Xiomara Castro has won a landslide election 12 years after the 2009 US and Canadian backed military coup. Her win is being celebrated by leftists around the world though she will no doubt face immediate and relentless attempts to undermine her presidency by the forces of reaction and imperialism.
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The National Party in Honduras is conceding defeat in an election that saw the leftist candidate, Xiomara Castro, win in a stunning landslide. Castro has a near 20 point lead (53.5% to 34%) with just over half of the votes counted, an insurmountable margin for the right-wing, establishment candidate Nasry Asfura .
Castro's victory is being celebrated by leftists across the Americas and around the world and is an important step in trying to reverse the legacy of the US and Canadian backed military coup in 2009. She will also be the first woman to win the presidency there.
Honduran teacher Faridd Sierra said “It’s brought hope to the entire country”.
As we noted on The Left Chapter before, Honduras saw a military coup in 2009 that ousted the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya. Since then a series of clearly fraudulent elections have ensured that right wing, pro-American and pro-business governments have remained in power including a sham election in 2017 that saw the "victory" of President Juan Orlando Hernández. Canada?:
“Canada has remained a steadfast ally to the [post-coup] regime,” Tyler Shipley, professor at Humber College and author of the book Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras, says. “Canada helped the coup government consolidate its power, and worked diplomatically to reintegrate the country into the OAS after they were kicked out of the organization. Canada was also one of the first to recognize the election in 2009 after the coup.”
This support began with the Harper government and continues under Trudeau and Foreign Minister Freeland.
According to Shipley "No country – save perhaps the United States – did more to facilitate the rise of the Honduran dictatorship than Canada" and "Canadians who believe that their country is a good citizen of the world would do well to take a closer look at the nightmare in Honduras. After all, it is a nightmare Canada has helped create."
Reactions to the victory are flooding in:
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel celebrated the win saying "Congratulations to President-elect Xiomara Castro. Latin America and the Caribbean also celebrate with Honduras." The leftist Puebla Group also congratulated Castro.
As recent history shows, however, Castro will almost certainly face immediate and relentless attempts to undermine her presidency by the forces of reaction and imperialism both within the country and in the United States and regionally.
Pedro Castillo in Peru has been under attack from the right since the first day of his election. His cabinet has been undermined and there is even an effort underway to impeach him. In Bolivia there was a coup in 2019 and the US and west refuse to recognize election wins by the left in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
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