Honduras: Turmoil in Context
The proximate causes for the recent protests and violence in Honduras relate to the potential impact of policies that would have restructured the Honduran health and education ministries. The May protests resulted in President Juan Orlando Hernández rescinding the decrees and the Congress revoking the law that would have implemented the President’s policies.
There are deeper reasons for the continuing protests linked to popular sentiment with respect to the legitimacy of the 2017 reelection of Juan Orlando Hernandez, and beyond, going back to the 2009 removal of then President Manuel Zelaya. A goodly percentage of Honduran citizens question the legitimacy of the ensuing political process. This might explain why the protests continue despite the fact that the health and education reform law was rescinded.
Another context is the lack of economic opportunity and crushing poverty combined with violent criminal activity that has increased thanks to the presence of gangs and drug traffickers.
For its entire history Honduras has been a poor country whose population has been mostly poor and rural. The historically rural, agrarian economy was supplanted by large scale banana plantations developed by the United Fruit Company, a US based corporation. These agricultural endeavors built railroad infrastructure, created jobs, but, being banana centric, failed to provide Honduras’s overall economy with the capital infusion needed in the early twentieth century to develop a middle class that could spur business creation and increase employment.
There has been little industry, a very few wealthy individuals and almost no middle class. The Army has been the dominant institution and until the 1980s ruled the country for most of its history. The infrastructure of the country for most of its history has been meager although the road network has expanded in recent years. Socio – economic indicators have historically been the lowest in the hemisphere save perhaps for Haiti.
Despite the advent of formal democracy in the 1980s, the Army retained its influence both politically and as the guarantor of public safety and security. The military has always been the best funded public institution in that society, so lacking in basic services.
Funding for the Honduran military increased significantly in the 1980s stemming from US concerns regarding the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador. The US gave security guarantees coupled with funding and training for the Honduran military and was provided access to Honduras as a military, special operations and intelligence base to undermine the Marxist – Leninists in the neighboring countries who received support from Cuba and the Soviet Union.
US economic aid and that of the IMF and World Bank has increased in recent years. Progressives would argue that neo-liberal exigencies and austerity measures that come with the indebtedness have only exacerbated social ills, made Honduras less sovereign, more aid dependent and less able to stand up to the US while continuing to lack the resources so desperately needed to actually develop their economy and society.
Demonstrators voice their opinion that the government’s policy of privatization has markedly driven up the cost of electricity, the cost of transportation, the cost of fuel, all without the privatization resulting in more employment. Many argue that the extensive funding of the military and police needlessly absorbs the limited capital available to Honduras, capital that would be better spent on job creation to solve the poverty that supplies unemployed Hondurans to the drug traffickers, gangs and the ‘migrant caravans’.
The one million odd Hondurans living in the US send remittances that amount to billions of dollars annually, a far greater amount than the IMF and World Bank provide on an annual basis. Protesters argue that the government misuses the funds available for purposes other than job creation while failing to attract significant financial and investment support from other nations, as former President Zelaya attempted to do with Brazil and Venezuela.
Supporters of the government’s policies argue that a socialist approach will not solve Honduras’ problems, as has been demonstrated in Nicaragua and Venezuela. The government, they say, has primary responsibility for providing security, and the security problems caused by drug traffickers and gangs must be resolved before funds can be freed up to support job creation projects.
