Paying Attention to LatAm Yet?

The attack on U.S. Investment in the innovative special economic zone in Honduras known as Prospera ZEDE was just the canary in the coal mine.

Consistent with the country's marked shift to the communist Chinese sphere of influence (China's Xi says willing to begin free trade talks with Honduras | Reuters), authoritarianism in Honduras has not since stopped flexing, following the game plan of the growing number of quasi-communist, Chinese-aligned countries throughout Central and South America.

After using extraordinary threats and pressure to gain control over much of the Honduran Supreme Court earlier in the year (see, e.g., https://www.elreporterohn.com/advierten-convocatoria-de-colectivos-de-libre-para-intimidar-durante-eleccion-de-magistrados-a-la-csj/), the minority Libre Party Castro Administration is now demanding that opposition parties yield to giving them control over the office of the national attorney general as well.

Per usual, the pressure being applied is not mere persuasion.

Yet again, anyone opposing the regime is being deemed a criminal. Conspiracy theories of imminent coups being organized are being floated, the suspension of civil rights has been reactivated, martial law and curfews have been imposed.

Mobs have been mobilized with the threat of using force to deny the opposition access to the halls of the Honduran National Congress, following the tactics used in January 2022 and the following months to seize control illegally over congressional leadership positions.

And yet again, the targets of threatened political persecution include opposition leaders, attorneys, judges, policy makers, thinkers, and influencers.

Fortunately, the Honduran opposition supermajority has risen to the occasion and has refused to yield so far. Their unity has blunted the regime from seizing control over Congress like it did in 2022.

But the threats are continuing. The threatened criminalization of the U.S.-aligned political opposition in Honduras as "traitors" certainly looks, walks, and talks like authoritarianism.

Obviously, if the opposition yields and a radical is installed in the office of the attorney general, the wild threats being made would then have the backing of most powerful criminal prosecutor in the country.

At the same time, the Castro Administration has abandoned its longstanding relationship with Taiwan, and is taking huge strides towards joining China, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, etc. in opposing U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere:

Wholly apart from the obvious national security ramifications, we in the U.S. can expect waves of migrants fleeing yet another crisis in our own backyard generated by the predictable devastation to Latin American economies from quasi-communist policies.

The dominos started falling when the most radical elements of the Castro Administration - representing 3% or less of the Honduran electorate - first initiated an expropriative attack on U.S. investment in Prospera ZEDE in defiance of a 50-year legal stability guarantee backed by CAFTA-DR (the main investment treaty with the United States in Central America).

There are now SEVEN recently filed pending international arbitration cases against Honduras alleging various forms of lawless and expropriative conduct by the Castro Administration. The extremists controlling or paralyzing the helm of the executive branch in Honduras are wildly exposing the country to nearly limitless legal liabilities.

Clearly, hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid, moral suasion, and opposition resistance are not bringing reasonableness to those extremists.

It is time to put the U.S. visas of aggressors and expropriators at stake for this behavior.

Denying authoritarians access to their favorite shopping malls in Miami just might be the only incentive with any effect.

Certainly, accommodating or mixed messages from U.S. and U.N. officials can only embolden these would-be authoritarians.

It is time for the Protect U.S. Investments Act to get moving.