IT WAS A swift public humiliation. On February fifteenth, simply 19 days after he left workplace as his nation’s omnipotent president, Juan Orlando Hernández was arrested at his mansion in Tegucigalpa and brought away in handcuffs. The arrest was in response to an extradition request from prosecutors in New York who've charged him with collaborating in a violent conspiracy to export 500 tonnes of cocaine to the US since 2004. He says he's harmless. His arrest holds out the potential of a brand new daybreak in a rustic benighted by corruption, violence, poverty and pure disasters.
Mr Hernández’s rise adopted the ousting in 2009 of Manuel Zelaya, a Liberal-turned-populist who allied with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and sought to alter the structure with a purpose to run for a second consecutive time period. Mr Hernández, a conservative, at first introduced himself as a reformer. He promised to crack down on drug-trafficking and purged the police. He allowed the Organisation of American States (OAS) to arrange a unit to analyze corruption.
He then persuaded Honduras’s Supreme Court docket, full of nominees of his Nationwide Get together, to permit him to run for a second time period in 2017. The OAS and others denounced his victory as fraudulent. However the US blessed it. Mr Hernández performed the administration of Donald Trump as sweetly as a marimba. Honduras grew to become solely the fourth nation to maneuver its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as Mr Trump needed. When scores of migrant caravans started leaving for the border with the US, Mr Hernández agreed to cease them.
American prosecutors had one other view. They secured the arrest and in 2021 the conviction for drug-trafficking of Tony Hernández, the president’s brother. Witnesses instructed of bribes from drug lords, paid to the Nationwide Get together to influence the federal government to look the opposite approach. The president mentioned he needed to “stuff medication up the gringos’ noses”, a witness assertion claims. He shut down the OAS unit as a result of it did its job too effectively. The administration of Joe Biden has printed a listing of 21 Honduran officers it says are “corrupt and undemocratic”, together with Mr Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio Lobo (who denies the accusation).
Hondurans have had sufficient, too. In November they elected as president Xiomara Castro, the spouse of Mr Zelaya. At her inauguration she pledged to struggle corruption. She introduced again a police chief fired by Mr Hernández, who promptly arrested him. She desires the UN to arrange an anti-corruption fee.
Mr Hernández says the case towards him is predicated on the testimony of convicted drug-traffickers in search of revenge. The strain to extradite him is powerful. His arrest was celebrated with fireworks in Tegucigalpa. Ms Castro appears to have a special agenda from the one her husband had when he was president. She received partly as a result of she allied with an anti-corruption social gathering of the centre-right whose legislative backing she wants. She appears to have dropped a marketing campaign promise to recognise China’s declare on Taiwan. “She clearly has opted to go along with the US,” says David Vacation, an analyst of Central America. Her first assembly as president was with Kamala Harris, America’s vice-president.
Mr Hernández is just not the primary Latin American head of state to be accused of drug-trafficking. The case merely highlights the persevering with penetration of drug cash within the area. Luis García Meza, a Bolivian dictator of the early Nineteen Eighties, positioned his authorities on the service of the business. Manuel Noriega, Panama’s former strongman, was convicted of trafficking by an American courtroom. Ernesto Samper, a Colombian president within the Nineties, admitted that his marketing campaign took cash from the Cali drug gang, although he insists he was unaware of it. Gangs have bribed politicians, police and officers from Argentina to Mexico.
However the rot goes significantly deep in Honduras. Its enterprise and political elites, protected of their gated communities, have allowed the seize of the state by organised crime whilst lots of of hundreds of peculiar Hondurans flee. Remittances of practically $6bn in 2020, equal to nearly 70% of exports and 1 / 4 of GDP, preserve an unreformed nation going.
Ms Castro may change this. Her first check is to attempt to make sure that a brand new Supreme Court docket and attorney-general are politically unbiased. If they're, which will persuade the UN to become involved. Mr Biden’s staff will probably be supportive. However it's going to take a few years of onerous work for Honduras to police itself.
Learn extra from Bello, our columnist on Latin America:
Why allegations about his son may harm Mexico’s president (Feb nineteenth)
How the “Cannibal Manifesto” modified Brazil (Feb twelfth)
Argentina’s Peronists squabble over an settlement with the IMF (Feb fifth)
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