From the date of the June 28, 2009 (US and Canadian-backed) military coup in Honduras, through to January 28, 2022, former President Juan Orlando Hernandez and the Nationalist party operated a military-backed “narco state” that maintained full military and economic with the US and Canada, that both rubber-stamped 3 sets of violent elections corrupted by drug-trafficking money (2009, 2013, 2017) and referred to President Hernandez as a “democratic ally” through to his last day in office.

“They put them on planes and tossed them into the ocean to get rid of evidence of torture,” said the judge, also describing the ripping out of fingernails and tongues, sexual assaults and electrocuting men’s genitals.

“The frenzied extraction of natural resources has created massive community displacement, dependency, poverty, and vulnerability, while encouraging corruption, violence, gang recruitment, drug trafficking, militarization of Honduran society, and systematic repression of popular protest and resistance.”

While the US government is the #1 propper-upper of repressive, exploitative, open-for-global-business regimes in Honduras (and elsewhere in Latin America), other governments and economic actors in the self-annointed “international community” participate in and benefit from the propping up the same corrupt and repressive, anti-democratic regimes.

Despite corruption and organized crime infiltrating all branches of the Guatemalan government, state and judiciary, governments and actors in the “international community” – notably the US, Canadian and European Community governments, the World Bank, IMF and IDB, and transnational companies in the sectors of mining and resource extraction, for-export food production – maintain full political, economic and military relations with Guatemala, calling it a “democratic ally”.

"The community consultation carried out by the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines was carried out illegally."
(Rafael Maldonado, lawyer for Maya Q’eqchi’ complainants)

"The community consultation carried out by the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines was carried out illegally."
(Rafael Maldonado, lawyer for Maya Q’eqchi’ complainants)

On April 21, 2022, a plane with 6 DEA agents landed at the Toncontín airport, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. An hour later, they left with former President Juan Orlando Hernandez (“JOH”) on board, on their way to New York where he will face trial.

Maria Choc - sister-in-law of killed community defender Adolfo Ich, sister of Angelica Choc, sister of Ramiro Choc (spent 6 years in jail as a political prisoner – goes to court today, again, to face corrupted criminal charges for her land, rights and environmental defense work.