In 2008, the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations published a report titled US-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality. Timed to influence the foreign policy agenda of the next US administration, the report asserted: “the era of the US as the dominant influence in Latin America is over.”
Then, at the Summit of the Americas the next year, then-president Barack Obama promised Latin American leaders a “new era” of “equal partnership” and “mutual respect”.
A group of youths who identify as LGBTI travel at a distance from the larger group of thousands of Central American migrants who are moving north towards the US border.
The group of at least 40 Honduran LGBTI youths say they face harassment at home and even along the route of the caravan, but remain determined to reach the US where they say they will have a brighter future.
United States President Donald Trump has resorted to racist comments and extreme measures in response to a procession of refugees and migrants heading towards the US.
In mid-October, thousands of Hondurans left for a journey of many weeks through Guatemala and Mexico to the US. At its peak, the procession of refugees and migrants has included more than 7000 people fleeing unemployment, poverty and gang violence.
Hundreds of women, men, children, youth and the elderly decided to leave Honduras on October 12 as a desperate response to survive, the Honduras Solidarity Network of North America writes.
The recent uplifting news that 11 of the 21 political prisoners in Honduras would be released on bail and allowed to contest their charges in freedom has brought joy to their comrades but also brought into sharp focus the situation of those who remain locked up on false charges.
United States President Donald Trump regularly professes deep concern for democracy and human rights in Latin America, but the US’s attitude to Honduras highlights the hypocrisy of US policy in practice.
After a journey of more than a month, more than 150 members of Viacrucis Migrante — known as the Central American Migrant Caravan — arrived at the United States border on April 29. They were met with a hostile response.
“This is not a conflict over elections. It’s the Honduran people rejecting the policies of plundering, death and violence of the state”, said Berta Zuniga Caceres, the daughter of murdered indigenous rights leader Berta Caceres and coordinator of the Civic Council of People’s and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH).
At least six people were wounded in clashes between police and protesters in Honduras on February 27 as protesters voiced their opposition to the visit of United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and her country's support for President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was re-elected amid electoral fraud allegations last November.
The British government sold spying equipment worth more than £300,000 to the right-wing Honduran regime implicated in mass human rights abuses, including the assassination of high-profile environmental activist Berta Caceres.
The sale of the spyware came in the year preceding Honduras’s November 2017 presidential election, which was widely seen as stolen by the incumbent government of Juan Orlando Hernandez.
In the days leading up to the January 27 “self-inauguration” of fraudulent Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, three early morning news bombshells only added fuel to the raging fire of public outrage and indignation in the Central American nation.
Opposition to Hernandez (or JOH, as he is commonly known) has been mounting since he stole the November 26 national elections in which he sought re-election, despite the constitution allowing only single terms.
What has happened in Honduras confirms the old thesis that history always repeats itself: the coup against president Manuel Zelaya in 2009 as tragedy and the electoral fraud of 2017 as farce.