Honduras - Hernandez tries to hold on

The Biden administration faces a challenge in terms of how to deal with a country captured by a criminal group masquerading as a political party.

Juan Orlando Hernandez is striving to remain in power beyond this year and protect himself from prosecution by the US. The country is likely to experience a series of crises in the coming months as the de facto president tries to manipulate electoral institutions and dodge domestic and international pressure. That is the conclusion of a report I received from a freelance journalist who is currently investigating campaign financing and the political intrigue that is occurring in the country.

The leading scenario is that the president manipulates the electoral institutions later this year to guarantee a victory by the National Party. The party’s candidate will be determined in primary elections next month between Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah, the mayor of Tegucigalpa, and Mauricio Oliva, the president of the Congress. Financial and institutional support from Hernandez will be necessary to win and will leave the next president beholden to the current leader. 

As a reminder, Juan Orlando Hernandez stole the 2017 election. The idea that he does it again in 2021 is decently likely. He is incentivized to do so because an opposition win would mean likely arrest and potential extradition to the United States. 

Some of this is playing out in an ongoing battle at the National Electoral Council. Less than three weeks from the primary election, the CNE is still arguing over exactly how ballots will be counted. A Zoom meeting last week ended abruptly as one council member (briefly serving as interim president) criticized the National Party for trying to block transparent vote counts. There will be an emergency session over the coming weekend to try to finalize the details of the vote counting and transmission process.

As a second scenario, there are ongoing rumors in the country that the president plans some sort of crisis that will allow him to cancel or postpone the elections and remain in power. These sorts of rumors can’t be verified, but given how poorly the international community has responded to similar power grabs in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti, Hernandez has good reason to believe that he could get away with it if he tried.

One thing my source in Honduras stressed is that Hernandez retains the ongoing support of the security forces. The military and national police are likely to back Hernandez in whatever he decides to do. 

Pressure in the US

Hernandez is widely believed to be under sealed indictment due to the information revealed in the cases of his brother Tony Hernandez as well as drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes. A recent InSight Crime investigation did a fantastic job describing how Hernandez and the National Party operate as their own criminal conspiracy.

The Biden administration has said it plans to crack down on corruption in Central America as a key part of dealing with the root causes of migration. However, they face a complicated challenge because they want to cooperate with Honduras on topics including citizen security, regional migration and recovery from Covid and last year’s hurricanes. There are still a couple hundred US service members that operate out of a base in the center of the country. Biden’s overall goal is to increase aid to the Northern Triangle as a way of improving conditions there. Cutting relations with Honduras’s president could mean potential steps backwards on other areas of cooperation.

The US Congress is playing an important role and plans to make the decision easier for the Biden administration. A proposed Senate bill would sanction President Hernandez and suspend financial aid and security support to Honduras. Tim Padgett has a strong column arguing that the Biden administration should take a harder line on Hernandez, treating him as the leader of a narco-state the same way the US has done to Nicolas Maduro.

My preference, instead of cutting funds, would be to increase assistance and have the money rerouted to humanitarian aid and anti-corruption efforts by non-governmental groups. 

Hernandez has responded to this pressure with a lobbying campaign intended to delegitimize the legal cases in the US. Hernandez’s supporters stress that the witness testimony against him comes from drug traffickers who cannot be trusted. He will also attempt to reframe the issue by discussing his cooperation on certain anti-drug and anti-gang issues.

The international pressure does create challenges for Hernandez domestically. Here is a flyer going around WhatsApp for a protest scheduled for tomorrow that identifies Hernandez as a “usurping narcotrafficker.” 

Sometimes a single tragic event helps focus the issue

On the night of February 6th, Keyla Martínez, a young nursing student, was detained by police in the city of La Esperanza in Honduras’ western La Intibucá department. Initially, police reported that Martínez was found trying to take her own life after which she was transferred to a hospital where she died. However, hospital staff working at the time she was brought in dispute this account saying Martínez was already dead for over 30 minutes when she arrived at the hospital.

The case has received international attention (see articles in Vice and the Guardian) and likely helped encourage the recent Congressional bill to sanction Hernandez. It has also led to significant protests in Honduras. 

My source in Honduras says journalists in the country are facing pressure and threats to include and highlight the police version of the story that the death was a suicide whenever they report on the incident. 

Nobody believes the police story. The murder highlights the issue of femicides as well as the gaslighting and coverups of killings like these by Honduran authorities. Impunity for these sorts of crimes helps explain how police forces get infiltrated by organized crime.

Honduran press reported on an alleged subdivision of police in the Intibucá department responsible for several femicides or incidents of gender-based violence. Since this incident, other women have come forward (on the condition of anonymity) disclosing that they have been detained, abused, and threatened by police too.

It is noteworthy that the deputy police commissioner in La Esperanza, Melvin Alexander Alvarenga Deras, was involved in another extrajudicial killing in 2011, though two other officers took the fall for the incident. Alvarenga was also previously the police chief in La Mosquitia in the Gracias a Dios department which borders Nicaragua, and before that he worked in the Olancho department, a former hub for drug planes.

Thanks for reading

Thursday’s newsletter is usually just for paying subscribers, but I sent today’s newsletter to everyone because I know there is a lot of interest in this topic at the moment.

Why was I able to hire a freelance journalist to help me report today’s story? Because this newsletter is supported by paying subscribers. Thanks to everyone who supports this newsletter. If you haven’t already and can afford it, please consider subscribing.

The journalist requested to remain anonymous “porque con JOH, aquí las cosas están feas...ese mata.” That says a lot about the conditions at the moment.