Hondouras

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US Attacks on Xiomara Castro’s Government Escalate After Termination of Extradition Agreement
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 2, 2024
Pablo Meriguet


Press conference of the Libre Party on September 1. Photo: Libre Party

A series of attacks from the US Embassy and the local oligarchy have sought to undermine the progressive government in Honduras.

Following the termination of the extradition agreement between Honduras and the United States requested by President Xiomara Castro, the Central American country has experienced a political earthquake. President Castro’s decision was taken after the US Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, made statements to Honduran media questioning the meeting of several Honduran officials with Venezuelan officials.

In light of this decision, the right-wing opposition in Honduras has accused the executive branch of making the decision due to alleged relations between some government officials and criminal groups. Such rumors increased after Congressman Carlos Zelaya – brother of former President Manuel Zelaya (ousted in a coup d’état in 2009) – said that in 2013 he was in a meeting where a drug trafficker was present. Carlos Zelaya clarified that this meeting was not a meeting known or ordered by his brother or by the current President of the country, Xiomara Castro, but rather that it was a personal meeting. For the time being, the congressman announced that he would resign from his political post to be investigated so that he can clarify that there is no connection between criminal groups linked to drug trafficking and the political party Liberty and Refoundation (Libre), which is currently in power.

“I am going to present my resignation to the National Congress as congressman and as secretary of the Congress to strip myself of any kind of shielding I may have and to be investigated,” said Congressman Zelaya. He also stated that he would have no objection to appear before the US justice system to prove his innocence if the US government so requires.

Carlos Zelaya’s son is José Manuel Zelaya, who was until recently, Secretary of Defense. The opposition quickly tried to link the father’s situation with the son. But José Manuel Zelaya has declared that he will also resign from his post as Secretary of Defense to submit to a thorough investigation by the Honduran justice system. “The mission of the Libre Party is above the exercise of a public office, for this reason, and to be investigated with complete freedom, I have submitted my resignation as Minister of Defense to President Xiomara Castro, highlighting the integrity and honor of my Father Carlos Zelaya who has voluntarily appeared before the MP to testify about a video in meeting 11 years ago (2013), with people who were accused of drug trafficking. We will continue fighting for the truth,” said the former Secretary of Defense. Given this resignation, Xiomara Castro appointed Rixi Moncada Godoy as the new Secretary of Defense. Moncada is, for now, the presidential pre-candidate of the Libre Party for the 2025 elections.

Political persecution as punishment for defending Honduras’ sovereignty

In a statement released after an extraordinary meeting of the National Coordination of the Libre Party, they declared that this new attack is part of a plot to carry out a new coup d’état in Honduras because the Castro government has not submitted to Washington’s directives and because it sovereignly “dared” to terminate the extradition agreement. In addition, it was warned that one objective of the conspirators is to prevent the holding of free and democratic elections in 2025. Therefore, the party has condemned and rejected the “interfering actions of the Embassy of the United States of America by attacking the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces and the former Minister of Defense, violating international principles and conventions, trying to provoke the destabilization of the armed forces”.

In addition, the Libre Party decided to give a vote of confidence to the public officials who chose to resign from their positions so that they could be investigated transparently: “To recognize the voluntary appearance before the Public Prosecutor’s Office of comrade congressman Carlos Armando Zelaya, and his resignation from his position in the National Congress, as well as the resignation of comrade Rafael Sarmiento, who have made themselves immediately available to the national and international investigative bodies”.

Finally, President Castro’s political party decided to call for a mass mobilization on September 15 to support the government of Xiomara Castro and reject foreign interference that seeks to destabilize the democratically elected government. “The Libre Party was born in the streets, we will remain active and mobilized throughout the country to continue fighting the oligarchy and the neoliberal, opprobrious, and corrupt system. For a new triumph in the primary and general elections of 2025. WE RESIST AND WE WILL WIN!” concludes the communiqué.

Frente a la guerra desatada contra la Presidenta Xiomara Castro con el objeto de promover un nuevo golpe de Estado por la élite conservadora, en contra de Libre, nos pronunciamos de la siguiente manera:

Reunida este día domingo 1 de septiembre de 2024, en Sesión Extraordinaria,… pic.twitter.com/pl1rgR6sRd

— Partido Libre (@PartidoLibre) September 2, 2024

Many have also pointed out the hypocrisy of accusing the left and progressive movement of links with narcotraffickers when politicians from the far-right National Party, including former president Juan Orlando Hernández, have been convicted and extradited over charges of exporting hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/09/ ... agreement/

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Honduras Reveals List of Right-Wing Politicians Investigated for Drug Trafficking


Honduran Defense Minister Rixi Moncada (C), 2024. Photo: X/ @diario504hn

September 4, 2024 Hour: 8:05 am

Trials initiated in the U.S. are selective due to the activities of corrupt networks, Defense Ministry said.
On Tuesday, Honduran Security Minister Gustavo Sanchez and Defense Minister Rixi Moncada revealed a list of opposition politicians who are under investigation for drug trafficking.

This information was made public during a press conference led by President Xiomara Castro, who denounced that plans for a coup against her are still being carried out. Sanchez and Moncada indicated that 33 opposition politicians have been convicted or are under investigation in the United States for drug trafficking-related crimes.

The Security Minister mentioned 26 cases involving members of the National Party, including former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison “for turning Honduras into a narco-state,” and his brother Juan Antonio Hernandez, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking. Another notorious case involves Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who received money from the Los Cachiros cartel and Alexander Ardón for his 2009 presidential campaign.

The Defense Minister detailed that there are seven ongoing drug trafficking investigations in U.S. courts related to the Liberal Party. One of these investigations involves Mauricio Villeda, the former presidential candidate of the Liberal Party and current member of the National Congress.


In the trial against former President Hernandez, Villeda was mentioned as having received around US$250,000 from the Los Cachiros cartel in exchange for helping Carlos “El Negro” Lobo recover assets that had been seized.

“The entire state security system was dismantled. They used our territory as a bridge to introduce cocaine into the United States, turning it into a paradise for drug traffickers. This happened during the 12 years and seven months of the narco-dictatorship. Radars were disabled. The drug trafficking route, which uses our seas and airspace, is controlled from Key West in the United States,” the Security Minister said.

“They reformed the law protecting the sovereignty of the airspace, obstructing the possibility of shooting down planes trafficking drugs. As has been demonstrated on multiple occasions, trials initiated in the U.S. are selective due to the activities of corrupt networks involving police, military personnel, prosecutors, judges, magistrates, and law firms,” Moncada pointed out.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/honduras ... afficking/

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Honduran President Xiomara Castro Accuses Biden Administration of Plotting Against Her
By Hernán Viudes - October 22, 2024 0


[Source: derecholatinamerica.com]

“The interference and interventionism of the U.S., as well as its intention to direct Honduran politics through its Embassy and other representatives, is intolerable.”

The categorical post by the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, exposed foreign interventionism in her country, which is not new but has intensified during her administration.


Xiomara Castro [Source: gchumanrights.org]

As detailed by social leader Luis Méndez of Mesa 11 and CELAC Social, “we cannot lose sight of the historical hegemony of the United States in the region. Over a century of interference and dependence, in the case of Honduras, a country marked by the mining and banana enclave of the past century.”

The exploitation of gold and silver in the mines of Rosario, San Juancito with the Rosario Mining Company, the place where the United States established its first embassy, and the banana enclave with the United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company in the first half of the 20th century are two key events to contextualize the role of the U.S. in Honduras and the region.


Stamp with image of Rosario mining operations in San Juancito. [Source: en.wikipedia.org]

The attack and overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, organized from U.S. geo-military laboratories in Honduras, demonstrate that, beyond any economic development initiatives from the U.S. for the region, its supreme interest was always its geo-political and geo-strategic control.

Its false “Alliance for Progress” initiative during the presidency of John F. Kennedy was merely an excuse to implement the blockade against Cuba, and in the 1980s, the establishment of the Palmerola military base in Comayagua. It was part of a strategy to contain the advance of the left on the continent, particularly supporting the Nicaraguan counter-revolution and weakening the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) project in El Salvador.

It was the United States that planned and carried out the political-military coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the first “soft coup” of the 21st century, which aimed to contain the advance of the popular project represented by ALBA.

Currently, interference under the representation of the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Laura F. Dogu, is a continuation of a historic project of American control and domination over the governments of the region.

The exception is the sovereign government of Nicaragua, which in 2018 expelled and declared Laura Dogu “persona non grata” for being part of the destabilization project and attempt to overthrow President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.


Laura F. Dogu [Source: amcham.org]

After being expelled from Nicaragua, the U.S. appointed Dogu as ambassador to Honduras to counteract the advance of the left in the region. She has training and experience in foreign intervention in sovereign decisions of other countries: She served as foreign policy adviser to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff.

The official embassy portal itself acknowledges this interference, albeit with euphemisms: “She left that country stating that ‘investors must be aware of the physical, financial, and reputational risks of doing business in Nicaragua.’” With these credentials, she arrived in Honduras to carry out a similar agenda.

“Local Foundations and NGOs”
Behind the U.S. developmental guidelines and the false pretense of safeguarding “democracy,” international and local actors have aligned themselves to limit and destabilize President Castro’s administration, and to influence the upcoming 2025 general election, pushing for a return to the traditional system of governments servile to northern interests.

The role of NGOs and foundations controlled by USAID and NED, under the guise of “social aid, anti-corruption efforts, freedom of expression, and the false war on drugs,” serves as the perfect excuse to boycott popular, leftist and progressive governments. To justify their interference, they always label them as “corrupt,” and they associate “freedom” with the economic interests of local elites and U.S. companies.

Among the most influential NGOs and foundations in Honduras is the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ), founded by a group of Hondurans and Americans and funded by USAID and the State Department. One of its key areas of attack on the government is the criticism over the “high energy losses in Honduras.”

To address this, they “urgently require the unification of efforts to reduce losses.” In doing so, they question one of the most important and structural public policies of Xiomara Castro’s government: the recovery of the energy sector, now understood as a human right, no longer as the loot of businessmen who, for decades, accumulated capital by selling energy to the state at high costs.

The destabilizing role of the National Anti-Corruption Council (CNA) has a distinguishing feature in its method of infiltration: the CNA is led by an Assembly composed of representatives from 12 civil society organizations, including business chambers, churches and the media. Through and with the funding of the Council, the United States intervenes in Honduras.

The third organization is the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise, whose “mission is to contribute to national economic development through the strengthening of Free Enterprise.”

As social leader Luis Méndez explains, “these NGOs and foundations receive money that they then channel into a communication project to carry out a campaign of constant aggression against the country’s refoundation project.”

The “narco video” of destabilization
The Secretary of the National Congress and Xiomara Castro’s brother-in-law, Carlos Zelaya Rosales (brother of former President Zelaya Rosales and father of the Minister of Defense, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales), appeared before the Public Ministry and confessed to having met with a group of drug traffickers in the context of the 2013 election.

There, they discussed the possibility of providing financial resources for the campaign of the now-ruling party Libre. Several years later, Insight Crime, an NGO that works on journalistic investigations into drug trafficking and organized crime, released the news known as the “narco video,” in which Carlos Zelaya Rosales is seen with known criminals in the country.


Carlos Zelaya Rosales [Source: reportarsinmiedo.org]

In this regard, President Castro stated at a press conference: “I condemn all types of negotiations between drug traffickers and politicians.” Subsequently, the president denounced having detected “movements within the Armed Forces” aimed at carrying out a coup d’état.

This was compounded by the public statements made by Ambassador Dogu regarding the visit of the Minister of Defense to Venezuela and his meeting with Vladimir Padrino, which internally triggered a media onslaught from the corporate press and NGOs controlled by the embassy.

In light of this situation, President Castro ordered Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina to “denounce” the country’s Extradition Treaty with the United States, as a powerful tool to counter U.S. interference in her government.

This incident of the “narco video” puts several issues into perspective: First, the radical distancing that must exist between “the government’s Refoundation” project and issues related to drug trafficking and corruption; second, any political party or current allied with drug trafficking and narcopolitics is destined, sooner or later, to perish; third, narco-politics is a product of former President Juan Orlando Hernández, extradited to the United States, and is a hallmark of the National Party and the Honduran right, and, fourth, the situation exposes the false U.S. policy in the fight against drugs, given the role played by the DEA and the State Department in the anti-drug efforts.


Protesters mock U.S.-backed dictator Juan Orlando Hernández [Source: reportarsinmiedo.org]

The structural reforms of Xiomara Castro
The Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE) was established as a result of the struggle of social, Indigenous and popular organizations that formed the National Front of Popular Resistance after the coup d’état against Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

During the current government of Xiomara Castro, a series of policies have been implemented that affect the interests of economic and political groups, sectors that have historically divided the state and its institutions for personal, family and corporate interests rather than for the population.

Among these, we list:

The repeal of the Employment and Economic Development Zones Law (ZEDE), which implied a loss of national sovereignty.
The proposed Tax Justice Law, still not finalized but already heavily criticized by business chambers.
Honduras’s denunciation of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
The National Electric Energy Company (ENEE), and the service considered a human right, with subsidies for families consuming 150 kilowatts or less monthly.
The order not to renew more than 200 trusts that were in the hands of private banking.
A subsidy of 10 lempiras (about 40 cents of a dollar) per gallon of fuel.
Improvements to the road network, among others.
At the level of foreign policy, the following actions have generated discomfort in the United States:

The severing of relations between Honduras and Taiwan and the establishment of relations with the People’s Republic of China.
The close relationship of the Honduran government with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The recognition by the Honduran government of the electoral results in Venezuela in 2024, in favor of President Nicolás Maduro.
The profound changes of the Xiomara Castro government are evident in Honduran society. Eugenio Sosa is a sociologist and director of the National Institute of Statistics. He says that: “Xiomara found 73.6% of Honduran households in poverty, and by 2024, the trend is that households in that condition will be at 62.9%. Meanwhile, extreme poverty decreased from 53.7% to 40.1% of households.” The economy is also returning to a path of order and less inequality: “In 2022, due to the geopolitical effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine, inflation reached 9.80%. In 2023, it decreased to 5.19%, and it is expected to close in 2024 at 4.96%.” Various social indicators from the Institute reflect this: “The unemployment rate in 2021 was 8.6%, in 2023 it dropped to 6.4%, and for 2024, it is expected to be 5.2%.”


Eugenio Sosa [Source: Photo courtesy of Hernan Viudes]

The improvement in the indices is related to the reactivation of the economy and the increase in public and social investment. Investment in infrastructure and the revitalization of agriculture have increased. This has allowed food insecurity to decrease from 28% to 18%, according to the World Food Program (WFP).

For human rights attorney Leticia Salomón, Xiomara Castro’s government has helped Honduras “achieve progress in health and education, in addition to the repair and construction of airports and roads. She implemented a social policy focused on school supplies and meals, seeds and fertilizers for farmers, and financial assistance for obtaining housing for low- and middle-income families.”


Leticia Salomón [Source: Photo courtesy of Hernan Viudes]

But there are many pending issues for the government: “Reforming or eliminating the laws that supported the abuses of the previous government, related to corruption and drug trafficking. In addition, there is the need to restructure the political, business, media, and religious opposition, supported by international opposition, particularly by the U.S. Embassy,” Salomón says.

Precisely, that is the main challenge for the ruling Libre Party in the 2025 elections, and what the alliances of local elites with the U.S. Embassy want to condition and, if possible, block.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/1 ... ainst-her/