Massive Turnout in Favor of Leftists in Honduras Repudiates US-Backed Coup, Jose Luis Granados Ceja, on Xiomara Castro

“Thousands of jubilant voters have been flooding the streets of cities across Honduras to celebrate the apparent electoral victory of leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro... Castro, who is part of the leftist Libre Party, is in position to become the first woman president of Honduras, and the overwhelming show of support for her candidacy is a repudiation of the conservative forces that — with backing from the U.S. government — carried out a coup in 2009 and seized power from democratically elected leftist President Manuel Zelaya, who is Castro’s husband. Hondurans across the country are celebrating the end of the Juan Orlando Hernández regime and marking the beginning of a new democratic era in the country.... “[Castro] is a righteous woman, a decent woman, a woman who is concerned for the well-being of Honduras, not just a select group of people, but the entirety of the Honduras people,” Erodito Vásquez, a Libre Party voter in the Suyapa neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, told Truthout.”

“As Zelaya’s spouse, Castro was thrust into the political spotlight after Zelaya was whisked away in the middle of the night by the armed forces to nearby Costa Rica. She became one of the most visible faces of the anti-coup resistance that sprang up in response to the rupture in the country’s constitutional order. Despite months of daily street protests, the coup was consolidated thanks to violent repression and the efforts of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed the election of Lobo in a vote held barely five months after the coup, despite widespread condemnation of the conditions in post-coup Honduras that ensured the vote could not be free or fair.... “Democracy remains very fragile in Honduras,” said Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot in a press release. “This is a country that saw the military kidnap the president at gunpoint and fly him out of the country just 12 years ago, and there was very strong evidence that the elections of four years ago were stolen.” With memories of U.S. support for the 2009 coup still present in the minds of the vast majority of Libre Party supporters, as well as memories of the role played by the U.S. in sustaining Hernandezin power, relations between Washington and Tegucigalpa under a Castro government are likely to be complicated. However, with Hondurans representing the largest nationality crossing the southern U.S. border seeking asylum and U.S. President Joe Biden’s stated commitment to addressing the flow of migration from Central America, Washington will likely be forced to accommodate itself to the new government in Honduras.”