In January of last year, a few days after taking office as the new vice president of the United States, Kamala Karris called a meeting at the highest level in her office to discuss the situation in Central America. Joe Biden, her boss and new occupant of the Oval Office, had just assigned her the portfolio of the region, with special emphasis on the so-called Northern Triangle, an area made up of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which from the beginning was identified as a priority for the young Democratic administration for being the origin of a large part of the illegal immigration to the US and a route for drug trafficking.
Much of the meeting focused on Juan Orlando Hernández, the then president in Tegucigalpa (Honduras). According to officials from the DEA and the National Security Council, Hernández was up to his neck in drug trafficking and there was a case against him opened by a New York court, but secret until then.
Harris, who before passing through the Senate and reaching the White House had been a prosecutor in California, did not doubt it for a moment: “Then you have to put it on paper. We are going for him,” the vice president would have said, according to people who attended that meeting. But her advisers recommended a pause.
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First, because the US had an unwritten habit of avoiding the indictment of sitting presidents for practical reasons. As long as Hernández remained in power, he enjoyed immunity and the revelation of a process against him could unleash a crisis in the country and the region. In addition, Harris was told that the US needed Honduras to deal with the looming immigration crisis that threatened to derail the first months of the Biden administration.
On that day, however, a kind of road map was developed to deal with the explosive situation: as long as Hernández remained in power, the US would avoid any government contact and would work instead with civil society and people of his around. At the same time, he would have his visa revoked – something that officially happened in June of last year – while the investigation against him progressed and the final blow was prepared.
For us, access to the elites is key. And it is not so important if it is a human rights violator or a drug trafficker as long as it serves the purpose.
That blow came last Monday, 15 days after Hernández left power. The US Department of State delivered to the Honduran Foreign Ministry an arrest request for extradition purposes against the former president to answer for drug trafficking charges raised by the South New York prosecutor’s office.
A few hours later, Hernández left his residence with his hands and feet handcuffed. A dramatic outcome for one of the most powerful people in Central America and the beginning of a new judicial chapter while the country resolves its near future with Xiomara Castro at the helm.
According to the request, which was known by this newspaper, Hernández is accused of participating in a “violent drug trafficking conspiracy” and of being responsible for exporting more than 500 tons of cocaine to the US from Colombia and Venezuela. As well as receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes since 2004 to allow the flow of drugs from his country and protect criminals, as well as his possible role in the murder of several of his associates.
Charges the former president vehemently denies and say are based on testimony from criminals cooperating with US authorities to reduce their sentences.
“Juan Orlando Hernández is a crook and he took advantage of us because he discovered that as long as he cooperated with us on immigration issues he could bribe us to ignore everything else.”
Although the request for the extradition and arrest of Hernández was explosive, both in Washington and in Tegucigalpa it was an open secret. Especially in the case of his brother, Congressman Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, another powerful figure in Honduras, who was captured in 2018 when he was visiting Miami, Florida, and who, after a trial before the southern district of New York He was sentenced in October 2019 to life in prison plus 30 years for importing more than 185 tons of cocaine.
Throughout his entire process, both prosecutors and witnesses pointed out that the former president was always behind his brother’s business. In fact, according to prosecutors, Hernández’s first election in 2013 was financed by drug money, and they described the duo as guilty of turning Honduras into a narco-state.
As part of the evidence, the authorities presented alleged payments from ‘Chapo’ Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa cartel, to the Hernández. Something that also came to light during the trial of the Mexican drug trafficker in 2019. In the process, the authorities described how the Hernández sold weapons to drug traffickers while giving them advance notice of DEA raids in conjunction with the police.
“They turned Honduras into the hub of international drug trafficking and one of the most violent places in the world,” said one of the prosecutors in the case against ‘Tony’. But what they did not say, at least not in public, is that for decades Washington chose to look the other way while the Hernández brothers supposedly did their thing.
“For us, access to the elites is key. And it is not so important if it is a human rights violator or a drug trafficker as long as it serves the purpose. Juan Orlando Hernández is a crook and he took advantage of us because he discovered that as long as he cooperated with us on immigration issues and in the fight against drug traffickers, he could bribe us to ignore everything else,” former US ambassador to Mexico recently told the New Yorker magazine. USA in Honduras Cresencio Arcos.
Something especially noticeable during the presidency of Donald Trump. Despite the controversial constitutional changes that allowed Hernández’s re-election in 2017, the Republican president was among the first to congratulate him. In fact, he declared him “a valuable and reliable ally.”
In large part because Hernández, a conservative, ‘married’ Trump on the immigration issue, which was key to his victory in 2016. To the point of signing a third-country agreement, which allowed the US to send Honduras to migrants detained at the border with Mexico. And the cooperation continued unimpeded despite the arrest and conviction of his brother in 2019 for drug trafficking.
“After his departure from power -says a source in Washington-, Hernández ceased to be useful and hence what we are seeing.”
Even so, his future is quite uncertain. An extradition to the US would be a great victory for Biden and, incidentally, a strong message for other leaders in the region such as Nayib Bukele, in El Salvador, who walk the path of autocracy. But it won’t be easy. Hernández has some immunity from being part of the Central American Parliament, and his party remains powerful in the Honduran Congress.
The case, which must be resolved by the Supreme Court of Justice, was assigned to a judge who, according to the Honduran press, has close ties to the conservative party..
And although Xiomara Castro is an enemy of Hernández – she has accused him in the past of drug trafficking – and depends heavily on US assistance, she has her own agenda. She has been heavily criticized for having promoted an amnesty in Congress for her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, and members of the former government. Therefore, bidding now for the extradition of her rival would be controversial and could be costly.
In any case, what happened to Hernández in Honduras is quite a high-tension novel whose last chapter has barely begun to be written.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
Washington
On Twitter @sergom68
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