On 2 April, US President Donald Trump strode to the podium of the White House Rose Garden to announce “Liberation Day” — a series of unprecedented unilateral tariffs that, Trump said, “will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.”
Taken at his word, then, the trade measures taken on "Liberation Day" sought to free the United States from the pernicious influence of foreign economic powers. “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said.
The painful irony, however, is that Trump’s economic policy has been designed precisely to sustain the country’s looting, pillaging, and plundering of its own neighbor nations. “Liberation Day” may have sought to rewrite the rules of global trade, but only to secure a new century of US supremacy at the cost of developing economies asphyxiated by tariffs, sanctions, blockades, and historic levels of unsustainable sovereign debt.
But in the South, a counter-movement is stirring: the democratic refoundation of the global economy. From Latin America to Africa, states are beginning to reclaim sovereignty over resources, investment, and development policy — challenging the architecture that keeps the peoples of the South subordinate to foreign capital.
Nowhere is this struggle clearer than in the Central American nation of Honduras.
Since President Xiomara Castro took office, the country has faced 16 investor lawsuits worth $13.5 billion (more than 35% of GDP) at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) — for undoing a US-backed experiment that sought to carve up Honduran territory into private corporate fiefdoms.
At the heart of the battle lies Próspera, a private corporate enclave on the island of Roatán. Born in the aftermath of the 2009 coup, Próspera was granted the power to write its own laws, enforce its own courts, even levy its own taxes — a libertarian utopia for investors, a dystopia for Honduran democracy. When Castro’s government and Congress repealed the ZEDE (or, Charter cities) framework in 2022 — and when the Supreme Court struck it down again in 2024 — Próspera retaliated with one of the largest corporate lawsuits in history.
But Honduras is not backing down. Last week, the Attorney General Manuel Antonio Díaz Galeas convened the Progressive International for an international seminar in Tegucigalpa under the banner Recuperar la soberanía, “Recovering Sovereignty”. Jurists, economists, and political leaders from across the world gathered to chart alternatives to a system that disciplines democracies and rewards corporate extortion. “Sovereignty means our dignity as a nation is not for negotiation,” said Luis Redondo, President of the National Congress of Honduras.
The seminar was opened by Díaz Galeas, who affirmed that the state would defend Honduran sovereignty with “responsibility and determination,” in line with President Castro’s commitment to safeguard national dignity while ensuring transparent economic governance. Each investor claim, Díaz Galeas said, “is a battlefield for the well-being of the Honduran people.”
International voices rallied to Honduras’s side. Among them was Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who travelled to Tegucigalpa to participate in the seminar and hold high-level meetings with President Castro, her finance and tax ministers, and Libre presidential candidate Rixi Moncada. At the press conference, Sachs called the arbitration regime a tool of extortion, dismissing the claims against Honduras as “a joke.” He praised the government for striking the right balance: welcoming investment, but on the conditions imposed by the laws, regulations, and democratic demands of its people. Sachs continued:
“The pursuit of economic sovereignty is not only a Honduran question, but one faced by countries all over the world. Honduras may need foreign investors, but it does not need foreign invaders. This region has been plagued by foreign investors who are abusive, authoritarian, and tied to the power of the United States — not just for 10 or 20 years, but for 200. Powerful companies tied to powerful Washington law firms, in turn tied to powerful individuals in places like the State Department have had free rein to overthrow governments and intervene as they see fit… It is a shame that the multilateral institutions tasked with leading the sustainable development agenda host a process [like ISDS] which is nothing more than an abuse.”
Other international participants included Lisa Sachs and Ladan Mehranvar of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, Iza Camarillo of Global Trade Watch (Mexico), Christian Pino, former executive director of Ecuador’s CAITISA, and Andrés Arauz, former Ecuadorian minister and member of the Progressive International’s Cabinet. Together, they joined Honduran leaders in documenting the harms of the investor-state dispute system and advancing legal and political alternatives that put people before profit.
For Honduras, the stakes could not be higher. To abolish ZEDEs, revoke ICSID membership, and confront Próspera in open defiance is to pit the sovereignty of a small nation against the weight of global capital. But in doing so, Honduras has become a reference point for the world.
The lesson is simple: what Honduras is resisting in Roatán is what the Global South must resist everywhere — from Washington’s tariff wars to Brussels’ “de-risking.” Each is a tool to secure the subordination of the South to the North, to force governments into submission, and to deny peoples their right to self-determination.
As Luis Redondo declared: “The abolition of ZEDEs consolidates national sovereignty as a historic triumph of the Honduran people.” Sovereignty is not a slogan. It is, in his words, “profoundly human.”
That is the spirit behind Honduras Resiste — the campaign launched by the Progressive International alongside Honduran movements in 2023 after Próspera filed its $10.7 billion claim. The campaign has carried the message of Honduran sovereignty to the world: that no corporation can stand above the will of a people, and no tribunal can erase their right to self-determination.
As Honduras advances from resistance to reconstruction, the Progressive International will continue to rally solidarity behind its fight — and to link it with the wider struggle across the South to build a democratic global economy that defends sovereignty, dignity, and life against corporate and imperial power.
From Tegucigalpa to Delhi, from Bogotá to Johannesburg, the message to Trump must be the same: our sovereignty is not for sale.
Türkiye is set to block all Israel-linked ships from its ports after signing onto The Hague Group’s Bogotá commitments, "to ensure that territorial waters do not serve as conduits for genocide.”
Meanwhile, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has instructed all ministries to conduct a comprehensive review of contracts with Israeli companies, spanning sectors from coal exports to arms, software, and digital tools. This directive implements the fourth measure outlined in the Bogotá Joint Statement of The Hague Group, reinforcing Colombia’s commitment to scrutinising economic relationships that may facilitate violence or human rights abuses abroad.
The BJP government in Assam, India, has filed sedition charges against the Progressive International’s partner publication, The Wire India, for its reporting on India-Pakistan tensions.
Press freedom in India — and everywhere — must be defended.
Read more about the case and the government’s use of sedition laws to challenge press freedom in The Wire India here.
Eighty years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear disarmament remains critically relevant. Join Jeremy Corbyn, Carlos Umaña and Masako Wada on Saturday, 30 August at New York 0800 / London 1300, Brussels 1400 / Hiroshima 2100 for a special webinar on the struggle for a nuclear-free world.
Alma Leiva (born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras) is a Miami-based artist and educator. Leiva has a research-based practice and uses installation, video, and photography to discuss corruption, human rights abuse and violence, amongst other issues that affect central American society.
The pictured interactive installation juxtaposes QR codes with Mayan mythological iconography and footballs, a nod to the 1969 ‘Football War’ with El Salvador. The codes reveal victims of violence in the San Pedro Sula – at the time murder capital of the world, still recovering from Hurricane Mitch which decimated Banana production.
