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Xiomara Castro

President of Honduras

Xiomara Castro (Spanish pronunciation: [ˌsi.oˈmaɾa ˈkastɾo]; born 30 September 1959), is the current President of Honduras since 27 January 2022. She is the country's first female president. Castro has represented the left-wing Libre Party in the 2013, 2017 and 2021 Honduran general elections. She was the First Lady in 27 January 2006 – 28 June 2009.

President Xiomara Castro (January 27, 2022)

Quotes

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  • This important act reflects the will of a people demanding unity, especially within the opposition, in order to defeat the dictatorship... I want a social pact with every sector, the productive sectors, with business, with workers, with teachers, with farmers and campesinos, with the informal economy and small and medium-sized businesses
    • Quoted in Could Honduras Shift Left? A Look at Xiomara Castro, by Brendan O'Boyle, America's Quarterly, October 14, 2021
  • The economic catastrophe that I am inheriting is unparalleled in the life of the country and its impact on the lives of the people is reflected by an increase in poverty of 74% making us the poorest country in Latin America. This number by itself explains the caravan of thousands of people of all ages fleeing to the north, Mexico and the United States, looking for a place and a way to survive, regardless of the risk to their lives.” ... Having economic resources to invest in people is one of the fundamental missions of my mandate. The transversal axis of the next budget that I will send to the national congress will be transparency and anti-corruption. It is impossible to find another moment in our history so full of sabotage to our country, but I did not come today to elaborate a story full of complaints, nor to deduce historical accounts of the past. The justice system will take care of that... We are committed to our proposal for democratic socialism so that the events that have embarrassed us will never be repeated. The refounding of Honduras begins with the reestablishment of respect for human beings, the inviolability of life, the security of citizens, no more death squads. No more silence in the face of femicides. No more hit men, no more drug trafficking, no more organized crime.
  • We are going to concentrate our greatest efforts on 4 sectors permanently demanded by the citizens: Education, health, security and employment. They will be the real anchors to progress. Education will be an objective of supreme priority. Effective tomorrow, we start the dialogue with the teachers for the return of our children to in person classes.
    The government will not be alone, but will accompany the voice and opinion of the people through popular consultations...
    As part of my first decrees, I order that more than a million families who live in poverty and consume less than 150 kilowatts per month from this day no longer pay the bill for energy consumption. Electricity will be free in their homes.... Our vision of the world puts the human being before the rules of the market. We have the best disposition and spirit of dialogue. No more violence against women. I go with all my efforts to generate the conditions for our girls to fully develop and live in a free country. Honduran women, I will not fail you. I will defend your rights, all your rights. Count on me. To victory. Forever.

Quotes about Xiomara Castro

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(Chronological order)

2021

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  • In Honduras’ presidential election on November 28, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya could make history in an already historic year: Her victory would make her the first woman to lead the nation since it declared independence from Spain 200 years ago.
    Castro has proposed some big changes for the crisis-stricken country, including a referendum to propose rewriting the constitution, switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China, and the creation of a UN-backed anti-corruption commission similar to Guatemala’s once successful CICIG. For many, however, the self-described “revolutionary” Castro would be far from a fresh start. Before he was removed in a 2009 coup d’état, her husband had brought Honduras closer to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and much of the business establishment still fears that the Zelayas want to pick up where they left off. In her campaign, Castro is trying to strike a more moderate tone in meetings with private sector leaders. As for what she wants to repeat from her husband’s presidency, she points to the reductions in poverty during those years. “Most of her policies,” said economist Roberto Lagos, “are related to reducing poverty and inequality. This message is connecting with voters.”
  • Castro, 62, declared herself the winner in a speech before a crowd of jubilant supporters late on Sunday, and promised to form a government of “peace and justice”. ... Supporters across the nation took to the streets to celebrate, including in the capital, Tegucigalpa., where people gathered along one of the main boulevards to party. “We are celebrating because the corrupt are no longer going to govern Honduras,” said Oliver Pindel, 50, a doctor who danced while draped in a Honduran flag... Castro’s apparent victory was the opposite of what many had expected... On the campaign trail, Castro promised to “pull Honduras out of the abyss we have been buried in by neoliberalism, a narco-dictator and corruption,” and victory would be seen as a repudiation of the culture of impunity in government.
  • As Zelaya’s spouse, Castro was thrust into the political spotlight after Zelaya was whisked away in the middle of the night by the armed forces to nearby Costa Rica. She became one of the most visible faces of the anti-coup resistance that sprang up in response to the rupture in the country’s constitutional order. Despite months of daily street protests, the coup was consolidated thanks to violent repression and the efforts of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed the election of Lobo in a vote held barely five months after the coup, despite widespread condemnation of the conditions in post-coup Honduras that ensured the vote could not be free or fair....
    “Democracy remains very fragile in Honduras,” said Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot in a press release. “This is a country that saw the military kidnap the president at gunpoint and fly him out of the country just 12 years ago, and there was very strong evidence that the elections of four years ago were stolen.”
    With memories of U.S. support for the 2009 coup still present in the minds of the vast majority of Libre Party supporters, as well as memories of the role played by the U.S. in sustaining Hernandezin power, relations between Washington and Tegucigalpa under a Castro government are likely to be complicated. However, with Hondurans representing the largest nationality crossing the southern U.S. border seeking asylum and U.S. President Joe Biden’s stated commitment to addressing the flow of migration from Central America, Washington will likely be forced to accommodate itself to the new government in Honduras.
  • Xiomara Castro won Honduras’s presidency pledging to tax wealth, expand the welfare state, and end the country’s “failed neoliberal model.” Her win was also a defeat for the US, which backed a coup that overthrew her husband Manuel Zelaya 12 years ago... Iraq is still in flames, Henry Kissinger will probably live to 100, and the world’s nations are pockmarked with the irreversible damage of countless capital - driven military coups. Yet as Xiomara Castro’s win in Honduras should remind us, it’s not a hard-and-fast rule that the world’s many wrongs are destined to never be righted.
    This past week, the socialist Castro won the Honduran presidency in a landslide, ending twelve years of right-wing rule in the country and becoming its first female president in the process. That Castro won on a platform to tax wealth, create a new welfare payment for the poor and elderly, and overhaul the country’s “failed neoliberal model” is significant enough. But Castro’s win is also a symbolic reversal of the US-backed right-wing coup that threw her husband, Manuel Zelaya, from power twelve years ago.
  • Before the vote, many were anxious: Upscale businesses boarded their windows in anticipation of violence...Instead, unease turned to celebration as it became clear Castro would win...It wasn’t clear that Castro had a chance to win until several other opposition candidates decided to support her... When I interviewed Manuel Zelaya in 2019, he said that the weakness of the Honduran left was that it lacked the organizational capacity of the National Party, something that would only be overcome if the opposition parties united. Two years later, just downstairs from where we spoke, his wife walked out to a crowd of thousands and a flutter of camera lenses to announce her victory in the presidency....The Castro government won’t have it easy: Corrupt networks have been entrenched for decades and permeate every branch of government. Hilary Goodfriend, a journalist and doctoral researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told me that the 2009 election of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the leftist guerrilla organization turned political party in El Salvador, is an important precedent.
  • I heard repeatedly that people hope the Castro administration will provide an opportunity for the United States to alter its relationship with the country, which many Hondurans say remains asymmetrical and exploitative. “The US continually dictates whatever goes on in this country,” said Audrey Majomar Lomas, a business owner from Tegucigalpa. “Nothing gets done without the embassy’s approval.”...
    For anyone who opposed the National Party—and it wasn’t just the left; the last 12 years of misrule created enemies across the political spectrum — the election of Castro was an emotional event. On a roundabout in front of a gas station the night of November 29, more than a hundred residents parked their cars, danced, waved red (Libre Party) flags, and sprayed each other with champagne bottles. It was a scene that repeated itself on the streets hundreds of times across Tegucigalpa over the past week....
    Jalvin Sandoval, a teacher from Tegucigalpa, smoked a cigarette on the hill above the party, overwhelmed by the National Party’s defeat: “All of this right now grows out of the suffering we’ve lived through since the coup d’état. They humiliated the people, they mistreated them. This vote [for Castro] was for all of the deaths since then.” he said through tears. “I finally feel free.”

2022

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  • In Honduras’ presidential election on Nov. 28, Xiomara Castro and her allies among the country’s political opposition ousted the ruling National Party, which has spent the past decade using corruption, violence and vote-buying to entrench itself in power. For Castro’s coalition, just making it to election day meant facing down targeted assassinations, engineering a fragile consensus among opposition factions to back her candidacy and convincing disillusioned voters that turning out was worth it, even if the elections might be rigged. But in retrospect, winning the election might have been the easy part for Castro and the opposition—at least compared to what comes next.
    Castro has promised to rebuild democracy and the rule of law and to fight corruption, but after 12 years of National Party rule, she inherits a thoroughly gutted state. Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in power since 2014, repurposed the courts and electoral council to tilt the playing field against opponents. The feared Military Police harassed government critics and killed dozens of opposition protesters. And according to testimony from the drug-trafficking trial of HHernandez’s brother—now serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison—cartels penetrated all levels of public office. As Castro’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 27 approaches, the new president faces a daunting question: How do you rebuild democratic institutions in a mafia state?
  • Castro’s challenges... are not historically unprecedented. Since 2000, pivotal elections have brought down undemocratic governments and ushered opposition parties into power in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and while none of these countries bears an exact resemblance to Honduras, their transitions yield clues... three issues became stumbling blocks: tackling corruption, reforming the security forces and keeping pro-reform constituencies united. By learning from the past, Castro might steer clear of these other post-authoritarian governments’ mistakes....
    The dilemma isn’t so much building democratic institutions as rebuilding them — often under the shadow of entrenched corruption and organized crime. Moreover, elected autocrats know how to linger... after losing office, they tend to keep control of political parties... to sabotage institution -building and thwart justice, while appearing to play by democratic rules.... After the election, Hernandez published an executive decree that turned virtually the entire appointed executive bureaucracy into permanent career positions—a bid to keep his party plugged into power that, although unlikely to succeed, is sure to generate confusion. Meanwhile, the National Party’s delegation in Congress, ...proposed legislation to set up a special unit within the intelligence services and set aside $10 million to fund it. Ostensibly, the unit and funds will be used to set up security details for state officials leaving office, but government critics warn the program amounts to a scheme to make off with cars, houses and public money. Before election day, the National Party... altered Honduras’ law on money laundering, enabling judges to dismiss charges against 10 suspects in corruption cases tied to the Hernandez administration.
  • During her inaugural speech, Xiomara Castro said that she will work from her presidential office so that justice is done in the case of Berta Cáceres, an environmentalist murdered in 2016, and for whom the perpetrators were sentenced in 2019. During the campaign, Castro placed the protection of human rights as one of the priorities on her agenda, which also includes the issue of the rights of migrants and minority communities. The new president promised the release of political prisoners and defenders of the environment, she also spoke of relief for a million underserved families who will no longer pay for electricity. Xiomara Castro’s inaugural speech reproached the previous administrations for the high indebtedness with which they left the state coffers.
  • Honduras' new leftist president on Wednesday intervened to halt a court-ordered eviction of an Indigenous community from their ancestral lands following violent scenes of the attempted forced removal by police earlier in the day... Castro, sworn in January 27 following a dozen years of the country being run by the right-wing National Party, is the country's first female president. She is also the wife of Manuel Zelaya, Honduras's former progressive president who was in power from 2006 until 2009 when he was ousted in a Washington-backed coup.
  • On Monday, February 28, the newly inaugurated government of progressive President Xiomara Castro declared Honduras a country free of open-pit mining as a measure to protect its environment. In this regard, the government announced the cancellation of the approval of extractivist exploitation permits. According to a statement from the Ministry of Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Mines (MIAMBIENTE), the decision was taken as a part of the 2022-2026 government program and in accordance with the principles of climate justice, respect and protection of natural resources. “The approval of extractivist exploitation permits is canceled, as they are harmful to the State of Honduras, which threaten natural resources, public health and limit access to water as a human right,” said the MIAMBIENTE. The initiative, which placed the protection of the environment above the interests of the transnational companies, was celebrated by environmentalists and social organizations across the country.

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