During the research for my latest book, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, I reported from Honduras, a key narco transit country.
The country recently elected a new President, Xiomara Castro Sarmiento Zelaya, who pledges to reform the nation.
In a new piece for US outlet Truthout, I’m interviewed by journalists Rodrigo Acuna and Nicholas Ford:
“Honduran politicians have long known that Washington will grant them immunity from prosecution (with some notable exceptions, including the former president’s corrupt brother). This culture has led to a Honduran [political] class [that hasn’t] cared about the fate of their people,” independent Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein, who has reported on Honduras in his recent book, Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs, told Truthout. “It usually doesn’t matter whether a Democrat or Republican occupies the White House, except perhaps the latter is more honest about his country’s real intentions towards Honduras: bribe [officials] with huge amounts of cash in the hope that they’ll do U.S. bidding.”
Noting that Honduras is a key transit point for drug trafficking in Central America, Loewenstein said that the country has “long been a U.S. client state” and that “this only worsened after the 2009 coup.”
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According to Loewenstein, President Castro “offers a possibility of change, but only if she negotiates a real shift in the relationship with her country’s imperial master.”