Stop U.S. and Canadian support for Honduras’ Narco-Dictatorship!

This statement on recent events in Honduras was issued by the Honduras Solidarity Network Oct. 13.

Former President Mel Zelaya leads an August protest against Honduran dictator JOH.

Honduras’ Narco-Dictatorship installed through a US backed coup must go! For ten years, since the US backed coup in June 2009, a crisis of the rule of law, constitutionality, and democracy has deepened as a blatantly criminal neoliberal dictatorship has sunk its teeth into Honduras. 

The 2009 coup, subsequent fraudulent elections, official corruption, and impunity and violence by the state against its people are reasons enough to call for an end to the regime. Now the public exposure of the depths of criminal activity and narco-perversion of the entire state of Honduras by the dictatorship confirms what many Hondurans have denounced for years. 

The details are emerging in a US federal court in New York City, where Tony Hernandez, brother of current Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), went on trial starting October 2nd. The testimony against Tony Hernandez in just the first days of the trial includes information that narcotics traffickers, including El Chapo, gave $4 million to the presidential campaigns of National Party politicians Pepe Lobo and Juan Orlando Hernandez. Pepe Lobo was installed in office through the farcical elections of November 2009, which simply aimed to whitewash the illegal coup. 

JOH took power in 2013 (the year he got the “donation” from El Chapo) after highly questionable elections, and then he declared himself the winner in a blatantly fraudulent election in 2017. Beyond money, evidence being presented shows that Tony Hernandez was also directly involved in murders. All of these crimes were never prosecuted in Honduras. Witnesses who were involved in the crimes have even stated that they knew that any investigations in Honduras would be blocked by the Honduran government. Meanwhile, the Honduran justice system focuses on arrests and imprisonment of people participating in protests against the narco-dictator: small farmers recuperating land and Indigenous communities protecting land and water from mining and other extraction industries. 

Throughout this post-coup history, both Democratic and Republican administrations in the U.S. and administrations in Canada have upended Honduran democracy and supported dictatorship while diligently advancing the interests of large corporations engaged in the exploitation of labor and resources in Honduras. In so doing they have aided in the theft of the lives, property, freedom, and rights of the Honduran people.

The Honduran Solidarity Network supports the demand of the Honduran people and their organizations that JOH immediately leave office and be held accountable for all of the crimes he and his government have committed. Hondurans want a process to renovate democracy and constitutionality that involves the social movements, opposition political parties and society as a whole and works on solutions for the economic, social and political destruction that has taken place since the 2009 coup. This means support for dictatorship from Canada and the US must end now!

For more information, visit hondurassolidarity.org.