By Karen Spring, Coordinator of Honduras Now, a podcast (hondurasnow.org). She has lived and worked on human rights and US and Canadian policy in Honduras. She is also a TFA board member.

On November 28, 2021, Honduran Presidential candidate Xiomara Castro Sarmiento and the LIBRE Party made history. Within hours of the polls closing and with a 70% participation rate, Castro became the candidate to receive the most votes in Honduras’s history. On January 27, 2022, when she will be inaugurated, Castro will become Honduras’s first woman president and the first self-identified democratic socialist in such a position.

On election day from outside the country, solidarity activists and observers held their breath wondering if any attempts at electoral fraud (the computer system crashing, ballot box stuffing, US support for fraud and a continuation of the dictatorship – all of which characterized the 2017 elections) would threaten Castro’s victory. But shortly after the polls closed, outside the LIBRE party headquarters in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, Hondurans could not wait to celebrate, feeling confident with the preliminary results and Castro’s clear and definite lead. The streets were blocked off and thousands of Hondurans carrying red and black flags representing la resistencia and the LIBRE party danced to music and cheered as Castro delivered her victory speech:

“We won! We won, after 12 years of the people in resistance. And those 12 years were not in vain. Because today, the people showed up and gave meaning to the slogan, ‘Only the people save the people!’ Thank you to the resistance … today, the people have created justice. We stopped authoritarianism and stopped them from staying in power… Never again, Hondurans, will there be an abuse of power in this country. From this moment on, the people will prevail eternally, onward towards a direct democracy, onward towards a participatory democracy.”

That night, Hondurans started the beginning of the end of the corrupt, neoliberal narco-dictatorship that took shape following the US and Canadian backed 2009 military coup. But despite LIBRE’s hard work, it would not be fair to attribute the election results solely to the party or to Castro herself. It took 12 hard years of struggle, protests, campaigning, and sacrifices, led by the Honduran social movement and grassroots community groups, for Honduras to get to where it is now.

In the weeks following the elections and as the vote counting continued, it became increasingly clear that LIBRE was doing well in the two other races for the 128 seats in Congress, and at the municipal level for local authorities in 298 municipalities around the country. In Congress, LIBRE won 50 seats, the most seats of any party, gaining 20 seats more than in the 2017 election. The National Party that previously controlled Congress lost 17 seats, ending up with a total of 44.

But despite LIBRE’s success on the Congressional level, they fall far short of a simple majority. This puts Castro’s ambitious electoral promises to dismantle the National party dictatorship and elect new key positions in Honduras’s Supreme Court and the Public Prosecutor’s office at risk.  To maintain many key parts of Castro’s and LIBRE’s electoral platform, which include overturning the law that gave birth to the extreme neoliberal project, the Zones of Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs), an amnesty for the imprisoned Guapinol water defenders and other political prisoners. LIBRE will need to negotiate with other parties to pass legislation. More importantly, the possibilities of former President Manuel Zelaya and LIBRE’s long-standing promise to call a National Constituent Assembly upon winning power also seems bleak and uncertain.

LIBRE’s most likely ally in Congress is Salvador Nasralla’s Savior Party of Honduras (PSH) that won only 10 seats. Nasralla formed a Presidential coalition with Castro but maintained a party structure of candidates in some races on two levels of government. But even with that alliance, LIBRE will have to negotiate with the traditional Liberal party for a simple majority, and worse yet, will depend on National party votes.  They will need two-thirds of the Congress to overturn many of the laws that maintain the structure and economic interests of the 12-year dictatorship.

Almost as if the US was waiting for their long-time ally Juan Orlando Hernandez’s defeat, the US’s show of support for Xiomara’s victory was odd and suspicious. Two days after the elections on November 30, ^t, the same day that the National Party Presidential candidate conceded to Castro, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Hondurans on their “free and fair” election and recognized Castro’s victory.

Within two weeks, US Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted that she looked forward to working with Castro on her promises to combat corruption, a sore spot in the US’s relationship with Juan Orlando Hernandez. On December 13, 2021, Harris announced that the US will be increasing their commitment to the Central American region in order to deepen private sector investments currently totaling $1.2 billion dollars.

With Harris’s designation as the White House’s point person on tackling the Central American migration crisis, the US is wasting no time promoting investments from US companies such as Microsoft, Cargill, PriceSmart and PepsiCo, in their efforts to “sustainably address the root causes of migration.” These new investments, at a time when a democratic socialist President is taking power, will indeed present a significant challenge for Castro who will be balancing many interests and demands from both the left and the right.

Honduras has suffered a 12-year plunder of state institutions and public funds as well as being hit hard by the pandemic.  Castro will now face these challenges as well as the challenges of a strong, independent social movement that will continue to demand transformation and could become antagonistic to the Libre Party which will now try to balance its interests and negotiate power in Congress. Recognizing these difficulties since their victory on November 28^th, LIBRE has called for meetings and discussions with many sectors of the Honduran social movement.

Many grassroots organizations have expressed their relief for the election results, both because a violent post-electoral confrontation was expected, and because of the National Party defeat. Organizations such as the Civic Council for Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) welcome the victory and have reaffirmed their autonomy and independence from the government, emphasizing the importance of the role of the social movement in holding LIBRE accountable to their promises. Castro and her government will face strong, independent social movements that continue to push for transformative change. These movements will play a fundamental role for LIBRE as the party balances multiple interests and negotiates with the powers that be, from a minority position in Congress.