Biden Just Killed Funding for a Controversial Dam Trump Tried to Build in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Biden Just Killed Funding for a Controversial Dam Trump Tried to Build in Honduras
The local community fought the project and two opponents were killed, but the US had pledged millions anyway.

By Sam Knight
May 27, 2021, 9:16am



THE PROTEST ENCAMPMENT AGAINST THE JILAMITO DAM ON ITS FOURTH ANNIVERSARY. PHOTO: WITNESS FOR PEACE AND SOLIDARITY COLLECTIVE.

The U.S. government withdrew financial support this week from a proposed dam in Honduras that is at the center of a simmering conflict between local residents and developers. Two opponents of the project have been killed.

The decision by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, (DFC), which provides funding for private-sector projects, marked a victory for the activist groups in Honduras and the United States that had urged the agency to drop the project. In a recent letter to U.S. officials, they drew parallels to the 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, a prominent activist who led opposition to a similar dam project in Honduras.

The DFC, which had pledged loans of $35.7 billion towards the Jilamito Hydroelectric Project, a 14.8 MW dam in northeastern Honduras, gave no reason for its decision, except to note that it was taken after “an extended due diligence period.”

But the reversal of the approval given by the Trump Administration comes as the Biden Administration is reviewing policies towards Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to try and reduce the poverty, corruption and violence that drive tens of thousands of people to try and reach the United States every month.

A 2009 coup in Honduras sent the country -- already one of the hemisphere’s poorest -- into a spiral of violence. Since then, the country’s political class has been involved in repeated scandals, including drug trafficking convictions in the United States for close relatives of the two presidents elected since the coup.

More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvzm43/biden-just-killed-funding-for-a-controversial-dam-trump-tried-to-build-in-honduras

[Chainfire]

1. Somebody is going to be losing a lot of money on that one.

Maybe they will want their money back from the Bone Spur in Chief.