JOIN HONDURAS SOLIDARITY NETWORK AND IRTF ON THIS 4-PART WEBINAR SERIES
Every Tuesday March 15 - April 5, 8 PM ET
REGISTER HERE
From the late 1800’s, the United States has been destabilizing countries in Central America, including Honduras, through political, corporate, and military intervention. As recent as in 2009, the U.S. stood by while the Honduran military violently ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Systemic inequality and the ensuing violence – including the criminalization and assassinations of hundreds of Honduran activists– has led to a significant increase in Honduran migration toward the U.S. over the past decade.
With the victory of Xiomara Castro, the first woman head of state in Honduras, in the elections of November 28 2021, the country experienced a historic step forward for the popular resistance that coalesced after the 2009 coup. Still, there are many uphill battles in the struggle for justice and dignity for the people of Honduras. The previous administrations since the 2009 coup betrayed their own people by selling the country’s land, water, and minerals to foreign investors; brutalizing of activists by the police and military with US-supplied funding and training; and installing maximum-security prisons designed after those existing in the US.
In this four-part webinar series, we will be looking at how corruption, land dispossession, environmental degradation, and systemic human rights abuses are the consequences of neoliberal (global free-market capitalist) policies and the legacy of U.S. imperialism. We at Honduras Solidarity Network and the InterReligious Task Force on Central America and Colombia invite you to join this series to gain a deeper understanding around these issues, as well as what can be done by people living in the Global North to show solidarity.
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March 15, 8 PM (Eastern): Where are we now?
The elections of November 28, 2021, became a historic event for Honduras. We see Xiomara Castro’s electoral victory as another step in the popular resistance that preceded the 2009 coup. This victory resulted from the work of a coalition that spanned the political spectrum in Honduras to oppose the re-election of newly-displaced dictator, Juan Orlando Hernandez. It is also because of the countless sacrifices of criminalized and murdered activists that the people of Honduras can continue to resist the harmful impacts of the U.S. and Canada-backed neoliberal model (global free-market capitalist). The Honduran people are working to build a new country with justice and dignity.
Join this webinar in a 4-part series to gain a deeper understanding of the current political landscape in Honduras after the election of President Xiomara Castro, the new foreign policy interests of the U.S. and Canada towards Honduras, and what it means now to build solidarity with the people of Honduras.
Registration HERE
March 22, 8 PM (Eastern): Imperialist Development - ZEDEs, Neoliberalism, and Labor Exploitation
Throughout the 20th century and until present day, Honduran leadership, with the support of the United States, has sold out land and water concessions to transnational corporations. This has happened through countless avenues, including the Banana Wars one hundred years ago and the signing of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2006. This pattern has never ceased. Since the 2009 coup, the authoritarian government has granted hundreds of concessions to foreign companies to extract minerals, build dams, create luxury resorts, and log timber. One of the most obvious examples of this exploitation and extraction is the signing of the 2013 Zones for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDE) law, which allows the government to further sell off Honduran land, including collectively-held ancestral lands of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples. Foreign investors, mostly from the US and Canada, are moving in to develop autonomous charter cities where the government will have no jurisdiction. President Xiomara Castro had made it one of her main election campaign promises to overturn this law.
Join this webinar in a 4-part series to examine the role the US government and corporations play in seizing land and waterways from communities in Honduras, the popular resistance movement against the ZEDEs, and the challenges faced by the new presidential administration and the people of Honduras in the current political landscape.
Registration HERE
March 29, 8 PM (Eastern): Environment, Human Rights, and Social Repression
The land of Honduras is some of the most biodiverse and nutrient-rich in the world, with an abundance of rivers and forests. This makes Honduras particularly attractive to transnational corporations looking to profit from extractive projects, which is exactly what has been done throughout the last century. African palm monocultures for palm oil, heavily sprayed with insecticides/herbicides, have contaminated and depleted the soil; hydroelectric dam projects have cut off vital sources of drinking water and fisheries; and mining operations have poisoned air, water, and soil. To add insult to injury, communities residing on land targeted for these extractive projects are being forcibly dispossessed without a chance to consent to the construction; and if they try to resist, they are criminalized and heavily brutalized by state security forces that are bought off by private companies. Assassinations of environmental defenders are routine.
Join this webinar in a 4-part series to learn about some of the environmental human rights violations in Honduras, examine the role the US government and corporations play in seizing land and waterways from communities in Honduras, the mechanisms of transnational agreements that allow these abuses to occur, and how the struggle for environmental defense might shift in light of the new administration of President Xiomara Castro.
Registration HERE
April 5, 8 PM (Eastern): US Imperialism & Corruption - Does the Leopard ever Change its Spots?
The government of Honduras has a long history of controlling the country’s people and resources to benefit the elite. Corruption plays a large part in that control. While a new president assumed office in January, the long-entrenched systems that benefit the oligarchy persist. As the Biden administration is putting together its plans to address root causes of migration from Central America, it points to corruption. But corruption doesn’t originate solely in Honduras. From Washington, the US enables systems of corruption to serve its own interests.In the late 19th and throughout the 20th century, the US utilized military force to impose its will on countries in the Global South. Today, it finds “legal” avenues of controlling Honduras for its imperialist agenda, including pushing trade policies that force Honduras to open up to foreign investment and supporting a corrupt political class that extracts resources from the land and its people.
Today, the US is “providing aid” under the guise of security and development that is funneled to the Honduran police, military, and paramilitary forces, which use it to brutalize those who dare to defend themselves against state and business interests. In Honduras, protests are repressed with state-sanctioned murders, “disappearances,” and illegal detention of activist leaders. State and corporate leaders who benefit from this repression also utilize the abusive law enforcement and court system to weaken organized resistance. The National Congress has also been placing restrictions on public assembly, greatly curtailing the ability of organizers to promote their demands and criminalizing them when they do so. So community members are forced to direct their attention and resources towards freeing their friends in jail, rather than fighting the oppressive structures themselves. At the same time, corrupt lawbreaking officials receive nothing more than a slap on the wrist. They know that Washington will excuse their criminal activities–and even grant them immunity—when it serves US interests. The US is reliant on this corruption so it can control Honduras’ resources and people.
Join this webinar in a 4-part webinar series to learn how the US enables corruption in Honduras, how these challenges are being addressed by the new administration of President Castro, and why there is a wide call from civil society groups in Honduras to urge the United States to stop meddling in Honduras’ affairs.
Registration HERE
