“Yes, I can, yes we could…” Thousands of Hondurans celebrated the return of the left to power like a party after a long journey through the desert of more than 12 years, when former President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power and the country in pajamas after a coup. His wife, Xiomara Castro, 62, became president this Thursday when she was sworn in in front of Luis Redondo, one of the two leaders who have proclaimed themselves president of Congress, and Salvador Nasralla, who has become his right-hand man. Castro donned the blue and white sash in Zelaya’s presence, a moment the event’s host described as “the return of legality” to Honduras.
In her first speech to the nation as president, Castro addressed “her people” and the “national resistance” that for years demanded in the streets the return of her husband to power. Her first words were addressed to women: “We are breaking chains and traditions,” she said at the National Stadium before describing the country’s economic state as a “national tragedy.” “I receive a bankrupt country after twelve years of dictatorship,” she said. “The economic catastrophe is unparalleled in the country’s history and this is reflected in a 700% increase in debt and poverty, which rose to 74%,” she said with the presidential sash across her chest. “We are the poorest country in Latin America. That explains the caravans of migrants who flee north risking their lives, ”she added before thousands of supporters.
Castro thus referred to an open secret, that the coffers are empty. Although he announced “free electricity for the poorest and a reduction in fuel prices”, the public accounts do not add up, which is why he announced that he will draw up a plan to restructure the public debt. “50% of the income is consumed by the payment of the debt, which makes it impossible to meet the payments,” he warned. Xiomara Castro wanted to accompany her inauguration by announcing some measures aimed at the poorest and political and social gestures of great importance such as amnesty for political prisoners or justice for the murdered environmentalist leader Berta Cáceres. To the women of the country with the highest rate of femicide in the region, she harangued them: “I am not going to fail you,” she told them. “I will defend your rights until victory always.”
In his first speech, Castro spent many minutes throwing a bucket of cold water on the expectations generated by his coming to power. The reality ended up locating the problems that he will face. Until last weekend, when his deputies staged an embarrassing fight in the Congress rostrum, the adjective that best fit his arrival in power was “historic.” At the head of the Libertad y Refundación (Free) party, Castro achieved a landslide victory in November that ended bipartisanship in the most voted elections in history, in which his group also won in the main cities: Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. . As historic as the electoral results was also the fact that a politician reached the top in one of the countries in the region where it is most difficult to be a woman.
However, the internal division in the coalition that led her to victory spoiled the party with a brawl, also historic, in which several members of her party fought on the platform of Congress. The insults and shoves before the eyes of the entire country evidenced the division surrounding her arrival in power. The clearest image of her weakness is the meeting she had with Jorge Cálix hours before the ceremony. If a few days ago he called him a “traitor” for proclaiming himself president of Congress, on Wednesday he offered him a position in his Cabinet to allow the position to be filled by his candidate, Luis Redondo.
The daughter of a landowner from Olancho, the first time most Hondurans heard of Xiomara Castro was in the summer of 2009, when she mobilized to defend her husband’s government, expelled after a civil-military agreement for flirting with Chávez and Cuba and break a good number of laws. Until that day, Castro had impeccably fulfilled the role that much of Latin America reserves for presidential wives: smile, inaugurate hospitals and visit the poor, who in Honduras make up 70% of the population. However, after the fall of her husband, she took a step forward, which continues to this day.
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Aware of his resounding victory, the international community supported his coming to power with the presence of personalities such as the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris; the King of Spain, Felipe VI; the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, or the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. At the same time, the left of the continent celebrated his coming to power as one more piece of a gear that includes Gabriel Boric in Chile and Lula Da Silva and Gustavo Petro also aspire to do so this year if, as the polls say, they achieve victory. victory in Brazil and Colombia, respectively.
The other focus of attention was on President Juan Orlando Hernández, 51, who leaves office after a convulsive eight-year administration marked by his controversial re-election and the imprisonment of his brother, Tony Hernández, who was sentenced to life in prison for putting tons of cocaine in the United States. A conviction, after a trial in a New York court, in which Hernández’s name came up more than 100 times for complicity with a local cartel. In an interview with EL PAÍS, Hernández assured that he will be part of the Central American Parliament, which apparently could guarantee him diplomatic immunity, however, US Congresswoman Norma Torres announced that he will seek his extradition.
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