Comment by Martin Mowforth
November 2024
Early in 2024, the President of Honduras warned of a potential coup d’état in her country. President Xiomara Castro is relatively progressive, although some would describe her as ‘mildly progressive’. Regardless of these descriptive labels, she represents a turn towards a search for justice for ordinary people in Honduras and a challenge, however mild, to the prevailing and domineering ideology of neoliberalism which during the last three Honduran administrations became synonymous with gangsterism and corruption.
A September 13 report by Wyatt Reed in The Grayzone states that the Honduran government has complained against the US for trying to spark a coup d’état in their country. The media outlet Insight Crime, which is funded by the US State Department, had released an eleven year-old video implying that President Xiomara Castro’s brother-in-law had dealings with men who later turned out to be drug traffickers. This led to public accusations that Castro was sitting down with drug dealers. It is thought that the US released this questionable evidence in anger at President Castro’s willingness to sit down with the Venezuelan government despite the severe and internationally illegal sanctions called by the US against the Venezuelan administration.
In turn, President Castro withdrew the extradition treaty between Honduras and the US government and drew the public’s attention to US propaganda efforts to bring down her government. Referring to threats made by the US Ambassador accusing the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and the former Secretary of Defence of being drug traffickers, President Castro said: “I ratify that the peace and internal security of the Republic are at risk. … The same dark internal and external forces of 2009 [the year of the coup against former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya], with the complicity of the national and international media collaboration, are reorganising in our country to carry out a new coup d’état that the people must repel!”
Wyatt Reed, 13 September 2024, ‘Us govt-backed media, activists behind attack on Honduran government’, The Grayzone