NicaNotes

December 18, 2025

Note: NicaNotes will not publish on the next two Thursdays which are Christmas Day or New Year’s Day. Happy Holidays!

By John Perry

(Nicaragua-based journalist John Perry writes for the London Review of Books, FAIR, Antiwar.com and Covert Action. This article was first published in Internationalist 360°.)

An extraordinary catalog of US interference – amounting to an electoral coup – may have destroyed what was already a struggling democracy in Honduras. Trump has succeeded in closing the door to progressive government and in all likelihood his preferred neoliberal candidate – previously trailing in many opinion polls – will be declared president when the count eventually finishes.

While Washington’s aversion to foreign interference in its domestic elections verges on paranoia, the gross hypocrisy which runs through its foreign policy leaves it free of any compunction when meddling in other countries’ elections, especially in Latin America. Perhaps no country has greater recent experience of this than Honduras. Although most accounts of this meddling begin in 2009 with the ousting by army officers of its democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya, in truth US dominance of the country has a much longer history, as I described at the time.

The US refused to designate Zelaya’s toppling as a “military coup” or to back international calls for his rapid return to office. Washington then backed all the post-coup governments, including those established by Juan Orlando Hernández when his National Party “won” two highly manipulated elections. Rampant corruption by him and his predecessors ensured that Honduras became a “narcostate.”

Nevertheless, US administrations embraced Hernández as a prime ally in the war on drugs up until the point when he left office and was extradited, tried, convicted and sentenced to 45 years in a US prison. Only the large majority won by the Libre party’s Xiomara Castro in the 2021 election, and the fact that Hernández had become a liability, temporarily frustrated Washington’s customary ability to get the Honduran president that best suited its interests.

Castro’s government only partly fulfilled its progressive aims, not least because of the continuing power wielded by Honduras’s often corrupt elite, a judicial and security system still strongly subject to US influence, and social media campaigns which often originated in Washington. Opinion polls showed that Castro’s chosen successor as Libre Party candidate, Rixi Moncada, would be in a close race with the right-wing candidates of the two traditional parties, the Liberals’ Salvador Nasralla and the National Party’s Nasry Asfura. Trump favored Asfura, effectively the successor to Juan Orlando Hernández, as the candidate most attuned to his policies.

The fact that the November 30 election took place at the height of the US military build-up in the Caribbean was itself a crucial ingredient in determining the outcome. Both right-wing candidates were able to warn Hondurans that a vote for Libre would be an invitation to the US military to turns its guns on them. Trump emboldened them by asking on Truth Social, “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” According to him, a vote for Asfura would ensure that Honduras did not face the same potential fate as Venezuela. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists,” he added. “I cannot work with Moncada and the Communists.” Nor, apparently, could he even trust Nasralla, whom he described as “borderline communist.”

The president then trumped this statement by declaring that only if Asfura won would US aid for Honduras continue. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” he said. When Nasralla appeared to have edged ahead of Asfura, in a close count, Trump said that it “looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” adding, “If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Then, in a night “marked by technical failures and tension in the results system,” the count suddenly gave the lead to Asfura. The International Observation Mission of the American Association of Jurists asserted that Trump’s intervention “has placed the legitimacy of the democratic process in crisis.”

In an even more extraordinary move, Trump announced that he would be pardoning the disgraced former president Hernández, who has indeed since walked free from prison. A move that might have harmed the National Party appears instead to have been an astute boost to Asfura’s campaign, given that many of his supporters still idolize Hernández and regard Asfura as an inferior leader. However, Mike Vigil, a former senior official in the US Drug Enforcement Agency, told the Guardian that pardoning Hernández “shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade.” Activist and author Dana Frank told the Guardian that “his repressive, thieving, dictatorial history, backed by the United States year after year, has evaporated from the story.”

Another, very effective but little publicized intervention appears to have taken place, if Rixi Moncada’s claim in an interview with Telesur is correct. According to her, huge numbers of the 2.5 million Hondurans who receive remittances from family members in the US were warned that, if Libre won, they would not receive their December payments. The magnitude of the threat (whether or not it could have been carried out in practice) is indicated by the fact that remittances account for a quarter of Honduras’s GDP. It seems possible that many poor households’ votes, which might have gone to Libre, didn’t – because of text messages sent directly to their phones.

That electoral fraud would again favor the US-supported candidate was indicated in the run up to November 30 by leaked audios implicating the National Party’s representative on the national election council. The council’s Libre representative, Marlon Ochoa, who denounced that planned fraud, has now published a detailed account of irregularities since counting started, which he claims invalidate 86 per cent of polling returns. Indeed, at the time of writing, following a week of technical problems in vote counting, there is still no official winner. [Note: The National Electoral Council announced on Dec. 12 that it would carry out a special recount of the votes which are extremely close between the two right wing candidates.]

Rixi Moncada harshly questioned the silence of the electoral observation missions from the Organization of America States and European Union, which she accused of deliberately omitting any reference to Trump’s interference in their bulletins on the conduct of the election. “So far they have not commented on the intervention of the U.S. president in their reports,” Moncada claimed, noting their attitude “borders on complacency.” New York Times interviews with Hondurans showed clearly that Trump’s comments influenced their votes. Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out that his interventions were “a violation of Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory.”

Emboldened by his apparent success in defeating “communism,” even if (at the time of writing) he may not yet have secured the victory of his preferred neoliberal candidate, Trump has gone on to publish his own “corollary” to the century-old Monroe Doctrine, endorsing its claims to a unique US sphere of influence covering the whole region. Echoing the 1904 corollary to the doctrine issued by President Theodore Roosevelt, which declared that the US would be a “hemispheric police power,” Trump says he is “proudly reasserting” control over “our hemisphere,” guarding the American continents “against communism, fascism, and foreign infringement.”

Nothing could be a clearer manifestation of what has been called the “Donroe Doctrine” than the military build-up in the Caribbean, which provided the threatening backdrop to the final weeks of the Honduran election campaign. As Roger Harris and I noted in a recent article, the deployment of one-fifth of US maritime power is aimed not just at Venezuela, but at starting a wider domino effect in the Caribbean basin. In the aftermath of November’s election night in Honduras, the first domino appears to have fallen.

Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Professionals Graduate in Natural Medicine and Complementary Therapy

As part of efforts to strengthen healthcare for the population, the Institute of Natural Medicine and Complementary Therapies held a graduation ceremony for 197 healthcare professionals on December 11. That date marked the institute’s eleventh anniversary. Deputy Minister of Health Dr. Carlos Sáenz said that the center is driven by the government’s political will to promote traditional medicine.

Dr. Sáenz reported that, to date, the entire network of clinics has treated 2.9 million patients. “We have trained 2,891 health workers in natural medicine and complementary therapy, 35,111 community promoters trained between 2017 and 2025, 20,700 health workers trained in various therapies, and 12,705 caregivers for people with disabilities, trained during this same period,” he said.

The graduation ceremony is part of the celebrations marking the anniversary of the foundation. Sáenz said that progress is being made every day in terms of training and developing care protocols. “We have been twinning with the People’s Republic of China, which has ancestral experience, together with our experience as Indigenous and Afro-descendants. We are going to coordinate that experience in the coming years in order to make more progress every day in training, in protocolization, and in advancing that research throughout the national territory,” he said. Wilmer Castillo, a physician, therapist, herbalist, acupuncturist, and specialist in acupuncture and the Japanese shonishin therapy at SILAIS-Granada, said that natural medicine training has been enriched since the inception of this Institute of Natural Medicine 11 years ago. (La Primerisima, 11 December 2025)

New Direct Flight between Montreal and Managua

Excellent news for Nicaragua’s aviation and tourism sectors was confirmed with the announcement of a new direct route between Montreal and Managua operated by WestJet and Sunwing Vacations. This service will begin on December 18, 2025, and will operate every Thursday until April 2026. This resumption marks the return of a nonstop air connection between the two countries. The route will be covered by Boeing 737 aircraft, consolidating the WestJet Group’s commitment to expanding its sun destinations in Central America. This direct link will facilitate the arrival of tourists interested in the country’s adventure, nature, and culture offerings. It is a great opportunity to strengthen ties between Canada and Nicaragua and generate new revenue for the tourism sector. (Informe Pastran, 11 December 2025)

Relations of Mutual Benefit Between China and Latin America

On Dec. 10, China published its new roadmap for Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting that relations have entered a new stage characterized by “mutual benefit.” In the “Document on China’s Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean,” the Asian giant emphasizes that the region “is an important part of the Global South and constitutes a significant force in defending world peace and stability and promoting its development and prosperity.” It expresses its rejection of what it calls “unilateral behavior” and urges the preservation of the multilateral trading system. (Informe Pastran, 10 December 2025)

Sanitation System Inaugurated in Ciudad Dario

Families, municipal authorities from Ciudad Darío, Matagalpa, and ENACAL inaugurated the city’s sanitation project on December 12. With funding secured from the national government and support from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), a wastewater treatment plant, 56 kilometers of sewer pipes, seven pumping stations, and 625 manholes have been built. The project will improve the quality of life for some 6,500 families in Ciudad Darío, and contribute significantly to the environmental sanitation of the Matagalpa River. (Informe Pastran,12 December 2025)

Government Hands Over 100 Homes Built with Support from China

On December 15 officials from the Nicaraguan government and the People’s Republic of China gave titles to 100 homes to the same number of families in the Nuevas Victorias neighborhood in Managua. This is part of the immediate response by Nicaraguan authorities to the needs of families who did not have decent housing. There are now 515 homes completed out of a total of 920 that will be built with the support of the Chinese government. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/2025/12/15/gobierno-entrega-100-viviendas-construidas-con-apoyo-de-china/ (La Primerisima, 15 December 2025)

1500 Inmates to Complete their Sentences at Home

Co-President Rosario Murillo announced that, on December 21, the legal benefit of house arrest will be granted to 1,500 prisoners, of whom 1,385 are men and 115 are women, who have been incarcerated in various prisons throughout the country and will now be reunited with their families. “We periodically hold these sessions to return people to their families, to their homes. They are people who, as we have always said, have made mistakes and who have the right, to the extent that those mistakes must be corrected, to live with their families, in their homes, in their communities, willing to do good for all. That is the premise, for the good of all,” she said. (Informe Pastran, 15 December 2025)

Young People Rehabilitated at Special National Police Center

On December 16 the National Police held the 14th Graduation Ceremony for Technicians at the Youth Training Center, with 175 young men and women completing technical courses this year. Commissioner General Mauricio Lenin Soza, Inspector General of the National Police, explained that since the center’s inauguration, a total of 2,115 young people have graduated and been reintegrated into society, of whom 511 are women and 1,604 are men. Among the courses that the young people completed are: mechanics, baking, English, basic electronics, computing, residential electricity, and beauty with an emphasis on barbering, among others. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/2025/12/16/mas-de-2-mil-jovenes-rehabilitados-en-centro-especial-de-policia-nacional/ (La Primerisima, 16 December 2025)

Financial Aid for Nearly Half a Million School Children for 2026

In January 2026, the government will begin distributing the Presidential Scholarship for Schoolchildren, a financial aid program for more than 470,000 children in preschool, special education, and elementary school, announced Nicaraguan Co-President Rosario Murillo. “The victorious youth group will deliver the Presidential Scholarship for Schoolchildren in the first days of 2026. We are talking about 470,000 and more children in preschool, special education, first and second grade of elementary school, regular elementary school, and multigrade,” she explained. Murillo said that “Parents will receive a Presidential Bonus of more than US$55, to buy school supplies, groceries, and tools for the start of the year. It will be presented between January 19, and January 24. And the first day of school in 2026 will be Monday, January 26. The boys and girls, the children, will obtain their school supplies with this voucher that the presidency, the People’s President, because it is the People who make all these programs possible, will grant them to help and support each other, to ensure that our children go to school fully equipped on January 26.” (Informe Pastran, 16 December 2025)