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Jeff Abbott
Protesters associated with the opposition meet with the Honduran National Police ahead of the march to the United States Embassy on December 8, 2017.
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Jeff Abbott
A member of the elite Cobra unit of the Honduran national police poses with his rifle in front of the Cobra barracks in San Pedro Sula.
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Jeff Abbott
Honduran citizens march to the United States Embassy demanding that the United States assist with the defense of their democracy on December 8, 2017.
The normally chaotic streets of San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second largest city, were abnormally quiet. Only a few sex workers and others, and the occasional passing car, were in the streets at 9:30 p.m.
“This is not normal,” the clerk at my hotel near San Pedro Sula’s central park told me as we stood on the deserted main street on December 5. “This is because of the state of siege.”
Just days earlier, on December 2, the Honduran government announced this state of siege to put down the mobilization of angry citizens over the election. The government deployed the military, suspended the constitution, and established a curfew for the hours between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. But the government quickly was forced to change the curfew to 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., because no one was respecting the curfew.
Just days later, on December 7, the government changed the curfew yet again to 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. And by December 9, the government had decided to end the state of siege.
But the state of siege had impacted small business owners across the country.
“There are a lot less customers, and we are being forced to close earlier, so this is affecting our economy,” Wendel Vergales, the owner of a small store told me as I purchased a few items. “This is not just affecting me, but rather all vendors and business owners in our country.”
He added, “This crisis is hurting the image of our country internationally.”
“Our constitution is there in order to avoid certain crises, but today we are in a crisis.”
As we stood chatting, voices could be heard coming from a street over. I quickly ran down the street expecting to find a march; instead there were two small groups of men drinking and playing soccer outside the entrances to two other hotels. Every so often they would take a break from their conversations and scream “fuera JOH!”—meaning, get rid of Juan Orlando Hernández, the purported vote leader after an election wracked with allegations of fraud.
“He has done nothing for the people,” Miguel, a taxi driver in San Pedro Sula, told me as we traveled through the chaotic streets of Honduras’ second largest city on December 6. “He privatized the energy company and made concessions to private companies to construct private highways. All the while the public roads are in poor condition. No one wants him.”
Honduras continues in a state of crisis nearly two weeks after the contested 2017 presidential elections held on November 26. The roadblocks have mostly been cleared and replaced by military checkpoints, but the popular anger still permeates the streets of the country.
Initially, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, or TSE, which oversees the national elections, gave opposition candidate Salvador Narsalla the lead in early results. This has historically signaled that the candidate would win the election.
“In the 2013 election, it was announced that our candidate for deputy from [the opposition party] LIBRE, Sandra Castro, had lost the election with only roughly 29 percent of the votes counted,” Warren Ochoa, a congressional candidate for LIBRE, told me while we sat in a mutual friend’s house in Comayagua. “So how is it that the TSE cannot declare who won this election with roughly 70 percent of the votes counted?”
The popular dissatisfaction with the election has spread into the country’s elite police forces. On December 4, the elite police force called “the Cobras,” held a press conference at its barracks on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula to announce resistance to the government’s orders to repress the people.
"We cannot be taking care of someone that the people do not want,” declared a member of the Cobra forces on December 4. “We are not from well-to-do families. We cannot repress our own people.”
"We cannot be taking care of someone that the people do not want,” declared a member of the Cobra forces. “We are not from well-to-do families. We cannot repress our own people.”
The government of Orlando Hernández quickly moved to reprimand the rebellious police officers, and work to find a solution to the strike. The government entered into negotiations with the Cobra forces by the end of the day following their declaration. Two days later, on December 7, the government of Orlando Hernández removed the director of the Cobra forces in Tegucigalpa, Police Commissioner Miguel Ángel Amaya Amador.
“We do not want violence,” one commander told me at the Cobra barracks in San Pedro Sula on December 6. “We are not political, but we want the TSE to issue some sort of statement.”
He added, “Our constitution is there in order to avoid certain crises, but today we are in a crisis.”
The constitutional crisis he refers to began when Orlando Hernández of the Partido Nacional ignored the constitution to run for a second term. He utilized a 2016 court ruling that lifted the laws that prohibited a sitting president from discussing re-election to justify his campaign.
“Juan Orlando manipulated the laws to allow himself to run,” explained Miguel, the taxi driver. “He never consulted the people. When [Manuel] Zelaya was talking about running for president again, he was organizing a national consultation to see what the citizens wanted. But Juan Orlando went behind our backs and ran for president again, in spite of the constitution.”
LIBRE has continued to denounce the illegality of Orlando Hernández Hernandez’s campaign. It is also demanding that the TSE carry out a complete recount of the results from more than 18,000 polling stations, and an end to the state of siege.
The opposition also continues to call for the massive mobilization of the population to protest the irregularities within the election. Yet the protests and blockades have taken place independent from the party as well.
“These have been the largest mobilizations [in the history of Honduras],” said Ochoa. “They have brought out hundreds of thousands of people. And these have all occurred simultaneously and spontaneously.”
The anger over this election highlights the deterioration of Honduran society in the eight years since the coup d’état against the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. Poverty and extreme poverty have greatly increased, just as access to public health care and schools has plummeted.
According to data from the World Bank, in 2013, at the time of Orlando Hernández’s first election, 62.8 percent of the population lived in poverty. By 2016, the number of people living in poverty had grown to well over 66 percent of the population, according to the World Bank.
During the same period, the Honduran economy grew by 3.6 percent. But this growth did not generate the opportunities for the majority of young Hondurans.
And as poverty increased, so did violent crime and migration to the United States. According to documents obtained by the PEW Research Center from The Department of Homeland Security, the rise in violence in 2014 led to the increase in migration from Honduras and El Salvador.
This violence especially impacted the youth of Honduras, who saw little opportunity for themselves in their homeland.
All these factors have contributed to the anger over the theft of the election.
Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. His work has appeared in NACLA Report on the Americas, In These Times, and Upside Down World. Follow him on Twitter @palabrasdeabajo.