IRTF News

Xiomara Castro has been sworn in as the first female president of Honduras on Thursday, marking the culmination of a remarkable rise to power that began just over 12 years ago when she led a massive protest movement in response to the ousting of her husband, former president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, in a military-backed coup. Activists are optimistic that Castro, of the center-left Libre party, will not only take actions that help improve conditions for women in the immediate, but also accelerate broader changes in the country’s culture. Castro’s inauguration will cap a remarkable rise but she faces daunting challenges around femicide and abortion.

This month marks 15 years since President Daniel Ortega declared public education to be free once again, just 24 hours after he was inaugurated. That was his second declaration, which has led to significant improvements – among many important improvements – in the lives of Nicaraguan families in the past decade and a half. The neoliberal educational model from 1990 to 2007 considered the public school system as useful only in creating future clients, viewing the poor as a source of cheap labor and not worthy of investment in their education. To that end, budgets were cut and the “school autonomy” policy was introduced, which passed the cost of education on to families. By 2003, the average Nicaraguan had just three and a half years of schooling and only 30% of those starting 1st grade were expected to finish 6th grade. By 2006, more than 45% of all teachers working in schools had not been formally trained.

LGBTQ+ people in Central America are often at heightened risk of violence and discrimination, and thousands have fled their home countries in search of international protection. While the United States remains a major destination for displaced LGBTQ+ people, increasingly, more and more LGBTQ+ people on the move are heading to countries within the region to seek protection. Protection systems in the region are improving but need strengthening. LGBTQ+-led organizations in Central America are often leaders in these systems, providing protection, support, and advocacy for and on behalf of LGBTQ+ people in their countries of origin, while on the move, and in their destination countries. In the Fall of 2021, Refugees International and IRCA CASABIERTA, a Costa Rica-based NGO that is led by and provides services to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees, conducted fifteen consultation meetings with Central American NGOs in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama that are led by and provide services to LGBTQ+ people. The meetings aimed to discuss the challenges that LGBTQ+-led organizations face in their respective countries in providing services to LGBTQ+ people.

In her inauguration speech as the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Honduras, Xiomara Castro said that among her priorities is an amnesty law for political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and the return of exiles who had to leave Honduras. Among other immediate actions, Castro stated that she will be working towards the dismantling of the controversial Special Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs), the condemnation of the 2009 coup d'état, and the fight against impunity and corruption. She also stressed the urgency for the Guapinol water defenders--who have been held in pretrial detention for more than two years--to be released and for there to be justice for Berta Cáceres, the world-renowned Indigenous environmental defender who was assassinated in 2016. Read her full inauguration speech from January 27, 2022 in this article.

On Thursday, Honduras will inaugurate Hernández’s successor: the country’s first female president, Xiomara Castro. Her resounding victory in November’s general election was propelled by a wave of anti-Hernández sentiment that reached even into his home town of Gracias. Hernández is widely expected to be indicted by US prosecutors on drug trafficking conspiracy charges upon leaving office. It would mark a spectacular fall from grace for a president who was once considered one of Washington’s top allies in the region.

A new study shows the impact the warmer climate will have on cultivating coffee, avocados and cashews, and on the farmers doing so. Of the three crops, coffee will be hit hardest by warming: The study model foresees an overall decline by 2050 in the number of regions where it could grow. For cashews and avocados, results were more complicated. Certain growing regions would experience declines in those crops while others, such as the southern United States, would likely find more land better suited to tropical food crops like cashews and avocados. By predicting decades in advance how agriculture will change, scientists can help farmers know what to expect, and can advise policy makers on how to encourage farmers to use more efficient growing methods like cover crops to prevent erosion or planting new crops when needed.

In scouring the globe for cheap labor, US clothing brands are not merely opportunistic, they are also sometimes actively parasitic. Honduras is a case study: one in which US corporations and the US state department have worked together for decades to bring cheap garments to American consumers, framing job creation as a blessing for the Honduran economy while simultaneously engaging in political interventions that keep Honduran citizens poor. Among the manifold complexities of the global supply chain, a simple principle holds: corporations will always go where their costs – and their responsibilities – can be kept to an absolute minimum.

Guatemala's highest court has sentenced five former paramilitaries to 30 years in prison for raping dozens of indigenous Mayan women during the country's civil war in the 1980s. The men were members of so-called Civil Self-Defense Patrols, armed groups formed and supported by the military. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala said the sentence was a "landmark advance in the access to the rights to truth, justice and reparation for female victims of sexual violence during" the war.