in many countries in Latin America. When a government with a different vision, a more progressive vision, puts forward a different way of doing things, or even thinking about things, it is met by powerful and established forces that make it difficult or impossible to change the status quo. One of these powerful forces are elements of the US government and US military.
Today I’m going to share my presentation to ROCLA, where I discussed the US opposition to a few reforms that President Xiomara’s government has implemented as per her campaign platform and her political promises made at the beginning of the year.
Welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. I’m your host, Karen Spring. In each episode, I will be sharing human rights stories from Honduras and connecting them to global issues and North American policy. Thank you so much for listening.
Tom Ward: I’m first going to introduce myself. I’m Tom Ward and the current convener for the Rochester Committee on Latin America. And I want to say hello and welcome to all of you joining us tonight. Then, without further ado, let me introduce Karen to you. She’s been with us before. Karen’s presentation today is going to focus primarily on how the US efforts are attempting to stop many of the reforms that the new president, democratically elected president I might add, Xiomara, is trying to implement with her administration. They have gotten some through, some positive policies, as well. And Karen will talk about those. And so, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Karen Spring. Thank you, Karen.
Karen Spring: Thanks so much, Tom, for the introduction. And good evening, everybody.Thank you so much for inviting me. So, my name is Karen, and I’m calling you or talking to you sitting in a house in Toronto, Canada. And I’m headed to Honduras tomorrow. So I have an early flight like Tom mentioned, but I’m looking forward to escaping the freezing cold and getting back to the heat. So thanks again to ROCLA for organizing tonight and for doing a great job promoting the event.
You know, one of the things that I want to kind of start is just talking a little bit about the victory of the new president, well, she’s not really that new anymore, she’s almost been in office now for a year. Xiomara Castro is the president of Honduras. She’s the first woman president of Honduras, which is very, very exciting for women in Honduras and just Hondurans in general. She basically ran over almost a year ago today. She won the elections and in quite a landslide victory for her and the platform that she put forward. And, you know, people were very, very hopeful, and are still hopeful, that her government will be able to overcome the challenges that it faces so that they can push through some of the reforms and some of the policies that she ran on.
So she took office in January. So it’s almost been a year, it’ll be a year next January. She had a whole, just so many campaign promises. And I’m just going to highlight a couple, because they’re very inspiring. And I think that it’s always important for any progressive government that comes to power to have a very inspiring agenda and aspirations and goals. And I think that’s something that she had, and the party had, and lots of people in her government. So some of the things that she promised to do, which there’s a whole slew of things that she promised to do, but I’m gonna focus on the ones that are more relevant to global issues, and US policy, and then human rights as well, since I work mostly in human rights, and so does the Honduras Solidarity Network.
She promised to establish stronger ties with China, which of course is not something that the US is very happy about, or would be very happy about.
She promised to legislate and implement policies regarding the morning after pill for women. But this was something that was actually legal before the coup in 2009. And Xiomara said that she wanted to bring that back for women. It was actually outlawed after the coup.
She wanted to send the military back to their barracks and get them off the streets, which is obviously something that is really exciting and important to do. Because the military shouldn’t be on the streets, shouldn’t have policing functions.
She actually committed to reviewing CAFTA and the free trade agreements, which is something that Honduras has never really benefited from, it’s been much more to the benefit of US companies.
She also said that she was going to reform the energy law, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. It’s hard to understand, but I’ll talk about what that means, and what are the challenges with doing that.
She said she’d overturn the ZEDE law. The ZEDEs are the zones of economic development and employment. I’m not sure if anyone here has heard about the ZEDEs. But the ZEDEs are like model cities, they’re basically private cities, charter cities, they have a bunch of different names. But they’re very, very widely promoted and pushed by libertarians, a lot of libertarians. And basically what it means, what is meant, at least in the legislation that was passed after the coup, is that you carve off a chunk of Honduran territory and hand it over to the highest bidder. And they can create their own court system, their own policing system, their own social security, their own system, their own courts, their own police, their own national anthem, like everything. They’re basically their own nation within the borders of Honduras. And so she promised to overturn that legislation that was pushed forward by the post-coup government.
And she also wanted to establish the Commission Against Impunity and Corruption in Honduras, which is modeled after the Guatemala CICIG, which no longer exists, unfortunately, but basically an internationally funded body that investigates corruption and impunity in the country.
When she put forward this platform, along with her party, and everybody that ran under her, and the LIBRE party, which is the party she is part of, people were really hopeful. I mean, people spent years after the coup, 12 years, under a narco dictatorship. A lot of you, and ROCLA certainly, really followed what was going on in the country, and all of the abuses that took place, the rise of a very corrupt state that was run by drug traffickers. Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president, he left office the day that Xiomara took power. And then the day he left office, the US Justice Department signed a request for his extradition to face drug trafficking charges in the US. So he is now in prison in the US, awaiting trial for drug trafficking charges and related weapons charges.
So, you know, if you have a president that literally the day that he steps out of office, an eight-year presidency, and then he’s asked for extradition by the United States, who supported and backed him through the eight years he was in power, you can only imagine the crimes that he committed while he was in power. And I think drug trafficking is probably the lesser of his crimes, even though, obviously, it’s devastating for the country and for people that, you know, involved in a drug trade, but also consumed drugs across the Americas. But you can imagine all the measures that he went to to maintain his power, which wasn’t just about his political power, but was about his economic power and controlling the drug cartels in the country for his own economic benefit. So you can imagine what Hondurans suffered. If the president alone, and what he was involved in, doesn’t give an indication of what Hondurans were dealing with, and what they were so tired of, you know that they were facing also massive human rights violations, Honduras became the most dangerous country in the Western or in the world, at the peak of his dictatorship, right after the coup, it became one of the most dangerous countries to be an environmentalist, a journalist, a land defender. And so many people lost their lives under his regime.
So Xiomara’s platform is very inspiring. And so she was widely voted for, and widely supported, by the Honduran population.
So she’s taken power since, so January 27, I think, of this year, and she’s just faced, her government has faced endless challenges. And, obviously, it’s not easy taking over a government that’s been controlled by a drug cartel for so long. And the challenges are just, I’m going to name a couple, the ones that I think are the most important.
She basically took over a government and a state that is totally broke. I mean, all of the money that the previous governments following the coup, you know, that the US and Canada supported, kept funding, kept sending more money to, you know, there’s just endless corruption that took place in that government, and overspending as well, especially on a military, on the military and policing that obviously had no effect for what it was intended to do, which was allegedly to make Honduras a safer place for its citizens. Instead, money was spent on basically promoting a military and police that were also trafficking drugs along with the president, while they were also squashing any protests or any opposition to the government and its policies.
So I think that the amount of debt that Xiomara has to deal with, she inherited a state that is totally broke. And I think that it’s estimated, and this isn’t a very good measurement, but I’m not really sure how else to explain it, but Honduras in their external and internal debt, it totals 56.7% of their GDP, or $15.68 billion, is what Honduras owes, which I know is hard to conceptualize. But, I mean, I’m sure the United States owes more than that, and has much more debt that that, much more. But the thing is that Honduras has very little income. They don’t have very strong tax collecctions. So it’s very difficult. They’re also paying crazy interest rates on these loans. So that’s a huge problem for Xiomara and implementing the reforms that she outlined in her platform.
She also inherited a state that’s totally infiltrated by organized crime. I mean, consistently, and still today, we hear all about, you know, mayors and police officers, groups of police officers, military, that are involved in drug trafficking, and still involved in drug trafficking. And so she is responsible, she is head of the armed forces and the Minister of Security who runs the police is also under her command. But she really has no control over a lot of these rogue groups and organized criminal groups that are operating inside the police and military still.
So it’s been a huge problem across the board in the country for security, and also for repression against different populations, especially like land defenders, for example, which continues to be a problem under Xiomara’s government because she, again, doesn’t have full control of the military and police.
She also has a very weak government. She doesn’t control all branches of government. She is head of the executive branch. But even with her being head of the executive branch, she still has parts that are offices or institutions that are under her command that she doesn’t have full control over.
She doesn’t control Congress. Or the LIBRE Party, which is her party, doesn’t have full control over Congress. So they’re constantly negotiating and trying to figure out how to pass bills that are part of her platform, but, you know, is constantly facing, and the United States plays a huge role in undermining what the Congress is trying to do when the LIBRE Party is able to put forward something that promotes Xiomara’s platform. And there are constant divisions, and these are obviously, these are sort of provoked as well by the US, which I’ll get into a little bit more.
And she also doesn’t control the judiciary, which is huge. And the Attorney General’s Office, which are the two bodies that basically decide what will be investigated and when and who goes to prison and who doesn’t.
So that’s very important for criminalizing protests and criminalizing land defenders. Xioamara has no power over that. Those are still under the control of people that were appointed by the narco dictatorship and by Juan Orlando Hernández and people that are still loyal to him despite the fact that he’s in prison. They put the head of the cartel in prison, but all of the arms and legs and the tentacles of the narco dictatorship are still very much alive. And so that is definitely the case with the judiciary and the Attorney General’s Office. And despite the fact that she’s chief of the armed forces, the armed forces have not changed at all, and they haven’t been cleaned up and they’re the same armed forces that supported the coup, and that were involved in drug trafficking, and promoted and kept Juan Orlando Hernández in power, despite his full range of abuses.
So, I mean, you have this great platform, she gets to power, and she’s faced with all of these challenges that are constantly undermining any sort of ability for her to really push through, her and her government to push through, any significant changes and to promote her platform.
And despite that, there are some things that they’ve done, and the government has done, that are very inspirational and that they have been able to achieve. And I’m going to mention those. I’m going to pick a couple, because there are certain things that Xiomara’s government has been able to implement that are incredible, but that the US is constantly undermining because they don’t like these policies.
I mean, I’m sure a lot of you remember when, I think in 2017, and even back to 2014, there was this whole, the US media, mainstream media, was really focused on all these unaccompanied minors that were coming from Honduras and Central America, and that were making their way to the border. And then they put together the Biden Plan to deal with the unaccompanied minors at the border, to address migration, and like that didn’t work.
And so now, with all of the migration at the US and Mexico border, Vice President Kamala Harris has put together this call to action that she launched in May of last year, basically saying that they’re going to address the root causes of migration. And so I think they’ve designated billions of dollars to this call to action for the Northern Triangle countries. The Northern Triangle countries are El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. And they’re going to stop migration or address these so-called root causes of migration. And Kamala Harris is under the impression that companies like Gap, and Visa, and Microsoft, and Nespresso are some of the great companies that are going to help deal with these root causes of migration.
So I mention that because there’s a whole big chunk of money that’s being promised to the Northern Triangle countries. And I would argue that the US is sort of using that, amongst other things, to sort of extort the Xiomara government into doing things or not doing things that are against the interests. Because you have this Honduran government that is totally broke, because of a narco dictatorship that stole all the money, that misspent a lot of the money, that the US supported and backed for so long, in this condition where they have no money, and they really want to address and make changes that the Honduran people really badly need.
And then you have the US saying, well, we have all this money, but then they’re kind of dangling it in their faces, saying, you know, we’ll give it to you, but you have to do certain things, or you’re not allowed to do certain things. And I’m going to go through some of the things that they haven’t liked so far, and they’ve been very vocal about it. And it’s very problematic. And it’s very worrisome.
Because, you know, people are under the impression in the US that, you know, the narco dictatorship is out of power now, Honduras is great, Honduras has a democratic socialist government, its progressive government, it cares about human rights, so we can move on to other countries now, or we don’t have to worry about Honduras. But it’s actually a really, really important time to keep watching Honduras, because of how all the challenges that the government is facing, and just the historical presence of the United States in Honduras has always undermined anything progressive, or anything that challenges US economic interests in Honduras, but not just Honduras, in the region.
Because Honduras has been the country where the US has launched a lot of its wars in the past. It’s the home to the largest US military base in the region. And so the US is not going to let any government do whatever they want in Honduras. You know, they don’t really do that anywhere. But they’re specifically not going to allow it in Honduras.
And so I’m going to talk a little bit about what they have opposed and what Xiomara has been able to do, and just how much backlash she’s getting from the US over it.
So what’s going on is, the US, when Xiomara won, interestingly enough, Congressional offices in the US were telling us that the State Department was sort of going around to Congressional offices and saying, You know what? We really support Xiomara, you need to support her, she’s gonna do great things. And so there was this, and Kamala Harris even went to her inauguration. And so there was this impression that the US was starting off well, and everyone was sort of suspicious about it, because the US doesn’t just go and support a progressive government that identifies as democratic socialists out of nowhere. But it was sort of like positive, it was like, OK, you know, let’s see how this goes, this is positive. You know, obviously it’s suspicious at the same time.
But what’s happening now is the US is really not liking some of the things that Xiomara promised that she would do. And I think the US kind of bet that she wouldn’t be able to do it, and that they would work really hard to undermine her agenda and undermine her government. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
So the US is now teaming up with the opposition, which is the narco National Party, basically a party that is totally infiltrated by organized crime, it was Juan Orlando Hernández’s party. And they’re teaming up with the government’s sort of enemies, or people that are, you know, either they’re NGO’s that the State Department has funded for many years, they’re now sort of raising their voice and being very critical of Xiomara. And so the US, I don’t think they necessarily support the National Party, which was the narco party that I talked about, that was in power since the coup. But they’re sort of taking advantage of the fact that they’re the opposition now, and they’re sort of mixing their message against the government to sort of go at the Xiomara government. And so you have this really, really powerful opposition of these really, really incredible and powerful forces that are criticizing everything her government does.
So I’m talking the oligarchs, the very wealthy families that have controlled Honduras for many, many years, there’s like 12 to 13 families. I’m talking about the military that, obviously, any Latin American country is always going to be worried about what their military says and supports, because the military has just so much tremendous power, not just in Latin America, but also in the United States. And then I mentioned the National Party. And so, along with the US government, those are the actors, they’re all sort of working together to really undermine the government. And it’s very concerning, because it makes a weak government even weaker. And it doesn’t really give them any breathing room, either, to make mistakes, and every government is going to make mistakes.
So I’m going to focus on three key policies and promises that Xiomara made during her campaign, and the ones that she’s been able to fulfill. And then I’m going to talk about what the US is doing to undermine that.
So the first one I want to talk about is the temporary labor law. The temporary labor law was passed under the narco dictatorship after the coup, and it was a heyday for US companies. It basically eliminated any benefits or any labor laws for transnational companies.
So I’m talking about textile companies. I’m Canadian, so I always think of Gildan. But if people follow Haiti at all, they know that Gildan is a very, very bad company. It’s a large sweatshop company. SanMar is another one, it’s a US textile company.
The US, specifically, they really benefited from this temporary labor law, because it basically said that they could contract Honduran workers for four hours a day, pay them less than minimum wage, and they didn’t have to pay any benefits or any pension or anything, any sick days, no vacation days, nothing. And so it was great for these companies.
But it was terrible for Honduran workers. And so the Xiomara government recognized that as being something that was very damaging, because it undermines the labor movement. It undermines job security for workers. And since, you know, jobs and unemployment are a major driver of migration, the Xiomara government said, You know what? We’re going to overturn that law, and then these companies are going to have to abide by the labor law, the labor law that’s been, you know, the temporary labor law took over or trumped the labor law. And so they overturned it. And they’re like, OK, you got to abide by the labor law now, like the regular labor law.
And so, and since they did that, the US government has taken every opportunity possible, led by the ambassador, to talk about how much that temporary labor law undermines investment in Honduras. And if we’re thinking about Kamala Harris’s promise and call to action with all these companies like Pepsi, and Microsoft, and all of these big companies that are literally going to bring Honduras out of poverty and stop migration, none of these companies are going to invest in Honduras if they don’t have a very exploitative labor law that lets them pay Honduran workers nothing, so that they can continue profiting off of investing there. And so the US Ambassador has just been really, really vocal, and in State Department reports, about how this is undermining investment in Honduras and being very critical of it, and saying that it’s damaging relations, and damaging the willingness of companies to invest in Honduras.
So I’m just going to give an example of the US hypocrisy. As the Kamala Harris government is, you know, talking about addressing the root causes of migration, which one of them is unemployment or underemployment, people not having jobs, young people graduate from university, they can’t get a job, they drop resumes off everywhere, they spend months and months and months dropping resumes off, they can’t get a job, there’s no jobs. And the jobs that they do get are terrible in terms of conditions and the exploitative nature of a lot of these companies. Because the companies know that there’s just so many people that want jobs, they take advantage of that desperation. And so they just fire people and hire people and fire them if they don’t like it, and hire someone to replace them.
You know, when they overturned the temporary labor law, the US is actually building a new embassy in Tegucigalpa, a huge, gigantic building. They’ve hired Honduran workers to build this embassy. And when they overturned the temporary labor law, these workers started saying, OK, well, now you have to hire us under the normal labor law. That means you have to pay minimum wage. That means you have to pay us vacations. That means you have to pay us pensions.
And they wouldn’t do it. And the US company that’s building the new US Embassy, BL Harbert, which apparently builds embassies all over the world, basically, the workers went on strike, and they just refused to sit down at the negotiating table. And so the workers that went on strike, they were fired and replaced by other workers. And they still don’t want to pay the benefits to these workers at all.
So it’s interesting, because as much as the US talks about enforcing the rule of law, and getting these companies to abide by the law, their own companies don’t want to abide by the law and pay the benefits to workers, including the ones that are building their own embassy where they’re going to conduct all of their diplomatic relations out of.
Also, maquila companies, or sweatshop companies, as well, they’re laying massive layoffs in a lot of these factories, because they no longer have the temporary labor law to exploit workers. And so they’re laying off like hundreds of workers in these factories. And a women’s organization that works with a lot of these workers is saying, you know what, we want these factories to be here, but we want them to give us good salaries, and we want decent working conditions. Which is not a lot to ask. So the US Embassy has been very vocal against overturning the temporary labor law and having to abide by the actual labor law which protects workers.
Another thing that Xiomara promised that she would do that she did do, through Congress, is that she promised to overturn the ZEDE law. That’s the model cities, the private cities law. So they overturned it in Congress. And it still is not fully overturned yet. But important steps have been made to do that.
And the US Embassy, there’s this one company that is a model city, it’s called Zede Próspera, based in the Bay Islands, the beautiful Bay Islands of Honduras, and Roatán, which is where a lot of people, if they visited Honduras, would have gone to that place. A lot of cruise ships stop there. And so, these US investors are invested in, and have obtained land to build a ZEDE in Roatán. And when the Honduran government overturned the ZEDE law, these investors of this ZEDE Próspera basically threatened the government that they were going to file suit against the Honduran government under CAFTA, and sue the government for the money that they’ve lost in their investment, and their ability to make money in the future. So right now, this company has filed a notice of arbitration under CAFTA, which means it’s suing the Honduran government for lost profits. And they’re saying that they’ve lost 10.7 billion dollars, and that’s how much they’re suing the Honduran government for. And I should say that ZEDE Próspera is actually American-owned. The companies are based in the US. I think Delaware is one. There’s three, two or three companies. They’re based in different parts of the US. And so they themselves are suing the Honduran government.
But it goes beyond that. The ZEDEs in Honduras have always been very, very unpopular. Widespread rejection of ZEDEs, from the very beginning that they were proposed after the coup. And, you know, there’s been years and years and years of protesting. In fact, I remember standing outside the courthouse every day protesting it. And so, you know, ten years later, Hondurans were still battling the ZEDEs. And so Xiomara takes power and says, We’re getting rid of this, this legislation, this is ridiculous. So they overturn it. And so this ZEDE Próspera is threatening to sue the Xiomara government for lost profits.
You have these two US Senators. One is Senator Hagerty from Tennessee, and Senator Cardin from Maryland. And they wrote a public letter recently, basically criticizing the reforms that overturned the ZEDEs, saying that they were threatening US interests, and that they were disappointed that the government was threatening US interests. And that was very disappointing to see, especially out of Senator Cardin, because he has been very supportive in the past of actions that we’ve done in Honduras.
But it goes to show you just how much the US is not willing to let Xiomara implement these important things and support what the Honduran people want, and what the Honduran people have asked for for so long.
And I just want to mention really quickly that almost immediately before ZEDE Próspera announced that they were suing the Honduran government, the US Embassy tweeted that they had met with the investors of ZEDE Próspera, basically throwing fuel on the fire. That they were supporting this, and they were supporting the investors, and that the investors should keep going in Honduras, despite the fact that nobody wants them there.
And I just want to take this really quick opportunity to say that the School of the Americas Watch, it’s a fantastic US-based organization, they put out an action recently asking people to sign on to an action to denounce the role of the US in the ZEDEs and promoting the ZEDEs. I highly encourage people to join us in that action and promote it as much as they can.
So the final thing I wanted to mention is, and probably for me, the most important and definitely something that the US is really, really unhappy about, probably the most unhappy about, is this energy law that Xiomara has passed, the Xiomara government through the Congress has passed. And it’s interesting, I’m going to say the name of the law, because I think it’s very telling about what Xiomara was trying to do. It’s very long, so I never really say it ever. But it’s called the Special Law to Guarantee Electricity as a Common Good for National Security and as an Economic and Social Human Right. That’s actually what the law is called.
And so, basically, what they wanted to do is, they wanted to roll back privatization of Honduras’s energy generation, transmission, and distribution, which is basically the whole energy grid, everything. So, basically, this law is trying to roll back privatization.
Some of the companies that have most benefited from the energy privatization are US companies. So solar, wind, which people usually are very supportive of solar and wind, but the way that solar and wind energy projects in Honduras have been implemented is usually through the oligarchs, through the wealthy families, and they create a lot of land problems, because you need land to put up solar panels and wind turbines.
So, basically, what this new law is doing is that Xiomara said, OK, any Honduran families that consume less than 150 kilowatts of energy a month, they’re all going to get free energy. So this has benefited 1.2 million families around Honduras. Which, if you ask people why they were, you know, some of the reasons why they were leaving Honduras and fleeing to the US/Mexico border, they would say that energy costs were just too much, they were too high, because of the privatization of energy, energy generation mostly. And so this has been hugely beneficial to many Honduran families.
And then Xiomara also said, You know what? We can’t pay these high energy costs that these private energy generation companies are charging the state to generate electricity. So she said, we’re going to start renegotiating those contracts. And we’re going to lower the amount of money that these companies are making, and that the state is paying them to make the electricity. And so that’s what they’re in the process of doing.
And two energy companies that are not in agreement with having, you know, not making millions of dollars off of the backs of Honduran people, have now decided that they’re going to also potentially sue the Honduran government under CAFTA as well for lost profits, because the government is renegotiating these contracts. And, obviously, some of the companies that have been the most affected are US companties that basically work in Honduras to exploit these contracts. And a lot of them were approved based on corruption and cronies work alongside the former narco dictatorship and its government.
So I think I’ll end there. I could say lots more, but I’ll leave it there for questions and maybe a discussion too.
Tom Ward: Karen, what can you say about the Garífunas? Have some of these model cities, are they on land that’s been taken from them, for example? I know there’s been a lot of trouble in the Garifuna communities with these investors.
Karen Spring: Yeah, so, the ZEDEs, one of the things that’s been challenging for the new government is to actually understand where there are ZEDEs, and where the former government actually signed documents to hand over pieces of land. One of the things that Juan Orlando Hernández’s government did is they destroyed a lot of public documents before they left office. And that’s also been a major challenge for the government to understand, like, what did the government actually do? Regarding ZEDEs, what did they sign, what commitments were made behind closed doors? And so we’re not really entirely sure where all the ZEDEs are.
But the ones that have moved forward and that have been vocal against the government, they’re not necessarily on Garífuna land. But the same sort of dynamics that play out. The ZEDE Próspera actually impacts a community that has been in Roatán for centuries. It’s not Garífuna, but it has Garífuna people that live in the community, as well as Miskito Indigenous people. So, and again, it’s not Garífuna land, but all the dynamics, like the evictions, the threats, it remains with this ZEDE, specifically, in ZEDE Próspera.
But, I mean, the Garífuna recently were evicted from their community in Punta Gorda, really close to actually where the ZEDE Próspera is trying to build its ZEDE, on the island of Roatán. And that was carried out by a corrupt judge, again, that Xiomara and the executive branch of the government doesn’t have control over. But it was very disappointing to see the police and the military involved in that eviction. But, again, that has a lot to do with the fact that, you know, there is still a lot of corruption in the police. And Xiomara doesn’t necessarily have full blown control of the police.
So the Garífuna issue is ongoing, as is a lot of the land issues that we’ve seen in Honduras. Granted, I think the Xiomara government is very particular about not wanting to violently evict communities or any protesters, and they do everything possible to avoid that. And the fact that that happened with the Garífuna is, I think, more telling of the different de facto powers that are operating inside the state than it is the actual central government and its ability to control everything.
That was my presentation to ROCLA. You can find the full version on their website at rocla.org. And just a few things I want to add. In the final part of my presentation, I’m referring to the violent eviction on November 7 of this year. Honduran police and military, all theoretically under President Xiomara’s command, evicted the Garífuna in Punta Gorda from their ancestral lands. Six Garífuna land defenders, including OFRANEH representative Melissa Martínez, were arrested. After a lot of outcry, all charges were dropped against the defenders. But the incident left a chilling effect. Why are evictions still happening under a new progressive government? Obviously, a partial answer to that question is that the judiciary is not under the control of President Xiomara, and instead is the same one that was put in place under the previous government.
But OFRANEH says the eviction and the attacks have to do with the ongoing structural racism against the Garífuna people in the country, while also pointing to the judicial system’s constant catering to the economic powers and interests of the tourist industry and the wealthy in the country. I think it’s also both.
I also think that attacks against land defenders, including evictions and arrests, will not completely go away under President Xiomara. The current administration, whether by force or through power negotiation, will be forced into deals and alliances with the economic elite. They, like all governments, are forced to negotiate power. Land defenders and environmentalists will continue to go up against economic interests and likely not receive much active protection or backing from the Honduran government.
That is the episode for today. I’m recording during the last few days of 2022. I want to wish you all a fantastic new year. Enjoy the celebrations with your friends and family.
That you for listening to the Honduras Now podcasts in 2022. We have lots of great stuff coming up in the new year. This is your host, Karen Spring, wishing you many celebrations and a fantastic year to come. Hasta pronto.