US Foreign Policy Continues to Undermine USAID’s Misguided Efforts to Strengthen Democracy in Honduras
As an international aid worker for more than 20 years, I have often been struck by the incongruity between US foreign assistance and US foreign policy. Sure, one expects that in a bureaucracy as vast as the US government, there are bound to be examples of different agencies competing for resources, missed opportunities for collaboration, and miscommunication, but what if I told you I found that US policy often actively undermines and works at cross-purposes with its own stated development objectives?
In the fall of 2018, I was hired by a US nonprofit organization to travel to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to help it prepare for an upcoming USAID funding opportunity. The goal of the new program, as stated by USAID’s announcement summarizing its objectives, was to “support the reform of key political and democratic institutions in Honduras, and rebuild citizen trust in these entities.” The audacity of that statement began to sink in as I reflected on the role that the United States had played in the country’s development. Having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras from 2002–2004, I knew the country well and was familiar with some of its history. How could the US begin to speak of rebuilding citizen trust in democratic institutions, I wondered, when it had played such a prominent role in destabilizing and undermining trust in local institutions?
Though Honduras experienced far less political violence and upheaval in the 20th century compared to its Central American neighbors, its status as the eponymous “Banana Republic,” was central to the development path that it took. In 1911, Samuel Zemurray, a US citizen and founder of the Cuyamel Fruit Company engineered a private coup against the Honduran government, installing a puppet regime that preserved the company’s dominance in the region for generations — through tax concessions, land appropriation and exploitation of local labor. The US government, under President Taft, gave its blessing to the political transition after it became clear that it could manipulate the man Zemurray had chosen to install as President, Manuel Bonilla. This was in spite of the fact that only four years earlier, the US government had organized a conference in Washington, DC where the leaders of the Central American republics had signed the General Treaty of Peace and Amity in which the countries had committed to nonintervention in their neighbors affairs, constitutional reforms prohibiting re-elections, and recognition of only democratically elected governments.
Later, during the Cold War, Honduras played a major strategic role for US-backed efforts to contain communism in Central America, serving as a staging ground for covert operations and hosting base camps for Nicaraguan paramilitary forces, the Contras, set up by the US military. In 1980, CIA and FBI instructors brought 25 Honduran army officers to the United States for training on surveillance and interrogation methods. The training continued in Honduras in 1981 under the instruction of Argentine military intelligence operatives — veterans of Argentina’s “Dirty War” — and CIA instructors, funded by the US government. The Commander-in-Chief of the Honduran Armed Forces at the time, General Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, who had himself graduated from the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas, advocated for the ‘Argentine approach’ to suppressing the country’s leftists and formed the country’s most notorious death squad: Battalion 316. In the name of stamping out communism, from the late 1970s until 1988, an estimated 184 people were disappeared or extra-judicially killed, while many more were abducted and tortured. The scars of the Cold War marked Honduras as a place where a militarized police force, autocratic tendencies, corruption and well-documented human rights abuses became the norm.
I wish I could say that the US-Honduras relationship has changed, but the United States’ capacity to cause harm didn’t die with the end of the Cold War. My initial misgivings only further came into focus during the course of my visit, as I interviewed numerous NGO leaders and government officials. One fiery and articulate activist minced no words, saying “Cooperation with USAID on the subject of rebuilding citizen trust in democratic institutions is going to be very complicated. Any such efforts promoted by civil society organizations with a USAID label on it will create antibodies,” meaning it would provoke a negative auto-immune response from the civil society corpus. She went on to say that because the Trump administration’s rhetoric toward Honduras had been so blatantly offensive, it was a particularly difficult time to trust the United States. But I was there to try and design a program, however misguided, to help improve citizen trust in democracy and their national institutions. I took a deep breath and tried to create an opening. “Ok, but we have to start somewhere, right? How could we begin to create opportunities for dialogue between civil society and the government?” Her response was immediate and matter-of-fact, “Sitting down with the current government is not an option because Juan Orlando Hernández was illegally elected and we don’t view him as the legitimate leader of the country. We cannot talk about dialogue until Juan Orlando Hernández is gone.”
I knew the history of what had transpired with the election of President Hernández in 2017, but her directness caught me off guard. Hernández had been the incumbent president that year. Despite the fact that the Honduran Constitution barred presidents from serving more than one term — a security mechanism designed to avoid the kinds of dictators that had governed Honduras in the past — Hernández had stacked the Supreme Court with hand-picked appointees in 2012 when he had presided over the National Congress. In 2015, the court issued a ruling eliminating presidential term limits, paving the way for Hernández to run again. In the runup to the 2017 elections, polls had given Hernández a considerable lead over the other two candidates, but on election day, preliminary results showed that the anti-corruption candidate, Salvador Nasralla, was ahead by five percentage points based on results from 57 percent of the polling stations. Election observers and media began to report an historic upset, as Nasralla’s lead seemed insurmountable. Then, vote counting systems mysteriously went offline for five hours, and when they came back online, Hernández was in the lead. Despite calls from the Organization of American States (OAS) for fresh elections, citing an election plagued by irregularities, of “very low technical quality” and lacking integrity, Hernández was declared the winner. Days later, the US State Department congratulated Hernández on his victory and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified Honduras as meeting accountability requirements in order to receive a $644 million US aid package.
If you had set out with the objective of undermining citizen trust in democratic institutions, I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than to congratulate someone over a rigged election and call it a day.
Put in this context, USAID’s new program not only seemed doomed to fail, but almost absurd. Rebuild citizen trust? In a government that was viewed by a significant portion of the country and international observers as not only illegal, but propped up by the United States? Was history repeating itself? If you had set out with the objective of undermining citizen trust in democratic institutions, I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than to congratulate someone over a rigged election and call it a day.
US diplomats will credit Hernandez with lowering the country’s murder rate and being a reliable ally on immigration issues. Honduras has also been viewed as a staunch US partner on the “war on drugs,” as it is a key transit country for drug trafficking from South America to the US. But that façade was recently pulled aside by testimony secured by the US Drug Enforcement Administration in the trial of Tony Hernández (President Hernández’ brother) who was convicted by the US District Court Southern District of New York in 2019 for cocaine importation conspiracy, among other offenses. Tony Hernández had offered protection to drug traffickers for years and facilitated their operations in exchange for their support of political campaigns, including those of his brother. President Hernández himself was named by US prosecutors as a co-conspirator in his brother’s drug trafficking case, but the Trump administration showed little interest in pursuing those charges. The evidence that drug traffickers had long collaborated with and bribed politicians at the most senior levels of the Honduran government belied the lip service they had given to curtailing the drug trade. Building trust in democratic institutions?
On my way back to the hotel after a full day of meetings, the evidence of citizen frustration was everywhere — the writing was on the wall, quite literally, as graffiti abounded on fences and buildings. “Fewer political prisoners and more politicians in prison,” “We aren’t guerillas… but soon we will be,” and “Fascist Dictator,” were some of the more memorable ones. The simple “Get out JOH!” (the President’s initials) was also a clear message.
Later that day, I had to cut short a meeting that was being held at an organization near the US embassy, as demonstrators were going to be protesting that evening, and might block the route back to the hotel. Originally planned as a protest against the Hernández government, the demonstrators had re-oriented the purpose to a new target, the US government, in light of the migrant caravans that were being turned away at the US border. That evening, I watched on television as protestors burned rubber tires in front of the US embassy. The previous day, US Chargé d’Affaires Heide B. Fulton had delivered a message in Spanish on national television aiming to stem the tide of caravans heading to the US. The ambassadorial post had been vacant since June 2017, thanks to the Trump administration’s attempts to hollow-out the US diplomatic corps, and she was the highest-ranking US diplomat in Tegucigalpa. She spoke chidingly and forcefully, as if scolding a child, saying that the United States was a nation built on laws and that it would enforce its laws. The irony of that argument was not lost on me. She went on to acknowledge that life in Honduras was difficult, and for that reason, the US was investing millions of dollars to help Hondurans improve security, education and economic opportunities. The lack of empathy in her tone-deaf statement made me want to scream. Do you know what these people are facing in this country? What drives them to flee with whatever they can carry? Who do you think bears some of the responsibility for this crisis? Did she honestly think that Hondurans were not aware of the dangers of undertaking such a trip? Leaving behind their country and their families was probably the hardest decision they had ever made.
Hidden behind the fact that millions of dollars are being invested in Honduras is the reality that the majority of that ‘investment’ consists of multi-million dollar contracts and grants awarded to US companies and nonprofit organizations
What Ms. Fulton had said about the US investing in Honduras’ development was correct, but to the uninitiated, it sounded grander and more generous than it truly was. You see, hidden behind the fact that millions of dollars are being invested in Honduras is the reality that the majority of that ‘investment’ consists of multi-million dollar contracts and grants awarded to US companies and nonprofit organizations who design and implement these development programs. These organizations in turn use some of the money to sub-grant or sub-contract to local organizations, but I can attest, as someone who has prepared and reviewed scores of development program budgets, that only a small percentage of funds is allocated to these types of sub-awards. Part of the reason is the onerous rules and regulations that recipients of US funding must comply with, and which local organizations are often unequipped to navigate. It is therefore much easier for US organizations to sub-grant and sub-contract with other US organizations, particularly when applicants are typically given only 30–45 days to submit a completed proposal, including its own budget and budgets for each of its partners. Most USAID requests for proposals provide fixed dollar amounts set aside for local awards, but that line item is invariably a small fraction of the total project budget.
That is not to say that all types of foreign assistance are wasteful or don’t have a positive impact. The last meeting of my trip was with a woman who worked at the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), an international entity with full autonomy and independence that had begun work in the country in 2016 under the auspices of an agreement signed between the OAS and Honduras. The MACCIH was established in the wake of a massive corruption scandal, in which public officials embezzled $355 million from the country’s Institute of Social Security, which provides medical care and pensions, between 2010 and 2014. The MACCIH’s mandate was to help government institutions implement reforms to combat corruption, but also to investigate allegations of corruption and provide that evidence to the Attorney General for prosecution — a far more dangerous undertaking. Some of the embezzled social security funds had financed the political campaigns of powerful politicians in 2013, including that of President Hernández. Building trust in democratic institutions? Hernández was still the leader of the country and all its institutions.
I had arranged to meet the MACCIH representative at my hotel, as it was much easier than granting me access to the mission’s high-security compound where it carried out its sensitive work. She arrived in a black SUV escorted by armed guards, and we sat in a back corner of the hotel lobby where we could speak discretely, yet under the watchful eyes of her security detail, which took up positions around the perimeter. She recounted some of the MACCIH’s successes, including the high profile case of the former first lady of Honduras, Rosa Elena Bonilla, wife of ex-president Porfirio Lobo, who had been sentenced to 58 years in prison on corruption charges. What were some of the key ingredients of the MACCIH’s success? They kept a low-profile, working behind the scenes with highly skilled and technical professionals to support the work of existing institutions. But there were also plenty of setbacks — the MACCIH had gathered enough evidence for prosecutors to file a lawsuit against five members of the national congress, but the congress subsequently passed a law assigning those cases to the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. The Supreme Court announced that it would prepare to take up the case… in three years. She was dedicated and passionate about her work, but acknowledged the difficulties of making recommendations and taking actions that were most certainly not welcome by the country’s powerful elites, saying, “We’re only here on a four-year mission. We don’t know yet if the agreement with the Government of Honduras will be renewed.”
In the face of such apparent lack of will, on the part of the country’s leaders, to reform and to act responsibly on issues of governance and public trust, what chance did a small new USAID program — driven by foreigners — have at fostering increased citizen confidence in its institutions?
A year later, the MACCIH would get its answer. In December 2019, Honduras’ National Congress voted to recommend that the MACCIH be discontinued, claiming that the mission had exceeded its powers and had violated the constitution. Several congressmen who had voted in favor of disbanding it had come under investigation from the Attorney General’s Office, with the MACCIH’s assistance. In January 2020, the OAS announced that it had failed to reach an agreement with the Honduran government to renew the MACCIH’s mandate, and that it would cease its operations. In the face of such apparent lack of will, on the part of the country’s leaders, to reform and to act responsibly on issues of governance and public trust, what chance did a small new USAID program — driven by foreigners — have at fostering increased citizen confidence in its institutions? I attempted to find any statement by the US government on the termination of the MACCIH in Honduras, but was not successful.
Yet if one searches the most recently released USAID Business Forecast, a document that lists all of USAID’s planned programming by country, you will find plans for a new program valued at $25–50 million entitled, “Effective Justice to Combat Criminality and Corruption.” It’s goal? “Strengthen the ability of the Honduran justice system [to] reduce impunity, criminality and corruption in Honduras by advancing an effective criminal justice system that upholds independence and integrity while increasing the state’s legitimacy and citizen’s support.” Apparently, the USAID office in Tegucigalpa hadn’t gotten the memo. Until the United States brings its development programming into line with its words and actions — and finds ways to work more flexibly with local partners instead of over-relying on the US international development industry — there is small hope that these types of assistance programs can have the kind of impact that they are designed to generate.
