The modern history of Honduras is replete with large-scale disappearances of left-leaning union members, students and others. The legislature approved a new constitution in 1982, and the Liberal Party government of President Roberto Suazo Córdova took office. Suazo relied on United States support — including controversial social and economic development projects sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development — during a severe economic recession. According to the US State Department, "Honduras became host to the largest Peace Corps mission in the world, and non-governmental and international voluntary agencies proliferated."
As the 1985 election approached, the Liberal Party of Honduras interpreted election law as permitting multiple presidential candidates from one party. It claimed victory when its presidential candidates (who received 42% of the vote) collectively outpolled the National Party of Honduras candidate, Rafael Leonardo Callejas Romero. José Azcona del Hoyo, the Liberal Party candidate who received the most votes of the Liberal Party candidates, assumed the presidency in 1986. With the endorsement of the Honduran military, the Azcona administration ushered in the first peaceful transfer of power from one civilian president to another in more than 30 years.
Nationalist Rafael Leonardo Callejas Romero won the following presidential election and took office in 1990. The nation's fiscal deficit ballooned during Callejas' final year in office. Growing public dissatisfaction with the rising cost of living and with widespread government corruption led voters in 1993 to elect Liberal Party candidate Carlos Roberto Reina with 56% of the vote. President Reina, elected on a platform calling for a "moral revolution", actively prosecuted corruption and pursued those responsible for human rights abuses in the 1980s. He created a modern attorney general's office and investigative police force, increased civilian control over the armed forces, transferred the police from military to civilian authority, and restored national fiscal health.
Liberal Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé took office in 1998. Flores inaugurated reforms and modernized the Honduran government and economy, with emphasis on helping Honduras' poorest citizens while maintaining the country's fiscal health and improving international competitiveness. In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras, leaving more than 7,000 people dead and 1.5 million displaced. Damages totaled nearly $3 billion.
Ricardo Rodolfo Maduro Joest of the National Party of Honduras won the 2001 presidential elections, and took office in 2002. Maduro deployed joint police-military forces and wider neighborhood patrols to fight crime and gangs. Maduro strongly supported the global war on terrorism and joined the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, contributing 370 troops for eleven months. Under Maduro Honduras also negotiated and ratified the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, received debt relief, became the first Latin American country to sign a Millennium Challenge Account compact with the U.S., and actively promoted greater Central American integration.
Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya Rosales of the Liberal Party won the November 27, 2005 presidential election with less than a 4% margin of victory, the smallest margin ever in Honduran electoral history. Zelaya's campaign theme was "citizen power", and he vowed to increase government transparency and combat narcotrafficking, while maintaining macroeconomic stability. The Liberal Party won 62 of the 128 congressional seats, just short of an absolute majority.
Honduras in the middle: United States policy and the Central American crisis
The Suazo Córdova administration: Caudillo politics in the shadow of the military President Roberto Suazo Córdova took office at a time of extreme political ferment in Central America. The United States government wanted to halt or roll back what it considered to be pro-Soviet forces on the isthmus. The leftist insurgency of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (, FMLN) in El Salvador had been underway for some two years, and the outcome of the struggle in that country was in doubt. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (, FSLN) was instituting social-democratic policies with considerable success for the poor majority.Context of '1990: Sandinistas Lose Nicarague Election to US-Backed Candidate' at historycommons.org Honduras — poor in resources, lacking democratic traditions, and strategically located between two revolutionary governments — almost inevitably drew the attention and involvement of Washington.
Suazo Córdova, a country doctor from La Paz, was a veteran of Honduran political infighting, but lacked the kind of experience that might have prepared him for an internationalist role as president of the republic. His initial approach to the question of Honduras' role appeared to stress coexistence rather than confrontation. This reflected Honduras's historical passivity in regional and international affairs and took into account the regional balance of power, which was unfavorable to Honduras. Suazo Córdova's inaugural speech stressed self-determination and a desire to remain neutral in the face of regional upheaval.
In keeping with this conciliatory approach, on March 23, 1982 Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgardo Paz Barnica proposed a peace plan to the permanent council of the Organization of American States (OAS), based on the following six points: general disarmament in Central America, reduction of foreign military and other advisors (then a point of contention with the Nicaraguan government), international supervision of a final agreement, an end to regional arms traffic, respect for delineated and demarcated borders, and the establishment of a permanent multilateral dialogue. The proposal met with little support from other Central American states, particularly Nicaragua.
Gradually, the Suazo Córdova administration began to perceive the FSLN government (commonly known as "Sandinistas") as an obstructionist as well as a subversive force that intended to undermine political stability in Honduras through intimidation, propaganda, and direct aid to insurgents. Consensus on this point in the Honduran administration and armed forces coincided with a significant expansion of the United States' role in Honduras both as policy adviser and as purveyor of military and economic aid.
Brigadier General Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, who assumed the position of commander of the armed forces in January 1982, emerged as a hardliner against the Sandinistas. He publicly declared Honduras "in a war to the death" with Nicaragua; and believed such a war should be conducted under the auspices of a triple alliance between Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Some observers also believed that Álvarez had another tactic in his anti-communist strategy: covert domestic surveillance and extralegal executions. Álvarez's training in Argentina (where such "dirty war" tactics were common in the 1970s) lent credence to charges of forced disappearance and other forms of harassment against the Honduran left.
Álvarez's main rival for the post of armed forces commander, Colonel Leónidas Torres Arias, a former head of military intelligence, had assumed an attaché post in Buenos Aires, after losing the struggle for command. From Argentina, Torres castigated Álvarez in the media, charging that he operated a personal death squad. The Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human Rights appeared to confirm Torres' charges to some degree, by reporting an increase in the number of political disappearances nationwide. According to foreign observers, the total numbers in no way rivaled those registered in El Salvador or Guatemala; the increase, however, was statistically significant for previously-tranquil Honduras.
Álvarez's strong-arm tactics drew criticism, particularly from the foreign press and international human rights groups. At the same time, however, leftist subversive activity expanded in the early 1980s. Much of this increase was attributed to Sandinista support for like-minded Honduran groups such as the PCH, the Lorenzo Zelaya Popular Revolutionary Forces (, FPR-LZ) and the Honduran Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (, PRTC-H).
Beginning with minor bombings, these groups eventually progressed to kidnapping and hijackings. A platoon-sized unit of Nicaraguan-trained PRTC-H members crossed the border from Nicaragua into the Olancho department in September 1983. A rapid response by Honduran troops isolated the PRTC-H column; 23 guerrillas surrendered and another 26 died in the mountains, some of starvation and exposure). A similar incursion in 1984 also failed to strike a revolutionary spark among the conservative Honduran peasantry.
The perception of a genuine leftist revolutionary threat to Honduran stability enhanced Brigadier General Álvarez's power and heightened his profile, both in Honduras and the United States. The imbalance of power between the military and the nascent civilian government called into question the viability of Honduras's democratic transition. Some observers saw in Álvarez a continuation in the long series of military caudillos, who had ruled the nation since independence.
A coup and reimposition of direct military rule appeared a virtual certainty to those who doubted Honduras's affinity for any form of democratic government. Others, however, pictured Álvarez more in the mold of Argentina's Juan Perón — a military-based caudillo, who successfully made the transition to populist civilian politics. Like most officers, Álvarez had ties to the PNH. Álvarez served as president of the Association for the Progress of Honduras (, APROH), a group made up mainly of conservative businesspeople and PNH leaders.
The initial goals of APROH were to attract foreign investment and to block the growth of "popular organizations" (labor unions, campesino and other activist groups) such as those that supported the FMLN in El Salvador. APROH's acceptance of funding from the South Korea-based Unification Church proved controversial, garnering negative publicity for both the organization and Álvarez. The general's purportedly-popular following, moreover, was suspect. He seemed much more comfortable and adept at high-level political maneuvering than grassroots organization. Eventually, even his support within the armed forces proved to be inadequate to sustain his ambitions.
Although Álvarez had appeared ascendant by 1982, some observers described the political situation in Honduras as a triumvirate, with Brigadier General Álvarez formulating national security policy and refraining from a direct military takeover of the government, President Suazo supporting Álvarez's policies in return for military tolerance of his rule and military support for his domestic policies, and the United States government providing the economic and military aid that helped sustain the arrangement. Some disputed the claim that Suazo was subservient to the military, pointing out that the president refused to increase the budget of the armed forces. That budget, however, failed to take foreign military aid into account. The increase in United States military aid from US$3.3 million in fiscal year 1980 to US$31.3 million in FY 1982, therefore, represented a substantial expansion in the military's role in government.