Case study: Honduras How transnational corporate interests & imperial powers discipline governments
“For a brief four years under President Xiomara Castro (2022-2026), efforts were made to roll back some of the most egregious policies imposed during the narcodictatorship [2009-2022], such as the widely unpopular creation of charter cities known as ZEDE, deepening privatization in the energy sector, and private-public infrastructure contracts highly unfavorable to the public interest.”
“We reiterate our repudiation of U.S. intervention in Honduras, as well as in Venezuela and all across the Western Hemisphere, as the U.S. seeks to blatantly reassert imperialist domination in the interests of big business and with the complicity of other Global North governments whose corporations are also positioned to benefit from such destabilization.”
Rights Action does not see any way that life in Honduras for the poor majority does not begin to get worse, all over again, in the very near future.
Below
First Honduras, then Venezuela: Organizations Denounce U.S. Interference to Please Corporate Cronies
“The Scent of Fraud”: The Door Opens for a New Corporate Assault on Honduras, by Jen Moore & Karen Spring, January 15, 2026
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January 20, 2026
First Honduras, then Venezuela: Organizations Denounce U.S. Interference to Please Corporate Cronies
https://ips-dc.org/release-first-honduras-then-venezuela-organizations-denounce-u-s-interference-to-please-corporate-cronies/
Washington, D.C. and Tegucigalpa – About a month before Trump gave the orders to invade Venezuela and kidnap sitting President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores in the name of combating narcoterrorism, Honduras also experienced unprecedented U.S. interference in its affairs.
Like in Venezuela, the consequences will be severe.
Just days before Hondurans went to vote, Trump announced a pardon of ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted drug trafficker, and threw his support behind one Presidential candidate. In this context, the undersigned organizations warn about the resurgence of a deeply corrupt corporate agenda with criminal ties that previously plunged Honduras into a 12-year crisis, including becoming one of the most dangerous places in the world for land and environmental defenders.
Over the holidays and following President Trump’s intervention in Honduran general elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Trump’s preferred candidate, Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the National Party, President-elect. Shortly after the elections, Trump made good on his pardon of former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), also from the National Party. JOH was serving a 45-year sentence in prison on narcotrafficking and arms-related charges in the U.S.
The CNE’s declaration is highly questionable given the failure of the electoral body to review inconsistencies and investigate electoral transmission software failures, given a technical tie of less than a 30,000 vote difference between the two Presidential contenders. Honduran social movement organizations call the Presidential results illegal, foreign imposed, and a negotiated pact between the wealthy Honduran elite and business class, the United States government, and foreign corporate interests.
The undersigned organizations categorically repudiate U.S. interference in the Honduran elections and affirm the inalienable right of the Honduran people to their autonomy and self-determination.
We also reject the Trump administration’s instrumental use of JOH’s pardon to advance a geopolitical and corporate agenda that disregards the Honduran popular will and seeks to reinstall the networks of power that subjected the country to a regime of violence, corruption and plunder for over a decade.
Trump announced he would pardon Hernández seventy-two hours before the general elections and made explicit threats to cut international aid if the National Party candidate, Tito Asfura, did not win the presidency.
These threats are an assault on Honduran sovereignty and expose with brutal clarity how transnational corporate interests network with imperial power to discipline governments, revive corrupt and criminal alliances, and ensure conditions to profit at the expense of the lives and territories of Indigenous, Garífuna and campesino communities.
This is most evident in the close association between convicted felon Roger Stone, who pressured Trump to pardon JOH, in support of the super-rich libertarian backers of the Próspera Zone for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDE).
This brazen U.S. interference not only seeks to reverse limited advances in human rights and social justice during the last four years, but to once again enable “mafia-style investments” (inversiones mafiosas) that have held the Honduran people hostage. Such investments refer to a corporate agenda detrimental to affected people and the public purse that is rife with corruption and irregularities, intertwined with organized crime interests and repression as documented in the report The Corporate Assault on Honduras.
For a brief four years under President Xiomara Castro (2022-2026), efforts were made to roll back some of the most egregious policies imposed during the narcodictatorship, such as the widely unpopular creation of charter cities known as ZEDE, deepening privatization in the energy sector, and private-public infrastructure contracts highly unfavorable to the public interest.
In response, Honduras faced an onslaught of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) claims currently totaling around $10 billion dollars.
We reiterate our repudiation of U.S. intervention in Honduras, as well as in Venezuela and all across the Western Hemisphere, as the U.S. seeks to blatantly reassert imperialist domination in the interests of big business and with the complicity of other Global North governments whose corporations are also positioned to benefit from such destabilization.
At the same time, we will work to strengthen solidarity with the Honduran people and continue to monitor and condemn the corporate assault on the Central American country in the coming period.
SIGNED:
Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ)
Americas Policy Group (APG)
Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN)
Comité por los Derechos Humanos en América Latina (CDHAL)
Common Frontiers
Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity
Denver Justice and Peace Committee
Global Exchange
Global Justice Now
Honduras Solidarity Network
Institute for Policy Studies – Global Economy Program
MiningWatch Canada
Rights Action
School of the Americas Watch (SOAW)
TerraJusta
Transnational Institute
U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities
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Here, an in-depth look at how a renewed corporate assault on Honduras will pick up on and deepen the corporate assault that spike from 2009-2022 when the U.S. and Canada [primarily] openly supported (and legitimized as a “democratic ally”) the narcodictatorship in power during that time.
“The Scent of Fraud”: The Door Opens for a New Corporate Assault on Honduras
While invading Venezuela over the pretense of drug trafficking, Donald Trump pardoned a Honduran leader actually convicted of trafficking and intervened to install a successor from his party.
By Jen Moore, Karen Spring | January 15, 2026, https://fpif.org/the-scent-of-fraud-is-honduras-on-the-verge-of-another-narco-dictatorship/
Honduran president-elect Nasry Asfura (left) meets with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) (Getty)
https://fpif.org/the-scent-of-fraud-is-honduras-on-the-verge-of-another-narco-dictatorship/
Background
U.S. stomps on Honduran elections and pardons former drug-trafficking President of Honduras
By Grahame Russell, Rights Action, December 3, 2025
https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/us-stomps-on-honduran-elections-and-pardons-former-drug-trafficking-president
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