Contracorriente defends journalism as a pillar of democracy, therefore our independence and freedom of the press cannot be compromised by any organization or government. Today we have to respond to a statement from the United Nations Office in Honduras because it makes us more vulnerable in the face of the power that we rebuke.
A request for legal assistance sent to Colombian authorities in 2012 revealed that former President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and several of his relatives were under investigation for money laundering and drug trafficking. Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office provided Honduran authorities with telephone recordings that tie the Zelaya family to drug trafficking and the irregular acquisition of properties. To date no indictment has been filed and Honduran prosecutors have not made progress in the investigation.
The newly appointed director of the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS) and the secretary of health refuse to issue statements about the ongoing social security crisis, denunciations of corruption or a recent decision to release millions of lempiras in funds, arguing that it is not their responsibility to do so. But others are speaking up: patients, who have been mistreated and don’t have access to medicine, and civil society groups and doctors, who are concerned about the future of a collapsing health care system and expect new legislation and transparent investments.
Eighteen deals have been registered in the name of Indigenous Carbon, a new company with ties to U.S. entrepreneur Michael Greene, who has been accused of public land theft by the Pará Public Defender’s Office
On the evening of April 26, Honduras’ National Police cracked down on more than 1,500 protesters with gunfire and tear gas at the detour in Las Hormigas, El Triunfo, department of Choluteca. The cause of the conflict is common and structural in southern Honduras: the government has repeatedly granted concessions to companies, allowing them to manage and exploit public goods and services.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Grupo W – a conglomerate of several companies engaged in industrial, commercial and residential projects – was granted a concession to build a terminal that would organize transportation. Quintín Soriano, mayor of Choluteca, and Jairo López, regional director at the Honduran Transportation Institute (IHTT), have instructed that the new terminal is a mandatory stop for regional transportation; a measure that will raise the fare that thousands of people in the region pay.
The Beast, the north-bound train that crosses Mexico, has maimed hundreds of migrants over the last decade. Despite this, migrants fleeing from five continents have no other choice but to ride on its back to reach the U.S. While most victims used to be from Central America, migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and other countries have also fallen prey to The Beast. For many, losing a limb is the end of the road, but others continue their journey north.
A 12-person jury found former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández guilty of drug trafficking and weapons possession charges after a two-week trial in the U.S. Hernández led a drug cartel as president, turning Honduras into a narco-state. The judge is expected to pronounce sentence on June 26, 2024.
Experts on disinformation and influence campaigns told Contracorriente that between May and July 2023 the Anti-Corruption Council (Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción – CNA) and its director, Gabriela Castellanos, were targets of a coordinated and inauthentic social media campaign after the CNA published a report that revealed nepotism in Xiomara Castro’s administration. Social media accounts involved in this campaign are linked to “digital troops” supported by the government, while other accounts mostly share pro-government content. The most relevant content posted in this campaign was used during Juan Orlando Hernández’ administration.
At the COP28 in Dubai, Paraguay advanced in negotiations with Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Paracel, one of the interested companies, is questioned in the voluntary markets.
Violence against campesino families, and legal actions against leaders in Bajo Aguán, in northern Honduras, intensify almost two years after the signing of a tripartite agreement between the Government, the Coordination of Popular Organizations of Aguán (COPA) and Plataforma Agraria that sought a solution to the conflict. The most recent case of eviction and murder in land owned by Empresa Asociativa Campesina de Isletas (EACI), a signatory to the agreement, shows the complicity between State security forces and the interests of a transnational banana corporation worth billions.
An indigenous reservation in the Colombian Amazon was included in two separate carbon market projects that were approved and have sold credits, in what may have constituted a case of double counting. The promoters of the newer project, which sold credits to the US airline, claim to have made the necessary corrections. However, situations like this undermine the credibility of that market in Colombia.
Hondurans euphorically relived celebrations of the November 2021 elections, which had the highest voter turnout in recent history, when former President Juan Orlando Hernández was apprehended in February 2022. Hernández was prosecuted in the U.S. and is now awaiting trial for drug trafficking charges. However, hope for a possible way out of a prolonged political crisis to a period of democratization quickly turned to frustration, a change that began in National Congress when the new administration took office.
Seen above is Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez, who was expatriated and is serving a 26-year prison sentence for alleged treason, as punishment for opposing the government of Daniel Ortega, in Managua, Nicaragua.
In a forum held in Costa Rica in which three experts participated, it was stated that the most critical case on authoritarianism is Nicaragua, however, they noted that in El Salvador “an authoritarian regime has been configured under the veil of protection in the fight against gangs”, alongside Guatemala where the administration of justice is under the control of the “corrupt pact” (political and economic elite), and finally, in Honduras it has gone from the authoritarianism of former president Juan Orlando Hernández “to the nepotism of the Zelaya-Castro family”.
A day after two well-known environmentalists from Guapinol were murdered, a Twitter smear campaign dating back to 2021 intensified once again. The campaign accuses members of an environmentalist group that opposes a mine development of being ‘fake environmentalists’ and taking part in the murders of 10 people in the thick of the conflict.
In the coastal border area between Honduras and Guatemala lies the land once slated for the Cuyamel-Omoa National Park (El Parque Nacional Cuyamel-Omoa – PANACO). In 2011, Honduran environmental authorities, with information and support from different NGOs, proposed that a protected area be created there. The wetlands of the region belong to the second most important coral reef barrier in the world: the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. Indeed, the biodiversity of this area and its ecosystem services are so important that, in 2013, Omoa was declared a site of international importance no. 2133 by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (making the region a ‘Ramsar site’). It is now dying in the face of the advance of oil palm and king grass monocultures, under the complacent gaze of Honduran environmental authorities.
Daniel Valencia is editor-in-chief of La Prensa Gráfica in El Salvador and coordinator of the Redacción Regional journalism project. Jennifer Ávila Reyes is director of
Approximately 7000 Honduran citizens are travelling through Guatemalan territory in the first migrant caravan of 2021. This exodus, possibly the largest since 2018, comes despite the pandemic and the widespread police and military deployment in Honduras and Guatemala.
Officially, Honduras has reported 500 damaged houses, 26 cut off highways, tree loss, and dozens of communities waterlogged by overflowing rivers. The destruction, however, is clearly much greater.
Photography by: Claudia Mendoza The exodus of Hondurans is alarming. Since last Friday, more than 2,000 people left from San Pedro Sula in a caravan
Miriam is a woman who fled from Honduras with her two year old son. The statement she gave in front of a United States immigration
Civil society groups from the Bay Islands, one of the well-known tourist destinations in Honduras, have also asked Congress to revise the Tourism Promotion Law
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