Honduras’ two presidential front runners, Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla, remain locked in a virtual tie. Donald Trump has threatened to cut aid to Honduras if Asfura, of the right-wing National Party, does not win the election. This comes after Trump said he would also pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was serving a 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and firearms charges.
Raymond Craib, a historian of modern Latin America, says Trump’s interest in Honduras is more about U.S. business interests, than democracy.
Craib says: “The elections in Honduras are a referendum on many things, for sure, with crime, corruption, and the economy being major issues. But we should not ignore the role of foreign investors and U.S. officials. The spectre of the 2009 coup d’etat that deposed Manuel Zelaya, husband of current President Xiomara Castro, hovers over this election. Implicitly backed by the Obama administration, that coup ushered in a decade of rule by the National Party [NP] and a further embrace of neoliberal policies and libertarian ideologues.
“On dubious legal foundations, the NP created Special Employment and Economic Zones [ZEDEs] with near-sovereign powers, attracting international investors, former USG officials, and libertarian tech-bros who aspired to build private cities in various parts of the country. Those have been challenged by Castro’s administration and their legality revoked by the Supreme Court, and one can imagine free private city investors, some of whom have threatened to sue the Honduran government for over US$10 billion, would like nothing more than to see her party out of power.
“The NP has garnered the support of Trump, who has vocally backed its presidential candidate Nasry Asfura. Moreover, and despite his claims to be waging a war on drug trafficking, he has pardoned convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez who, as a member of the NP, served as Honduras’s president in the 2010s when the ZEDEs were created and implemented.”
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