On May 8, the U.S. military struck another small speedboat in the eastern Pacific that it alleged was smuggling drugs. The strike killed two people, once again violating international law, and brought the total death toll from such attacks to at least 192. But the hard truth is that the U.S. strikes will have no impact at all on the smuggling northward. On the contrary, just a few months ago, President Donald Trump intervened in the Central American nation of Honduras, and his double-barreled interference guarantees that even if there were illegal drugs on board every single one of those sunken speedboats, the amounts are insignificant contrasted with the tons of cocaine that course northward by land through Honduras. Anyone with firsthand experience in Central America is shuddering at the dangerous consequences of U.S. policy, in both Honduras and the United States. In December, Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the country’s former president, who had been serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison for narcotics trafficking. Trump then intervened in the Nov. 30 Honduran presidential election by endorsing the far-right-wing candidate, Nasry Asfura, helping him to a narrow (but contested) victory. Asfura was the candidate of the National Party, which is more accurately described as a huge criminal enterprise rather than a normal political organization. Hernández had presided over the same violent, corrupt system for eight years. Hondurans called it the Narco State, and it severely damaged the country, forcing hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee. Trump is helping to revive that Narco State — even if ex-President Hernández himself stays out of the country or returns but lays low.
Since Trump’s pardon, the mainstream U.S. media have barely reported on the Honduras crisis, even though the president’s actions will increase cocaine traffic toward the United States. Hernández was convicted in a Manhattan federal court in 2024 of overseeing the smuggling of an astonishing 400 tons of the drug. The respected International Crisis Group has estimated that during his eight-year presidency, Honduras became “a transshipment point for most of the cocaine trafficked from South America to the U.S.” Trump is helping to revive that Narco State. Drug trafficking through Honduras is extraordinarily complex and sophisticated, and could not happen without massive complicity from key government figures. “Sometimes the drugs come in through boats, on the Atlantic coast,” said Laura Blume, author of an essential study of the Honduran drug trade, “ The Art of Trafficking .” “There are also tons of airplane landing strips — if you hear a plane at 2 in the morning you know it’s carrying drugs. In some areas, the narcos have even built their own roads to make it easier to move the drugs onward.” When Blume last visited the country in January, she found Hondurans were still stunned at Trump’s pardon. “There were massive street parties back when Juan Orlando was arrested in 2022,” she said. “Now, their pain is deep. It’s personal for Hondurans, because so many of them lost family members and friends during Juan Orlando Hernández’s years in power. The pardon sent a clear message: Corruption is tolerable as long as someone is willing to cooperate with the Trump administration.” Before Trump intervened, the centrist presidential candidate, Salvador Nasralla, was leading in opinion polls. Trump’s endorsement was accompanied by threats to cut U.S. foreign aid, along with insinuations that his administration would step up the deportations of Hondurans, if Asfura lost. People there, particularly the poor majority, are dependent on remittances from the more than 1 million Honduran refugees who have made it safely to the United States. Travel around Honduras and you will see MoneyGram outposts everywhere, even in small hamlets, where Hondurans collect the wired funds. Trump’s threat did frighten voters, boosting Asfura, and the official tally says he edged Nasralla by only 27,000 votes — out of 3.6 million cast. (Despite Trump’s impact, Blume says many Hondurans believe the election was stolen anyway, and that Nasralla did not protest more vigorously because he and his family got death threats.)
Asfura is likely to reverse the fragile recovery that had gotten underway during the four-year term of Xiomara Castro, a moderate leftist, and return to the dark days of Hernández’s time in power. You could understand how the Narco State transformed reality by, for instance, noting the profound changes over the years in the Central Plaza, the heart of San Pedro Sula, the country’s largest city and its commercial capital. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, you saw crowds out in the plaza until late in the evenings — young people promenading and flirting, their elders sitting on benches conversing or maybe crossing the street to the St. Peter the Apostle Cathedral for an evening Mass. But then, in the 2000s, the Narco State consolidated its power. As soon as night fell, everyone fled the Central Plaza, as kidnappings for ransom had exploded. Small shops closed and guards with shotguns appeared outside some of them. Taxi and bus drivers confided that they paid regular protection money to the criminals; a typical payment was $10 a day, a lot in a poor country. Drug money had corrupted the police and army up to the highest levels, along with the judiciary, so ordinary law-abiding citizens had nowhere to turn. In 2012, the murder rate rose to 90.4 per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world that year. (By contrast, the 2024 homicide rate in New York City was 4.7 per 100,000.) Trump’s actions will once again “exacerbate all the push factors.” In effect, Hondurans were living under a de facto occupation by a hostile, undisciplined army. The verb “aguantar” translates as “to endure” or “put up with,” but it has an even stronger sense in Spanish. Hondurans in the Hernández era would tell you that they could continue to make the necessary payoffs, but they drew the line when the gangs tried to forcibly recruit their children, including kids as young as 9 or 10. Those migrant caravans heading north included tens of thousands of parents who were fleeing along with their children. Professor Blume explains that Trump’s actions will once again “exacerbate all the push factors.” She said: “People remember that the country was quite unlivable for a lot of Honduran society under Juan Orlando Hernández. And in the rural areas especially, there are only two ways out of poverty — either you participate in the illegal drugs economy, or you migrate to the United States.” For now, the northward exodus from Honduras (and the rest of Central America) is stalled by the Trump administration’s refusal to let anyone cross the southern border and even ask for asylum, a right they should be guaranteed under both international law and the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980. But mass migrations can play out over decades. Central America’s recent exodus is in part a delayed consequence of disastrous U.S. violent interference in the region back during the Reagan administration. Meanwhile, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can bluster on all they want about their murderous, counterproductive attacks on small boats in international waters.
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