Jaime Rosenthal, patriarch of the country’s richest family, died on January 12, 2019 in his birth city of San Pedro Sula while under house arrest, accused of tax evasion. The case against him, opened by the Honduran prosecutor’s office, allowed him to live comfortably in his San Pedro mansion, while avoiding extradition to the United States, where he had an order to appear before the Southern District Court of New York in connection with laundering drug trafficking money.
The leading Honduran businessman was buried with honors as a national benefactor. Ex-vice president and ex-representative, owner of banks, real estate, media companies, cement factories and even a crocodile factory, he spent the last days of his life in the company of his family. That is, with the members of his family who are still free, as his son, Yani and his nephew Yankel, the heirs, voluntarily turned themselves in to authorities in Miami and pleaded guilty to charges of laundering money for the Los Cachiros cartel. Yani was sentenced to three years in prison on Dec. 15, 2017. He is expected to complete his sentence on Aug. 29, 2020. Yankel was sentenced in January 2018 to 29 months in prison and is expected to be released on Feb. 26, 2020.
The Rivera Maradiaga brothers, leaders of the Cartel, and long-time associates of the Rosenthals, were, at one point, in the same New York prison with el Chapo Guzman.
Devis Leonel, the eldest of the Rivera brothers, confessed in a New York courtroom to having murdered 78 people and bribing judges, police, army officers, congressmen and mayors. Were it not for the fact that drug trafficking in the region is the main priority of the United States, they would continue to operate unimpeded in their country.
Just like a child falling for a carnival magician, Fabio Lobo, son of ex-president Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014) fell for a trap set by the DEA: an agent passed himself off as an envoy of Chapo Guzman overseeing the details of a major shipment of cocaine. Lobo attended the meeting accompanied by six police chiefs who explained to the undercover agent how they would protect the merchandise once it landed on a Honduran runway that Lobo also controlled. The president’s son now also sits in a U.S. prison where he is serving a 24-year sentence.
Ex-representative Tony Hernández was the last to fall, having been captured in Miami in November 2018. The New York District Attorney’s office charged him with conspiring with the Colombian and Mexican cartels to bring cocaine into the United States, conspiring with other Honduran congressman and police and army officials to guarantee the passage of shipments, as well as for illegal possession of weapons. Tony is the brother of current president Juan Orlando Hernández.
The 12-member jury found him guilty of all charges and he now awaits sentencing. His trial has embroiled the president himself. During testimony, a witness swore to having seen several meetings between then-presidential candidate Juan Orlando Hernández and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, who is said to have donated a million dollars to finance Hernández’s campaign in exchange for a guarantee to transport the drug. To no one’s surprise, the president has said it is all a lie made up by drug traffickers in retaliation for his fight against drugs.
But, even if all the accusations against President Hernández were false, even if he were a president so blind as to not even notice his own brother’s rapid lifestyle change, or realize that so many members of his party or its financial backers have been found guilty of trafficking, and even in the unlikely event that he had not noticed any of this, the country he governs is, as every amateur scholar knows, a strategic place for drug trafficking.
For the past decade, the majority of cocaine that enters the United States passes through Honduras. If Colombia and Venezuela are the departure ports, Honduras is the bridge. And Uncle Sam is the skinny client, the one with the enormous nose that snorts all that white powder.
Honduras is one of the poorest countries on the continent. Its geostrategic location for the trafficking of so many drugs has hijacked the weak institutional framework and corrupted the economic forces and balance of power. But it’s not just drug trafficking. The state itself, infested with corruption, has, in recent years, dismantled the protection systems for individual freedoms, human rights and natural resources.
Since Juan Orlando Hernández came to power in 2015, Honduras has become the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists and advocates. Indigenous and farm worker leaders are constantly threatened, detained or killed for opposing the allocation of their lands to mining companies, hydroelectric dams or corporations dedicated to the planting of African palm.
Not even the murder of Berta Cáceres, one of the few events that occurred in Honduras which had international repercussions, was enough to alter these patterns. In Honduras, the police and army are at the disposition of the elites controlling the system: land owners, drug traffickers, corrupt politicians. During the past two years, they have also helped President Hernández, through the use of repression to silence the protests against him.
Unlike other moments in the country’s past, it is no longer a question of using force to impose an ideology, a version of history, a rationale. The Hernández government doesn’t even uphold these aspirations. It is simply repression as a last resort to keep him—and all those who take advantage of the system—in power.
I have visited Honduras frequently since 2009, when a coup orchestrated by the elites and the army overthrew President Manuel Zelaya, in what was the last coup d’état in Latin America. The walls along the streets of the Honduran capital are painted with the phrase “Fuera JOH” (“Get Out JOH”), which has been chanted by Hondurans in every protest since 2017, when President Juan Orlando Hernández joined the Supreme Court of Justice to declare unconstitutional the Constitution’s own prohibition against re-election.
In addition to constitutional fraud, Hernández also had to resort to electoral fraud to secure his second term, exacerbating the social and political crisis. The electoral fraud was only accomplished thanks to its authentication by the U.S. Embassy (Don’t let your State Department know what your anti-narcotics office is doing.)
Although both the OAS and European Union concluded that the sheer amount of irregularities made it impossible to validate the results, the United States recognized Hernández’s victory, which was enough to keep him in power. Along with the protests, state repression also increased. Local journalists have become experts in tear gas sampling and excellent advisers on how much protection is needed in each protest (gas mask; bulletproof vest; helmet; knee protection, etc…).
Today, Juan Orlando Hernández is experiencing his most vulnerable moments; with teachers and doctors on the streets opposing a legislative bill for the privatization of health; with students from the lowest grades rebelling against the government; and with farm workers and social organizations protesting against the assassination of their leaders and against the looting of their lands, forests, and rivers for the benefit of corporate extraction. A common cry unites them: Get Out JOH!
The government is incapable of satisfying the enormous social and political demand, in addition to the pressure from the United States to prevent the emigration of its citizens, those who began the recent trend of migrant caravans. Under these circumstances, the trial against Tony Hernández ended up sinking the president, whose only support for remaining in office today are the security forces and the U.S. government.
The army has once again come to his rescue, in exchange for more access to Honduran taxpayers’ money. In early November, the government announced that the Armed Forces will manage an agricultural program for which it has allocated nearly $200 million dollars.
“The big lesson from the 2009 coup should have been institutional consolidation,” Luis Zelaya, leader of the opposition Liberal Party of Honduras, told me recently. “Moreover, corruption and drug trafficking have infiltrated all the institutions at unprecedented levels.” In Honduras, you just don’t say that.
Corruption in Honduras is so scandalous that it is talked about openly in trials being held in New York and in political speeches throughout Latin America. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukeke didn’t even invite Hernández to his inauguration, in spite of the fact that the countries are neighbors. But none of this diminishes U.S. support for the leadership of its dubious Honduran partner.
During a June debate among the Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Bernie Sanders said, “Honduras is a failed state, with massive corruption.” He was not mistaken. He has seen the fallout on the southern border. The Senator has also heard the sound of the duck: a duck that quacks like a narco-state sponsored by the U.S. government.
*Translated by Vicki Adame
