On Saturday, September 14, tens of thousands of Hondurans took to the streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa, to express their support for the progressive government of Xiomara Castro. According to the Castro government, the opposition has been maneuvering in coordination with external forces in order to undermine her democratically elected government. In addition, she has suggested on several occasions that the US government has acted in an interfering manner through certain statements by its diplomats, especially US Ambassador Laura Dogu.
According to the Honduran Undersecretary of State, Gerardo Torres, there is a clear intention of the US government to destabilize the Honduran government: “We have seen a series of pressure actions by the US that have been escalating against the decisions of President Xiomara Castro.”
Last week the Honduran opposition took to the streets demanding Castro’s resignation for allegedly defending certain officials of her government from being extradited to the United States by canceling the extradition agreement. This protest took place days after a video from 2013 re-surfaced and went viral which depicted some members of the ruling party with drug traffickers.
However, the ruling party Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) has stated that the termination of the agreement was done so that the US government does not use such a treaty as a political tool to persecute the Honduran government and the armed forces of the Central American country. Concerning the video mentioned above, the Libre Party has requested that any illicit activity be investigated to the ultimate consequences and opted to request the resignation of the individuals involved.
The mobilization sought to give a massive show of support to the president, who is in a complicated moment of her mandate. “We have the people on our side and we are right, with the blood of our martyrs they will be defeated again,” said the President in a speech to her supporters in the capital Tegucigalpa.
With this type of action she intends to present resistance to the coup d’état attempts that, according to the government, are being developed from within and outside Honduras despite having won the elections peacefully: “Without a single shot…we defeated forcefully [the] corrupt narco-dictatorship of [former president] José Orlando Hernández and [that of] the cruel National Party”.
Furthermore, Castro warned that the political maneuvers of the national and international opposition against her government are aimed at taking power in the next elections 2026: “I want to inform that at this moment the power of the nation 2026-2030 is being defined”. According to several supporters who attended the rally, this crucial moment in Honduran history is comparable to the Independence from the Spanish Empire (whose anniversary was recently celebrated throughout Central America), in which Central Americans also had to confront international imperial forces.
Finally, in her speech the President asked the Honduran people to know how to differentiate between the Libre Party and the right-wing opposition, which has ruled Honduras for several decades: “Our adversaries are greedy, they have no scruples, they despise the poor that they plundered and vilified, we are not like them, they mount media matrices of lies every day, they distill poison, they do not want to understand that 203 years ago we put an end to the colony, to surrender and piracy, we do not want to be subjects of anyone, we want to be free, that they respect us.”
