The DEA in Honduras: Targeting Corruption in High Places

While democratic activists are stuck in prison, the DEA investigates the Honduran president, his brother, and other high level officials for their connections to drug trafficking.

While driving home in Tegucigalpa on the evening of January 19, 2018, Edwin Espinal was suddenly pulled over by the police, handcuffed, and take away to jail. A longtime activist, Espinal had participated earlier in yet another city-wide protest against the electoral fraud that most likely had allowed Juan Orlando Hernández to become president of Honduras. Espinal is well-known in that country for his leadership in the struggle to make democracy a reality there, a struggle that goes back to 2009 when a democratically elected president was ousted in a right-wing military coup. Since then, he has been harassed, beaten, and threatened by police for his role in the National People's Resistance Front, a coalition of grassroots organizations, movements, and political parties opposed to the coup.