MS-13 and Trump Backed the Same Presidential Candidate in Honduras

Gangsters from MS- a Trump-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization intimidated Hondurans not to vote for the left-leaning presidential candidate eyewitness sources stated The Intercept in most of cases urging them to instead cast their ballots in last Sunday s ballot for the right-wing National Party candidate the same candidate endorsed by U S President Donald Trump Ten residents from four working-class neighborhoods controlled by MS- including volunteer polling workers and local journalists notified The Intercept they saw firsthand gang members giving residents an ultimatum to vote for the Trump-endorsed conservative candidate or face consequences Six other sources with knowledge of the intimidation including establishment personnel human rights investigators and people with direct personal contact with gangs corroborated their testimony Gang members drove voters to the polls in MS- -controlled mototaxi businesses three sources mentioned and threatened to kill street-level activists for the left-leaning Liberty and Refoundation or LIBRE party if they were seen bringing supporters to the polls Two eyewitnesses notified The Intercept they saw members of MS- checking people s ballots inside polling sites as did a caller to the national exigency help line A lot of people for LIBRE didn t go to vote because the gangsters had threatened to kill them a resident of San Pedro Sula the second-largest city in Honduras stated The Intercept Mareros as the gang members are known intimidated voters into casting their ballots for Nasry Tito Asfura known as Papi a la rden or Daddy at your operation Multiple residents of San Pedro Sula alleged they were also directed to vote for a mayoral candidate from the centrist Liberal Party Miroslava Cerpas the leader of the Honduran national crisis call system provided The Intercept with four audio files of calls in which callers released that gang members had threatened to murder residents if they voted for LIBRE A lead investigator for an internationally recognized Honduran human rights NGO who spoke anonymously with The Intercept to disclose sensitive information from a soon-to-be published record on the balloting disclosed they are analyzing gang intimidation in Tegucigalpa and the Sula Valley based on direct contact with casualties of threats by gangs If you don t follow the order we re going to kill your families even your dogs We don t want absolutely anyone to vote for LIBRE People linked to MS- were working to take people to the voting stations to vote for Asfura telling them if they didn t vote there would be consequences the investigator described The Intercept They declared they received six complaints from three colonias in the capital of Tegucigalpa and three in the Sula Valley where voters reported members of MS- had threatened to kill those who openly voted for the ruling left LIBRE party or brought party representatives to the polls The three people in the Sula Valley the investigator revealed received an audio file on WhatsApp in which a voice warns that those who vote for LIBRE have three days to leave the area and If you don t follow the order we re going to kill your families even your dogs We don t want absolutely anyone to vote for LIBRE We re going to be sending people to monitor who is going to vote and who followed the order Whoever tries to challenge the order you know what will happen The MS- interference took place as the U S president who has obsessed over the gang since his first term extended an interventionist hand over the elections On November Trump threatened to cut off aid to Honduras if voters didn t elect Asfura while simultaneously announcing a pardon for Asfura s ally and fellow party member Juan Orlando Hern ndez the former president of Honduras convicted in the U S on drug trafficking and weapons charges last year Related Trump Frees Ex-President of Honduras Right-Wing Narco-Dictator Convicted of Drug Trafficking If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras because the United States has so much confidence in him his Policies and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras we will be very supportive Trump wrote on Truth Social If he doesn t win the United States will not be throwing good money after bad because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country no matter which country it is The electoral process remains undecided over a week after the fact Asfura holds a narrow lead over centrist Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla while Rixi Moncada the LIBRE party candidate remains in a distant third As people await the final results one San Pedro Sula resident declared there s been a tense calm It s unlikely the MS- interference led to LIBRE s loss since the ruling party had already suffered a major drop in popularity after a lack of change continued violence and corruption scandals under four years of President Xiomara Castro But the LIBRE leadership pointed to a raft of other electoral irregularities and a preliminary European Union electoral mission overview recognized that the balloting was carried out amid intimidation defamation campaigns institutional weakness and disinformation though it ignored LIBRE s accusations of fraud The Honduran attorney general informed their own examination into irregularities in the voting last week and on Monday two representatives for the National Electoral Council informed Hondurans that the electronic voting system wasn t updated for over hours over the weekend while results are still being finalized There is clear and resounding evidence that this electoral process was coerced by organized crime groups commented Cerpas who is a member of the LIBRE party pushing the people to vote for Nasry Asfura and intimidating anyone who wished to vote for Rixi Moncada There is clear and resounding evidence that this electoral process was coerced by organized crime groups Gerardo Torres the vice chancellor of foreign relations for the LIBRE leadership recounted The Intercept via phone that manipulation of elections by maras is a well-established practice but that the timing of the threats was alarming given Trump s simultaneous pardoning of Hern ndez and endorsement of Asfura When a day before the elections the president of the United States announces the liberation of Hern ndez and then automatically there is a surge in activity and intimidation by MS- Torres declared it suggests that the gang members see the return of the former president as an opportunity to change their situation and launch a coordinated offensive It would seem like the U S is favoring for ideological reasons a narco-state to prevent the left from returning to power he revealed The White House Asfura and the National Party did not respond to The Intercept s requests for comment All onlookers who alleged referendum interference have been granted anonymity to protect them from targeting by MS- They Control These Colonias Bumping over potholed dirt roads on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula the day before the presidential electoral process a motorcycle taxi driver informed their tourist of MS- s latest ultimatum The mototaxis were strictly prohibited from bringing people from LIBRE to the voting stations on referendum day recalled the client Only people for the National Party or the Liberal Party but for LIBRE no one no one not even flags were allowed Gangs like MS- control the whole area of Cort s the commuter announced referring to their home department Total subjugation The gang members closely monitor the movements of those within their territories in a great number of cases by co-opting or controlling mototaxi services to keep track of who comes and goes Three other sources in San Pedro Sula and one in Tegucigalpa authenticated MS- s co-optation of mototaxis in the area another source with direct yearslong contact with gang members on the north coast of Honduras substantiated that MS- was pushing residents in their territories of San Pedro Sula to vote for Asfura by the same means When members of MS- passed through Cort s warning that those who voted for LIBRE had three days to leave the mototaxi commuter announced residents surrounded by years of killings massacres and disappearances by the gang knew what might await them if they defied Related What Happens When a Barrio Soldier Tries to Leave the Gang MS- was formed in the s in Los Angeles California among refugees of the Salvadoran civil war who the George H W Bush administration then deported en masse to Central America In the s local gangs of displaced urban Hondurans morphed with the Salvadoran franchise Over the years the Mara Salvatrucha which MS stands for evolved into a sophisticated criminal enterprise first as street-level drug dealers then extortionists assassins for hire and cocaine transporters who have been documented working in league with high-level traffickers and state bureaucrats for at least two decades If Honduras has been a home turf of gangs the country is also an anchor for U S power in the region hosting the second-largest U S military base in Latin America and a laboratory for radical experiments in libertarian far-right private cities In the Honduran military carried out a coup under the passive watch of U S administration ousting then-President Manuel Zelaya a centrist and husband of current President Xiomara Castro The homicide rate skyrocketed turning the country into the world s most of violent per U S State Department rankings by the s The chaos gave rise to ex-president Hern ndez whom U S prosecutors later accused of turning Honduras into a cocaine superhighway as he directed the country s military police and judiciary to protect drug traffickers Last week Hern ndez was published from a West Virginia prison after a pardon from Trump and on Monday the Honduran attorney general reported an international warrant for his arrest Gangsters were going from house to house to tell people to vote for Papi As Honduran voters processed the latest cycle of U S influence over their politics the more immediate menace at the polls extended to the local level Gangsters were going from house to house to tell people to vote for Papi Asfura and el Pollo explained a San Pedro Sula resident who volunteered at a voting booth on poll day referring to the city s mayor Roberto Contreras of the Liberal Party Two other sources in the city and one cabinet source in Tegucigalpa also mentioned gang members were backing Contreras The crew of Mayor Roberto Contreras categorically rejects any insinuation of pacts with criminal structures mentioned a representative for the mayor in a message to The Intercept Any narrative that tries to tie advocacy for Contreras with Maras or gangs lacks base and looks to distract attention from the principal message the population went to vote freely without pressure and with the hope of a better future Gang intimidation of voters isn t new in Honduras where within territories zealously guarded and warred over by heavily armed gangs even the threat for residents to vote for certain candidates is enough to steer an poll in their district Remember that they control these colonias noted one of the San Pedro Sula residents And given the fact that they have a lot of presence they tell the people that they re going to vote for so-and-so and the majority follow the orders The human rights lawyer Victor Fern ndez who ran for mayor of San Pedro Sula as an independent candidate but lost in the March primaries reported he and his supporters also experienced intimidation from MS- during his primary campaign After his own race was over he declared he continued to see indications of gang intervention in the presidential campaign for months leading up to voting process day Both before and during the elections on November gangsters operating here in the Sula Valley exercised their pressure over the referendum he announced explaining this conclusion was drawn from recurring testimonies with residents of multiple neighborhoods The great violent proposal that people have verified is that gang members notified them they couldn t go vote for LIBRE and that whoever did so would have to confront the gang structure Vamos a votar por Papi a la rden Minutes after submitting a highly publicized complaint to the General Ministry on Monday Cerpas of the National Urgency call system reported The Intercept that her office received verified complaints of electoral violations on balloting day In those calls she commented there was a important group of reports regarding intimidation and threats by criminal groups Four audio recordings of residents calling the crisis hotline which Cerpas shared with The Intercept reflect the wider accusation that mareros used murderous intimidation tactics to prevent people from voting for LIBRE and vote instead for Asfura In one of the files a woman calling from Tegucigalpa tells the operator that members of MS- had threatened to kill anyone who voted for LIBRE while posing as electoral contest observers at the voting center They re outside the voting center they re outside and inside she says referring to members of MS- her voice trembling I entered and they stated me If you vote for LIBRE we ll kill you and your whole fucking family For days before the referendum a resident from a rural region of the country whose time in a maximum-security prison called La Tolva put him in yearslong proximity to gang members had received messages from friends and family members living in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula They all revealed a variation of the same story Gang members on mototaxis informing everyone in their colonias Vamos a votar por Papi a la rden We re going to vote for Asfura A former mid-level bureaucrat for the LIBRE regime stated The Intercept that during the lead-up to the balloting LIBRE activists who promoted the vote were intimidated by members of gangs so that they would cease pushing for the vote for LIBRE The former official didn t specify the gangs though they explained the intimidation took place in three separate neighborhoods All day the muchachos gang members were going around and taking photos of the coordinators read messages from local organizers shared with The Intercept The gang members noted that they needed to close themselves in their houses Testimony at Hern ndez s trial indicated that members of MS- were subcontracted as early as through the corrupt U S -allied police commander Juan Carlos El Tigre Bonilla to provide assurance for caravans of cocaine alongside soldiers Evidence presented in the trial of Midence Oquel Mart nez Turcios a former Honduran soldier and longtime congressional deputy for the Liberal Party who was convicted of drug trafficking charges last week revealed that he trained sicarios for MS- to carry out high-level assassinations on behalf of the drug trafficking clan known as the Cachiros Testifying at Hern ndez s trial the imprisoned Cachiros leader claimed to have paid in protection money to the former president Trump wiped away Hern ndez s conviction calling it political theater but he sees MS- s sicarios in a different light To Trump the gangsters are human animals their gang a menace that violated our borders in an infestation justifying militarized crackdowns on caravans of Hondurans fleeing violence under Hern ndez and the categorization of the gang as a foreign terrorist organization Announcing the designation in February a White House press release reads MS- uses general displays of violence to obtain and control territory and manipulate the electoral process in El Salvador We used to think this was just to influence the mayors not the presidency It s known that MS- will do vote buying the investigator examining voter intimidation reported This is a recurring practice But we used to think this was just to influence the mayors not the presidency In El Salvador gangs like MS- have intervened in favor of another Trump ally Nayib Bukele whose establishment has been embroiled by disgrace over alleged collusion with MS- and other gangs meaning that the in Honduras wasn t the first time that the same candidate Trump endorsed was promoted by a gang he now designates a terrorist organization For Cerpas the coincidence of that voter intimidation with Hern ndez s release is cause for alarm The people in Honduras are afraid she mentioned because organized crime has been emboldened by the pardon of Juan Orlando Hern ndez The post MS- and Trump Backed the Same Presidential Candidate in Honduras appeared first on The Intercept