US Interference Threatens Electoral Integrity in Honduras

As Honduras approaches its 30 November general election, troubling signs have emerged of a coordinated effort to distort, delegitimize, and ultimately interfere in the country’s sovereign democratic process.

Yesterday, many Honduran political figures — including presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla and numerous members of the Honduran National Congress — attended a Western Hemisphere Subcommittee hearing in the United States Congress chaired by Representative María Elvira Salazar, a far-right proponent of US intervention in Latin America.

The hearing was framed in Washington as an “urgent” assessment of the situation in Honduras. In reality, the hearing sought to preemptively question the legitimacy of Honduras’s electoral institutions, to cast doubt on the democratic process, and to prepare the ground for claims of fraud before a single vote has been cast. This represents a dangerous escalation of foreign interference — one that threatens the integrity of the upcoming elections and echoes a long history of external interference in the country’s political life.

Among the witnesses called to testify in the hearing was Carlos Trujillo, former US Ambassador to the OAS. Mr. Trujillo admitted that he was a registered lobbyist with longstanding economic and political interests in Honduras. Just this year, Trujillo confirmed that his firm represented ZEDE Próspera — an “anarcho-capitalist” attempt to carve out a corporate colonial enclave in defiance of Honduran law and sovereignty, backed by US investors such as Peter Thiel. (Próspera is currently suing Honduras for over $1.6 billion dollars after the government reasserted its sovereignty over the territory.) “It is very rare that we have a registered foreign agent and a registered lobbyist sitting in that chair (...), it almost never happens,” said Representative Joaquin Castro, questioning the legitimacy of testimony by a lobbyist whose former clients have much at stake in Honduras’ elections.

During the hearing itself, far from supporting Honduran democracy, Rep. Salazar lauded the US backed 2009 military coup of democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, claiming that the Honduran armed forces had “saved the country.” After expounding on Honduras’ strategic importance to US interests in the region, Rep. Salazar declared, “the United States is watching closely and we will not let socialism rob the people of their voice.” 

These public statements delivered by a US congresswoman amount to unilateral political threats. Such pronouncements violate the most basic norms of democratic conduct and constitute an unacceptable intrusion into the internal affairs of Honduras. No foreign government has the authority to define the terms of Honduran democracy, nor to confer or withdraw legitimacy from its institutions based on partisan alignment. These declarations could not be more ominous in light of the fact that Rep. Salazar will spearhead an eight member US congressional operation to Honduras this week.

The danger of this dynamic is not theoretical. Recent history in Honduras reveals a pattern of destabilisation campaigns, often backed or legitimised from abroad, that have weakened democratic institutions and deepened social fracture. The 2009 coup — executed in coordination with US military officials and the tacit support of Washington — removed a democratically elected president and unleashed more than a decade of authoritarian drift. The subsequent elections of 2013 and 2017 were marred by documented fraud, violent repression, and the manipulation of electoral rules to entrench the post-coup regime. Against this backdrop, the Honduran people have shown extraordinary democratic resolve: mobilising peacefully for their rights, defending their votes under conditions of extreme intimidation, and opening a path to political renewal.

Now, the same forces responsible for those ruptures are once again working to distort the democratic process. In Washington, they disseminate false claims about the current government and the course of the democratic process, while in Honduras, they stand accused of preparing a new destabilisation strategy. 

Recently, CNE Councillor Marlon Ochoa formally submitted a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office warning of an emerging plan by the Honduran right to perpetrate an “electoral coup” — a coordinated effort to delegitimise the vote, discredit the authorities, and manufacture a climate of crisis that could be used to justify external pressure or internal rupture. These allegations demand immediate and impartial investigation, not foreign amplification designed to tilt the political field.

In this context, presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla’s presence alongside former lobbyists for the some of the Honduran government’s most powerful opponents in the halls of the US Congress — with its long record of interventionist policy toward Latin America — is not an act of democratic engagement, but a direct appeal for foreign involvement. The right of Honduran citizens to exercise their civil and political rights must be defended within Honduras, not outsourced to political bodies abroad. Democracy is built at the ballot box, in community assemblies, and through the hard work of national institutions — not in congressional hearings thousands of miles away. 

The principle at stake could not be clearer: the sovereign right of the Honduran people to choose their own leaders, free from external interference. The right to self-determination is not a diplomatic formality; it is the foundation of any legitimate democratic order. In the face of escalating disinformation campaigns, unilateral pronouncements by foreign officials, and cross-border coordination by right-wing actors, the international community must uphold this principle with consistency and resolve.

The Progressive International Observatory issues this alert to warn that Honduras faces a renewed threat of intervention in its democratic process. We call on governments, media, and civil-society organisations worldwide to reject any foreign interference — whether rhetorical, political, or institutional — in Honduras’s elections. And we call on progressive forces across the world to remain vigilant and in solidarity with the Honduran people, whose long struggle for democracy has endured coups, fraud, and repression, and who today once more defend their right to determine their own future.

The world must stand watch — and stand with Honduras.