By: Staff Writer
November 16, 2021
The November 28 Honduran elections are getting really nasty. So far, we have a presidential candidate arrested on suspicion of murder and drug trafficking charges, an opposition mayor murdered along with the conventional screams of Marxists calling the sitting government dictators and all of the regular anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Why are the elections in Central America still marred with such violence and anti-capitalist rhetoric when the Cold War between the US and former Soviet Union has been over since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989? It just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Typically in the 1960’s up to the 1980’s, the US and former Soviet Union used Latin America as their battle ground for the political-economic soul of the world. With every Marxist/Socialist leader in the region that was pro-Communist, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had an answer and replacement for them, oftentimes a very violent answer and replacement for them. Lest we forget Jacobo Arbenz in neighbouring Guatemala in his ousting in 1954.
Oddly enough, Honduras has been in frequent turmoil post-Cold War. As a matter of fact, the Honduran army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya in the summer of 2009 in Central America’s first military coup since the Cold War ended in 1989, triggered by Zelaya’s bid to make it legal to seek another term in office.
This upcoming Honduran elections are just as absurd as the coup in 2009. Honduran authorities on Thursday arrested presidential candidate Santos Rodriguez over accusations of money laundering related to drug-trafficking and homicide, including the murder of a DEA informant.
Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez has himself been accused of drug-trafficking, while his brother Tony Hernandez was in March sentenced to life in prison in New York for the same crime.
While Rodqiguez was not a favourite to win, his arrest raises the eye of speculation around the circus that is politics in Honduras at this time.
Along with the trials of the outgoing president and a somewhat fringe presidential candidate, we have the murder of a high profile opposition mayoral candidate.
Francisco Gaitan, mayor of the municipality of Cantarranas outside the capital, Tegucigalpa, and member of the Liberal Party, was shot to death on Saturday night after a political rally. The elections are just weeks away.
A suspect has been arrestyed in Gaitan’s murder, but there has been no motive. But what motive could one need when the country and its people lean left and the politician is right or centre-right like Gaitan was. You see, the political violence goes both ways in Central America at times and not only US intervention spurs the violence.
A statement by the comrades of Izquierda Marxista Honduras (Marxist Left) regarding the forthcoming elections in the country, they have vehemently called for the “end of the dictatorship and capitalism” in Honduras.
President Hernandez is a far right wing politician with an even further right political party in that of the National PArty of Honduras. All of this becomes very strange because apparently two right or centre right parties are the ones at the centre of power in Honduras, the Liberal Party with 28 seats and the NPH with 61 seats out of the 128 seats in the Honduran parliament.
So with those two parties as the main contenders of the upcoming election, there will be no Marxist revolution as Honduras may get more of the same.
While the people may lean to the left, their politicians are certainly not leftist-Marxists by any stretch.
Still this does not answer the questions about all of the violence and accusations of murder and drug trafficking. However, we are willing to chalk it up to the Cold War hangover as the tools of warfare including the propaganda and the like are hard to drop when they have proven to be so effective in the past.
We wish the Honduran people all the best! We take no sides, but are just reporting what’s out there.