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Caribbean & Central America - December 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

HONDURAS: Crouching tiger, hidden dragon?

“The tiger is crouching”, declared a left-wing deputy ahead of the approval in congress of new executive-proposed measures to give the Honduran military broad policing powers. President Porfirio Lobo is putting the military on the streets under a 18-month state of emergency in order to combat the rising tide of violent crime in the country, which now has one of the highest homicide rates of anywhere in the world. Despite strong concerns about the move locally, the president is not for turning and, ahead of the congressional vote, he proudly touted figures showing a marked drop in crime in the main cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula following a recent joint military-police deployment known as Operation Lightning Strike. Critics warn that Lobo might do well to look north towards Mexico, where President Felipe Calderón’s military security strategy has led to a massive upsurge in domestic violence and is largely considered a failure. Indeed, in late November, a Mexican lawyer lumped President Calderón and several members of his government in together with the (alleged) local drug kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in a complaint filed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague alleging “systematic human rights abuses and crimes against humanity”.

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