In Honduras, a Determined Presidency Hits Turbulence
When Xiomara Castro had become Honduras’s first female president in 2022, she had promised a massive departure from the preceding 12 years of National Party (PN) rule. PN officials had destroyed state institutions and worked at the highest levels with organized crime as hospitals and schools languished and a large number of Hondurans fled for the U.S.
Since then, Xiomara has partially delivered on promises to take firm action against street crime, improve welfare programs and public services, and fix roads. GDP growth touched 3.9% in the second quarter of this year (2024), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects it will remain over 3.5% for the ensuing five years. Her accomplishments on these bread-and-butter issues put Xiomara’s approval rating at 61% in April, according to Mitofky (a Mexican pollster), making her LIBRE party competitive ahead of the national elections to be held in November 2025.
But her core campaign promises were to restore institutionality, fight corruption, and deliver an international anti-graft commission modelled on the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Now, Xiomara’s approval rating is dwindling as her anti-corruption initiatives appear to be sinking under the weight of new scandals roiling her inner circle.
As public scepticism grows, Xiomara and LIBRE will attempt to prove over the coming year that Honduras is turning a corner under their leadership. For now, reasonable progress on crime and kitchen-table concerns may overshadow voters’ concern over grand corruption.
A U-turn on extradition?
The promised change seemed underway when, only three months after Xiomara took office, she extradited her predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández, to the U.S. Once a U.S. ally, Juan Orlando is now serving a 45-year sentence for drugs and weapons trafficking. Much of the public appeared ready to believe that accountability and stability were returning for the first time since Xiomara’s husband, former President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was ousted in a coup in 2009.
But in August, Xiomara’s brother-in-law (Carlos Zelaya) resigned as president of Congress after he confessed to meeting with drug traffickers in 2013, and a video of the meeting circulated in which he seems to negotiate bribes. In the video, the drug traffickers can be heard claiming they previously sent bribes to Xiomara’s husband, former President Zelaya. Just after Xiomara’s brother-in-law resigned, his son (and Xiomara’s nephew) also resigned as defence minister.
In the middle of all this, Xiomara denounced Honduras’ extradition treaty with the U.S. She said it was unconnected to these exposes and was instead in reaction to U.S. Ambassador Laura Dogu’s criticism of a meeting between Honduran military leaders and Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, whom Dogu termed a “drug trafficker.”
In an open statement posted on X, Xiomara criticized U.S. policy toward the nation. “The interference and interventionism of the United States, and its intention to direct the politics of Honduras through its embassy and other representatives, is intolerable.”
This was the latest in a sequence of diplomatic skirmishes with the U.S., by far the nation’s largest trading partner. In July, Xiomara congratulated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro after he declared victory in an election most Latin American leaders have criticised as fraudulent, and last year her administration cut bonds with Taiwan in favor of China. In 2022, Xiomara’s administration scuttled the domestically unpopular “special investment zones” known as ZEDEs, upsetting some U.S. investors with this and other reforms.
Even so, the nations continue to cooperate closely on security; the U.S. still maintains a military base in Honduras, and the new defence minister (Rixi Moncada) met with U.S. counterparts at the Pentagon and SouthCom headquarters in October. In the meantime, extraditions to the U.S. continue, most recently with an alleged fentanyl trafficker on 23rd October.
The extradition statement, resignations, and delays on the UN anti-graft commission “give the impression that corruption is still ingrained, that this administration has the same narco-vices as the last administration,” said Leonardo Pineda (a political analyst in the northern city of San Pedro Sula). “The public is disappointed.”