The new president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, is scheduled to take office on Jan. 27. She’s a darling of the corporate media, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken congratulated Castro within minutes of her electoral win. This raises an interesting question. What does the USA have to gain from Castro’s victory?
Let’s take a look at Presidenta Castro on Twitter. Her bio is the usual carbon copy that everybody has (including Antony Blinken): “Madre, abuela, esposa, y Presidenta Electa del país cinco estrellas, Honduras.” Translation: Mother, grandmother, wife, and President Elect of the five-star country, Honduras. Yawn, kill me now, muchas gracias. Her page activity is equally banal, but also strange. She (or at least her social media manager) interacts almost exclusively with foreign governments and NGOs. That in of itself isn’t necessarily damning, but I find it concerning for a supposed head of state to be so… to use Antony Blinken’s favorite word, entwined, with American geopolitical interests.
How about Xiomara Castro herself? For starters, she has never held a real political office before. Castro is even more unqualified than Hillary Clinton. Her only job experience is being married to Manuel Zelaya, who was exiled in 2009 after his failed attempt to illegally rewrite the constitution. Castro is laughably unqualified. Wouldn’t it make more sense to elect someone who has climbed the ranks and already proven herself in management positions of increasing importance? It would be much easier to be optimistic toward Castro if she had already demonstrated competence as a mayor of a large city, or at least a member of congress. But she hasn’t. She hasn’t done anything. It’s a very bad sign when someone’s entire political career can be summed up in one paragraph. Castro doesn’t seem to even have any tangible accomplishments associated with her. Now she’s “presidenta” of the whole country.
Speaking of the word “presidenta,” it’s an odd one. Its current usage to refer to a female president (as opposed to a first lady), is new. Up until very recently, it was a convention of the Spanish language to use “presidente” as a neuter term, as the role is irrelevant to the person’s sex. This trendy new terminology might have sprung up organically as women gain increased political prominence, but it might also be an example of linguistic colonialism. See this interesting article (in Spanish) on the subject. Note that Google auto-translate struggles to distinguish between “presidente” and “presidenta.”
Linguistic colonialism can’t realistically be proven at the moment, but it wouldn’t be the first time American liberals have tried to force their imperialist bullshit on the Untermensch. To cite another example, it is now sexist to say “Latino” or “Latina.” You have to say “Latinx,” a word that white American liberals made up five minutes ago. Overall, the West has a track record of using language as a weapon (India and Ukraine are both good examples of this). And let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. The American empire loves pushing woman candidates like Castro in Honduras and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Belarus. Fictional colonial fantasies like the Amazon Prime show Jack Ryan also tend to fetishize woman candidates. But why?
There are many advantages to using a woman as an imperial puppet. For starters, Western propaganda outlets like BBC, CNN, and the New York Times can obsess over her sex as a marketing tool. Oh, but Castro is the first woman president of Honduras! Who cares if she’s qualified or not? What are you, some kind of bigot?
Here’s another great advantage. America’s enemies tend to be slow to recognize a woman as a threat. Castro and Tsikhanouskaya are both wives of men who betrayed their countries. If those governments were a little wiser, they would have locked up or exiled the wives too. Instead, they incorrectly assumed that a woman isn’t a threat and allowed her to openly conspire with the United States against her own country. Luckily for Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya seems content to sit in Lithuania and buy expensive clothes on someone else’s dime (last month, Lithuanians were enraged to learn that Tsikhanouskaya consumes €400,000 a year). But Castro was savvy enough to turn the tables on her opponents.
It is also possible that this fascination with woman puppets is a reflection of America’s own shift into neoliberalism. American Republicans fancy themselves as manly men (whether or not that’s actually true can be debated, of course), and mostly want to see that quality in the foreign leaders they associate with, even in vassal states. American Democrats tend to be much more feminine, even the men (Pete Buttigieg, anyone?), and they’re terrified of masculinity. An imperialist overlord cannot be afraid of his own servants, so those servants must be more emasculated than him. Or literally just be women. Maybe American liberal elites view these women like Castro and Tsikhanouskaya as appropriately submissive, therefore not a threat.
When I first heard news of Castro’s win, I worried that it would be difficult for me to assess motivations. Fortunately, a stenographer at AP News was there to explain to me exactly why the empire wanted Castro in office:
Despite opponents’ efforts to paint Castro as a communist, experts expect her to govern as a centrist with a desire to lift up Honduras’ poor while attracting foreign investment.
-AP News
A speech Castro made to her Liberty and Re-foundation party in June remains one her clearest expressions of how she will navigate the U.S. relationship.
“In the first 100 days, we will execute and propose to the administration of President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a plan to combat and address the true causes of migration,” Castro said.
Castro describes Hondurans’ emigration in terms of flight to escape inequality, corruption, poverty and violence. That sounds a lot like Harris’ assessment of the root causes the Biden administration wants to focus U.S. aid on.
But Castro also puts some of the blame on the U.S. government.
“I believe the Biden administration has an enormous opportunity to address the issue of migration,” Castro said in the June speech. “First, recognizing that they have part of the responsibility for what happens in our country,” she added, noting the 2009 coup.
“Attracting foreign investment” is, naturally, a polite way of saying let Wall Street rape the country (more). Presumably, Castro can also be relied on to do her part to prop up the US Dollar. That might not seem important, but with larger countries like Russia, China, and India dumping their Dollar reserves as fast as they can, the participation of even small nations like Honduras are going to be important to keep the American empire from collapsing, or at least delaying the collapse a little while longer. Remember Iraq and Libya. The American government is willing to kill millions of people to prevent even one government from cashing out of the casino.
Why would outward migration be a hot topic for a presidential candidate to talk about? If the Honduran government succeeds in creating a prosperous and safe economy, people will stop leaving. It’s that simple. Why even talk about migration at all, let alone try to solve it first above all other issues? Seriously, who cares? Well, of course, the US government cares. Castro was directing those speeches not at the Honduran people, but at her masters in Washington.
Though from a domestic perspective, the migration argument does have some merit. Creating the illusion that the USA is a land of milk and honey might be useful for propping up slave drivers in Latin America. In my various adventures on social media, I continue to be amazed at the warped perception so many people have of the USA. Many of them do seem to sincerely believe that the exceptional nation is perfect and jobs grow on trees. This might at least partially explain why the Biden regime has been so casually lenient toward border security. If border guards get too rough on migrant caravans, that could potentially damage American imperial interests down South.
It’s too bad that the USA didn’t accomplish regime change in Honduras a bit earlier. The country is still on the “naughty list” and was excluded from the upcoming Summit for Democracy on December 9. Maybe Castro be allowed to chime in as an observer, despite not being sworn into office yet? I’m genuinely curious.
Ian Kummer
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