Almost always wearing a western style white hat, Xiomara Castro is quite a character. This 62-year-old woman is at the head of Honduras when nothing predestined her to enter politics in this country of 10 million inhabitants, in the heart of Central America, between Guatemala and Nicaragua.
This mother of four initially devoted most of her life to administering her husband’s cattle farms and forestry operations. But her husband precisely, Manuel Zelaya, marked on the left, was overthrown by a coup in 2009, when he himself had become president of Honduras. Xiomara Castro then decides to take over from her husband. In November 2021, she won the presidential election hands down.
A feat for a woman, in a very conservative and macho country. For 200 years, Honduras has always been ruled by men. The investiture of Xiomara Castro promises to be spectacular this January 27, at midday in Honduras, therefore at the start of the evening in Paris. It takes place in the great national stadium of the capital, Tegucigalpa, in the presence in particular of the vice-president of the United States Kamala Harris.
The new president claims a rather audacious left-wing program. She won after having succeeded in forming a front of all left and center left parties. Which earned him to be called a “communist” by the right during the campaign. She prefers to speak of “democratic socialism”. It announces the color. She wants to give priority to the most disadvantaged: 70% of the population of Honduras lives below the poverty line.
Xiomara Castro also takes bold positions on social issues, especially in this part of the world. She intends to legalize therapeutic abortion and same-sex marriage. It is a double taboo in a country where the churches, Catholic on the one hand, evangelical on the other, have considerable influence. She also says she wants to fight corruption (the country is one of the most corrupt in the world, 157th in the ranking of the NGO Transparency International). She wants to repeal impunity laws that allow all information about state purchases to be concealed.
The task is immense, Honduras is really a country in great difficulty. In addition to poverty and corruption, there is drug trafficking controlled by gangs, the infamous maras. The brother of the former right-wing president was himself sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for cocaine trafficking.
The corollary is endemic violence with one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Consequence: Hondurans seek to flee. It is the main country of origin of migrant convoys that regularly form in Central America heading for the United States. That’s a lot of challenges to overcome. The worries are already beginning since two of the parties in Xiomara Castro’s coalition are vying for the presidency of Parliament. They each had a different president elected to head the Assembly. There were even fights in the precincts of Parliament. The woman in the white hat has her work cut out for her.