If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Latin America, it’s that no matter how bad life gets in Mexico, things will almost certainly be worse in Central America.
For Honduras, that has meant decades spent as as the quintessential banana republic, its political reality at the mercy of Western corporate interests, such as the United Fruit Company, better known today as as Chiquita Brands, growers of the yellow fruit probably sitting on your kitchen counter. Uncomfortably situated in the United States’ so-called sphere of influence, the Central American nation saw its governments toppled, its land handed over to foreign business interests, its sovereignty trampled upon in the name of an international Cold War-era pissing contest in the ‘80s. Little has changed over the last 100 years.
But Honduras has taken another small step toward gaining its sovereignty.
Friday, 25,000 Hondurans took to the streets to demand that President Juan Orlando Hernández resign amidst a $200 million corruption scandal.
Maybe young Hondurans are taking a cue from Libya and the Spanish indignados. Maybe they’ve decided it’s time to take the reins from their US-friendly government that would gladly see the country remain pinned under the sweaty thumb of imperialism. But their protests against the right-wing National Party (Partido Nacional) are different than uprisings in Europe, and even parts of the Middle East: Honduras is one of the world’s most violent countries, mired in drug violence and with a well-earned reputation for open, active repression of the smallest acts of political dissent.
Read the full post on Lumpen Magazine.