Honduras readies to declare first female president as leftist Castro heads for victory

[peppertree]

Source: Reuters

Honduran presidential candidate Xiomara Castro looked set to put the left back in power 12 years after her husband was ousted in a coup, even as the vote count for Sunday's election unexpectedly paused for a few hours on Monday morning.

Castro, who would be the Central American nation's first female president, has promised big changes in Honduras including a constitutional overhaul, United Nations support in the fight against corruption, and looser restrictions on abortion.

She has also floated the idea of dropping diplomatic support for Taiwan in favor of China, a policy proposal keenly watched in Washington, Beijing and Taipei.

With just over half the ballots counted, Castro, 62, the wife of former President Manuel Zelaya, held a nearly 20-point lead over conservative Nasry Asfura, the capital's mayor and candidate for the ruling National Party, who won 34% according to a preliminary tally.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/honduras-set-woman-president-leftist-castro-declares-victory-2021-11-29/

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Honduran presidential candidate Xiomara Castro celebrates with her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya.

Zelaya was overthrown in 2009 - in the first of a number of "soft coups" in Latin America against progressive presidents over the following decade.

Honduras has become a narco-state since then, with current President Juan Orlando Hernández promising to "shove drugs up the gringo's noses."

[ShazamIam]

1. Since the re-colonization of Central America for U.S. capitalists, "leftist," is anyone democratic.

After all, conservatism is all and only about hierarchical rule, not democratic governance.

If you so much as believe in a constitutional, law based system of governance, the oligarchy calls you a commie-socialist.
If you include listed and intended to be enforced individual rights, of course you are socialist, communist, Marxist.

The masses must be kept silent and obedient. And the theft of land must be completed so the investor class can have everything.


edit: teh/the

[peppertree]

2. +1

A lot of has to do with the pervasive influence of right-wing Cuban exiles in the State Department and elsewhere.

Not content with determining U.S. policy toward Cuba itself, they very much presume to determine U.S. policy toward all of Latin America.

Whether or not it's actually good policy, or strengthens our standing in the world? "¡Qué importa!"

"Who cares."

[SharonAnn]

4. Having lived there for a while, I observed that it's really all about American companies wanting all

All the land
All the natural resources
All the labor
And now, all the drug money.

We did little, if anything, for Hondurans. Just established and propped up governments so that our corporations, starting with United Fruit Company, could take everything.

[ShazamIam]

5. All those migrant drives for political purposes here and for the land grab there.

Drive the people of their ancestral lands, blame drug lords, send them up North to become slave labor at some meat or chicken plant, blame the Democratic.

[Polybius]

3. "Dropping diplomatic support for Taiwan in favor of China"

That's interesting.

[burrowowl]

6. Hoorah!

[LiberalLovinLug]

7. We'll see if Biden's SoS, Antony Blinken, will support democracy.

The last Democratic SoS supported the RW coup. With no reduction in military and other aid.

Even Democratic administrations know that supporting American companies abilities to suck profits from third world countries unabetted by labor or church community or environmental organizers is more beneficial to them, on the home front. ie. more campaign cash. vs. electoral justice in countries hardly anyone in America even keeps up on.

It never works out.

Years later we have Hondurans trying to escape that hell the US helped facilitate, and that surge is then used politically by Republicans against Democrats.

I fear for her life. She has few friends in Washington.

[burrowowl]

8. Hopefully there is not another

US supported coup.