On January 27, Honduras entered a new era following twelve years of rule by the conservative National Party. Amid a celebratory atmosphere, the Central American country inaugurated center-leftist Xiomara Castro as its first woman president. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was among the heads of state in attendance for the inauguration.
“I believe in a frank relationship, one in which we have a good exchange and where we can work together.”
Harris’s presence at the inauguration was welcomed by the new administration, which is seeking to have closer relations with the United States than did the outgoing administration led by Juan Orlando Hernández.
“A close relationship [with the United States] will generate spaces for greater cooperation and of greater understanding,” Eduardo Enrique Reina, Honduras’s new Minister of Foreign Relations, tells The Progressive. “I believe in a frank relationship, one in which we have a good exchange and where we can work together.”
Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown in the 2009 coup d’état that ushered in the twelve-year rule of the National Party. The U.S. Department of State during the Obama Administration, at the time led by Hillary Clinton, was among the first to recognize the rightwing government that took power following the coup, despite its rejection by other countries in Latin America and around the world.
Over the past month, officials from the new administration met with representatives from the United States ahead of assuming office. Migration is among the key focuses that the incoming administration discussed with the embassy. Reina says there are an estimated one million Hondurans living in the United States, many of whom had fled the country as part of massive caravans during the administration of Juan Orlando Hernández.
The close relationship between the United States and the new administration serves the geopolitical interests of the Biden Administration by expanding the United States’s influence in Honduras as a counter to China’s growing influence in the region. This, in turn, will help Biden with some of his other foreign policy objectives, such as preserving Taiwan’s autonomy from China.
“At the moment it is not a priority to seek relations with mainland China,” Reina says. “It will depend on whether the relations we have with each of our partners are fruitful and are of benefit to Honduras. And the relationship with Taiwan is maintained at the levels we consider adequate.”
But seeking closer relationships with the United States has led the new administration to already walk back some of its initial campaign proposals. Specifically, the administration has decided to not seek to open direct foreign relations with Beijing and to maintain foreign relations with Taiwan, in spite of suggestions during the campaign that the country would move toward China.
“We can say that this was the first error for the new administration,” Julio Raudales, an economist and current rector at the private José Cecilio del Valle University, tells The Progressive. “It was included in their governmental plan, but they will not be able to comply with the campaign promise.”
Raudales suggests that the decision to maintain relations with Taiwan came about as a condition of the aid from the United States. Honduras remains one of the last fourteen countries in the world to recognize Taiwan as an independent state. Most recently, Nicaragua recognized “One China” and officially closed and gifted the Taiwanese embassy in Managua to Beijing.
Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández had on several occasions used opening relations with China as a threat to pressure the Trump Administration to maintain aid to his country.
But as the country of Honduras celebrated this historic moment, they also faced their first major political crisis of the new administration.
Ahead of the inauguration, a large block from the LIBRE party broke agreements to form a broad coalition and negotiated the formation of the Congressional Council with congressional representatives from the Liberal and National Parties. Jorge Cálix was elected to head congress, displacing President Castro’s pick. In response, the remaining members of the Libre party formed a parallel congress.
These divisions in the National Congress will inhibit the new Castro administration’s efforts to reform the Honduran state.
“There is an internal crisis,” Raudales says. “They are negotiating, but apparently they haven’t been able to find a way out of the crisis. So this has affected the beginning of the government quite a bit.”
After weeks of division, the National Congress appears to have found a resolution, permitting the Castro administration to begin to advance with its anti-corruption efforts.
There are now growing calls from the United States for the arrest and extradition of former president Hernández. Ahead of Castro’s inauguration, U.S. Congressmember Norma Torres, Democrat of California, issued a letter to the United States Department of Justice calling for the extradition of Hernández for his part in conspiring with drug traffickers to permit transit through Honduras.
The outgoing president faces accusations of permitting and supporting drug traffickers during his two terms in office. His brother, Tony Hernández, a former Honduran congressional representative, was convicted of conspiracy to traffic drugs in a New York court in 2021.
“Hernández leaves [office] with the possibility that he will be prosecuted in the United States,” Raudales explains. “There is an expectation in Honduras that this is going to happen, and that probably in the coming weeks or months.”
And these accusations appear to be moving along in the United States. On February 3, the week after the Castro administration was inaugurated, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who heads the senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a letter calling for the State Department and Department of the Treasury to label Hernández a narco kingpin under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. The designation would strip the former president of his U.S. visa.
The former president also faces accusations of corruption in Honduras, but he did not wait long to take steps to protect himself from these accusations in his home country.
Shortly after leaving the presidential palace, Hernández officially joined the Central American Parliament, known as PARLACEN, in order to maintain his immunity from prosecution in the region.
“[Juan Orlando Hernández] sought the seat in the Central American Parliament to avoid being prosecuted here in Honduras,” Raudales says. “We must remember that he has committed several crimes, including seeking re-election, which is prohibited in the constitution, and accusations of corruption.”
Hernández’s move mirrors that of former Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales, who organized an emergency session of PARLACEN in a hotel in Guatemala City in order to maintain his immunity after leaving office and to avoid protesters in January 2020. Morales at the time was facing accusations of corruption and calls for his prosecution for his role in the deaths of forty-seven girls who died in a fire in a government safe house in 2017.