Electoral Coup Surfaces in Honduras amid Signs of US Intervention / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Photo: Xiomara Castro de Zelaya/X}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Elections taking place November 30 in Honduras will decide the country’s next president and make-up of the national assembly. Current President Xiomara Castro of the democratic socialist Party of Liberty and Refoundation (Libre), in office since 2022, is limited to one term. Libre Party presidential candidate Rixi Moncada was finance minister and then defense minister in Castro’s government.

The mantra circulates that ten families rule in Honduras and hold most of its wealth. Their influence is such that left-leaning opposition forces can count on the most forceful kind of pushback.

Businessman Manuel Zelaya turned progressive politician was Honduras’ president from 2006 until June 2009, when a military coup deposed him, with U.S. help. He had called for a minimum wage, mild agrarian reform and a constituent assembly. Zelaya is now general coordinator of the Libre Party, founded in 2011 in reaction to the coup. He is President Xiomara Castro’s husband.

Xiomara Castro’s unsuccessful candidacies for president in 2013 and 2017 encountered electoral fraud and violent attacks orchestrated by the well-ensconced National and Liberal Parties. Her overwhelming electoral victory in 2021 resulted from the association of incumbent president Juan Orlando Hernández and his National Party with corruption and narcotrafficking. Hernández and his brother, convicted on narcotics and weapons charges, are serving long prison terms in the United States.Hernández’s second term was constitutionally illegal.

Current polls give the Libre Party candidate Rixi Moncada an even chance for victory, or a small majority. A plot emerged a month ahead of the voting.

On October 29, Attorney General Johel Zelaya reported he had transferred leaked audio recordings, with transcriptions, to the Public Minister for investigation. Libre Party’s Marlon Ochoa, one of three members of Honduras’ National Electoral Council, discovered them. Each councilor represents a political party. Voices on the recordings allegedly are those of Councilor Cossette López of the National Party; Tomas Zambrano, head of the National Party’s congressional bench; and an unnamed military officer.

According to Johel Zelaya, the conversations told of plans for hiring transportation companies and personnel to transfer voting results on election day, inserting agents among election observers, interrupting data transmission, prematurely announcing rightwing Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla as the winner, sowing suspicion in the media about voting processes, and announcing favorable partial results as a potential “alibi for impugning and suspending the process.”

According to an observer, “The recordings revealed … a plan to pressure external actors, notably the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, not to recognize any victories by Libre. This would turn an internal dispute into an international recognition crisis.” The report has councilor Cossette López-Osorio exclaiming, “We’ll use the tools that the people at the Embassy gave us.”

One Honduran observer says Salvador Nasralla is the “choice of the most reactionary spheres in Washington,” another that he has promised to “implement a security plan” similar to that of dictatorial Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Nasralla spent one third of the pre-election period traveling in the United States and Spain, presumably seeking support.

The Libre party on October 13 announced a “permanent mobilization … [against] the bipartisan plan to manipulate the coming elections.” The Party’s general coordinator Manuel Zelaya declared, “We must prepare ourselves to defeat the electoral coup … They know that we already reversed the coup in 2009 and that we will never go back!”

Rixi Moncada, speaking at a rally on November 9, reviewed gains achieved during Castro’s presidency, described her own program for governing, and highlighted a new twist in the coup saga. The National Election Council that day had carried out a nationwide simulation of election day processes. Only 1556 of 4362 voting locations actually transmitted voting records to a central location. Only 23.7% of biometric devices functioned. The results mirror the scenario presented by the recordings.

Moncada outlined plans; 12 Libre Party activists from each of Honduras’s 18 departments would remain in Tegucigalpa until election day. They would constitute a “commission … our battlefront in defense of victory.” Party activists on that day would transfer voting records to the various Party headquarters where votes would be counted.

Context is important. The U.S. government has long maintained hundreds of troops and several military units at Honduras’ Soto Cano airfield. They constitute the largest U.S. base in Central America, which facilitates U.S. interventions in regional affairs, as when the U.S. government in the 1980s sent supplies to Contra paramilitaries fighting in Nicaragua.

U.S. economic interests center on the mining, tourism, and agricultural export sectors. Honduras, regional center for narcotics transfer to the United States, qualifies as a target of U.S. drug war activities, but also as staging area for military interventions, for which drug war is a frequent pretext.

President Castro has irritated U.S. officials. She cut ties with Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China and supported Venezuelan President Maduro against U.S. accusations that his 2024 election victory was fraudulent. Accusing the U.S. ambassador of meddling with Honduras’ military forces in August 2024, she mentioned cancelation of the binational extradition treaty. Reacting to U.S. plans for massive deportation of migrants from Central America, Castro in January 2025 threatened to expel U.S. troops.

Her Libre Party government scored successes: new highways, new hospitals, reforestation, subsidized electrical power, electricity for rural households, educational scholarships, loans for thousands of farmers, seeds and fertilizers for 450,000 of them, community orchards, 5000 refurbished education centers, and land redistribution.

Honduras’ murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from an average of 41.7 during President Hernández last term to 27.2 under Castro. Families living in poverty dropped from 73.6% to 62.9%. The previous government had promoted so-called “zones for employment and economic development.” Castro ended the scheme that gave control of municipalities to foreign investors and deprived residents of self-government and legal rights.

Candidate Rixi Moncada, 60 years old, came from a working-class family, taught in rural and city schools, studied law and became a practitioner and teacher of criminal law. She served the government of President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) as secretary of labor and social security. She managed the government-owned electric company.

Moncada indicated that, as president, she will “defend workers and state sovereignty and democratize the economic system.” She would “transform the justice system, combat impunity, reform the public ministry and strengthen the courts … [and revive] “strategic state enterprises.” She would support public healthcare and education – “without privatization.”

On November 12, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau indicated the U.S. government “will respond rapidly and firmly to any attack on the integrity of the electoral process in Honduras.” At once the U.S. Embassy broadly disseminated Landau’s message.

Interviewed on television that day, Salvador Nasralla asked “What would happen if these people (from the Libre Party) tried to steal votes?” His response: “Those ships that are soon going to take over Venezuela are going to come and target Honduras.”

“U.S. interference in Honduras’ electoral processes is nothing new,” says veteran reporter Giorgio Trucchi. Quoting activist Luis Méndez, he adds that, “We are facing the old traditional politics, allied with US interference, large corporations, and business sectors attached to the neoliberal agenda with its project of dispossession and dismantling of the public sector …For Libre to continue governing is a setback for the geostrategic goals of U.S. domination in Latin America. We will somehow see this reflected in the elections.”

_{W.T. Whitney, Jr., is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician and lives in rural Maine.}

Honduras – next in line for US-imposed coup / By W.T. Whitney

_{^{Image: Honduras: Background and U.S. Relations | CRS Report}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

After narrowly losing elections in 2013 and 2017, Xiomara Castro and her social democratic Freedom and Refoundation Party (Libre) won the next set of elections such that, as of January 2022, she was Honduras’s new president. The defeated National Party had presided over worsening corruption, electoral fraud, poverty, and violent repression for 12 years – President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), for eight of them.

The U.S. government played a part in the military coup that in June 2009 removed President José Manuel Zelaya. He is President Casto’s husband and longtime “coordinator” of the Libre Party. Now the United States is promoting another coup.

Interviewed by media outlet HCH TV on August 28, U.S Ambassador in Honduras Laura Dogu stated that, “We are very concerned about what has happened in Venezuela. It was quite surprising for me to see the Minister of Defense (José Manuel Zelaya) and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Roosevelt Hernández) sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela.”

The seat-mate was Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López. The occasion was the World Cadet Games of the International Council of Military Sports taking place in Caracas from August 16 on. The U.S. government had charged Padrino López with “conspiring with others to distribute cocaine” and on March 26, 2020 announced bounties for his capture and that of 14 other Venezuelan officials facing drug-related charges.

Responding, Castro immediately declared that “Interference and interventionism by the United States … is intolerable.” Denouncing “U.S. violation of international law,” she canceled Honduras’s 114- year-old extradition treaty with the United States. Honduras has extradited 40 or so individuals to the United States over 10 years for prosecution on drug-related causes. JOH, the best-known of them, was recently sentenced to a 45-year prison term.

Slippery slope

On August 29, President Castro told reporters, “I will not allow extradition be used as an instrument for blackmailing the armed forces … Yesterday they attacked the head of the armed forces and the minister of defense in our country… [such an] attack weakens the Armed Forces as an institution and makes the upcoming process of elections [in 2025] very precarious.”

In a television interview , Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina indicated Dogu’s comments could set off a “barracks coup” aimed at removing General Roosevelt Hernández. Schisms do exist. A year ago, for example, General Staff head José Jorge Fortín Aguilar’s warned four retired military chiefs to desist from their anti-government activities.

Reina claimed that the extradition treaty, long used as a “political tool to influence the country internal affairs,” could be used “to bring Roosevelt Hernández or Secretary of National Defense José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to trial in the United States, in order to disrupt the Libre Party’s electoral plans.”

Primary elections take place in April 2025 and elections for president and Congress on November 30, 2025. The Libre Party is vulnerable.

The attorney general is investigating secretary of Parliament and Libre Party deputy Carlos Zelaya following his recent acknowledgement that two narco-traffickers in 2013 offered him money for the Libre Party’s election campaign that year.

Implicated in other drug-related crimes, Carlos is the brother of former President José Manuel Zelaya and brother-in-law of President Castro. On August 31, Carlos Zelaya and Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya each resigned. The latter is Carlos’s son; he and the former president share the same name.

President Castro replaced the resigned defense minister with lawyer Rixi Moncada. She is running for president in the 2025 elections. As such, she would “continue reshaping Honduras’s economic and financial apparatus to fit with the people’s revolution,” according to an admirer.

The situation for Castro and the Libre Party deteriorated even more after September 3 with wide publicity given to a video showing Carlos Zelaya conferring in 2013 with the narco-traffickers. Obtained by InSight Crime and allegedly leaked by the U.S. government, the video is accessible here. It shows the drug-traffickers “offering to give over half a million dollars” to the Libre Party. They mention “previous contributions” to former President José Manuel Zelaya.

On September 6, President Castro condemned Carlos Zelaya’s meeting with narco-traffickers where they “discussed bribes” as a “deplorable error.”  That day opposition politicians demanded her resignation. They were leading “more than a thousand Hondurans” in a march through Tegucigalpa.

Fallout and implications

The Libre Party’s loss of political power would jeopardize the already precarious lives of most Hondurans. Government data show a poverty rate of 73.6% in 2021 that fell to 64.1% in 2023. According to UNICEF, “Deprivations are highest in nutrition, followed by deprivations in sanitation, education, water, and overcrowding, respectively.” UNICEF reports that, “The homicide rate was 38.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, the highest in Central America and the second highest in Latin America.”

Honduran writer, lawyer, political commentator, and Libre Party partisan Milson Salgado outlines programs introduced by the Xiomara Castro government that promote national development and social rescue.

He cites these: public enterprises recovered from privatization; “high social investment … in the construction of hospitals, repair of educational centers, construction and reconstruction of recreation centers;” extension of the electricity network; and new highways.

The Castro government has funded rural development, provided “educational scholarships at all school levels,” “support[ed] the agricultural sector with loans at the lowest interest rates in history,” provided financial relief for small farmers, “recovered “65,000 hectares of forest,” and provided support for the elderly and disabled.

The U.S. – assisted coup in progress in Honduras is remarkable in two ways. First, it illustrates U.S. reliance on drug war as justifying military and other interventions in targeted Latin American countries. Salgado notes that the United States has “no interest in the fight against narco-trafficking other than to use it selectively as a weapon for blackmailing governments, countries, and people.”

As regards Colombia, the U.S. government invoked the pretext of narco-trafficking as cover for its direct role in combating leftist insurgents. In Peru, a burgeoning drug trade recently prompted the United States to send in troops, most likely out of solicitude for natural resources on tap there. Exaggerated concern about narco-trafficking in Venezuela has rationalized various kinds of U.S. intervention directed at regime change.

Secondly, U.S. strategists altered the device called lawfare that Latin American coup-plotters rely on these days to remove governments not to their liking. That happened in Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador through perverse manipulation of legal norms.

The U.S. gets credit for innovation. Treaties of extradition are legal instruments that, under international law, enable one country to ensure that its criminals staying in another country can be returned for prosecution. It’s a regular legal process that the United States has adapted for Honduras to bring about regime change there.

In any event, government supporters are planning a “big national mobilization” in Tegucigalpa on September 15 “in support of Honduras’s leader, in defense of the homeland’s independence and the building of democratic socialism, and in condemnation of interventionist activities.”

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

US General Hypes China as Threat in Latin America / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

The U.S. government has long intervened in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Now the U.S. military is paying attention to China’s economic activities there.

General Laura Richardson on March 8 reported to the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on actions and needs of the Southern Command, which she heads. She has charge of all U.S. military operations in the region.

Citing the 2022 National Security Strategy, Richardson declared that “no region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere …. [There] autocrats are working overtime to undermine democracy.” And security there “is critical to homeland defense.”

Richardson stated that “the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has both the capability and intent to eschew international norms, advance its brand of authoritarianism, and amass power and influence at the expense of the existing and emerging democracies in our hemisphere.” The Southern Command’s “main priority … is to expose and mitigate PRC malign activity.”

She sees a “myriad of ways in which the PRC is spreading its malign influence, wielding its economic might, and conducting gray zone activities to expand its military and political access and influence.” A “grey zone,” according to the NATO-friendly Atlantic Council, is a “set of activities … [like] nefarious economic activities, influence operations, … cyberattacks, mercenary operations, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns.”

Richardson highlighted China’s trade with LAC that is heading toward “$700 billion [annually] by 2035.” The United States, in her view, will be facing intense competition and presently “its comparative trade advantage is eroding.”

She added that, “The PRC’s efforts to extract South America’s natural resources to support its own population … are conducted at the expense of our partner nations and their citizens.” And opportunities for “quality private sector investment” are disappearing.

Competition extends to space: “11 PRC-linked space facilities across five countries in this region [enable] space tracking and surveillance capabilities.” Richardson complained of “24 countries [that] have existing Chinese telecommunication infrastructure (3G/4G), increasing their potential to transition to Chinese 5G.”

She expressed concern both about surveillance networks supplied by China that represent a “potential counterintelligence threat” and about Latin Americans going to China “to receive training on cybersecurity and military doctrine.” Richardson denounced China’s role in facilitating environmental crimes and pointed to “potential dual use for malign commercial and military activities.”

“Relationships absolutely matter,” she insisted, “and our partner democracies are desperate for assistance from the United States.” Plus, “if we’re not there in time, they … take what’s available, creating opportunities for the PRC.”

Moving beyond China, Richardson indicated that “many partner nations … see TCOs (transnational criminal organizations) as their primary security challenge.” That’s because drug-cartel violence leads to deaths and poverty and “illicit funds exacerbate regionalcorruption, insecurity, and instability.”

Her report avoids mention of particular countries other than offering brief references to Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. She criticized Russia for “military engagements with Venezuela and Nicaragua” and for spreading “false narratives.” Richardson praised Colombia for providing military training in other countries.

The Southern Command gains “exponential return” on supplying various countries with U.S. weapons and supplies. It conducts joint military exercises, and “provides professional military education to personnel from 28 countries.”

Richardson reported at length on processes she sees as fostering useful relationships between her command and the various governments and military services. The tone of urgency characterizing her discussion on China was entirely lacking.

Economic intervention

General Richardson’s view that China has greatly expanded its economic involvement with the LAC nations is on target.

Since 2005, China’s state-owned banks have arranged for 117 loans in the region worth, in all, more than $140 billion. They averaged over $10 billion annually. Since 2020, China has made fewer loans.

Chinese trade with Latin America grew from $12 billion in 2000 to $448 billion in 2021. China’s imports of “ores (42%), soybeans (16%), mineral fuels and oils (10%), meat (6%), and copper (5%)” totaled $221 billion in 2021. The value of exported manufactured goods that year was $227 billion. By 2022, China had become the biggest trading partner in four Latin American countries and the second-largest in many others.

China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) has long represented China’s strongest economic tie to the region. FDI signifies funding of projects abroad directed at long-term impact. China’s FDI from 2005 to mid-2022 was $143 billion. Energy projects and “metals/mining” accounted for 59% and 24% of the total, respectively. Of that total, Brazil and Peru received 45% and 17%, respectively.

The FDI flow since 2016 has averaged $4.5 billion annually; worldwide, China’s FDI has contracted.

Chinese banks and corporations have invested heavily in lithium production in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which, together, account for 56% of the world’s lithium deposits. China is the largest investor in Peru’s mining sector, controlling seven large mines and owning two of Peru’s biggest copper mines. Brazil is the world’s largest recipient of Chinese investments.

China’s government has linked FDI to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that began in 2013. As of May 2022, 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries were cooperating with the BRI and 11 of them had formally joined.

On the ground

U.S. military intervention in LAC is far from new. Analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein complements Richardson’s report with a three-part survey, accessible here, here, and here, of recent U.S. military activities in the region.

He indicates the United States now has “12 military bases in Panamá, 12 in Puerto Rico, 9 in Colombia, 8 in Perú, 3 in Honduras, 2 in Paraguay, as well as similar installations in Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Cuba (Guantánamo), and in other countries.”

Rodríguez maintains that, “levels of aggressive interference by Washington in the region have increased dramatically” and that U.S. embassies there are supplied with more military, Cuba, Nicaragua, and CIA personnel than ever before.

Rodríguez notes features of the LAC region that attract U.S. attention, among them: closeness to strategically-important Antarctica; reserves of fresh water and biodiversity in Amazonian regions; the Guarani Aquifer near the triple frontier of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, the largest in the world; and huge reserves of valuable natural resources.

Among ongoing or recent U.S. military interventions are these:

· The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is implementing a “master plan” for navigability of the Paraguay River and Plata River Basin. The nearby Triple Frontier area supposedly harbors international terrorism and drug-trafficking.

· The U.S. military facility in Neuquén, Argentina is turning from its alleged humanitarian mission to activities in line with local preparations for oil extraction.

· U.S. officials on October 13, 2022 announced that 95 military vehicles were being donated to Guatemala for drug-war activities.

· In Brazil in September 2022, General Richardson indicated that U.S. forces would join Brazilian counterparts to fight fires in the Amazon..

· The Southern Command’s fostering of good relations with Peru’s military has borne fruit. Under consideration in Peru’s Congress is a proposal to authorize the entry of foreign military forces. To what nation would they belong? Hint: former CIA operative and U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kenna met with Peru’s Defense Minister the day before President Pedro Castillo was removed in a parliamentary coup on December 7, 2022.

· In March 2023, two U.S. congresspersons proposed that U.S. troops enter Mexico to carry out drug-war operations.

· Presently the United States is making great efforts to establish a naval base on Gorgona island off Colombia’s Pacific coast. It would be the ninth U.S. base in Colombia, a NATO “global partner.”

· In Colombia, U.S. troops acting on behalf of NATO, are active in that country’s Amazon region supposedly to protect the environment and combat drug-trafficking.

· The U.S. National Defense Authorization Act of December 2022 awarded the Southern Command $858 million for military operations in Ecuador.

· In a second visit, the US Coast Guard Cutter Stone was plying Uruguayan waters in February ostensibly to train with local counterparts for search and rescue operations. The ship was also monitoring the nearby Chinese fishing fleet.

Rodríguez does not comment on U.S. interventions in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. That’s because they’ve persisted for “more than 60, 40, and 20 years, respectively” and each requires a “special report.”

John Quincy Adams returns

Proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine 200 years ago, Secretary of State Adams informed European powers that the United States regarded “any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

General Richardson would apply the warning of that era to the PRC. Yet signs of hegemonic aspirations from that quarter are absent.

Commenting recently, Argentinian economist and academician Claudio Katz notes that, “China concentrates its forces in the economic arena while avoiding confrontations at the political or military level … Investments are not accompanied by troops and bases, useful for guaranteeing return on investments.”

Besides, China “does business with all governments, without regard to their internal politics.” That tendency, Katz writes, stems from the PRC having “arisen from a socialist experience, having hybrid characteristics, and not completing a passage to capitalism.” He maintains that China, with its economic involvement, contributes nothing to advancing socialism in the region.