A spate of private contracts has become part of a “kleptocratic” regime, according to a 2017 report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Nearly all ISDS claims have their roots in contractual, legal, or other agreements entered into during this period.
For farmers and villagers who were forced off their land and whose water resources were privatized, the development rush was linked to a spiral of violence.
In 2017, the international watchdog group Global Witness wrote that “there is no place where you are more likely to be killed for standing up to corporations that grab your land and destroy your environment than in Honduras.”
Opponents of the project who were the subject of two ISDS claims were killed the following year.
At the center of these new laws and contracts was Juan Orlando Hernández, who was president of Congress when the ZEDE law was passed and was elected president of Honduras in late 2013. Hernández will serve two terms as president, a move prohibited by the constitution. . The U.S. Department of Justice later accused Mr. Hernández of using millions of dollars in payments from drug cartels to bribe local officials to ensure his election victory.
Ultimately, Hernández, his brother, and the national police chief will be extradited to the United States to be sentenced on drug trafficking and weapons charges. U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said Mr. Hernández used his time in power to carry out “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Hernández was convicted in March and sentenced to 45 years in prison, while the former national police chief was sentenced to 19 years in prison. His older brother is serving a life sentence. Hernández did not respond to requests for visitation from the prison.
Bremen, CEO of Honduras Prospera, who immigrated to the United States from Venezuela, says his goal is to streamline unnecessary bureaucracy that is holding back governments, particularly in some parts of Latin America. , said the aim is to provide a model that promotes prosperity and reduces poverty.
Rosa Danelia Hendricks.
Photo: Nicholas Kusnets. internal climate news
Honduras Prospera said it had “no connection whatsoever to any corruption in Honduras.” The company has not been publicly accused of involvement in corruption or involvement in the passage of the ZEDE law. But some residents, activists and current government officials have accused the company of using the law to collaborate with Hernández’s government, given how the law was passed.
“They came to make a deal with the darkest side of our country,” Rosa Danelia Hendricks said in Spanish. Hendricks served as president of the Federation of Guardians of Roatan and other Bay Islands and helped lead the fight against ZEDE.
The battle against economic superpowers
The Castro regime’s fight against ZEDE is being waged from Tegucigalpa’s Government Civic Center, a series of gleaming buildings built by the Hernández government. This orderly, modern plaza is next to the presidential palace and houses many government offices, but its pedestrian entrance faces a busy street with no junctions, resulting in the architect A chaotic scene unfolds, with double-parked taxis and honking horns, as if something has gone wrong. I imagine people visiting.
There, Fernando García and a team of six young staff members are editing documents and crafting impassioned social media posts denouncing ZEDE. In addition to Prospera, there are two others focused on agricultural exports and mixed-use development, but neither has filed an ISDS claim.
