By Laura Gottesdiener and Drazen Jorgic
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras, 19 May (Reuters) – Bags of rice and beans arrived in a complicated community in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second-largest city, to help poor government citizens in a complicated coronavirus blockade in April 2020.
César Lopez and his circle of hungry relatives received nothing. The food, he said, was only for supporters of the ruling National Party, which he opposes. He said the same goes for government work and other benefits.
He left for the United States before this year, motivated in part by what claims to be an unfair distribution of aid, a pandemic hunger crisis, and two hurricanes last year.
“The government is giving its supporters,” Lopez told Reuters in March, stopping at a Guatemalan village in the direction of Texas.
The ruling denies betting on favorites and said such accusations are typical of the parties to the conflict seeking to give a bad symbol to President Juan Orlando Hernandez. What is indisputable is that the Conservative National Party, since taking strength after a military coup in 2009, has built a formidable political device that has a wonderful influence on the lives of Honduran 10 million.
The patronage system, known as “clientelism,” is helping to boost migration to the United States by instilling cynicism among the disadvantaged of public benefits, migrants and policy experts said.
“Sometimes the balance between staying and going is the hope that things will simply get better, and clientelism destroys that hope,” said Andrew Seele, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, which supports liberal immigration policies.
The National Party uses its control of government establishments and the budget to praise its supporters, punish war parties, and influence elections, according to Reuters interviews with two dozen government officials, opposition politicians, former members of the National Party, diplomats, anti-corruption and academic researchers.
Three dozen Hondurans, some in the direction of the United States, told Reuters that the formula had led them or their relatives to migrate.
Corruption is rooted in Central America. For years, politicians have been involved in corruption scandals and drug trafficking lawsuits. Biden’s leadership has made the fight against corruption a central component of its $4 billion strategy to address the “root causes” of migration from the so-called Northern Triangle. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Economist Julio César Raudales served as Minister of Planning and External Cooperation in the party’s national government from 2010 to 2014 and said that spending on combating poverty was basically directed to spaces where the party had the most productive chance of winning elections, senior party officials. . He didn’t talk brazenly about practice at closet meetings.
“All the public investment went through my office, so it wasn’t hard to see,” said Raudales, now vice president of foreign affairs at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
Although the practice is not new, it has been “brazen” under the regime of the National Party, he said.
The party rejected accusations that it distributed aid on the basis of political support.
“This is absolutely false,” said Fernando Anduray, spokesman and executive secretary of the party’s political committee.
Honduran law requires the federal government to involve municipalities in the implementation of social programs; the National Party hosted 58% of the country’s mayoralties in the last elections of 2017; Anduray said all instances of local National Party supporters were remote instances.
SPONSORSHIP BLOOM
Clientelism has a long history in Latin America. The authoritarian parties, which added the ruling Socialist Party in Venezuela and the PRI in Mexico, which maintained strength for seven decades until 2000, used it to exert influence, political scientists say. The same goes for the former rival of the National Party in Honduras, the Liberal Party.
“We are all accomplices,” said Juan Carlos Elvir, candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the Liberal Party for the November elections. The country’s social coverage programs, he said, are forcing them to rely on political parties for help, an impediment to combat opposed to poverty.
Supporting the ruling party secures cash or food, and opposing it necessarily means a permanent loss of public benefits, political analysts and citizens said.
However, Honduran migrants said the practice was daunting in last year’s turmoil, and something in their resolve to leave.
Maria Garcia, who went to the United States in February with her two young children, said she had won any food aid that would have sunk into her village in southwestern Honduras.
“Only those who have (the president) receive help,” said Garcia, a supporter of the Liberal Party, who spoke to Reuters on the Guatemala-Mexico border.
The presidency, in a statement, said Hernandez’s purpose is to provide social assistance regardless of political affiliations.
Anti-corruption researchers and academics who have studied Honduras say that for all kinds of state benefits, from food distribution to multimillion-dollar public markets, loyalty to the National Party is required.
The 12 years of the party’s ten-year term have allowed him to expand and consolidate these practices, to the studios.
A 2019 report through the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University found that Honduras had the key moment of clientelism in Latin America, after the Dominican Republic. The study found that more than 18% of Honduran 1,561 voters surveyed in 2014 said they won a gift, favor or gain advantages in exchange for their vote in the 2013 presidential election. However, the investigation did not imply which political parties had made the alleged offers.
Local National Party activists are guilty of delivering government social coverage programs, which are then used to shore up poor citizens before the election, according to a March 2021 report through the Honduran Documentation Center, a personal study center founded in Tegucigalpa, with its National Democratic Agreement. Institute, an American group for democracy.
VOTE WITH YOUR FEET
Mauricio Arias said he witnessed the settlement as mayor of the city of Copon Ruinas in western Honduras. A member of the opposition Liberal Party, Arias said his management was excluded from decision-making about a federal aid program called “Better Life” or “Better. “Life. ” He told local National Party officials that they receive help, directing most of the aid to the party’s voter base.
Following Hernandez’s victory in 2013, the government deployed the distribution of food packages known as a “solidarity bag” or “solidarity bag. “Government aid has been widely channeled to well-known citizens in an internal party “census” as the most likely electorate of the National Party, said Rael Pineda Alvarado, a former National Party lawmaker.
“If you’re not on the census, you don’t have to go to the charity exchange,” added Alvarado, who now serves as a political analyst.
Anduray, a spokesman for the National Party, said he had a giant database of its members and supporters, and denied discriminating against the opposition electorate by distributing monetary aid.
Among those whose ruling party forges ties with the electorate are infantrymen such as Sogeri López, who has long supported Chamelecon, a suburb of San Pedro Sula.
Before the March primary this year, he said, the National Party granted him a grant to knock on the door of his neighborhood, which hit November’s hurricanes.
He said his task is to get the touch data from party supporters more likely to help mobilize participation. He also told the electorate that they would get food, new mattresses and construction fabrics to fix their homes.
The National Party “promised help in exchange for the votes of the people,” he said. He said he also said his prospecting would lead to a task for his 21-year-old son, Daniel.
Anduray of the National Party said it would have been an “isolated case” if such promises had been made. “This is a match strategy,” he said.
He’s got it from his illusions.
He said some of the documents he promised the electorate never came, neither his table nor the paintings of Daniel, who headed north last month hoping to reach the United States (Report through Laura Gottesdiener in La Técnica, Guatemala and Copon Ruinas, Honduras, and Drazen Jorgic in San Pedro Sula; additional reports through Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa and Frank Jack Daniel in Mexico City; edited through Marlala Dickerson)