Honduras’s Congressional Crisis Stymies President Xiomara Castro’s Anti-Corruption Efforts

On Jan. 21, a fistfight broke out in Honduras’s Nationwide Congress. The inauguration of then-incoming President Xiomara Castro was lower than every week away, and the nation had slipped into disaster. A faction of lawmakers from Castro’s left-wing Liberty and Refoundation (or Libre) occasion, whose leaders obtained marketing campaign financing from—and had beforehand labored for—a financial institution infamous for its ties to drug cash laundering, broke rank. They elected a head of Congress who would doubtless assist the continued energy and immunity of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández’s right-wing Nationwide Social gathering, which critics have lengthy accused of turning the nation right into a “narco-dictatorship.”

Legislators who remained loyal to Castro have been furious, and greater than two dozen of them swarmed the speaker’s stand, the place issues rapidly got here to blows. Inside days, these lawmakers fashioned their very own, separate Congress. Honduras’s Congress had break up in two.

A lot of the nation, beforehand euphoric after having elected Honduras’s first progressive president, was outraged. Within the days that adopted, indignant crowds gathered across the nation—together with exterior of the Nationwide Congress—to protest a transfer, although technically authorized, that almost all Hondurans saw as treason.

The disaster could show to be a canary within the coal mine for the Castro administration. Prospects for Castro’s proclaimed anti-corruption efforts now appear bleak, at the same time as many Hondurans stay hopeful within the early days of her presidency.

However Castro was solely capable of achieve a lead over Asfura after her Libre occasion and the populist Savior Social gathering of Honduras (PSH), which was based on an anti-corruption platform in 2020, fashioned an alliance in late 2021. The settlement was that the following head of Congress can be PSH lawmaker Luis Redondo. 

However then, final week, 18 Libre occasion members rejected the phrases of this alliance and unexpectedly named one among their very own, Jorge Cálix, as head of Congress. The implications have been deep: Castro could also be in control of the chief department, however with out the alliance that helped her garner assist to win the presidency, it might be far harder to push by way of anti-corruption measures or progressive reforms, rendering a lot of Castro’s undertaking toothless.

There are indications of connections between the leaders of the Libre legislators who defected and the Nationwide Social gathering, although a number of defectors have denied this. (One in every of them, Denis Chirinos, told Honduran media that “at no level have been we supplied cash [to vote for Calix].”) One of many essential funders of Cálix’s congressional campaign was Ficohsa, a financial institution going through money laundering scandals that’s owned by the Atala Zablahs, one of the crucial politically related households in Honduras. One distinguished member of the Atala Zablah household is Asfura, the Nationwide Social gathering candidate who misplaced the election to Castro.

Households just like the Atala Zablahs have nice energy in Honduras: As an illustration, personal messages point out a number of family members have been doubtless the architects of the 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, Honduras’s most well-known social motion chief opposing the post-coup regime. Ficohsa has additionally come beneath hearth for funneling money to Honduran corporations accused of human rights violations and killings, resembling DESA and Dinant.

Moreover, Beatriz Valle, the congresswoman who nominated Cálix—and who was nominated to be his vp of Congress—was previously on the board of directors at Ficohsa.

Given Cálix’s previous financing by Ficohsa and his shock bid to steer Congress, many Hondurans consider he was leaned on by the Nationwide Social gathering to impede Castro’s anti-corruption political undertaking. After being sworn in as head of Congress on Jan. 23, Cálix flew via helicopter to a rustic membership close to Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s capital. On Jan. 25, the Nationwide Social gathering and centrist Liberal Social gathering published a letter expressing support for him. Cálix, together with the 17 different legislators, has now been expelled from the Libre occasion. (He at present doesn’t have a celebration.)

“This disaster has virtually been created by the [National Party] that previously ruled this nation, which desires to take care of the impunity, injustice, and lack of accountability, and to forestall investigations into their acts of treason towards the nation,” mentioned Tomás Ramírez, a PSH congressman for the division of Atlántida, on Jan. 26.

That these lawmakers could possibly be purchased off didn’t shock some Hondurans: “We’re in a really susceptible political system,” mentioned Nelson Javier Cruz, a Libre voter in Tegucigalpa. “Latin American politicians are straightforward to purchase, their costs put up by businessmen.”

The Libre-PSH coalition, in flip, fashioned a separate Congress, with Redondo on the helm. Redondo’s coalition has 96 members, whereas Cálix’s has 80 members, together with all Nationwide Social gathering legislators; Redondo’s Congress works within the legislative palace in Tegucigalpa, which frequently lacks electrical energy, whereas Cálix’s Congress works by way of Zoom calls.

Each the Libre and Nationwide Events have filed constitutional injunctions towards one another, and the Nationwide Social gathering has filed criminal complaints, together with the usurpation of public positions, towards Redondo within the Public Ministry.

The rise up caught some off guard. “We, the individuals, by no means thought Jorge Cálix would try this to us,” mentioned Laura Alvador Alvarado, a road vendor from Tegucigalpa, exterior the Nationwide Congress.

For now, it’s unclear how the 2 Congresses will reconcile. On Jan. 26, Castro supplied Cálix a cabinet position in trade for permitting Redondo to be head of Congress. Cálix tweeted that very same day that he “would have his answer soon” however has but to elaborate.

At daybreak, a whole bunch of individuals arrived on the cathedral the place Castro would start her procession, to see what they hoped was the top of an period. The road was lined with tough wooden stalls serving baleadas, soda, sweet, and occasional. Standing guard have been state safety forces, municipal and nationwide police, troopers, secret service, and particular forces—nearly all infamous for being led by cachurecos, loyalists to the Nationwide Social gathering. Close to the church, a bunch of bikes mounted with Libre flags, hanging unfastened within the morning air, waited on the sidewalk to observe Castro to the nationwide stadium, the place she can be sworn in.

Amid a steadily rising crowd of supporters close to a plastic police barricade, Maria Jesus Sierra Varela, an elementary college instructor and Libre voter, spoke of the importance of 1 oft-referenced facet of Castro’s inauguration: “It’s a splendidly completely satisfied second {that a} girl is lastly president of Honduras,” she mentioned. “There’s been 48 presidents of this nation—all males. We hope insurance policies for girls get higher [here], that this may convey an finish to femicide, the unemployment of girls.”

Notably current on the inauguration was U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Beforehand, Ricardo Zúñiga, the U.S. particular envoy for the Northern Triangle, averted assembly Honduras’s management in his first go to to the area final April. (Presumably, Washington wished to keep away from bringing consideration to the truth that Hernández, previously a close U.S. ally, had been flagged by a U.S. court docket and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a serious state drug trafficker.) Castro doubtless appeared like a recent begin, and at a meeting following the inauguration, Harris met together with her to debate, amongst different issues, vaccines, sexual violence, combating corruption, and financial alternative.

Castro has mentioned she is going to abolish the Zones for Employment and Financial Improvement (ZEDEs), the semi-autonomous corporate enclaves which have their very own low tax schemes in addition to unbiased authorized methods, environmental and labor rules, and safety forces. ZEDEs—that are thought of a pet project of Hernández’s, who pushed them by way of the Supreme Courtroom in 2013—are extensively loathed in Honduras, the place many see them as a method of divvying the nation’s territory to unload to largely overseas buyers whereas contributing to the displacement of rural minorities.

Castro has additionally mentioned she intends to reverse draconian abortion laws and rework the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the 2004 accord that has displaced farmers and suppressed wages, fueling immigration.

Extra broadly, she’s promised to dramatically scale back the violence and corruption supercharged by the 2009 coup, when a spike in political assassinations and rise in felony violence made Honduras one of many most violent countries on this planet.

“There shall be no extra dying squads,” Castro said in her inauguration speech. “There shall be no extra silence within the face of femicides or organized crime.” 

However it’s not only a divided Congress that might show intractable within the face of progressive change or anti-corruption efforts. There’s a highly effective home oligarchy with transnational affect invested in stymying financial reform—households just like the Atala Zablahs and Facussés, who acquired immense energy by way of financial restructuring within the mid-Nineteen Nineties and, some argue, got here to grab management of the Honduran state itself throughout the 2009 coup. (As an illustration, the patriarch of the Facussé dynasty, Miguel Facussé—whose palm oil firm has been allegedly related to greater than 100 murders and who was accused in leaked U.S. State Department cables of utilizing his plantation to land drug planes—was a major supporter of the takeover.)

“Xiomara and her agenda are going to be sandwiched between the social actions that helped convey her to energy, on the one hand, and the pursuits of the oligarchs, the Nationwide Social gathering, and Jorge Cálix, who’s the agent selling their agenda, and the US—as a result of the US has at all times sided with the financial elite on this nation,” mentioned Karen Spring, a Canadian human rights activist who’s lived and labored in Honduras since 2009. Certainly, Washington has an extended historical past of favoring economic elites conducive to overseas funding in Central America.

The army and police, two extraordinarily highly effective establishments, may be an impediment to vary. Quite a few officers in state safety forces, resembling former nationwide police chief Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla Valladares, have been complicit within the drug trade.

State safety forces’ human rights abuses, which accelerated within the post-coup period, will most certainly proceed, Spring mentioned, although Castro, as head of state, can put stress on these establishments to start altering their tradition. “Though Xiomara will management the army and the police, there are nonetheless gangs and teams within the army and police which have by no means—and can by no means—reply to the pursuits of the brand new president and are nonetheless working in organized felony teams,” Spring mentioned. She identified that the military and police have labored collectively not simply with organized crime teams but additionally with the financial elite—creating, as an example, paramilitary death squads to homicide peasant activists—in a sample that may doubtless proceed.

That doesn’t imply Castro received’t strive. “My authorities will convey the maelstrom of theft to an finish,” Castro said to a packed stadium at her inauguration. Outdoors, as crowds stood in sweltering warmth, a number of celebratory cannon pictures resounded over the rust-colored valley of Tegucigalpa.

As of Tuesday, Cálix hasn’t determined whether or not to take the cupboard place, and the nation stays break up between two Congresses. In the meantime, Castro has begun her first week as president, and the congressional disaster, nonetheless unresolved, threatens to undermine her time period.