US-Backed Coup Regimes Trapped Honduras in Unpayable Odious Debt, Warns new President Xiomara Castro
February 3, 2022
By Bejamin Norton – Feb 1, 2022
At the time of the 2009 US-backed coup, Honduras had $2.48 billion in external debt. Now it has $9.25 billion. New leftist President Xiomara Castro says this odious debt is unpayable. It already eats up 50% of the government budget.
The new leftist administration in Honduras managed to win November 2021 elections in a landslide and defeat an authoritarian coup regime, but now it faces a huge problem that will make it difficult to govern: odious debt.
When a US-sponsored military coup overthrew Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the country had $2.48 billion in external debt.
By the end of 2021, after 12 years of rule by corrupt right-wing coup regimes, Honduras’ external debt had swelled to $9.25 billion – a 373% increase.
The Honduran state’s internal debt to private parties likewise skyrocketed from approximately $810 million in 2009 to roughly $7.3 billion today.
Honduras’ GDP is only $23.8 billion, yet the country is saddled with more than $16.5 billion in debt – meaning its debt is nearly 70% of the size of its entire economy.
The Central American nation’s new leftist President Xiomara Castro, Honduras’ first democratic leader since the coup, has said this burden on the government is a form of odious debt, and is simply unpayable.
Castro declared in a speech at her inauguration on January 27 that the previous coup regimes had “submerged” the state in debt, leaving it in “bankruptcy” in an “economic catastrophe.”
Debt payments now eat up a staggering 50% of the government’s budget, Castro stressed.
This graph from Honduran media outlet La Prensa shows how the debt skyrocketed after the US-backed coup.
![Image](https://i0.wp.com/multipolarista.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Honduras-external-debt-graph.png?resize=880%2C462&ssl=1)
A graph of Honduras’ external debt
This graph does not include Honduras’ massive internal debt.
“After 12 years of dictatorship the amount of internal debt increased from 20 billion lempiras (USD $810 million) to 179 billion lempiras (USD $7.3 billion),” Castro said in her inauguration speech.
“With these figures it is clear that the state does not have the capacity to sustain the outrageous and shameful debt that we are inheriting,” the new Honduran president added. “It is practically impossible to meet the debt requirements.”
Castro said the only way to manage the debt is to renegotiate it with the creditors.
“My government will not continue the vortex of plunder that has condemned generations of youth to pay the debt they took on behind their backs,” she declared.
“The country should know what they did with the money and where are the $20 billion that they took out in loans.”
The new Honduran president warned that this “plunder” caused poverty to increase by 74%, “turning us into the poorest country in Latin America.”
“This statistic itself explains the [migrant] caravan of thousands of people looking for opportunities,” she said.
Debt traps ensnare Argentina, Puerto Rico, Greece
Other countries in Latin America have been caught in these same kinds of debt traps.
In 2018, Argentina’s right-wing President Mauricio Macri took the largest loan in the history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF): $57.1 billion.
This enormous debt incurred by Macri pushed the subsequent center-left government of President Alberto Fernández into a debt spiral that has made it very difficult to spend on social programs.
The IMF, which is dominated by the United States, and is used as an economic weapon to advance Washington’s foreign-policy agenda, has often trapped Global South nations in unpayable debt.
The IMF uses this debt as leverage to force countries to sell off their natural resources, privatize state-owned enterprises, slash social spending, and cut labor protections that challenge the interests of foreign corporations.
Puerto Rico, a US colony, also suffers from painful odious debt. The US government used this debt burden to impose an unelected Financial Oversight and Management Board that controls Puerto Rico’s spending, and has imposed devastating austerity measures on the Puerto Rican people.
Even Greece, a member of the European Union, has similarly been crushed under the weight of odious debt. While Greeks work the most hours in Europe, economics experts have said the country’s debt is impossible to pay off.
https://orinocotribune.com/us-backed-co ... ra-castro/
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Leftist President of Honduras Blocks Indigenous Community’s Eviction
February 14, 2022
Andrea Germanos – Feb 10, 2022
The Human Rights Ministry called the evictions a “clear violation of the human rights of over 100 families who live in the sector in an ancestral Lenca territory that dates from the year 1739.”
Honduras’ new leftist president on Wednesday intervened to halt a court-ordered eviction of an Indigenous community from their ancestral lands following violent scenes of the attempted forced removal by police earlier in the day.
Human Rights Minister Natalie Roque shared on social media that, with orders from President Xiomara Castro, lawyers and officials from her office went to the Tierras del Padre community, located just south of the capital of Tegucigalpa, to stop the evictions, saying the suspension was in accordance with the law and authorized by the state.
“We are not going to tolerate any aggression or blow against a pregnant woman or against a citizen or against a child,” presidential adviser Pedro Amador said on the scene, according to a video circulated on social media
In a tweet, Roque accused judicial officials who’d approved the evictions of continuing “in the power of the dictatorship.” As Agence France-Presse reported last month, “four of the five judges in the court’s constitutional chamber were named to their posts by the previous Congress, which was dominated by the right-wing National Party of former president Juan Orlando Hernandez
A statement from the country’s human rights ministry called the proposed expulsions—performed at the behest of a businessman and land developer who claims ownership of the area—a “clear violation of the human rights of over 100 families who live in the sector in an ancestral Lenca territory that dates from the year 1739.”
Before the federal officials arrived to intervene, community members faced riot police who, according to local reports and photos, intimidated and hit several community members.
The planned evictions sparked concern from the Honduras office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Of particular concern, the office said in a Wednesday Twitter thread, was that a constitutional appeal of the evictions filed by the community had not yet been processed. The UN office further urged the state to halt the eviction order, noting threats to “the effective protection of the rights of the community, particularly its right to housing and food.”
Castro, sworn in January 27 following a dozen years of the country being run by the right-wing National Party, is the country’s first female president.
She is also the wife of Manuel Zelaya, Honduras’s former progressive president who was in power from 2006 until 2009 when he was ousted in a Washington-backed coup.
Featured image: Residents face riot police during an attempted eviction at Tierras del Padre, a Lenca Indigenous community between the municipalities of Ojojona and San Buenaventura, Francisco Morazan department, Honduras, on February 9, 2022. Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images.
https://orinocotribune.com/leftist-pres ... -eviction/
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Marco Rubio Threatens Honduras’ President (+Venezuela)
February 17, 2022
During a US Senate hearing regarding the nomination of Laura Farnsworth as new US ambassador to Honduras, US extreme-right Republican Senator Marco Rubio said he hoped the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, would not follow the example of her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, and align Honduras with Cuba and Venezuela.
“I hope that the new president Xiomara Castro follows that path, and not the example that her husband provided when he was president and sympathized with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Raúl Castro in Cuba,” said the anti-communist senator. Analysts surmise that Zelaya’s drift to the left was the cause of the US-backed military coup d’état that overthrew the president in 2009.
During the hearing, Farnsworth stated that one of the most important issues on her agenda is that Honduras continues to be an ally of Taiwan. This seems highly improbable, due to the weakening of the US economy and the strengthening of China as an international economic and geopolitical powerhouse, particularly in Latin America. Taiwan’s nationhood is not recognized by the United Nations (UN) because is a province of China. Only 13 countries, including Honduras, currently recognize Taiwan and maintain diplomatic relations with the entity. This prevents Honduras from enjoying relations with China.
Taiwan is a model of what the US desires for Asia, added Rubio. He encouraged Farnsworth, should she be chosen for the post, to apply her diplomatic expertise to the issue.
Finally, Marco Rubio said that he trusts that Honduras, under the government of Xiomara Castro, will implement common sense reforms that are receptive to foreign investment—a euphemism for Honduran subservience to Washington.
“If more things are manufactured in nations like Honduras, closer to our country, we will have a more secure supply chain that will depend less on interruptions from other regions of the world,” said Rubio, demonstrating his ignorance regarding the current fragility of the capitalist system.
To date, no response from the president of Honduras or the Honduran Foreign Ministry has been reported.
Featured image: Extreme-right US senator Marco Rubio, with Xiomara Castro and Mel Zelaya in a corner of the photo. Photo: RedRadioVE.
(RedRadioVE) by Patricia Ferrer with Orinoco Tribune
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/marco-rubio- ... venezuela/
If I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of Xiomara Castro I have a few words for Senator Rubio: "Go fuck yourself."
(She is proly not as crude as I but I'm sure the sentiment is there.)