Honduras under President Asfura: Justice in the service of the elite

The return of Amilcar Ardón Soriano, leading figure of the Hermanos AA drug cartel, is a prime example for Lesly Frazier. On August 25, Ardón Soriano flew by helicopter into El Paraíso Copán, on the border with Guatemala, to the applause of many spectators.

“It was the staged return of a cartel capo who no one wanted to harm,” said the Radio Progreso journalist. The station is one of the most inconvenient media outlets in Honduras, was founded by the Jesuits and is financially independent. Unlike many other media.

President Nasry Asfura was sworn in in January. The politician from the national party, supported by Donald Trump in the election campaign and only elected amid dubious counting errors, governs the Central American country with around eleven million inhabitants in cooperation with his party colleague Tomás Zambrano.

Zambrano, Speaker of Parliament, returned from Chile just a few days ago from the 5th meeting of Foro Madrid, the anti-communist network with a Latin American orientation initiated by the Spanish party Vox. Together the two of them set the course back to the past. They work in the service of the ultra-conservative political-economic elite.

Only in June, various laws were passed that provide for the promotion of the agro-industrial sector, affecting tourism, mining and the energy sector. All are in the national interest. These laws fuel existing land conflicts and criminalize protest against land grabs, Frazier said. This is also confirmed by human rights lawyer Reina Rivera Joya, who worked for the Swedish non-governmental organization Diakonia for a long time.

She refers to the Rigores massacre. On May 21, 20 people, all small farmers, including three children, were shot dead on their way to a palm oil plantation in the community in the Aguán Valley in the north of the country. The background, say local farmers' organizations, is that there are claims from large landowners on the land of smaller cooperatives, small farmers and farmers' cooperatives

The investigations by the national authorities have so far produced nothing. This is typical of the country, where the number of murders, massacres and femicides is rising steeply. “1,272 murders, more than 60 massacres and 190 femicides have been recorded since January 1st,” says Lesly Frazier. She suspects that there were a number of targeted murders in the context of the return of drug capos such as Ardón Soriano, but also of former President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Hernández, who was pardoned by Trump and sentenced to 45 years by a US court for drug smuggling, returned to Tegucigalpa at the end of July. There he was acquitted at the beginning of September in the only case that the judiciary brought against him, for embezzlement of public funds.

Experts like Rivera Joya or lawyer Joaquín Mejía do not expect further investigations. The latter is an analyst at the Jesuit Research Center Eric SJ from El Progreso. “We haven't had an independent judiciary in Honduras for a long time; we have a selective one that serves the elites,” the lawyer clearly criticizes. This is also confirmed by Eric SJ's representative annual survey from June, which gives the government a lousy report. They act as before, in the service of large landowners and elites. More than eighty percent of respondents are in favor of an international justice commission to combat corruption and impunity.

But this will hardly exist under the dual political leadership of Asfura/Zambrano. Especially since many believe that Hernández could return to power. For Rivera Joya, it is he who is best connected. In addition, it could well be that he came from the USA with secret orders.

This is not unlikely, because in Honduras there are several special zones for employment and economic development in which international capital enjoys special libertarian rights - like a kind of state within a state. This model, implemented by Hernández in 2013 in violation of the Constitution, could attract interest from the Trump environment, it is said.

“The fact is, however, that the return to authoritarian and corrupt structures has come a long way after the four-year break under left-wing President Xiomara Castro,” says Lesly Frazier. The prospects for the population in Honduras are modest.