Honduras confronts COVID-19 amid corruption and state abandonment

Bertha Zúniga, general coordinator of Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), spoke to Peoples Dispatch about the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Honduras.

April 16, 2020 by Peoples Dispatch

Bertha Zúniga, general coordinator of Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), spoke to Peoples Dispatch about the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Honduras. The country has been under dictatorial project since 2009 when a US-backed coup d’état took democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya out of office. Since then the subsequent governments have plunged the country into a deep economic, social and political crisis through the adoption of neoliberal economic measures and the selling off of Honduran resources to foreign investors.

The current government led by Juan Orlando Hernández who was “re-elected” through electoral fraud in 2017 has not taken the necessary measures to protect the already vulnerable population of Honduras from the virus. Instead Hernández’s government has taken advantage of the crisis to increase repression and increase the political power of the country’s military.