Legal reflections on the political crisis in the national congress

Legal reflections on the political crisis in the national congress
FEBRUARY 3, 2022
By: Joaquín A. Mejía Rivera* and Ana A. Pineda H

From Legitimacy of Origin to Legitimacy of Exercise
Article 1 of the Constitution states that Honduras is a state governed by the rule of law. According to the UN Secretary-General’s Report on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, the rule of law can be defined as a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the state itself, are subject to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It also requires that measures be taken to ensure respect for the principles of the rule of law, equality before the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legality, non-arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency.
In the same vein, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice establishes in its SCO-623-2013 ruling of 22 November 2016, that every rule of law aims to achieve the general welfare of its inhabitants, which are enshrined throughout the Constitution of the Republic as human and fundamental rights, with a series of formal and material guarantees, enshrining the division of powers and the principles of legitimacy and legality. These are all aimed at achieving the consolidation of peace and universal democracy.
From the previous sentence, it is important to highlight the principles of legality and legitimacy as essential aspects of the rule of law, as they prevent the omnipotence or tyranny of majorities, in the words of the French sociologist Alain Touraine. These two principles are what distinguish a democratic regime from a totalitarian regime such as fascism, Nazism or Stalinism, which enjoyed, at least at some point, the support of the majorities.
The horrors perpetrated by these regimes have taught us that the will of the majorities alone is not enough to guarantee a democratic system, since, as Luis Ferrajoli points out, “democracy does not consist in any way in the despotism of the majority”, for if it did, the Nazi (Holocaust) and Stalinist (Gulag) concentration camps could be classified as democratic only because both regimes enjoyed parliamentary majorities and, consequently, legitimacy of origin.
In this sense, legality ensures that the decision is the result of the will of the majority, and legitimacy ensures that the content of the majority’s decision does not violate the higher values contained in the constitution of the republic, including democracy itself, human rights, human dignity and the rule of law.
Therefore, following Max Weber, the 128 deputies of the National Congress enjoy indisputable legitimacy of origin, since their mandate comes from the manifestation of the principle of popular sovereignty expressed in the will of the majorities through free and authentic elections. However, as the jurist Romel Vargas points out, this mandate is not a blank cheque that the sovereign has granted from the ballot box to be exercised as it pleases or against the interests of its voters in particular and society in general.
Therefore, this legitimacy is not sufficient, nor can it be invoked by the deputies to exercise power and authority arbitrarily, but rather a legitimacy of exercise is required in the sense that their acts are based on the expression of the citizenry and do not violate human dignity and rights or run counter to the other higher values enshrined in the Constitution and to the conditions necessary to guarantee the validity of legal acts.
2. Legality and legitimacy as elements of the validity of legal actsIn the light of Article 1 of the Constitution, in a democratic society legality and legitimacy are two sides of the same coin, and in a true rule of law it implies two aspects:
That the requirements on the way in which legal acts are carried out and produced must be fulfilled in order to be considered existing (legality).That the requirements regarding their content, that is, their effects or meanings, must be met in order for them to be considered valid and, therefore, effective (legitimacy).Therefore, according to Luis Prieto Sanchís, for a legal act to be legally valid and effective, it must comply with certain conditions of form (formal) and certain conditions of content (material). The formal conditions have to do, firstly, with who carried out the act of creation, i.e. the requirement that it was carried out by the body competent to produce it; and, secondly, with how it was produced, i.e. the requirement that the established procedure was observed.
The formal conditions seek to ensure that legal acts cannot be manifested in any manner, but only in the manner prescribed by the legal system. In order to establish a formal defect, it is therefore only necessary to look at the body which produced the normative act and the procedure it followed.
In this sense, the Constitution of the Republic and the Organic Law of the Judiciary provide that with the concurrence of at least five deputies, the provisional board of directors will be organised, which will be presided over by the Secretary of State in the Offices of Governance, Justice and Decentralisation (art. 194 of the Constitution and 4 of the Organic Law of the Legislative Power). It is public knowledge that this Secretary of State failed to comply with the parliamentary techniques that make the act legal, in terms of verifying the quorum prior to the start of the session – even though it is obvious. Then, in accordance with the rules for debating draft decrees and motions, he announced the agenda for the day (election of the provisional board of directors), and then received the proposed motions, read them out in full and submitted them for debate in the order in which they were to be debated.
This space is extremely important, as it allows the deputies to freely express their opinions on the subject of the motion and allows the deputy making the motion to defend or clarify his or her proposal, and then to continue with the act of voting with half plus one of those present and to end with the solemn act of swearing in, and not in the midst of non-conformity and disorder. These formal conditions of the act of installation of the provisional board of directors were not observed, generating a serious defect in the object and form, which obviously entails legal consequences that affect the perfection of the act, both in its validity and its effectiveness, preventing the subsistence or execution of the act.
The material conditions, on the other hand, relate to how the legal acts created must be and how they must be justified, i.e. what they can prohibit, command or permit. In order to check a material defect, an interpretation is needed to determine whether or not the legal act in question contradicts the values contained in the Constitution of the Republic. Bearing in mind that representative democracy, popular sovereignty and the rule of law are essential principles of our constitutional framework, it can be concluded that these are violated by the legal effects of the act by which the provisional board of directors was elected.
If this original act does not meet the conditions of validity and effectiveness analysed above, the other acts arising from it are also vitiated by nullity. In this regard, it can be said that, in principle, the act of convening the session to elect the board of directors in ownership continued with the defects of nullity, when having been convened at a certain time and at the headquarters of the National Congress, the convened session is not attended and a new convocation is extended a few minutes before it is held and in a distant place, which makes it an impossible act. Given the seriousness of this flaw, another provisional board of directors was formed, which also failed to comply with the procedure, but which has been exercising legislative functions with an apparent higher level of legitimacy, that is, the support of an important sector of the citizenry, and of the president of the Republic, relieving any flaw derived from the original act. However, this should not be the rule in a genuine rule of law.
3. ConclusionThe crisis in the National Congress goes beyond the legal sphere and should be resolved through democratic dialogue, that is, dialogue that seeks to transform existing conflictive relations into concrete solutions in order to avoid major crises that undermine the rule of law, the general interests of society and the democracy to which they are beholden. The crisis of power in the National Congress is a reflection of how diverse society is in political and ideological terms, and this requires building a solid framework of permanent consensus within this branch of government for the design of the legislative agenda.
The 128 deputies have genuine democratic legitimacy, but this does not imply that they can exercise power outside or above the law and the Constitution. If this were the case, it would be a distorted conception of representative democracy and a mockery of the principle of popular sovereignty. A true rule of law has a Constitution that is respected and complied with, which is achieved by “strengthening genuine democracy, the effective protection of fundamental rights, respect for the principle of legality, control of administrative activity and an authentic division of powers”. Only in this way is it possible to “maintain the order and social peace that the human person yearns for, as the supreme goal of society and the State”, as stated by the Constitutional Chamber in the aforementioned SCO-623-2013 ruling.
The way out of this institutional crisis is to understand that the general welfare and human dignity should be the guiding principle of the national political class, and that democracy is not only a political system, but also a system of values on which the actions of those who exercise public power and a mandate of representation are based.
* Researcher at ERIC-SJ and deputy coordinator of the EJDH.
* University lecturer and researcher.

Jesuit Fr. Melo on the presidential victory of Xiomara Castro in Honduras

Jesuit Fr. Melo on the presidential victory of Xiomara Castro in Honduras: “We are a happy people after a long bout of sadness.”

by David Inczauskis, SJ | Dec 9, 2021 | Current Events, Global Catholicism, In the News, Justice

The regime of the narco dictator Juan Orlando Hernández and his right-wing National Party of Honduras fell on Sunday, November 28, 2021, with the election of the left-wing Xiomara Castro de Zelaya of the Party for Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE). Ms. Castro secured the most votes that a presidential candidate has ever obtained in Honduran history. David Inczauskis, SJ, interviewed Fr. Ismael Moreno, SJ, in El Progreso, Honduras, about Ms. Castro’s victory. Fr. Melo is the director of Radio Progreso / ERIC, a communications and social research ministry of the Central American Jesuits. 

Describe the reality in Honduras behind Xiomara Castro’s victory. What’s been going on in Honduras that led to her election?

What do we see behind the 2021 elections? We see a Honduran society that from my point of view has three ingredients of a profound crisis. The first is an economic model that permanently produces inequalities. Here in Honduras there are–at least five years ago according to a study–five people, five men, who have a fortune equivalent to the combined minimum annual salary of 2 million Hondurans. And this is increasing! It’s a model that produces inequalities, that concentrates wealth, that takes away opportunities from millions of Hondurans. 

The second ingredient of the crisis is a development model based on extractivism, on exploiting natural resources, which makes the country move inevitably towards greater environmental degradation, compounded by the problem of global warming. Honduras has become one of the most vulnerable countries to natural phenomena. 

And the third ingredient of the crisis is an institutional state of affairs that is moving increasingly towards ungovernability. That’s to say we have a political system that favors small groups, that’s responsible for corruption, for impunity, for the violation of human rights. These three ingredients of a crisis are behind Ms. Xiomara Castro’s victory in these elections.

In the U.S. press, Ms. Castro has been called a socialist. Is she a socialist? What are Ms. Castro’s economic proposals?

I don’t think that Ms. Castro’s political project is a socialist one, beginning with my conviction that she doesn’t have a socialist model as her horizon. Better put, she has a great desire to restore democracy, and her triumph is largely due to the deterioration that we’ve lived through in Honduras. Honduran society is sick of corruption, of impunity, of the violation of human rights, of organized crime, including high public officials connected to drug trafficking. So I don’t think she’s a socialist. 

Moreover, she represents a coalition that stretches from the left that supported Mel Zelaya Rosales before the 2009 coup to the Party for Innovation and Social Democratic Unity (PINU) and other parties of the center right. It’s very hard to say that it’s a coalition that wants to move towards a socialist project. In this coalition, there are some tied to the Party for Liberty and Refoundation who come from a socialist tradition and are interested in orienting the country towards a project that they call “democratic socialism.” But I believe that Ms. Castro has neither the coalition nor the capacity to push for such a project. 

The Honduran project is not ideological. It is not a political ideology. It’s about humanity. It’s about a society that has been in such extreme conditions that it’s just looking for healthcare, for education, for truly Honduran responses, for employment, for more access, especially among the youth, to a bit more dignity and to overcome such high levels of violence. Those are the basics. I think that all that about a socialist project is not real, and I don’t think it will happen in the future. We’ll have to start a debate about what’s the best political project for Honduras, but, right now, it’s not the project that matters but the necessity of recovering people’s dignity, to have work, healthcare, and education for our people.

From a Christian liberationist perspective, how can one interpret Ms. Castro’s victory? We know that the Church does not identify itself with a particular party or politician, but we also know that the mission of the Church has a political dimension. Where do the reign of God and Ms. Castro’s proposals coincide?

They coincide in the search for justice and the dignifying of Honduran society, especially the most destitute. I believe that Ms. Castro incarnates the yearning of many of us in the Church who are looking to attend to the cry of the poor. If I had to summarize, I would say that our current mission is to listen and attend to the cry of the poor majorities in Honduras. I think that Ms. Castro situates herself in that dimension. But of course the Church must maintain clear autonomy and independence from any political party and from any government because the mission of the Church is to be the critical consciousness of society and to defend the rights of the most humbled, oppressed people. 

Insofar as a government attends to the cry for justice and the grievances of the poorest people, the Church can be close to its project, always without getting confused, always maintaining its independence. Insofar as a government distances itself from the societal demands of the impoverished, the Church has to become a critical consciousness, a channel for denunciations and a defender of the rights of the poorest. 

Right now, I think Ms. Castro is identified with the search for justice. The Church, as a continuation of the mission to historicize the reign of God, also searches for justice. We are together, but we are not married. We are simply together in our identification with the cry of the poor. 

Help us understand Ms. Castro’s religious identity and rhetoric. 

Look. Ms. Castro is Catholic. Now, she is quite resentful towards church hierarchy because she has expressed that the Church closed its doors to her after the coup. In fact, for a certain time, she was not permitted inside a church building. She’s said as much in a few close circles, but she is Catholic. She has looked for closeness to the Church. She’s looked for people in the Church who would listen to her, who would heed her. 

During the campaign and after her victory, Castro has spoken about LIBRE’s martyrs. Who are these martyrs? What do these martyrs have in common with the martyrs of the Bible and of church history?

The martyrs to whom Ms. Castro is referring are those people in Honduras who, for their commitment to justice, for their love of a new society, lost their lives. They were killed. They are martyrs who represent a Honduran tradition of commitment, of dedication. They are martyrs who were assassinated during the coup and after it. They have names like Berta Cáceres or Margarita Murillo here along the northern Honduran coast. They have names like Carlos Escaleras in the zone of the Aguán. They are people who had faith in others. They had faith in justice. They had faith that the future would be one of dignification. 

How are these martyrs associated with those of the Bible and of church history? Well, they are associated because they had faith in humanity, faith in God, faith in justice. They were committed to social transformation. It has to do with humanity. The martyrs were not only humans. They defended the cause of humanity, and, in humanity, God is present. 

Upon giving their lives or upon having their lives taken away, they were enmeshed in the church’s tradition of martyrs in which God’s cause is humanity’s cause. As the church fathers would say, where the glory of God shines, justice and right shine. Therefore, these martyrs actively or passively sought for God’s glory to shine in humanity. Therefore, there is an intimate unity between the martyrs of the people and the martyrs of faith in Jesus Christ. 

We are about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutiérrez. In that book Gutiérrez speaks of dependency theory and dependency’s noxious effects in Latin America. Does dependency theory continue to accurately capture Honduran reality? What will Ms. Castro do to overcome Honduras’ economic dependency?

Dependency theory is a valid norm here in Honduras because dependency theory tends to present contrasts, profound contradictions in society: the development of some at the cost of the underdevelopment of others. That’s to say, the accumulation of capital is at the cost of the impoverishment of the great majorities. As long as we fail to break from that contradiction, which is a fundamental one, we will only move forward with great difficulty. The problem of justice in Honduras is that it cannot be resolved in patches. It cannot be resolved by cosmetic changes. It cannot be resolved through welfare. Why? Because the Honduran problem is a response to structural roots producing violence, producing inequalities, and dependence is intimately connected to poverty. As such, dependency theory says that development produces underdevelopment. In that sense, it’s still relevant here in Honduras. 

Ms. Castro, in as much as she hits on these dynamisms that produce development and underdevelopment, will be putting in practice a profound process of transformation. I think that throughout this century what we’ve had here in Honduras have been mere patches. It’s been welfare that has hidden the deep reality. And this means accumulating conflicts. If I had to summarize the political history of Honduras, I’d say it’s a history of continual processes that accumulate conflicts. Ms. Castro’s task is not to continue accumulating conflicts but to expose these conflicts in order to get to the bottom of what’s producing millions of people without work, without opportunities, with wealth concentrated more and more in fewer and fewer hands. To break with this is Ms. Castro’s task as well as that of those who are committed to backing this process of transformation. 

Generally, Radio Progreso has offered a very positive interpretation of Ms. Castro’s victory, but is there anything of concern? What of her politics deserves criticism?

She’s yet to put policies in place, but still one can perceive some concerns. One is the amount of family members in her government. Her son went on campaign with her. Her other son was with her the entire campaign. Her daughter ran for Congress. Her husband was president, and he’s her presidential advisor. That’s worrying. It’s an expression of nepotism. We must be on alert. For example, there’s a serious issue. According to the Constitution of the Republic, her daughter, who won a seat in Congress, should not be a congresswoman. Ms. Castro should do her part to make her daughter step down. It’s what’s best for the common good, for their image. It’s what’s best all around. 

Since arriving in Honduras a few days ago, I’ve noticed that many folks are especially hopeful. Most are abuzz with happiness. What’s happening in Honduras?

What’s happening is that we’ve been carrying for so many years an enormous burden: disenchantment, anxieties, fear, uncertainty. I believe that, with the electoral results that gave the win to Ms. Castro, people feel that a big weight has been lifted. Though she’s yet to do anything, we feel that something different is happening. Something has changed. We feel lighter. And that generates happiness. We have a right to life, for our happiness to be prolonged. So we have to just come out and say it: we are a happy people after a long bout of sadness. 

What needs to happen is for that happiness to keep its feet on the ground. We must not forget that the reality of violence, misery, and unemployment remains a wound in contemporary life and that these politicians of today are the same as those of the past. They can play us dirty, including those close to Ms. Castro. That’s why it ought to be happiness but with firm feet, happiness but with a view towards the future, happiness but with a critical word. 

It’s now for us in this early stage to be of critical support. We should never conspire with the government. Even if it achieves much, we should not conspire. For example, the new government has asked for my collaboration, and I have given it. I am going to support but also maintain my autonomy and that of my team. Why? Because our role is always to be the critical consciousness of society and of the established power. The present danger is to conspire with a power that would later make us lose our freedom, make us lose our identity. And so, happiness, with our gaze placed critically on the future and with our feet placed in the reality that we have to transform and from which we will develop proposals and demand that our elected officials respond to the cry of the poor. 

This abbreviated interview was translated into English from the original Spanish by David Inczauskis, SJ.https://thejesuitpost.org/2021/12/jesuit-fr-melo-on-the-presidential-victory-of-xiomara-castro-in-honduras-we-are-a-happy-people-after-a-long-bout-of-sadness/

Elections in Honduras: The challenge of ending twelve years of neoliberalism

  Mar, 23/11/2021 – 08:40http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/13443

Giorgio Trucchi Nicaragua y Más,

November 23, 2021
https://nuevanicaraguaymas.blogspot.com/2021/11/elecciones-honduras-el-…

Honduras is at the most important crossroads of its recent history

On November 28, more than 5 million Hondurans will be asked to elect the President of the Republic, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 20 to the Central American Parliament, 298 mayors and more than 2 thousand municipal councillors.

As the election date approaches, the political atmosphere has become polarized, conflict has intensified and social tension grown.

No one has forgetten the violent repression of 2017 against those who protested against the gross electoral fraud that prolonged the agony of the current government regime. At that time, more than thirty people lost their lives violently and these crimes have remained in total impunity.

The bloody events of the last few days reawaken the ghosts of that violence and repression.

On November 11, a Liberal Party candidate for councillor, Óscar Moya, was shot several times in Santiago de Puringla (La Paz). Two days later the mayor of Cantarranas (Francisco Morazán) and candidate for reelection for the Liberal Party, Francisco Gaitán, was assassinated.

The following day the leader of the opposition Libertad y Refundación (Libre) Party, Elvir Casaña, and a Liberal Party activist, Luis Gustavo Castellanos, were killed in San Luis (Santa Bárbara) and San Jerónimo (Copán), respectively. Two other activists were wounded in the deadly attack on Castellanos.

On November 15, another attack killed Dario Juarez, a Liberal Party vice-mayor candidate in the municipality of Concordia (Olancho). Two days later, unknown persons made an attempt on the lives of Héctor Estrada, independent candidate for mayor of Campamento (Olancho) and Juan Carlos Carbajal, candidate for mayor of El Progreso for the Salvador Party of Honduras.
 
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras and the National Violence Observatory (ONV) of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), more than 30 violent deaths have been registered in the context of the current electoral process, which is shaping up to be even more violent than that of 2017.

The Observatory reported at least 64 cases of electoral violence up until October 25, including 27 homicides and 11 attacks. To these must be added the most recent attacks that took the lives of five people in five days (as detailed above) and other non-fatal attacks.

The OHCHR condemned these acts of electoral violence “that affect the right to political participation” and urged the authorities to carry out “prompt, thorough and impartial investigations”.

A legacy of impunity

“These murders of local leaders are a prelude to what could happen during and after the elections. Let us remember that all this is happening after the approval in Congress of reforms and laws that deepen the criminalization of social protest and citizen mobilization,” warned Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (Cofadeh).

“They have been practically legalizing repression against those who demonstrate their discontent and defend human rights. These are the results,” she added.

In 2017, repression against those protesting the electoral fraud orchestrated by the ruling National Party claimed the lives of 37 innocent victims (Cofadeh 2018). Of all these cases only one was successfully prosecuted and the charges against the police officer accused of shooting and killing were dismissed.

“The chain of command was never investigated, nor the context in which these deaths were caused. The dictatorship gave the military police guarantees of impunity to capture, torture and execute opponents in the streets. This only generates the conditions for similar and even more violent events to be repeated”, predicted the human rights defender.

In this sense, Cofadeh will be monitoring and denouncing any electoral crimes committed before and during Election Day, as well as violations against people exercising their right to vote.

Three for the presidency

Of the 16 presidential aspirants, only three have a real chance of winning: Xiomara Castro of the opposition Libre Party, who leads most polls; Nasry “Tito” Asfura Zablah of the National Party, main opponent of the former first lady and Yani Rosenthal of the Liberal Party, representing the other traditional party in Honduras but with little chance of victory.

For Xiomara Castro, this is her second attempt to reach the presidency of the country, after the allegations of fraud around the questionable defeat she suffered in 2013 at the hands of Juan Orlando Hernandez.

After the public presentation of her “Government Plan to Refound Honduras 2022-2026”, Castro and Salvador Nasralla (of the Salvador Party of Honduras) formed an alliance, joined by the Innovation and Unity Party (Pinu), some sectors of the Liberal Party and an independent candidacy. In order to join efforts and potential votes, Nasralla renounced his presidential candidacy and supported Libre’s candidacy.

Nasralla, an eccentric, well known sports talk show host, was the 2017 presidential candidate of the Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship, which also included Libre and Pinu and which received the support of a wide range of social, popular and union organizations.

On that occasion, the Alliance denounced the unconstitutionality of a new candidacy of Juan Orlando Hernández, since in Honduras the Constitution prohibited presidential reelection. The Alliance also mobilized for weeks against the electoral fraud that deprived Nasralla of the presidential seat, with the tacit consent of the United States, the European Union and the OAS.

“Tito” Asfura, popularly known as “Papi a la orden”, has been mayor of Tegucigalpa for two terms (2014-2022) for the ruling National party. A businessman with more than 30 years occupying governmental and legislative positions, he was a shareholder of an offshore company in Panama while still a public official. In the end, the said company ended up under the control of Banco Ficohsa, owned by the powerful Atala Faraj family.

In June of this year, the Court of Appeals suspended a pre-trial hearing against Asfura for abuse of authority, use of false documents, embezzlement of public funds, fraud and money laundering. In order to reactivate the hearing, the Superior Court of Accounts will have to carry out a special audit on the funds investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

According to information published in recent days, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa has also been linked to the notorious “Diamante” corruption case involving the mayor of San José, Costa Rica, Johnny Araya, who is being investigated by Costa Rican authorities for alleged bribes in exchange for public works.

The third candidate is former congressman and banker Yani Rosenthal, who in 2017 was indicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the United States for participating in financial transactions using illicit proceeds (drug money laundering). He voluntarily turned himself in and was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York but returned to Honduras in mid-2020.

Both the investigations carried out by US prosecutors and the media Pandora Papers investigation revealed the connection between the Rosenthal family, one of the richest in the region, and several offshore companies that may have been used to launder money.

Programs and proposals

In her government program, Xiomara Castro points out the need to rebuild the democracy broken by the 2009 coup and to re-found the country through a Constituent Assembly that “gathers all sectors to agree on the legal bases of their future coexistence in a new consensual order”, leading the nation towards the construction of a democratic socialist state. While, by contrast, both Asfura and Rosenthal propose the same worn out neoliberal recipes that have led Honduras to be among the poorest and most unequal countries of the continent.

“Xiomara proposes a government of national reconciliation that includes all sectors of the opposition. A government that aims to overcome these disastrous years that have deepened the neoliberal model, privatizing services, ceding national territory, handing over public goods, expanding extractivism, putting national sovereignty up for sale,” said Gilberto Ríos, candidate for congressman for Libre.

The social movement leader explained that Libre’s government plan proposes to move from a deeply oligarchic State to a democratic socialist one. Among many other points, it intends to repeal all those laws and reforms approved by the dictatorship, which deeply harm the interests and rights of the immense majority of the Honduran population.

Thus, we are talking about, among others, the Hourly Employment Law that deepens labor insecurity and annuls the rights of workers, the Secrecy Law that blocks public auditing of State funds, as well as the Surveillance Law  that allows spying on the political opposition and too the Organic Law of the Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs) that violates national sovereignty. It is also expected to reverse reforms made to the Penal Code that criminalize social protest and mobilization.

“It will be a more redistributive government, of social works and projects, that defends human rights, consistent with the needs and security of the population. In this sense – clarified Ríos – we differentiate ourselves from the other candidates and political parties because they are openly neoliberal and represent the interests of the Honduran oligarchy, transnational capital and the old bipartisanship. That is what it is all about: defeating the traditional bipartisanship and neoliberalism”.

How is Honduras now?

The Central American country arrives at these elections in difficult conditions, to put it euphemistically.

Honduras currently ranks among the most unequal countries in Latin America, with 62 percent of the population mired in poverty and almost 40 percent in extreme poverty (EPHPM 2020). According to a recent report by the National Institute of Statistics (INE 2021), removed from the institution’s website twelve hours after its publication, in July 2021 poverty had reached 73.6 percent of the population.

That increase is also the result of disappointing government management in the face of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the two hurricanes that struck the country last year.

According to figures from the Technical Unit for Food and Nutritional Security (Utsan), 1.3 million Hondurans face food insecurity and almost 350 thousand people are in a “critical situation”. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has reached 10% of the economically active population (EAP), perhaps the highest in the Latin American region. There are at least 4 million Hondurans with employment problems and more than 700 thousand unemployed workers.

Faced with this scenario, thousands of families have taken irregular migration as their only option, the vast majority of whom are being held up at the borders. It is a portrait of one of the deepest tragedies of the last 40 years.

“In the last ten years Honduras has had a frank deterioration, not only in the rule of law in general, in democratic institutionality, in the population’s access to basic services and in the fight against poverty, but also socio-economically. When one looks at all these indicators, one realizes that rather than a failed state, we should speak of a dead state,” said Ismael Zepeda, economist at the Social Forum on Foreign Debt and Development of Honduras (Fosdeh).

Currently Honduras’ public debt exceeds 70% of GDP: the country’s economic growth is concentrated mainly in three sectors: financial, energy and telecommunications.

“These are sectors that do not produce development, nor do they generate redistribution, rather they produce more concentration of weath. In addition, we have an army of more than 250,000 public employees who absorb almost 50% of the budget, while there is a worrying drop in revenue. The situation is unsustainable and will represent a very heavy burden for whoever wins the elections”, explained Zepeda.

For years, the National Party has maintained a supernumerary staff, mainly composed of party activists. In practice, it has plundered the State so as to employ its political leaders and create client networks so as to stay in power.

State reengineering

For the Fosdeh economist, an immediate reengineering of the government, a reconversion of the productive system, a fiscal pact to dynamize the economy and efforts towards progressive taxation are necessary. Likewise, it is imperative to guarantee transparency, accountability and the fight against corruption, while promoting a strategy of internal and external debt reduction.

Finally, the generation of decent jobs, the creation of programs that prevent the deepening of poverty, more equitable management and redistributive policies to reduce social inequality, are also key elements the new government must implement.

“When a country is mired in a multiple crisis and has badly deteriorated, it is easy, so to speak, for a candidate to make promises. The most important thing, then, is not so much what is offered, but the way in which things eventually get done”, concluded Zepeda.

Labor insecurity

The 2009 coup d’état in Honduras not only broke the institutional framework and strengthened the oligarchy and elite power groups, but also allowed the governments that followed the coup to deepen the neoliberal extractivist model, encouraging the plundering of national territory and public wealth and increasingly deregulating the labor market.

For Joel Almendares, secretary general of the United Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the impacts of these policies on labor and union rights have been devastating for the vast majority of the population.

“There has been a growing deregulation of labor, coupled with the deepening of labor flexibilization and insecurity. One of the most nefarious laws has undoubtedly been the Hourly Employment Law: rights have been lost and permanent jobs have been made precarious,” said Almendares.

“There were also companies or institutions that simply changed their name or corporate name and did away with unions. Others created parallel unions to counteract a genuine organizing process,” he added.

Regression

All of these anti-worker measures have negatively impacted the safeguarding of rights.

“There are clear setbacks in the right to free unionization and collective bargaining. The programs to generate employment have been a mockery, tailored to the interests of large transnationals. Juan Orlando Hernández has definitely been a disaster for the labor and union sector”, stated the CUTH general secretary.

Another factor contributing to the deepening of the crisis has been the behavior of the government’s labor authorities.

“Shielding themselves behind the need to generate employment and supposed development, they have been biased and have systematically protected the interests of big national and transnational capital. They have done so at the expense of the rights of workers, abandoning them and allowing the violation of their rights. They have not protected them, and have been their executioners instead,” he lamented.

In view of this situation, the CUTH presented the Libre candidate with the political proposal of the union sector where, among other points, it calls for the immediate repeal of the above mentioned laws, to put a stop to outsourcing and labor insecurity, and to guarantee respect for the Teachers’ Statute and the ILO conventions[1].

The cancer of corruption

On November 17, the feature film “At the edge of the shadows” (you can see it here) was released in a movie theater in Tegucigalpa, a documentary that reflects the web of corruption, impunity, territorial dispossession and violence experienced by the Honduran people, forced to confront perverse plans that operate from the shadows.

Luís Méndez, member of the collective ‘La Cofradía’ that made the documentary, explained that the objective of the work is precisely to show citizens how corruption networks are formed and how they are articulated to involve politicians, public officials, national and transnational economic groups in a way cutting across all society.

The documentary addresses four crucial areas: the looting of Social Security and the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the dispossession of territories and pubic wealth, the co-optation of the justice system and its collusion with corruption, organized crime and the criminalization of protest. The fourth area has to do with the concept of democracy in a context as broken as the Honduran one.

Through key characters and experts, and with the participation of the current head of the Specialized Prosecutor Unit against Corruption Networks (Uferco), Luis Javier Santos, to tie up loose ends, the film rocks the country’s foundations, shaking up the conscience of the people, showing how Honduras is controlled by a criminal network that has ruled since the 2009 coup, and has become entrenched in the state apparatus.

“The documentary provokes disappointment, anger and rage, but also leaves the feeling that we are not defeated, that it is possible to fight, as many organizations and people do from the territories and cities.

In the midst of so much State violence, in the midst of a State held hostage – continued Méndez – there is resistance and struggle. As Berta Cáceres said, our peoples know how to do justice and they do it following their own trajectory, from their resistance, from their struggle for emancipation”.

Enough is enough!

A few days before the elections, the Convergence against Continuity, a platform made up of several organizations and personalities, made a public statement and recalled that these elections “are being held in a context of narco-dictatorship, whose creators came to control the State by violent and unconstitutional means and are not willing to hand over power by democratic political means”.

In this sense, the Convergence ratified its repudiation of “the mafia led by Juan Orlando Hernandez” and warned of the possibility that, in view of an imminent defeat, “he may orchestrate a new and violent electoral fraud by manipulating the voting process and vote counting”.

Finally, they made a vehement call to the Honduran people to “mobilize massively to the polls” and defend their vote “from these anti-democratic machinations”.

They also urged them to punish with their vote “the criminal group that has hijacked the State” and to vote for those candidates “who have shown firm signs of being against the narco-dictatorship, of fighting against corruption and for the defense of national sovereignty”.

Violence against human rights defenders

Several international reports, including “Last Line of Defense” published this year by the British organization Global Witness, point to Honduras as one of the most dangerous places in the world for human rights defenders, especially for those who defend land and common wealth.

The emblematic cases of the murder of Berta Cáceres, the disappearance of the Garífuna activists of Triunfo de la Cruz and the illegal imprisonment of the eight water and life defenders of Guapinol are a clear example of what is happening in the country.
 
The use and abuse of the justice system and the collusion of the State with extractive companies are two of the elements that characterize the systematic violation of human rights in Honduras.

According to Global Witness, in 2020 at least 129 Garifuna and indigenous people suffered attacks for opposing extractive projects and 153 defenders have been murdered in the last decade. In addition, the Center for Information on Business and Human Rights (Ciedh) points to Honduras as the country with the most judicial harassment against human rights defenders.

The situation of women and LGBTI people is also dramatic.

The Women’s Human Rights Observatory of the Women’s Rights Center (CDM) reports that in the first five months of the year, the Public Ministry registered a total of 1,423 complaints of sexual crimes (9.5 per day). Of these, 1,238 were attacks against women (8.1 per day) and 63.4 percent (785) were against minors. These data confirm that in Honduras a woman or girl is sexually assaulted every 3 hours.

In the last ten years, 4,707 women have been murdered in Honduras. 710 were killed in the last two years (2019-2020) and 301 women were victims of femicide up until November 15 of this year. Impunity is practically absolute.

According to the Observatory of Violent Deaths of the Catrachas Lesbian Network, in just over 12 years 390 LGBTI people have been murdered, 17 so far this year. Ninety-one percent of the cases remain in complete oblivion and impunity. Only 9 percent of perpetrators are convicted.

In recent months, a large and representative group of women’s and feminist organizations held a discussion with Xiomara Castro to present their demands and proposals. The activity led to the signing of a ‘State Pact’, the content of which will be implemented if Xiomara is elected as the first woman president of Honduras.

Similarly, in her government plan, Xiomara pledged to implement public policies safeguarding the existence and guaranteed access to fundamental human rights for LGBTI people (p.64).

Voting against the dictatorship

The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh) added its voice “in moments of the battle for survival in the face of the maximum expression of dispossession, fear and violence in the history of our country under a de facto and authoritarian government.”

Although the ballot box will not change Honduras – explains the Copinh communiqué – voting against the dictatorship that governs us will be a step. The Honduran people, for the most part, will cast a vote of rejection in the face of all the accumulated suffering.

The organization co-founded by Berta Cáceres alerted the population that “the conditions for fraud are in place” and expressed that as citizens “we are preparing to reject the electoral fraud at grass roots”.

Finally, Copinh urged the immediate convocation of a Popular and Democratic Constituent Assembly “that will give rise to the reconstruction of our country, assuming the historical demands of the indigenous, black and peasant communities, women, migrant communities, workers, LGBTI community, church sectors, among others, to repeal all legislation that exposes the peoples to the surrender of their territories and the violation of their rights”.

“We call on the peoples – concludes the communiqué – to activate the organizational, articulation and debate processes to achieve Berta Cáceres’ urgent dream of re-founding Honduras. The people of Honduras need a people’s government to confront the economic sectors that have enriched themselves unjustly in these 12 years of attacks on indigenous, black and peasant peoples and the majority of the population”.

The challenge of putting an end to neoliberalism

Undoubtedly, next Sunday’s elections represent a very important move on the Honduran political and social chessboard.

“The citizenry has an enormous desire for change. They want to have an alternative to what they have had to live through during these years. They expect a process to begin of recovery of lost rights. They want to have opportunities, that their territories and national sovereignty be respected,” explained sociologist and political analyst Eugenio Sosa.

“Honduras is at a crossroads. It must choose between the continuity of a regime and its failed model or the beginning of a process of openness and change”, added the analyst.

Will the regime respect an eventual defeat or will it seek, as in 2017, an illegal way to retain power, asks Sosa.

“People have not forgotten what happened four years ago. There is a lot of uncertainty around how the electoral authorities will behave, the vote count, the transmission of results, the identification of poll station personnel to avoid the purchase of credentials. At the same time there is a determination never seen before and Xiomara (Castro) has been able to rescue and bring together a consensus of wide and diverse sectors of Honduran society”, he concluded.

Note
[1] Conventions on freedom of association, collective bargaining, labor relations in the public administration, domestic workers, violence and harassment in the world of work, free, prior and informed consultation

Honduran political situation: same style, same interests, same betrayals

Honduran political situation: same style, same interests, same betrayals

Leticia Salomón

Sociologist

https://radioprogresohn.net/leticia-salomon/coyuntura-politica-hondureno-mismo-estilo-mismo-intereses-mismas-traiciones-%ef%bf%bc/
January 24, 2022

It is common knowledge that there are two urgent challenges that the country must face in the face of the new government:

a) DISMANTLE THE CONCEALING AND IMPUNITY STRUCTURE of corruption in the country;

b) ELIMINATE OR, AS A LAST RESULT, SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCE, THE PARTY POLITIZATION OF KEY INSTITUTIONS OF THE STATE such as the Supreme Court of Justice, the Public Ministry, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the Superior Court of Accounts, among others. Urgent tasks related to the repeal, reform or replacement of the legal framework that supported the government of Juan Orlando Hernández, his party and his close circle of friends, family and co-religionists, all of them accomplices, at the highest level, in the massive looting of state coffers and the total disrespect for the Constitution, laws and procedures governing the functioning of the state machinery, can be grouped around these two issues.
To achieve the above, CONTROL OF THE TWO POWERS OF STATE – Executive and Legislative – IS FUNDAMENTAL, and, derived from their control, the in-depth reform of the Judiciary. Everyone knows the direct and degrading way in which the president of the Executive controlled the Legislative power so that it would function totally subordinate in order to structure the entire legal framework of corruption, impunity and violation of laws and procedures with which they sealed the total defencelessness of Honduran society. The purchase of votes on fundamental issues for the maintenance of this structure within the National Congress became a STYLE OF LEGISLATIVE FUNCTIONING characterised by the flow of millions of dollars, vehicles, perks, travel, per diems, teams of bodyguards, helicopter transfers, private and public planes, individual financing disguised as community support, all with the direct or indirect participation of the Executive.
The last elections gave a resounding and unquestionable victory to the LIBRE party candidate, Xiomara Castro, for a change of figures, party and style in the executive branch. But this triumph was not so resounding in the Legislative branch, where the LIBRE party presented a party majority but not a parliamentary majority (50 deputies out of a total of 128), which added to the 10 deputies of the Salvador de Honduras party, the other member of the opposition coalition, gives a total of 60 votes, five less than the majority needed to elect the new Board of Directors of Congress, which should have been sought from the Liberal party (22 deputies), the Anti-Corruption party (1) and Christian Democracy (1), so as not to resort to the votes of the National party (44), which is directly responsible for the multiple crisis situation in which the country finds itself.
The country’s political situation took an unexpected turn when a group of 20 LIBRE deputies, led by two people who until then had won the sympathy and respect of many militants and independents for their characteristics as true leaders of their party, decided not to heed a summons from the highest authority of their party to discuss the issue of the Board of Directors of Congress, meeting simultaneously in another place and, above all, with deputies from the questioned National party to negotiate their support, as in fact happened. The irregular election of the provisional board of directors of the National Congress produced the following results: 44/44 VOTES FOR THE NATIONAL PARTY, 18/22 votes for the Liberal party, 20/50 for the dissident LIBRE group, 1/1 for the Christian Democracy and 1/1 for the PAC.The above data show very clearly that THE BIG ELECTOR of the provisional Junta – and also of the permanent one, elected in parallel – is the National Party, the same party that hijacked the country’s institutionality; that deformed the independence and ethical integrity of the Legislative power; that is directly responsible for the institutional deterioration of the country’s institutions; that is directly responsible for the deterioration of the country’s institutions; and that is the party that is responsible for the institutional deterioration of the country’s institutions; It is directly responsible for the institutional deterioration of the country and is accused of corruption, of taking advantage of the national budget to benefit its leaders, of covering up for major drug traffickers, and of unconditional support for the president of the republic, who has been accused both at home and abroad of corruption and drug trafficking.
The cynicism, opportunism and manipulation of the two LIBRE dissident leaders’ arguments that, with this support, they have ensured future governability, control of the Board of Directors by the LIBRE party, the fulfilment of President Xiomara Castro’s government plan, AND ALL THIS WITHOUT THE NATIONAL PARTY ASKING THEM FOR ANYTHING IN EXCHANGE! Anyone with any knowledge of how inter-party negotiations work in Congress knows that they are based on concrete requests: so many deputies of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and his deputy, the members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Superior Court of Accounts and others, to which are added the demands of the Liberal deputies managed by the former presidential candidate for that party and ex-convict for money laundering in the United States. All this characterises the same old style and practices to reproduce the same circle of impunity, corruption and control of key state institutions that characterised the nationalist government that is about to come to an end.
This style of handling major congressional decisions is combined with the public’s suspicion, based on another common practice within this style, that millions of dollars, vehicles and perks were used to secure the votes needed to legitimise the new board of directors. The style is most evident when the supposed provisional president moves around with multiple bodyguards, armoured cars, helicopters, satellite phones and a lot of cash, a situation that forces the public to ask where such attention and support for a deputy who until now belonged to a “leftist” party comes from.
With all of the above, it is clear that these dissident gentlemen – today expelled from the LIBRE party – have not understood that the Honduran citizenry gave a clear and forceful mandate to remove the current president and his party from the government, because their performance has exhausted patience, saturated the will and produced the greatest weariness in the history of the country. Sitting down to negotiate with the National Party, repudiated in the presidential elections, was the biggest mistake of these leaders, burying their political future as leaders of integrity, committed and standard bearers of the demanded dismantling of the structure of impunity and corruption bequeathed to us by this government. It is useless for them to try to scare the conservatives with the spectre of the elimination of state powers, of revenge on the perpetrators of the coup d’état, of the hidden intentions of the president and former president Zelaya to keep power and that this whole conflict was concocted by them to create chaos. Much less the attempt to manipulate Libre’s party base by arguing that everything was done so that the party that won the elections for the Executive would also control the Legislative branch, because it is a false, cynical and totally manipulative discourse to cover up their shameful behaviour.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IS LOADED WITH UNCERTAINTY due to the election of two boards of directors of the Congress, one of them endorsed and promoted by the National party and the other by the LIBRE party; it would not be strange if the board of directors headed by the dissident leaders, pointed out as traitors, come to the aid of the Supreme Court of Justice, the same court that is controlled by the current president and his party, and the same court that endorsed the illegal re-election of this gentleman in open violation of the Constitution of the Republic. This would close the circle of ignominy and the most degrading surrender of Congress to the National Party by these two leaders and their 16 followers, with more than a few naïve and others equally cynical and shameless.

Honduras in legislative crisis ahead of inauguration

MGBy Marlon GonzálezThe Associated PressTue., Jan. 25, 2022
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/americas/2022/01/25/honduras-in-legislative-crisis-ahead-of-inauguration.html

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Just two days from inaugurating its next president, Honduras was mired Tuesday in a legislative crisis bordering on the absurd.

Early in the morning, when the new Congress was scheduled to open its first session, rival congressional leadership teams convened two simultaneous, competing sessions.

One, loyal to President-elect Xiomara Castro, convened inside the National Congress chamber. The other, led by breakaway members of her own party, was carried out virtually, with the support of the party of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández and another opposition party.

The political schism has the potential to make it almost impossible for Castro to govern.

That would seem to be the primary objective for some of those involved. Hernández’s presentation of the results of his administration to the rebellious congressional leaders Tuesday bolstered the suspicions of many who see the situation as a move to spike Castro’s government before it even starts.

Hernández’s interior minister presided over the initial meeting of the new Congress Friday and didn’t allow Castro’s party to propose its formal choice for congressional president. Instead, 20 breakaway members of Castro’s party proposed someone else and chaos ensued.

“It is a major, major distraction,” a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, said Tuesday in a talk hosted by the Atlantic Council. “It makes people wonder who’s in charge. It raises questions about to what extent is the government committed to rule of law and to separation of powers.”

She said the United States sees a tremendous opportunity in the region with Castro’s government. The Biden administration has not been getting on well with the governments in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala, so a friendly administration in Tegucigalpa would be welcome in the region.

Vice President Kamala Harris is leading the U.S. delegation to Castro’s inauguration Thursday.

On Tuesday, the competing congressional presidents — Luis Redondo and Jorge Cálix — appeared set to carry forward leading parallel legislatures, despite questions about the legitimacy of both.

Political analyst and former Honduran lawmaker Efraín Díaz Arrivillaga saw the standoff as an effort to weaken the legislative branch and divide Castro’s Liberty and Refoundation Party, better known as Libre.

“Behind all of this is not only the National Party and Liberal Party, but also part of the important economic powers of Honduras that have benefitted under previous governments,” Díaz said.

Díaz suggested that a solution might be to choose a third person to preside over the Congress.

“What has to be guaranteed is a minimal governability so that Xiomara (Castro) can drive her plan of government,” he said.

__

AP writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report

School of Americas Watch: Inauguration of Xiomara Castro in Honduras

President Xiomara Castro is sworn in while her granddaughter holds the Honduran Constitution

Today, we celebrate with the Peoples of Honduras as they welcome President Xiomara Castro into office and officially put an end to the twelve year rule of a narco regime that has plundered their country. The historic election of President Castro, which saw the highest voter turnout in the country’s history, is testament to the steadfast organizing of grassroots social movements who came together in resistance to the 2009 U.S.-backed military coup. President Castro’s LIBRE party (Libertad y Refundación) was born out of the National Front of Popular Resistance, which brought together a diverse array of Hondurans – from Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, Campesino, LGBTQ, and Labor movements – to strategize and mobilize their resistance efforts. In spite of the violent political repression they faced, the willpower of the People to transform their conditions made possible this historic Inauguration Day. We honor this victory for the social movements of Honduras and recognize that without a unified majority in Congress, President Castro faces many challenges in her pursuit to transform a system of governance that has long been devastated by the stronghold of the economic elite, stubborn political corruption, and intervening U.S. interests.

SOA Watch and the international solidarity community will remain especially vigilant of the United States’ role in Honduras. It is very rare that the Vice President of the U.S. attends an inauguration in Latin America but today Vice President Kamala Harris led a U.S. delegation to attend the Inauguration in Tegucigalpa. Members of the delegation included Samantha Power of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Jose Fernandez and Brian Nichols of the U.S. Department of State, among others. The presence of this U.S. delegation signals the importance that the White House is placing on maintaining geopolitical control of Honduras as President Xiomara Castro assumes power. Vice President Harris is leading U.S. efforts to purportedly address mass migration from Central America and therefore, her relationships with government leaders in the region are critical for the roll out and implementation of the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America. 

Historically and recently, U.S. policies towards Honduras have prioritized and benefited U.S. economic and military interests in the region at the expense of the Honduran People. The Biden-Harris Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration for Central America threatens to do more of the same in the name of economic growth and workforce development. Its proposed solutions are not new or innovative but rather a continuous promotion for more security aid/militarization, and investment-enabling neoliberal reforms to make way for Multilateral Development Banks, International Financial Institutions, and private companies to operate in Honduras. This U.S. corporate agenda is at direct odds with some of President Castro’s commitments to the People of Honduras.

In the weeks, months, and years to come, President Xiomara Castro has pledged to repeal multiple laws that have passed since the coup which operate to grant impunity to corrupt government officials, repress political dissent, and sell Honduras’ land and natural resources off to the highest bidder. 

The new President plans to dissolve ZEDEs (Zones for Employment and Economic Development), these free trade zones dubbed “model cities” are unconstitutional company towns that can operate with complete autonomy and create their own independent political, judicial, and economic systems over predesignated lands throughout the country. ZEDES are brazen post-coup neoliberal projects dispossessing Hondurans of land and rights, their abolition is especially critical to the future of Campesino, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous movements whose very existence is tied to the land. 

As President Castro assumes power, we call on the U.S. to finally respect the autonomy of the Honduran people and their elected officials. Partnership with the U.S. can no longer mean that Honduras is expected to take marching orders from Washington and calling that democracy. It can no longer mean the imposition of Washington’s will on the People of Honduras. If President Castro prioritizes the interests of the Peoples of Honduras above the profit interests of the U.S., the U.S. must not intervene or interfere, but must finally respect the right of Hondurans to build the country that they want to live in.  

As activists go underground, U.N. reports on excessive force in Honduras

 https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/03/20/activists-go-underground-un-reports-excessive-force-honduras

Jackie McVicar

March 20, 2018

Aquilina Guerra is released on Feb. 26 after she was charged, fraudulently say supporters, with “storing weapons of war.” Photo by Louis Bockner.

In the months since the widely criticized elections in November, threats and harassment against social and political activists have ramped up in Honduras, according to the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights.

The report, “Human Rights Violations in the Context of the 2017 Honduran Elections,” published on March 12, outlines how the parameters of the state of emergency ordered by President Juan Orlando Hernández in the days following the elections were too broad and imprecise, “leading to massive and indiscriminate arrests, resulting in limiting the right to peaceful assembly and association.”

The report documents cases of extrajudicial murders committed by police, illegal house raids and threats and harassment against journalists and social and political activists since the end of November 2017 within “the context of a political, economic and social crisis inherited since the 2009 military coup.”

The U.N. report confirms what social movement organizers and civil society groups on the ground have been saying for weeks. On Feb. 26, the Center for Justice and International Law and the Coalition Against Impunity in Honduras, made up of 58 civil society organizations, denounced the Hernández government at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights Public in Bogota. They cited widespread “repression and militarization exercised against the Honduran population during the past months.”

In addition, the organizations charged that “the government has implemented other practices to identify and sanction opposition, resulting in house raids, improper searches and the improper use of criminal law to criminalize social protest.” They offered evidence of acts of repression at close to 200 peaceful protests and over 1,200 instances of illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial murder, internally displaced people, threats and intimidations.

The U.N. report documents cases of extrajudicial murders committed by police, illegal house raids and threats and harassment against journalists and social and political activists.

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The north coast of Honduras is rich in natural resources sought by powerful mining and other development interests, resisted by local people. A series of violent attacks like those outlined in the U.N. report and at the I.A.C.H.R. have targeted community members who have been organizing to defend their rivers and mountains.

According to the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (M.A.D.J.), on Jan. 22, in the days leading up to the inauguration of President Hernández, Ramón Fiallos was targeted and shot by police at a protest in Arizona, Atlantida.

Six hours later, following another protest nearby, Geovany Diaz, a 35-year-old father of five and member of M.A.D.J. was executed by Honduran police who shot him 40 times after dragging him outside of his home at 4 a.m., according to family members who spoke to America on Jan. 26.

“It’s logical to see that the reason for these murders is their struggle,” said a source from the Jesuit Reflection, Research and Communications Team, who has been closely following the cases. Mr. Fiallos was a well-known community leader who was working to protect the Jilamito River from a proposed hydroelectric project. In Pajuiles, where Mr. Diaz lived, the community has spent a year protesting proposed mining and hydroelectric projects.

Luis Garcia, a longtime friend who had worked for years with Mr. Fiallos, saw the violence happen. “Luis knew he could be next,” said Osman Orellana, a community health promoter at the Claret BioHealth Centre in Arizona. “He was in the last roadblock when they murdered Ramón.”

In the weeks after the killing of his friend, Mr. Garcia felt the pressure mount as community leaders across the country were targeted and arbitrarily detained. “He told us that in the last two weeks an unknown car had been circling his house,” said Mr. Orellana. “Different organizations and the parish told him it would be best to leave the country.”

In the past, Mr. Garcia had received death threats for his activism, and he ignored the advice to leave. This time he did not. He left Honduras on Feb. 21—the next day, the national police raided his home.

“The police arrived at my parent’s house at 5:30 a.m. with a search warrant in my father’s name,” said Luis Garcia Jr., in an interview with America on Feb. 25. “But he’s outside of the country because of the same persecution. My mom didn’t leave because we didn’t think she would have anything to worry about.”

In the past, Mr. Garcia had received death threats for his activism, and he ignored the advice to leave. This time he did not.

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After they raided the house without finding the elder Garcia, the police took his wife, Aquilina Guerra, into custody in nearby Tela. “They told her that she wasn’t being detained. They were bringing her in for something they had found outside her house,” said her son. “And then they took out the bag.”

Ms. Guerra is a 57-year-old housewife and a former catechist and cook for the Our Lady of Pilar parish in Arizona. She spends most of her days caring for her grandkids and making food for her family. Inside the bag that the police produced, which Ms. Guerra claims to have never seen before, were small cans of gunpowder, a container of gas and some empty soda bottles.

Arriving in Tela, the police alleged that Ms. Guerra was making Molotov cocktails; she was charged with storing weapons of war. The police took her picture in front of the weapons and then distributed it through social media, a common tactic to shame and discredit citizens and one that can have deadly outcomes.

“Luis Garcia is considered a leader of the social movement, and the investigation was directed at him,” said Carlos Reyes Torres, a lawyer who works with the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice. “Not finding him, they took whomever they could find.”

Mr. Reyes Torres spoke outside the courthouse in Tela on Feb. 26, during Ms. Guerra’s preliminary hearing. “The fact that the public prosecutor is charging her with storing weapons of war shows that state institutions consider us to be at war.”

The day before Ms. Guerra’s preliminary hearing on Feb. 26, parishioners at Our Lady of Pilar Church called out for the local communities to peacefully walk the streets of Tela to demand justice for her and the others whose acts of resistance have been criminalized since November. Outside the jail where she was being held, they celebrated Mass for the more than 200 people who came to show their support.

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“The church is called to be prophetic,” said the Rev. Victor Camara, who heads up the social ministry of the Diocese of La Ceiba, during the Mass. “Those who believe are called to denounce injustice, and we are here from the church to show the church will not be silenced. Although some remain silent, we will not. We are conscious. We are in solidarity with Aquilina, her family and the hundreds of brothers and sisters that are being criminalized and who have suffered the murder of loved ones…. May God hear the cries of the Honduran people who have suffered so much.”

The following day, over 100 people gathered outside the courthouse singing, praying and denouncing Ms. Guerra’s arrest. After eight hours of hearings and deliberations, the judge presiding over the case ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to continue the case against Ms. Guerra.

“It makes you want to cry—to see justice being served,” said the Rev. Javier Hernandez, the parish priest at Our Lady of the Pillar Church. “I think the public pressure from those here has strength. Prayers, the Eucharist that we shared yesterday, people asking God for justice. God is listening, listens to his people clamoring for justice for those who have been criminalized.”

“I feel very happy seeing my community here, how I love them and how they love me,” said Ms. Guerra outside the courthouse following her release. “I feel so happy to feel free. I never could have imagined this experience, but God has always been with me. It’s been painful to see my people suffer. This is a political persecution simply for supporting the movement. My husband and I have supported poor, humble people. I never expected this. But thanks to God, I’m free and I’m going home.”

On March 11, the M.A.D.J. charged that military personnel were roaming through the community of Florida, Atlantida, searching for Waldina Santos, a key organizer to mining resistance in the area. Ms. Santos was at both the march and Mass to support Ms. Guerra and helped organize the busloads of people who came to stand outside the courthouse to show their support.

Although many remain detained in Honduras, and others like Ms. Santos are living in fear for what could be next for her and her family, the small victory in Ms. Guerra’s case offers hope to many who feel helpless given the current political situation. “May this not only be for Aquilina but for so many who have been criminalized and who are being persecuted and unjustly jailed,” said Father Hernandez. “May this be a new beginning for peace in Honduras.”

Jackie McVicar

Jackie McVicar has accompanied human rights social movements and land protectors in Central America for more than 10 years.

Violence in post-election – Joaquin Mejia del Radio Progreso

Violence in post-election Honduras could affect U.S. migration patterns, activists say

• Esther Yu Hsi Lee

https://thinkprogress.org/post-election-honduras-violence-94da4232608b/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Claudia Mendoza (left) and Joaquin Mejia (right) were in Washington, D.C. to give an overview of post-election Honduras. (Photo: Esther Y. Lee)

WASHINGTON, D.C.– The violent aftermath of the Honduran presidential election — triggered by allegations of electoral fraud — has led to serious human rights abuses, Honduran advocates said Thursday, strongly advising the Trump administration not to deport immigrants back to a country repressed by deadly government security forces.

At an event sponsored by Alianza Americas, a transnational network of immigrant organizations, two Honduran-based speakers shared their on-the-ground perspective of the dangers they have faced after President Juan Orlando Hernández’s reelection. Joaquin Mejia — a lawyer and human rights advocate who works as a commentator at the Jesuit radio station Radio Progreso — expressed concern over the legitimacy of his country’s presidential elections and indicated that his life was at risk for openly criticizing Hernández and the military police. The Honduran constitution has since the 1980s explicitly enforced a one-term presidential limit. Hernández sought to change the constitution to ban term limits. Claudia Mendoza — a freelance journalist who has worked with Univision — also pointed out at the event the “shameful” silence by the Honduran news outlets to suppress news about the brutality at the hands of the country’s military police.

Mejia and Mendoza both noted that violent clashes between opposition supporters and the military police have led to the deaths of dozens of activists, hundreds of injuries, and thousands of detentions. Into January 2018, the Honduran government reportedly used security forces to tamp down protests using tear gas, batons, and live ammunition, according to a Latin American Working Group Education Fund report, brutally stiffing press freedom and imposing curfews in post-electoral Honduras. In the face of mounting violence following Hernández’s reelection, the U.S. embassy accepted the country’s election results, despite misgivings by the Organization of American States (OAS) which called for a presidential election do-over.

Mejia has been advocating for a fair electoral process and said he was “hopeful” that the Honduran youth would turn out for future elections. He also wants the U.S. government to stop deporting people back to a country beset by violence and forced displacement. As of February 9, the U.S. government has deported 2,279 people to Honduras, according to Consular y Migratorio de Honduras (CONMIGHO) data. CONMIGHO receives USAID funding and is affiliated with the Honduran Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores y Cooperación Internacional. Tens of thousands of Honduran Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients may also be at risk of deportation if the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fails to renew their statuses by July 5, 2018.

Many people are driven to flee their homes for another city in Honduras because of ongoing threats and assassinations, as the Latin American Working Group Education Fund graphic below shows.

(Photo by Latin America Working Group Education Fund)

Mejia himself has faced a constant barrage of threats because of his stance against the Hernández government.

“From the time I worked at Radio Progreso to when I came here yesterday [on a three-city visit to the United States], I’ve had threats against my family,” Mejia said at the event, his voice going up an emotional lilt before he spoke again. “There is absolute impunity of crimes committed by the police.”

“You can see an increase of the forced displacement of the people because of the violence,” Mejia told ThinkProgress after the event. “Even though officially, there’s been a decrease in the rate of homicides in Honduras, it’s a mistake to see the reduction of violence in Honduras only in the perspective of murdered people because we have to see it in other types of violence like robbery, extortion, and other elements we have to take into account in that kind of violence.”

From the U.S. perspective, Honduras is so dangerous that the U.S. State Department has advised U.S. citizens to “reconsider” travel to the country on account of crime with some areas seeing “increased risk.” The federal government has also advised against traveling to Gracias a Dios, an isolated area where infrastructure is weak. Travelers who go there won’t get help since “U.S. government employees are restricted from traveling to the area.”

JOAQUIN MEJIA WAS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. TO GIVE AN OVERVIEW OF POST-ELECTION HONDURAS. (Photo: Esther Y. Lee)

When asked his position on the Trump administration’s efforts to make it very difficult for people to seek humanitarian relief — like asylum or refugee status — on claims of fraudulent interviewees being “coached” to make up lies about Honduras, Mejia shook his head.

“The Trump administration has this theory about immigrants, but at the same time it’s supporting a regime that’s provoking a political situation that is going to provoke an increase in the immigration to the U.S., Spain, Costa Rica, and an increase in asylum and refugee seekers,” Mejia said. The United States has long had an over-sized influence in the country, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to help fund elite military and police units, The Guardian reported. As the publication explained, these units have helped push down Honduras’ murder rate, but the country is still one of the most violent places in the world.

“I don’t know what’s happening in the government of the United States, but if they really want to stop immigration, the logical thing is to support democracy in our country,” Mejia added. “But they are supporting a regime that is authoritarian, using the military force to attack those who are opposition and denouncing electoral fraud. This will provoke increased immigration to the United States.”

Mejia fears that mass deportation from the United States would trigger more instability at a time when Honduras has yet to resolve widespread doubts over electoral irregularities.

“Those people deported from United States — what they’re going to face is a very complicated situation – a political crisis and instability,” Mejia said, explaining that there are no programs in place that he knows of that would help resettle deported immigrants. “And I’m sure what they’re going to do is try to go back to the United States. They left the country because that violence and that instability but now they’re going to find the same instability, same violence.”

Beyond the scale of U.S. immigration policies, Mejia and Mendoza have noticed a troubling trend in Honduras that affects every resident. As a journalist Mendoza has observed other press coverage being too favorable towards the Hernández government or has presented no criticism of the brutal oppression. News coverage of the large-scale protests “emphasize property damage and not human life,” she said.

“The press should have been critical, but [their articles] looked like press releases from the government,” she said according to an English translation from an in-ear interpreter present at the event. “La Prensa and El Heraldo are theoretically independent but there is no criticism.”

Mendoza pointed to the death of Kimberly Dayana Fonseca, a 19-year-old who went to look for her brother during anti-government protests and was killed with a bullet to the head on the first night a curfew was put in place in the country. Military police shot live rounds into the crowd, but the prosecutor’s office “tried to blame” her death on a tear gas canister, the Miami Herald reported in January.

“Sadly, the press is taking a lot of the military line,” Mendoza said. “We are in a country where there is no freedom of press… we have one line and it’s the government’s line.”

US policy perpetuates violence in Honduras

Jan 5, 2018

by NCR Editorial Staff

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/us-policy-perpetuates-violence-honduras

CNS-Honduras c.jpg

Supporters of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández celebrate as they wait for official presidential election results Nov. 28, 2017, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (CNS/Reuters/Edgard Garrido)

Is Honduras “returning to the terror in the 1980s”? That’s what Dr. Luther Castillo told NCR in an interview. Evidence supports his assertion, and today’s terror, just like 30 years ago, has U.S. ties.

Central America was a flashpoint in the Cold War and in the 1970s and 1980s. Honduras was the staging ground for the U.S.-backed covert war against leftists in the region. Honduras was the de facto U.S. military base for Contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Inside Honduras, U.S.-trained military units — most especially the notorious Battalion 316 — carried out a campaign of torture, extrajudicial killing, and state-sponsored terror against Honduran civilians.

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Castillo is among Honduran activists now under threat of personal danger because they are calling for new elections, claiming that incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández and his National Party rigged the Nov. 26 election and then imposed martial law to stifle protests.

All through Election Day and into the next day as ballots were being counted, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla had a commanding lead. An electoral tribunal magistrate told Reuters Nov. 27, “The technical experts here say that it’s irreversible.”

But then the shenanigans began. The election tribunal, which is controlled by Hernández’s National Party, went mysteriously quiet for 36 hours. Reports of a “computer glitch” spread. When ballot counting resumed, Nasralla’s lead had evaporated. Hernández eventually pulled ahead and was declared the winner.

Calling for a new, clean election, Hondurans protested in the streets, watched over by rows of navy, army and police officers carrying riot shields. The government suspended constitutional rights for 10 days and imposed a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, arresting anyone, including journalists, who violated it. Before Christmas, squads of police and soldiers cleared blockades set up by protesters in the capital and the countryside. At least 12 people were killed and hundreds more detained at military installations, where they were “brutally beaten,” according to human rights experts at the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The Organization of American States has also called for new elections. In a statement issued Dec. 17 after receiving the results of an independent audit of election results, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said it was impossible to determine a winner, given that there was “deliberate human intrusion in the computer system; intentional elimination of digital traces; the impossibility of knowing how many times the system was breached; ballot cases open or without ballot tallies; extreme statistical improbability regarding participation levels.”

“The only possible way for the victor to be the people of Honduras,” he said, “is a new call for general elections.”

Despite all this, the Trump administration recognized Hernández as the winner Dec. 22. Days earlier, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had certified that the Honduran government has been combating corruption and supporting human rights, paving the way for Honduras to receive millions of additional U.S. dollars, including about $17 million for Honduran security forces. The certification ignores cases of government corruption and the assassinations of environmentalists, indigenous leaders and journalists, extensively documented by two major studies last year.

A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report from May describes Honduras in the center of “transnational kleptocratic networks” and characterizes the Honduran military as “an instrument for the consolidation of power,” used to patrol indigenous communities, suppress protests, curtail the exercise of free speech, and “assume a wide variety of domestic security and policing roles.”

The London-based watchdog organization Global Witness called Honduras the deadliest place on the planet to be a land or environmental activist. The Hernández government never prosecuted the killers of the country’s most prominent activist, Berta Cáceres, who spearheaded efforts to stop the plundering of indigenous lands by hydroelectric, mining and logging interests.

More than 120 activists have been murdered since 2009 when a coup overthrew democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and ushered in a succession of corrupt right-wing governments that have overseen, according to Global Witness, “shocking levels of violence and intimidation suffered by rural communities.”

In a very real sense, the Obama administration — particularly then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — laid the foundation for Hernández’s victory by turning a blind eye to the toppling of Zelaya, who they thought was too close to Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and other left-leaning Latin American leaders. By refusing to recognize Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup, Clinton kept Honduras on the military aid and training gravy train.

Longtime observers of Central America will know that since the 1980s, nearly 5,000 officers from Honduras have been trained at the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas. Graduates of this school hold key positions in the Honduran government and security forces and have been implicated in numerous coups, human rights abuses and suppression of democracy.

Today, the boogeyman of communism that haunted the region in the 1980s is gone, but the institutions and power centers set up in Honduras decades ago remain entrenched, and now environmental activists and indigenous rights leaders are targeted for threatening the political-economic status quo.

“We know it’s the U.S. that runs Honduras,” and it is “co-responsible” for the human rights abuses and fatal shootings following the latest presidential election, says Nasralla — who could very well be the legitimate victor in the presidential election.

By legitimizing a stolen election, ignoring the rare Organization of American States call for new elections and refusing to condemn the post-election crackdown by the (U.S.-trained) military, the U.S. is again perpetrating violence that ultimately hurts its own self-interest, but, more importantly, continues the oppression of Hondurans.

“Berta nos llama a articularnos y a fortalecer la unidad”

Con Ismael Moreno

Berta Cáceres nunca será un logo vacío, sino motor de lucha para las transformaciones sociales

En Tegucigalpa, Giorgio Trucchi

http://informes.rel-uita.org/index.php/sociedad/item/berta-nos-llama-a-articularnos-y-a-fortalecer-la-unidad

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Foto: Giorgio Trucchi

Ismael Moreno Coto, conocido como padre Melo, es un sacerdote jesuita hondureño, director de Radio Progreso y del Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación (ERIC). El año pasado fue galardonado en Noruega con el prestigioso Premio Rafto 2015, en reconocimiento a su trabajo por la defensa de la libertad de expresión.

Previo al desarrollo de la 1ª Asamblea de la Articulación Popular Hondureña “Berta Cáceres”, el padre Melo conversó con La Rel sobre la difícil coyuntura que atraviesa Honduras tras el asesinato político de la dirigente indígena lenca.

-¿En qué contexto político, económico y social se da el asesinato de Berta Cáceres?
-Ocurre en un contexto de creciente escalada del modelo extractivista, que es la expresión más radicalizada del modelo neoliberal en Honduras y en el mundo.

La puesta en vigencia de las “ciudades modelo”, la aprobación de la Ley de Minería, la expansión del cultivo de palma africana y el concesionamiento de ríos y territorios enteros a multinacionales aliadas de la oligarquía nacional, son un ejemplo del proyecto político que impulsa la extrema derecha hondureña e internacional.

En este sentido, el asesinato de Berta Cáceres no fue casual, sino que responde a un marco general de consolidación  de este proyecto, que tiene como mecanismo la militarización de la sociedad, la criminalización de la lucha popular y el exterminio de dirigentes que no pueden ser controlados, que no son comprables, ni sobornables.

Esta ofensiva ha generado una agudización de los conflictos, porque el asesinato de Berta despertó a la humanidad para que volviera nuevamente la mirada hacia esta Honduras.

Hay un resurgimiento de la lucha popular en el marco de lo que Berta siempre ha buscado: la articulación de los sectores desde compromisos que surgen de las bases y que se proyectan tanto a nivel nacional, como regional y mundial.

Esto es el gran legado que debemos recoger. Un proceso de lucha y un proyecto unitario en el marco de un trinomio político-estratégico que marcaba el pensamiento de Berta Cáceres: una articulación anticapitalista, antirracista y antipatriarcal.

-¿Qué idea se ha hecho en cuanto a los mandantes de este asesinato?
-La oligarquía nacional y el capital transnacional han ido criminalizando a las organizaciones de base y la lucha popular, fortaleciendo los instrumentos represivos y desarrollando campañas mediáticas muy agresivas. Sin embargo, han intentado evitar asesinatos de altísimo impacto, porque redundan negativamente en sus negocios.

Un asesinato selectivo

La impunidad consagrada

Lo que suelen hacer es tratar de cooptar a los dirigentes y asegurarse una oposición en cierta medida controlada. Cuando hay factores o actores que impiden este proceso de cooptación, puede haber mandos intermedios -como gerentes de proyectos, autoridades municipales, oficiales regionales- que decidan planificar el asesinato.

Ellos saben que, en última instancia, van a contar con el respaldo de los altos dirigentes tanto de la política como de las empresas extractivas.

El peligro para la dirigencia política y social es latente, porque se han creado las condiciones para que aquellas personas que ponen en entredicho la implementación de las políticas extractivitas van a contar con una respuesta criminal organizada, en el marco de un sistema generalizado de impunidad.

Para atacar la impunidad y este sistema que la genera y la protege tenemos que articularnos a nivel nacional e internacional.

-Retomando las palabras de sus hijas e hijo, ¿qué hay que hacer para que la imagen de Berta no quede simplemente como un logo vacío?
-Hay que trabajar una propuesta unitaria real, histórica, que es lo que tratamos de hacer en estos espacios que se están convocando.

La lucha no puede limitarse solo a consignas, ni a una demanda judicial, sino que debe obligar a que las diversas instancias del movimiento popular hondureño se articulen en esta propuesta unitaria de mediano y largo alcance, que debe ser permanente independientemente de la coyuntura que vive el país.

Solamente así podemos ser fieles al pensamiento, a la práctica y a la mística de Berta Cáceres.