According to him, the avalanche of private contracts has become part of a “kleptocratic” regime. one report from 2017 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Almost all ISDS claims have their origins in contracts, regulations or other arrangements made during this period.
With farmers and villagers being pushed off their land or having their water resources privatized, the rush of development has coincided with increasing violence.
“Nowhere are you more likely to die for standing up to companies that are grabbing the land and destroying the environment” – International watchdog group Global Witness wrote in 2017“than in Honduras.”
The following year, an opponent of the project, which became the subject of two ISDS claims, was murdered.
At the center of these novel laws and agreements was Juan Orlando Hernández, who was president of congress when the ZEDE Act was passed and was elected president of Honduras later in 2013. Hernández will serve two terms as president – a step prohibited by the Constitution. The United States Department of Justice later accused Hernández of using multimillion-dollar payments from drug cartels to aid bribe local officials to secure electoral victories.
Ultimately, Hernández, his brother and the national police chief will be extradited to the United States and convicted of drug and weapons trafficking charges. Hernández, US Attorney General said Merrick B. Garlandhe used his time in power to pursue “one of the largest and most brutal drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Hernández was found guilty in March this year and sentenced to 45 years in prison, while the former national police chief was sentenced sentenced to 19 years. His brother is is serving a life sentence. Hernández did not respond to a request for an interview from prison.
Brimen, the CEO of Honduran Próspera, who immigrated to the United States from Venezuela, said his goal is to create a model that promotes prosperity and helps alleviate poverty by streamlining unnecessary bureaucracy that hampers governments, especially in parts of Latin America.
Honduras Próspera stated that “it has no connection with any corruption in Honduras.” The company has not been publicly accused of involvement in corruption or passing the ZEDE Act. However, some residents, activists and members of the current government criticize the company for using the law in the context of its adoption and cooperation with the Hernández administration.
“They came and did business with the darkest side of our country,” Rosa Danelia Hendrix said, speaking in Spanish. Hendrix is president of the Roatán and other Bay Islands patronage federation and helped lead the fight against ZEDE.
Against an economic superpower
The Castro administration’s fight against ZEDE is taking place in the Government Civic Center in Tegucigalpa, a sophisticated of gleaming buildings erected by the Hernández government. The neat, newfangled plaza sits next to the presidential palace and houses many government offices, but the pedestrian entrance opens onto a busy street with no exit, resulting in a cluttered scene of double-parked taxis and honking, as if the architects had failed to imagine that citizens would visit us.
There, Fernando Garcia and a team of six adolescent workers collect documents and post impassioned social media posts denouncing ZEDE – in addition to Próspera, there are two other companies engaged in agricultural exports and mixed-use development, with no ISDS claims.