Peter Schurmann. Ethnic Media Services
TEGUCIGALPA ? With tears streaming down his face, a teenager hides at the entrance of a building, staring beyond the yellow police tape that guards the area. Inside, a group of indigenous Hondurans are gathered after traveling to the capital to denounce what they say ?is the government's continued theft of their ancestral lands.
I'm sorry about all this," says the security guard, pointing to the scene around him, "this is Honduras.
So, in this context of extreme poverty and social violence, Hondurans will vote for their president on November 28. For many, the upcoming elections offer the best, and perhaps the last, opportunity to improve their country's deplorable situation.
These elections are an opportunity to recover the democratic process and confront the multiple crises we live in," says Gustavo Irias, executive director of CESPAD, a nonprofit organization that advocates for marginalized communities. This is an opportunity for Honduras to recover its sense of nationhood," he said.
That notion was shattered in 2009 when the Honduran military overthrew former President Manuel Zelaya in a move in which the United States is believed to have played an active role. Since then, Honduras has remained under the control of the right-wing National Party, currently led by President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who ends his second term in office under a cloud of suspicion about possible ties to drug trafficking.
Candidates seeking to replace him include National Party favorite and current Tegucigalpa mayor Nasry Asfura, "Papi," as he is known, and Xiomara Castro of the Libre Party, wife of ousted former President Zelaya, who has vowed to curb the excesses of free-market policies adopted by her opponent while forging closer ties with China.
Corruption and poverty are endemic in the Central American country. According to the World Bank, as of 2019, 15 percent of Hondurans are living on less than 2 dollars per day, conditions likely worsened by covid 19 and the impact of two hurricanes last year, which led to more than half of its inhabitants falling below the poverty line in 2020.
Such conditions are fueling a mass exodus of migrants from the country. Data from June 2021 presented in a June report by the Migration Policy Institute, 168,546 Hondurans were detained by immigration officials in the United States and Mexico, the report notes that 1 in 5 want to leave their country for reasons ranging from food insecurity to unemployment to fear of insecurity.
But for some citizens of the capital, the upcoming elections offer little hope for improvement.
Nothing is going to change," says Victor Manuel Mayorga, a public employee who says he has been unable to retire because the government has stolen state pension funds. At 79, Mayorga is one of a small minority of older people in a country where the average age is just 24.
Sitting in the city's central square talking soccer with friends, he laments the lack of education and health care, and accuses officials of all political persuasions of abandoning the country. I believe in democracy, but in Honduras it is destroyed. It has been broken since the coup?
Still, not everyone is so desperate.
César Nahún Aquino, 44, is an auto mechanic in the town of Yoritos, located about 200 km north of the capital. This small town made headlines two years ago because residents successfully banded together to drive out a mining company that had tried to set up operations in the region.
A member of the Tolupán indigenous community, Aquino ran a transportation company in San Pedro Sula before the Covid 19 pandemic, which he says wiped out his business. Now he is back in his hometown, a largely agricultural region known for coffee, avocados and cattle ranching.
We are asking for the basics, getting rid of corrupt elections, transparency, reactivating the local economy so that it benefits the people of the community," says Aquino, a supporter of local mayoral candidate Freddy Murio, an undocumented immigrant who spent 12 years working in construction in New York before returning to his hometown two years ago. We have to start with our municipality before we can start changing the country," he said.
Back in the capital, officials acknowledge that no election will solve the challenges facing Honduras. But they emphasize that protecting the integrity of the vote and ensuring the democratic process in November are key to repairing the ongoing damage caused by the 2009 coup.
The only opportunity for the country to build a democratic base is through the next elections," says Rixi Moncada, a lawyer and one of the three people who serve on the newly created National Electoral Council (CNE) on a rotating basis.
The CNE, the entity responsible for delivering the final tally once the polls close, was created in the wake of the widespread irregularities and violence that marked the 2017 elections. Along with the National Registry of Persons and the Clean Politics Unit, which is charged with monitoring campaign financing in a country where drug money and politics are intrinsically linked, These three institutions are responsible for ensuring the integrity of the elections.
Moncada, a former member of Zelaya's government, admits it's no easy task.
No one is prepared for criminality," he says, referring to the ongoing political violence that he sees as an extension of the 2009 coup, including the recent assassination of mayoral candidate and opposition Libre Party member Nery Reyes, who was killed earlier this month. this month. No one has yet been arrested for his murder.
We are ready for the process.
