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Honduras' President Xiomara Castro delivers a speech during a ceremony to commemorate the National Flag Day, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras September 1, 2024.
Honduras rocked by presidential drug scandal
Honduran President Xiomara Castro faced calls to resign on Wednesday after journalists released a video of her brother-in-law negotiating payoffs with convicted drug traffickers. The man in the video, Carlos Zelaya, denied he knew he was taking drug money, but he and his son both resigned from their government positions after the revelation. Carlos’ brother, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, is Castro’s husband and was president himself before being overthrown in a coup in 2009.
Just before the video broke, Honduras withdrew from its extradition treaty with the United States — not a coincidence. Dozens of accused Honduran drug traffickers have been extradited to face trial and imprisonment in the US, including Castro’s immediate predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández,whom she accused of running a “narco-dictatorship.” How the tables have turned!
Eurasia Group regional expert Risa Grais-Targow says there’s more to it than simple self-preservation. Castro’s Honduras has been moving further away from the US, for example, by dropping its recognition of Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China, and immediately siding with Venezuelan strongman president Nicolás Maduro in the aftermath of that country’s deeply controversial election.
“All of this pushes Honduras further into that club of countries — Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia — that has a much more contentious relationship with the US than other Latin American countries,” Grais-Targow explained.
French President Emmanuel Macron.
What We’re Watching: A big day for Macron, Taiwan’s friend list, Russia droning on
A tense France waits
It’s a big day for French President Emmanuel Macron. After months of protests, strikes, and piling up trash, the National Assembly is set to decide on whether – and how – to vote on the president’s very unpopular pension reform plan, which would raise the national retirement age by two years to 64. (For a reminder of what’s at stake with this reform, why Macron says it is necessary, and why two-thirds of French despise it, see our explainer here.)
With only a slim majority in the lower house, Macron’s bloc needs support from at least some center-right lawmakers from Les Republicains to see this through, but it is still unclear if he’ll have the numbers, particularly since some of his own coalition members say they won't back the bill.
Macron now faces a very tough choice: call for a vote and risk losing the fight over his biggest domestic priority, which would see him turned into a lame duck president for the remainder of his five-year term. Or trigger a constitutional loophole that would rush the bill through without a vote but risk setting the streets on fire. If he chooses the latter, unions warn, his government will pay a hefty price...
Honduras unfriends Taiwan
(The People's Republic of) China swiped one of Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic chips this week when Honduras announced it'll change official recognition of China's government from Taipei to Beijing.
It's unclear why Honduran President Xiomara Castro — who promised to switch sides before she was elected in 2021 but then walked it back once in power — changed her mind again. Regardless, Honduras’ U-turn will surely overshadow Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit next week to Central America. Taiwan still has friends there in Belize and Guatemala, but Xi Jinping is spending big in the region to counter Taipei's diplomatic clout.
China, for its part, is paying more attention to the second leg of Tsai's trip. She also plans to travel to California to meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who finally decided against irking Beijing by emulating his predecessor with his own Taiwan visit.
Where’s the drone?
After the encounter between a Russian fighter jet and an American-made drone above the Black Sea, some have warned of a risk of an escalation in the Ukraine war that pits Russia directly against the US. That’s extremely unlikely.
The Biden administration, which on Thursday gave the US military the green light to release footage of the crash, has been clear and consistent that its support for Ukraine won’t include actions that bring US and NATO soldiers into direct conflict with Russian forces. And though Vladimir Putin has tried to persuade Russians and the world that Russia’s at war with the West, he has avoided any action that might push his military into a broader war it would quickly lose. (If Putin wanted a wider war, it would be very easy to start one.)
Nor is this incident particularly unusual. As the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted on Tuesday, “Russian forces have used coercive signaling against US and allied flights and naval vessels for decades in multiple theaters without triggering conflict.” The US will continue to use drones in the Black Sea to provide Ukraine with intel on Russian actions. But there is one aspect of this story we’re still watching: Can Russia recover the wreckage of the drone? If so, and it’s in decent condition, it might give Russian engineers access to advanced drone technologies they don’t already have.A vote for change in Honduras. Will they get it?
The small Central American nation of Honduras is in many ways a full blown narco-state. President Juan Orlando Hernandez – who’s governed the country for close to a decade – has been linked to the country’s booming drug trafficking trade. His brother Tony, a former congressman who is buds with Mexican drug lord El-Chapo, was sentenced to life-in prison this year for smuggling cocaine into the US. Narco-trafficking gangs run riot in the country, fueling one of the world’s highest murder rates, while corruption and poverty abound.
In a sign of the hunger for change, Hondurans have overwhelmingly selected an avowed socialist to be the next president, rather than see the conservative Hernandez’s preferred successor take power. It’s a big moment for a country in crisis. What happens now?
First, who’s won? With most of the votes counted, Xiomara Castro of the leftist Libre party currently holds a whopping 20-point lead over Nasry Asfura of Hernandez’s ruling National Party. That means Castro is now all but certain to become Honduras' first female president. She is in fact no stranger to Honduran politics: her husband José Manuel Zelaya served as president for three years until he was ousted in a military coup in 2009.
Hernandez and his cronies won’t be missed by many Hondurans whose lives are plagued by poverty and gang violence while the political elite gets rich off drug money. In Honduras, one of Central America’s poorest countries, lack of economic opportunity and high murder rates continue to drive high levels of emigration, most notably during the pandemic. The emigration rate from Honduras has increased 530 percent over the past three decades.
Will this development change things? In many ways Castro’s win is a triumph for democracy. The elections appear to have been free and fair, a stark contrast to the post-election violence that resulted after claims of election fraud in 2017.
The 62-year old Castro, who represents a coalition of opposition parties, has said she wants to open dialogue with all sectors of Honduran society to bridge the country’s deep divides. She has positioned herself as a change candidate, vowing to root out graft by establishing a UN-backed anti-corruption commission and to reduce poverty. And although her policy details are scarce, her message has resonated with a deeply disillusioned Honduran electorate that feels it has everything to lose by keeping the ruling Nationals in power.
However, Castro’s wings might be clipped by Congress, if the Nationals and its political allies hold solid ground in the 128-seat chamber.
Who’s watching? The United States, for starters. The Biden administration has made combating corruption a key part of its broader Central America policy, which aims to stabilize the region in order to reduce northward migration. And Honduras is a key piece of this: during the surge in illegal border crossings over the past year, Hondurans were second only to Mexicans among nationalities stopped at the border.
Castro, for her part, says she wants to maintain solid ties with the US, though it is unclear whether Washington and Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, will find common ground on a range of issues including relations with China, migration, and security.
Mexico also has a keen interest in seeing a more stable Honduras. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has come under strong pressure – first from Trump, now from Biden – to stop migration flows at his own borders.
Looking ahead. Castro’s job will be to turn stump speech rhetoric into meaningful change that people can feel. Hondurans are desperate for change. The neighbors are watching closely. Can she deliver?
What We're Watching: Honduras bracing for post election upheavals
Honduras braces for post election upheavals (again). Leftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro jumped out to a sizable early lead in Sunday's Honduran presidential and legislative elections, but her rival is also claiming victory in a vote already marred by fears of violence and several confirmed cyberattacks on voting systems. Castro's main opponent is businessman and capital city mayor Nasry Asfura, candidate of the ruling center-right National Party. If Castro wins, she would become the Central American country's first female president, and the first leftist to hold power since her husband, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted in a coup 12 years ago. The stakes are high for Honduras, which has been wracked by gang violence, sky-high murder rates, and poverty for years. Widespread irregularities in the 2017 re-election of current president Juan Orlando Hernandez led to days of deadly violence, and Hernandez himself has since been placed under US investigation for ties to drug traffickers. Outside of Honduras both Mexico and the US will be watching closely — hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have fled instability in their home country in recent years, traversing Mexico to seek opportunity in the USA: after Mexicans, Hondurans are currently the second most common nationality apprehended at the US southern border.