President Xiomara Castro fulfilled a major campaign promise last week when she signed the decree to repeal the ZEDEs law. We spoke to Honduran Vice Minister for Agrarian Reform, Rafael Alegría, on this important victory for the campesinos and social movements of Honduras. Rafael is a historic leader of the international peasants movement, La Vía Campesina. Having been at the forefront of years of struggles in Latin America, he’s now a strong anti-imperialist voice with the Partido Libre administration. Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante sat down with Rafael in Managua, where he and other movement leaders participated in commemorative events marking the 30th anniversary of the founding […]
Honduras
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Above Photo: In his video grab, former president Juan Orlando Hernández is handcuffed as police take him out of his house. Honduras police / AFP/Getty Images. Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández has been arrested, a day after the US Department of Justice requested his extradition over drug trafficking and weapons charges, culminating a spectacular fall from grace for a man who was once considered one of Washington’s top allies in Central America. On Tuesday afternoon Hernández left his home in a wealthy neighborhood in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa, where he was cuffed at the hands and feet and provided a […]
Above Photo: Xiomara Castro celebrates during general elections on 28 November 2021 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Inti Ocon / Getty Images) Since a US-backed coup toppled Mel Zelaya in 2009, Honduras has faced a clampdown on democracy and serious human rights abuses. But the election of socialist Xiomara Castro is a chance to break the cycle. What appeared impossible has been achieved: the people of Honduras have broken the perpetuation, through electoral fraud and thuggish violence, of a brutal, illegal, illegitimate, and criminal regime. By means of sheer resistance, resilience, mobilization, and organization, they have managed to defeat Juan Orlando Hernandez’s narco-dictatorship […]
Following Xiomara Castro’s victory in the Honduran elections, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, Coordinator, COPINH, spoke to Peoples Dispatch about what this means for people’s movements in the country. She talks about the government’s plans in its first 100 days, what movements like COPINH think are the next steps for rebuilding democracy, and more. Source link
Above Photo: Libre Party Presidential Candidate Beat Out Her Right-Wing Rival Nasy Asfura To Secure Honduras’ Presidency For The Upcoming Term. (@XiomaraCastroZ / Twitter) After A Historic Voter Turnout Of 62%, And Despite Attempts By The Right-Wing National Party (PAN) To Claim An Early Victory, Democratic Socialist Candidate Xiomara Castro De Zelaya Is Leading By A Nearly 20% Margin In The Country’s Presidential Elections. Leading ovr Nasry Asfura, current mayor of the capital city Tegucigulpa and PAN candidate, as well as Yani Rosenthal, candidate for the Liberal Party, Castro is on track to become the first woman president of the Central American nation, […]
Honduras is at the most important crossroads of its recent history. Follow the live election blog from the Center for Economic and Policy Research here. Today is the presidential election in #Honduras. The last polls indicated an overwhelming victory for the left-wing @XiomaraCastroZ of @PartidoLibre. However, last night and early this morning the nation’s electoral authority website went down. There’s a high likelihood of fraud pic.twitter.com/zLqfndXJd8 — Denis Rogatyuk (@DenisRogatyuk) November 28, 2021 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 […]
Many would-be migrants, like the Garifuna, would love nothing more than to stay in their homes. It’s Washington that’s making it difficult. On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I want to tell you about my people, the Garifuna. We’re an Afro-Indigenous people, descended from Arawaks and Africans. Our ancestral territory spans the Caribbean border of Central America. Latin American and Caribbean communities like ours are rarely noticed in U.S. media — except when we migrate. In summer 2021, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris came to Central America and told would-be migrants: “Do not come .” More recently, photos of U.S. Border Patrol agents whipping Haitian refugees in the Texas desert brutally drove […]
Above Photo: Fibonacci Blue Chilean author and human rights advocate Ariel Dorfman recently memorialized Orlando Letelier, President Allende’s foreign minister. Agents of dictator Augusto Pinochet murdered Letelier in Washington in 1976. Dorfman noted that Chile and the United States were “on excellent, indeed obscenely excellent, terms (like they are today, shamefully, between the United States and the corrupt regime in Honduras).” The Honduran government headed by president Juan Orlando Hernández does have excellent relations with the United States. The alliance is toxic, however, what with the continued hold of capitalism on an already unjust, dysfunctional society. Hondurans will choose a new president on November […]
Pre-Trial Procedural Stuff · The trial process begins (as permitted by Honduran law) with the prosecutors and defense presenting additional evidence that was not presented in the evidentiary hearing. Today, the prosecutors mostly just clarified evidence that had previously been accepted by the court. In addition, · Edwin’s defense team presented 9 documents outlining the state persecution that Edwin has faced since 2009 and one witness, Mery Agurcia from the Honduran human rights organization, COFADEH. The court did not permit any of the evidence presented by Edwin’s defense arguing that they were irrelevant to the crime being tried and were out […]
As Private Cities Advance In Honduras, Hondurans Renew Their Opposition By Beth Geglia, Center for Economic and Policy Research. December 5, 2020 As Private Cities Advance In Honduras, Hondurans Renew Their Opposition2020-12-052020-12-05https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/12/honduras.jpg200px200px Above photo: La Voz de Zacate Grande. Efforts to develop semi-privately governed jurisdictions called Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) in Honduras have recently emerged anew. ZEDEs, first legislated as Special Development Regions (REDs) and informally known as “charter cities,” “model cities,” or “startup cities,” are a flexible territorial concession that can be used for city-scale real estate and tourism development, resource extraction, energy production, manufacturing, banking, and the […]
Over 3,000 migrants have crossed illegally into Guatemala from Honduras while heading towards the United States. Some groups of migrants were able to force their way through border checkpoints, footage shows. The large congregation of migrants heading from Central American countries to the US crossed into Guatemala on Thursday, local officials said. Members of the group arrived at the border early in the morning and by midday more than 3,000 of them illegally entered the country, Guatemalan migration officials confirmed, appealing for help from their Honduran colleagues. ASÍ CRUZARON MÁS DE 300 hondureños de manera ilegal la frontera con Guatemala.09hrs frontera de […]
Blood on the Wall, the new film from Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger, and co-directed by Nick Quested, is Junger’s most political yet. The film, out Sept. 30 on National Geographic, follows three groups in 2017 and 2018: a caravan of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico and hoping to make it to the U.S. where they can claim asylum in the wake of extreme violence due to drug trafficking; the drug traffickers themselves, usually Central Americans and Mexicans from poor or working-class families that have been left behind by neoliberal economic policy; and the townspeople and community police units formed to […]
A large ‘tsunami’ of trash has hit a beach in the town of Omoa in northern Honduras. The garbage traveled from neighboring Guatemala, where anti-waste barriers were damaged by heavy rain. Footage from the scene shows thick layers of plastic bottles and other waste carried by the waves and piled up on a sandy beach next to wooden shacks and palm trees. Local official Daniel Ortega said that between 100 and 150 tons of garbage was cleaned from the beach. Environmentalists have been sounding the alarm as large quantities of trash regularly wash ashore in Honduras, including in places like Omoa […]
Agroforestry Land Restoration Technique Improves Food Security In Honduras By Lorraine Potter, Forests News. May 18, 2020 Agroforestry Land Restoration Technique Improves Food Security In Honduras2020-05-182020-05-18https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/05/agroforestry-e1589816135381.jpg200px200px Above: Agroforestry from the International Network for Natural Sciences. Five years ago, farmer Damas Nunez had reached a point of economic desperation. He had decided the best option to feed his family was to flee north to the United States from Honduras, despite the risks involved. He made a farewell visit to a friend with a farm in the upper Cangrejal Valley and was astounded to see a beautiful crop of corn and a large stack of firewood, […]
Honduras During The COVID19 Pandemic By Karen Spring, Task Force on the Americas. May 12, 2020 Honduras During The COVID19 Pandemic2020-05-122020-05-12https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/05/honduras-e1589310702293.jpg200px200px Why We Shouldn’t Go Back to “Normal.” On May 5, a group of Afro-indigenous Garifuna men stood guard at the entrance of La Travesía community in the department of Cortes in northern Honduras. The men were fumigating vehicles, documenting the traffic transiting through their community, and implementing other bio security measures as part of community-led prevention efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19. In the afternoon, a police vehicle arrived and stopped at the check point. The Garifuna men were […]