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US HELPED TURN HONDURAS INTO A NARCO-STATE. HOLD OBAMA, TRUMP AND
BIDEN ACCOUNTABLE  
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Judy Ancel
March 12, 2024
Kansas City Star
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_ The Drug Enforcement Administration had strong evidence since 2013
that the Hernandez brothers were making Honduras the primary transfer
point for cocaine between Colombia, and likely knew they were working
with Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzman... _

The Kansas City-based Cross Border Network has seen the damage
Honduras' ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández has done firsthand for
years. (Gustavo Amador /Sipa // Kansas City Star),

 

Ex-president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, popularly known as
JOH, was convicted Friday in federal court in New York on drug
trafficking and weapons charges. JOH rose to power after a 2009 coup.
He was president from 2014 to 2022, stealing at least one and possibly
three elections. He and his brother Tony (convicted on drug charges in
2019) allegedly made deals with the murderous MS-13 gang and grew rich
from the drug trade. Honduras became a narco-state riddled with
corruption, violence, human rights violations and extreme poverty.

The Drug Enforcement Administration had strong evidence since 2013
that the Hernandez brothers were making Honduras the primary transfer
point for cocaine between Colombia and the United States. The U.S.
likely knew JOH’s associates were working with Mexican drug lord El
Chapo Guzman as early as 2011. In 2016 El Chapo gave JOH a
million-dollar campaign contribution through brother Tony.

From 2009 to the present, my organization, the Kansas City-based Cross
Border Network, conducted six human rights delegations to Honduras. We
went to Ahuas to interview survivors of an operation where U.S.
helicopters with DEA agents and Honduran police on board opened fire
on a boatload of native river passengers, killing four and seriously
wounding four others, mistaking them for narco-traffickers. They left
the wounded and dead in the river for hours, and the DEA never
compensated wounded survivors and orphaned children. Instead, the
agency lied about the incident.

We visited a maximum-security prison, La Tolva, which the U.S. had
encouraged Honduras to build to house gang members, but JOH also sent
arrested protesters of his fraudulent 2017 election there to await
trial. They were terrorized by the gangs while deprived of food and
clean water.

We talked to dozens of women garment workers for companies such as
Hanes who are so disabled with repetitive strain injuries from
punishing production quotas that they can’t pick up a toddler or
sweep the floor. These U.S. corporations benefited from free trade
agreements with labor rights provisions that neither JOH nor the U.S.
cared to enforce.

We met with numerous farmers and native groups whose land was stolen
by palm oil corporations and real estate developers selling homes in
paradise to unsuspecting snow birds from North America.

We even met with one Honduran Navy colonel who said the drug war was
just a game of whack-a-mole. Meanwhile, his troops — trained by both
U.S. and Colombian military — after a drunken holiday party fired on
two cars filled with native youths stuck in a sand dune, killing one
and injuring others.

The DEA, State Department and three presidents all backed JOH every
step of the way with weapons, police and military training and
millions in foreign aid. Why didn’t they stop when they knew
Hernández had turned Honduras into a narco-state? Using the drug war
as an excuse, the U.S. expanded its military bases and imperial
control over Central America and the Caribbean. It facilitated U.S.
corporations’ extraction of cheap resources and exploitation of
cheap labor.

Media covering JOH trial isn’t highlighting the United States’
role as enabler to JOH, and is protecting Presidents Barack Obama,
Donald Trump and Joe Biden from accountability for the thousands
killed, maimed and jailed, let alone the tens of thousands of
Hondurans who fled for sanctuary in the U.S.

The Honduras Solidarity Network wants accountability. We are calling
for declassification of documents, congressional investigations and
reparations for victims of the DEA massacre at Ahuas, and we want the
U.S. to stop interfering in the current government’s efforts to
repair the damage that JOH did. Only that will actually get to the
root of Honduran migration. For information about our campaign Putting
the U.S. and Canada on Trial, go to HondurasNow.org
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_[JUDY ANCEL is a labor educator and producer of the Heartland Labor
Forum on community radio KKFI in Kansas City. For 30 years, she has
worked to build international labor solidarity through the Cross
Border Network [[link removed]], which has been
taking labor and human rights delegations to Honduras since 2009.]_

* Honduras
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* Juan Orlando Hernández
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* drugs
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* Colombia
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* Cocaine
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* Mexican Drug Cartels
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* Mexico'sDrug Cartel
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* El Chapo Guzman
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* Obama Administration
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* Trump Administration
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* Biden Administration
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* Latin America
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* U.S. Policy in Central America
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* drug trade
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* NARCOS
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* Honduras Now
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* Cross Border Network
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