DF

Part of the problem is that we don’t have transparency about who’s actually receiving that money. There is very little accountability to either Congress or to the American people on where the $750 million is flowing. So I can’t even tell you where most of it is going. It’s not even clear how much of that money is even flowing at all, because of congressional challenges.

You asked about the tri-national, anti-gang force that has been recently publicized in Central America. I would not take that project very seriously at all in terms of what the Honduran government is actually doing to fight gangs, except I’d say that it shows that the Hernández regime is militarizing its approach to criminal justice even more.

What should be addressed are jobs and the rule of law. Instead we have transnational militarization funded by the United States to address problems that are being created, in part, by the very militarization of policing that US money props up.

The real issue in Honduras is that there aren’t jobs, there isn’t the rule of law, and there’s near-complete impunity. But with “new anti-gang task forces,” the Honduran and US governments both get publicity for fighting violence — while both fund its creation.

This past summer the New York Times gave an enormous amount of free publicity to a US-funded “gang prevention program” in Honduras, in order to push back against congressional calls to suspend US funding for the Honduran police. It turns out, though, that US-funded Honduran police involved in the Times‘s celebrated program had themselves committed extrajudicial killings less than a year before. And this is their model project?

If we look at the economic development side of that $750 million allocated for Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, we don’t have transparency. We don’t know where it goes; we don’t know whether it’s effective; we don’t know how it’s interlocked with the larger, dangerous situation with the US-funded and trained police and military, let alone the Honduran elites who are pulling the strings and robbing the country all day, every day.

But Congress has been pushing back harder and harder every year. It placed human rights conditions on half of the money allocated for the central government of Honduras in 2016. The State Department has to certify that Honduras has made progress on many fronts, including prosecutions of corrupt officials and police and military who have killed people, respect for indigenous land rights, and protection of journalists, human rights defenders, and the opposition.

Some of those conditions are terrific. Senator Patrick Leahy, in particular, deserves recognition — he heroically led the successful fight to get those conditions into the act.

Given how terrible the situation remains in Honduras, we had hoped that the State Department would not certify that the conditions had been met. But on September 30, the State Department informed Congress that yes, they had been met.

Like clockwork, two weeks later, a hideous wave of repression erupted in Honduras.

A prominent campesino leader and another campesino activist were assassinated, and then the son of another prominent campesino leader was killed. The government unleashed tear gas and water cannons on a peaceful demonstration — including children and the elderly — by the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), in front of the presidential palace.

The United States had sent the Honduran government a signal, a green light; you can do anything you want, and we’re still going to give you the money.