Category: News

The first 100 days of Honduran president Xiomara Castro’s administration have exposed the complex situation facing Honduras. Internal conflicts within the president’s party and the political alliance that won the elections last November have hampered real change. Although Castro has kept some of her promises, the country’s structural problems are holding her back in many ways. Un met campaign commitments loom over the first female president of Honduras, including her promises made to women.

On June 3, 2021, U.S. president Joe Biden announced that fighting corruption would be a key objective of his administration. Soon after, various U.S. government departments and agencies began to quickly expand their efforts to combat corruption at home and abroad. President Biden’s anti-corruption strategy could very well color his country’s relationship with President Xiomara Castro’s administration and determine whether Honduras can become a strategic partner for the U.S. in the region.

Translated on April 20 | A judge authorized the seizure of 33 properties, eight businesses, 16 vehicles, and other financial assets from former president Juan Orlando Hernández’s family. However, this represents less than half of Hernández’s $7.8 million net worth.
Recent news reports said that the former first lady sought to protect some of their wealth by transferring US$2.44 million in personal assets to a local bank, allegedly to repay a debt. This asset transfer temporarily prevented the Justice Ministry from seizing these assets, while prosecutors investigate whether the bank and Ana García de Hernández acted in good faith.

On March 16, after a judge authorized the extradition of former President Juan Orlando Hernández to the United States on drug trafficking and weapons charges, Hernández sat down in the Supreme Court president’s chair and began to record a video. The incident did not sit well with the Special Commission on Extradition of the National Congress, which had met in the same room a day earlier with several Supreme Court judges, including the president of that body, Rolando Argueta Pérez.

Ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) was arrested at his home in Tegucigalpa and taken to the police special forces headquarters after the United States requested his extradition on drug trafficking charges.

Legislators from the faction supporting Luis Redondo as president of the National Congress met on February 2 to vote on several laws that fulfill some of President Xiomara Castro’s campaign promises. A law proposed by Representative Rasel Tomé condemning the coup that deposed Manuel Zelaya 12 years earlier was approved, and includes amnesty provisions for those that defend national sovereignty, land and water sources. It also protects public officials from prosecution for corruption-related crimes committed from 2006 to 2009.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, repeatedly accused of having direct ties to drug traffickers, became a representative to the Central American Parliament in a virtual swearing-in ceremony on January 27. This granted him immunity from prosecution and extradition. A few days earlier, Representative Norma Torres of California had sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice asking for the immediate extradition of Hernández for drug trafficking.

Competing boards of directors of the National Congress were sworn in on January 23 in Honduras. One was elected by a group of 79 legislators who met offsite, 30 kilometers from the National Congress’s chambers. The other board was elected by 50 members of Congress who met in a legislative chamber with no lighting. Some political analysts say the first board was legally elected, but the second one is backed by president-elect Xiomara Castro. The dispute will now have to be sorted out by the nation’s constitutional court.

It has been almost two years since Honduras’ education ministry suspended classroom schooling following the first detected cases of COVID-19 in March 2020. The pandemic

The first migrant caravan for the year departed from the San Pedro Sula bus terminal in Honduras on January 15. Almost half are Nicaraguans.

It has been a year since hurricanes Eta and Iota devastated parts of Honduras and Central America. Especially hard hit were four municipalities which are led by mayors now looking to be reelected by the very constituents they have neglected. Contracorriente visited La Lima, where many people still live without permanent housing, jobs, or stable incomes. Some have tried to rebuild their homes with scraps of discarded building materials.

Early on October 14, eleven buses carrying migrants arrived at the Guatemala-Honduras border. They had been deported by plane from the United States to Mexico, and then put on buses for the long journey home. No one from the Honduran government was there to record their arrival. According to non-governmental organizations that help deportees at the border, between 250 and 450 deportees have been arriving every night since mid-September.

In an interview with Contracorriente, Eduardo Facussé, president of the Cortés Chamber of Commerce and Industry, talked about the country’s political outlook ahead of the November 2021 elections, and gave his thoughts on Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs).

Cryptocurrencies are gaining traction in a number of countries including El Salvador, which recently authorized its use as legal tender. Economist Julio Raudales says that short-term adoption in Honduras is unlikely because the country “does not have the [necessary] financial or political conditions.”

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights opposes unlimited presidential reelection limits on the grounds that it violates the American Convention and the American Declaration. Dr. Joaquín Mejía says that the Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of this practice should be criminally investigated, and that President Juan Orlando Hernández’s reelection was illegitimate. Mejia believes that Honduras’ Supreme Court should reverse this ruling and reestablish presidential term limits.

Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE) are proliferating in Honduras. Just three months before the November general elections, three political parties are proclaiming their opposition to the ZEDEs, but their plans to abolish them depend on winning the presidency and control of the National Congress.

People are increasingly denouncing the National Party’s politicization of vaccinations in Honduras. These complaints not only criticize the national government, but also some mayors who are taking advantage of the situation to gain favor among the electorate and garner more votes in the November general elections.

A two-year-old Honduran boy was found abandoned in Mexico on June 28. He was traveling with his father, a 27-year-old farmer who was barely making ends meet back home. No one knows how they were separated. The child is back in Honduras while his father remains imprisoned in Mexico. “The face of poverty in Honduras is rural,” experts say, and Wilder’s story is proof of this.

They report to the job site every day at 7:00 am even though they don’t know what time they’ll finish work that day. For years, they didn’t dare complain about the inhumane work conditions. Now they are preparing a lawsuit.

A little over six months after the United States Congress passed the United States-Northern Triangle Enhanced Engagement Act (HR-2615), the U.S. State Department published a

Civil society organizations from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador recently launched the Center Against Corruption and Impunity in Northern Central America (CCINOC) in order to focus on one of the region’s biggest problems – corruption.

La Lima was the Honduran city hit hardest by Tropical Storm Eta. Its residents are still cleaning out the mud and dirty water that has filled their homes, while yet another storm threatens Honduras.