Yearbook 2004
Honduras. As in other Central American countries, crime was high on the agenda during the year. Congress President Porfirio Lobo even proposed the reintroduction of the death penalty, which H. abolished in 1957, to meet the growing organized crime, especially Colombian cocaine leagues, Chinese human traffickers and youth gangs. However, the opposition to the proposal was compact from both the opposition and the church as well as President Ricardo Maduro.
The total population in Honduras is 9,904,618 people in 2020. A minor government crisis was averted when Finance Minister Arturo Alvarado resigned in early August, officially for personal reasons. However, analysts believe the reason was difficulties in convincing Congress about the budget discipline that Alvarado strongly advocated.
A marked political assassination took place on July 10, when Elpídio Martínez Chavarría, leader of the Pech Indians in the Eastern Honduras, was killed. The Pech tribe is Honduras’s fifth largest Indian group, and they are fighting for the preservation of traditional rights. Since 1994, eight of its leaders have been murdered.
Honduran authorities arrested David Castillo Mejía in March, charged with participating in the assassination of Berta Cáceres two years earlier. Mejía was a former intelligence officer and director of the firm to build the dam that Cáceres and her organization protested against. The British newspaper Guardian’s own investigation revealed that Cáceres had been listed on the military death lists several months before his death, and that these lists were also in the possession of the United States. There is a long tradition in the country for cooperation between its security forces and the United States, and in this case, the United States knew of the planned murder several months before it was committed. US Ambassador Heidi Fulton welcomed the arrest of Mejía.
16 votes from an oppressed people in Honduras. Part of the explanation that thousands are fleeing the regime the United States has created in the country.
Demography and economic geography
State of Isthmian Central America. In 2014, the UNDESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) estimate of the population (8,260,749 residents) recorded the effects of the high mortality due to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and the consequent drop in all indicators demographic. Economic development is negatively affected by the climate of insecurity and political instability and Honduras it ranks as the second poorest country in Central America (60% of the population lives below the poverty line), a condition aggravated by an extremely unequal distribution of income.
History. – At the turn of the first decade of the 21st century, the main problems of Honduras they continued to be linked to poverty, to the high rate of homicides (a consequence of drug trafficking) and, above all, to the weakness of the democratic system. See cellphoneexplorer.com for Honduras country overview.
The president of the Partido liberal de Honduras (PLH) Manuel Zelaya, elected in 2005, tried to intervene on the country’s structural deficiencies with a series of social reforms (60% increase in minimum wages, commitment to fight illiteracy, etc.) which met with the hostility of the Honduran oligarchies. The convening of a consultative referendum on the possible appointment of a constituent assembly (according to the opposition, to allow Zelaya to be able to stand for a second time) was opposed by the Supreme Court of Justice, whose pronouncements gave impetus to a military coup against the president (June 2009). Criticized by the international community and opposed by the National Popular Resistance Front, an anti-coup organization of which Zelaya himself was general coordinator,
After the new presidential elections (Nov. 2009), in which less than half of the voters voted, the candidate of the Partido nacional de Honduras (PNH) Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who led a government of national unity, was elected to the presidency. On the domestic front, the new government proposed a series of privatizations that provoked severe protests, while on the level of international relations, it brought out the Honduras from ALBA (ALianza Bolivariana para lospueblos de nuestra América), the economic and social cooperation organization promoted by Venezuela and Cuba, which Zelaya joined in 2008.
In May 2011 Zelaya, exiled, was able to return to the country and resume political life. Thus he founded a new radical left party, LIBRE (LIBertad y REfundación).
In the new elections of November 2013, which saw record turnout of 61%, PNH candidate Juan Orlando Hernández (36.9%) prevailed, while the newborn LIBRE – which contested the electoral result – established itself as the second party of the Country, overcoming the liberals. On 23 April 2015, following the appeal of some PNH parliamentarians, the Supreme Court of Justice sanctioned the inapplicability of Article 239 of the Constitution, which prevented a president from running again in the elections: the intent, previously attributed to Zelaya, it was carried out by its opponents.