
We look at a new Reuters special report examining corruption and the drug trade in Honduras, which human rights groups say are pushing tens of thousands of people to flee the Central American country for the United States. “People really describe feeling that their life has become unlivable in Honduras,” Reuters correspondent Laura Gottesdiener says. This comes less than six months after a federal court in New York sentenced Tony Hernández, the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, to life in prison for drug trafficking and listed the president as a co-conspirator. We also speak with Adriana Beltrán, executive director of the Seattle International Foundation, who says the instability in Honduras today is directly linked to the U.S.-backed coup of 2009 that deposed President Manuel Zelaya. “To a large extent, the crisis that you continue to see in Honduras and its democracy has its roots in the coup,” Beltrán says. “Honduras has been struggling to build representative democracy, to fight corruption and crime.”
This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.