As the sky dims over the Honduran capital, the streets are ablaze with the flames of thousands of torches, each one carried by a citizen outraged by the entrenched corruption and impunity in this Central American country.

Though the light from the bamboo torches gives the protest a festive air, the message the protesters are sending is serious. One handmade sign reads “The corrupt have ripped apart my country.” Another says: “Enough is enough.”



It is a scene that has been repeated every Friday evening for nearly three months, since the government party was linked to a fraud and graft scheme that nearly bled the national health service dry.



The route taken by hundreds of peaceful protesters on a recent Friday was particularly symbolic. It started at the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS) whose former director and other officials allegedly siphoned off some $200m through shell companies to pay for luxury lifestyles complete with mansions in Miami, sports cars and lavish parties with highly paid prostitutes.



From the IHSS, the marchers wound through the streets of Tegucigalpa until they reached the supreme court building, where the journalist who exposed the connection between the fraud and political party is on trial for defamation.



President Juan Orlando Hernández himself has not been implicated in the scandal. Nonetheless protesters are calling for the resignation of Hernández, who most Hondurans call by his initials (pronounced hoh).



“Down with JOH!” has become the favourite chant of spontaneous social uprisings inspired in part by similar protests in neighbouring Guatemala, whose government and political class are embroiled in a separate corruption scandal.



University students and members of citizens’ organizations demonstrate in Tegucigalpa to demand the United Nations to form a commission to investigate a corruption scandal. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

The two countries, cowed for much of their histories by military dictatorships – and, in Guatemala’s case, a brutal civil war – are considered strong US allies. Most recently their governments have played a key part in America’s fight against organized crime, which has made Central America a way station between drug producers in South America and consumers in the north. At the same time, crushing poverty and rampant violence have driven tens of thousands to attempt to migrate to the United States.



Amid the general turmoil, corruption by politicians and public servants has long been considered a given. But now the protesters in both Honduras and Guatemala are saying they won’t take it anymore.



“Our tolerance for corruption has to end,” Ariel Varela one of the organizers of the marches in Honduras, adding that corruption is at the root of many of Central America’s problems. “Corruption generates poverty and poverty leads to violence,” he said.



As people began to gather at a small traffic circle in front of the IHSS for a recent Friday night march, Varela likened the movement to uprisings in the Arab world in 2011. “This is our Central American spring,” he said.



But for a movement that calls itself the indignados (“the outraged”), Honduran protesters don’t seem terribly angry as they march. Instead, their demonstrations are tinged with a joyful hope for change.

“It’s like a patriotic party,” said Nohemi Sierra, a 63-year-old retired telecoms worker who had participated in the previous seven marches.



With their torches lighting the way through the darkening city streets, protesters, many with small children in tow, danced a few steps to the music blaring from a loudspeaker mounted on the bed of a pickup truck.



One man wrote his protest on blue paperboard in his best English: “JOH get out. You, your family and your party steanks [sic]”.



The last time Hondurans protested like this was after the 2009 coup against then president Manuel Zelaya, which eroded already fragile institutions and left a power vacuum during which the IHSS fraud scheme was hatched.



The indignados movement (‘the outraged’) are more hopeful than angry: ‘It’s like a patriotic party.’ Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

Hernández has said his government would get to the bottom of the corruption scandal “no matter who falls”.



But he has resisted the demand by protesters for the creation of an independent criminal investigative body under the aegis of the United Nations, like one established nearly a decade ago in neighbouring Guatemala, which has been crucial in uncovering cases of government corruption and organized crime.



‘Choosing the next group of thieves’

It was a fraud scheme in the customs agency revealed by the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) in April that sparked wave of protests in Guatemala and led to the resignation of the vice-president, whose private secretary was implicated in the scam.

In weekly marches, held on Saturdays in the Guatemalan capital’s Constitution Square, protesters have called for the impeachment or resignation of President Otto Pérez, whose term ends in January.



Opposition politicians are also under scrutiny for alleged involvement in other corruption schemes that have thrown upcoming presidential elections, set for 6 September, into a tailspin. A CICIG investigation found that the running mate of Manuel Baldizón, the frontrunner in the presidential vote, was involved in money laundering scheme when he was head of the central bank.



Further fanning the anger of ordinary Guatemalans, a CICIG report released in July revealed that drug money and corruption are primary sources of financing for the country’s political parties.



Protesters are now demanding that the vote be called off. “Under these conditions, we don’t want elections,” has become one of the demonstrators’ chants.



“Without major political reform, elections will just be about choosing the next group of thieves,” says Manfredo Marroquín, head of Acción Ciudadana, an NGO that acts as the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International.



So far the US has stood by presidents Pérez and Hernández, whose governments have received millions of dollars in American security aid to fight drug trafficking.



US lawmakers are now debating an Obama administration request for a major boost in aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – collectively known as the Northern Triangle – which aims to stem the flow of migrants to the United States by helping to address the gang violence, poverty and lack of opportunities that has driven them to leave their countries.



But in Guatemala, the US has also expressed firm support for the protesters. In a statement on 16 July its embassy said that “political classes have been mocking the Guatemalan people” and that the US government “supports [protesters’] call for reform and change”.



It warned however that “the interests that created this corrupt system will work hard to defend it”.



In Honduras journalist David Romero has seen those interests at work. After revealing the links between the president’s party and the IHSS fraud scheme, he was accused of defamation – a criminal offense here – by the wife of one of the people implicated in the scandal.



On a recent day when a public hearing had been scheduled for his trial at the supreme court building, military police surrounded the building in full riot gear. “We haven’t seen this kind of security even when top drug traffickers have been on trial,” said Romero.



Thomas Shannon, a senior adviser to US secretary of state John Kerry, has suggested a CICIG-like body might be a good idea. And the US Senate appropriations committee has already earmarked $2m of the overall Northern Triangle aid package specifically to finance a commission against impunity, if one were to be created.



Despite his refusal so far to accept such a commission, Hernández has accepted an outside mediator appointed by the Organization of American States to lead a national dialogue about demands for reform. Hernández says he will abide by whatever agreement comes from the talks.



The mediator, veteran Chilean diplomat John Biehl, has called a meeting on Friday that, for the first time since protests began, will bring together government and opposition parties, as well as representatives of the indignado movement.



Varela, one of the march organizers, says the indignados have been empowered by the sustained support shown through the marches and will insist on their demands.



“It’s exciting to finally be doing something to stop the rot from eating away at our country,” said Sierra, the protestor as she pumped her lighted torch in the air sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. “I for one will keep marching until we see change.”

