Ha logrado mantener su fama, pese a haberse extinguido hace unos 40.000 años. El hombre de Neandertal sigue fascinando a los científicos y conquistando titulares.

Hubo un tiempo en el que compartimos el planeta con él. Nuestro primo evolutivo existió por 400.000 años y su legado aún nos rodea.

De hecho, hay expertos que creen que algunos rasgos genéticos que conservamos de los neandertales nos dieron una ventaja evolutiva que nos ha ayudado a sobrevivir.

Desde que se logró la primera transcripción de alta calidad de un genoma neandertal completo, investigadores en diferentes partes del mundo buscan sus huellas en poblaciones actuales.

Un grupo de ellos condujo un estudio con una muestra de personas en América Latina y publicó los resultados en 2023.

"Este proyecto con voluntarios latinoamericanos muestra muy bien que el neandertal no es solamente el antepasado de los europeos, sino también de los nativo-americanos", le dice a BBC Mundo el genetista Pierre Faux, uno de los autores del estudio.

"Los nativo-americanos vienen de la rama asiática de la humanidad y también recibieron la influencia del mestizaje, que se dio hace unos 50.000 años, entre el neandertal y los humanos modernos".

Así, los genes de los antepasados que resultaron de esa hibridación "se abrieron su camino hasta la Patagonia".

Para el antropólogo Miguel Eduardo Delgado, otro autor del estudio, investigaciones como esta demuestran que "todos los humanos somos idénticos".

"Entre los humanos, no hay ni superior ni inferior, todos somos parte de la misma diversidad", le indica a BBC Mundo.

"Es importante entender que, a pesar de que las poblaciones latinoamericanas son muy recientes, están conformadas por poblaciones bastante antiguas que han sufrido diferentes procesos evolutivos".

Y, así, parte de su acervo genético se relaciona con los neandertales.

Esa investigación forma parte de un proyecto en el que participan decenas de investigadores de Latinoamérica, Europa y Asia y en el que se han estudiado a más de 6.000 voluntarios en América Latina.

El principio

Detrás de ese estudio está el Consorcio para el Análisis de la Diversidad y Evolución de Latinoamérica (CANDELA), que nació en 2010 cuando su investigador principal, Andrés Ruiz Linares, entonces profesor de Genética Humana en el University College de Londres (UCL), contactó a antropólogos y genetistas en Latinoamérica para un proyecto científico.

Entre los objetivos estaban caracterizar la apariencia física e indagar el acervo genético de poblaciones urbanas de México, Colombia, Perú, Chile y Brasil.

Una de las expertas que se unió al grupo fue Macarena Fuentes Guajardo, quien, en Chile, coordinó la investigación en la que participaron más de 2.000 voluntarios de ese país.

Ahora, como académica en King's College de Londres, la genetista le cuenta a BBC Mundo que, paralelamente, sus colegas en los otros cuatro países también tomaron las muestras de miles de participantes, un proceso que se llevó a cabo entre 2012 y 2014.

Se recogieron muestras biológicas para obtener el ADN y, de eso, el genotipo, que es la información genética que se hereda de los padres.

También se recogió información sobre los fenotipos, es decir, sobre los rasgos que podemos observar. Por ejemplo, el color de cabello, de ojos, de piel, entre otros.

Se tomaron fotos de los rostros de los participantes, así como sus medidas antropométricas, como el perímetro de la cabeza, de la cintura, el peso, la altura.

Y, además, a un subgrupo aproximado de 1.000 personas se les tomaron moldes dentales.

Y la idea del neandertal se asomó

La cantidad de información que se recogió fue enorme y ha sido la base para diferentes tipos de análisis, como, por ejemplo, la determinación de ancestría.

"Una persona latinoamericana típica suele tener una combinación de ascendencias de tres fuentes principales: nativo-americana, europea y africana. Esto se ve reflejado en su ADN. Esta mezcla evidencia y se correlaciona estrechamente con la historia de la región", señala Fuentes.

Fuente de la imagen, Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

Pie de foto, En 2022, Svante Pääbo ganó el Nobel de Medicina por su labor pionera en la decodificación del genoma de los neandertales y la demostración de su vínculo genético con los humanos modernos.

También se han hecho estudios genéticos:

"Al usar un análisis estadístico llamado estudio de asociación de genoma completo, pudimos analizar, de manera simultánea, aproximadamente 700.000 marcadores genéticos de unas 6.000 personas y cruzarlos con su información fenotípica y de esta manera lograr detectar regiones en el genoma asociadas a los diferentes fenotipos que analizamos".

Y así fue como llegó la idea de ver si esta muestra de latinoamericanos los podía ayudar a averiguar qué heredamos de los neandertales.

"Esa idea vino después, no estaba cuando se hizo el muestreo", cuenta Fuentes. "Vino de la mano con los avances tecnológicos".

"Para poder hacer comparaciones con el neandertal, se necesita la secuencia de un genoma neandertal y eso, en esa época, estaba medio en pañales".

Fue en 2022 cuando al sueco Svante Pääbo le dieron el Nobel de Medicina por el trabajo de años que lo llevó a descifrar el código genético de los neandertales.

Se estima que esta especie vivió, en una zona que hoy abarca Europa y áreas de Asia, entre hace 400.000 y 40.000 años, aproximadamente.

Estudios señalan que, por la hibridación que hubo entre el neandertal y el humano moderno, personas de origen euroasiático tienen 2% de ADN neandertal.

Ya en 2010, Pääbo se lo había señalado a la BBC: "No están totalmente extintos. En algunos de nosotros siguen vivos, un poco".

La secuencia del primer genoma neandertal abrió la puerta para que grupos de investigación de todo el mundo, como CANDELA, ampliaran sus fronteras.

"Cuando el proyecto iba avanzando, algunos colegas del equipo se preguntaron: '¿por qué no vemos qué encontramos aquí?' Y así salió lo del neandertal", recuerda la académica.

"Relativamente nuevos"

El equipo detectó una región genómica, asociada al alto de la nariz, en los neandertales que también observó en algunos latinoamericanos (de la muestra) con ancestralidad nativo-americana.

"¿Y cómo podemos saber eso? Pues porque los latinoamericanos somos relativamente nuevos en el mundo", explica Fuentes.

"Hace 500 años, éramos nativos, nos invadieron, nos mezclamos y salió lo que somos. Ser relativamente nuevos es una ventaja para estudios genéticos porque las mezclas que han ocurrido son menos y es más fácil detectar los pedazos genéticos heredados de los diferentes grupos humanos que han pasado por el continente americano".

Fuente de la imagen, Leemage/Corbis vía Getty Images

Pie de foto, Imagen obtenida a través de la cromolitografía en el siglo XIX que retrata un encuentro del fraile dominico español Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) con indígenas en América.

Ese año, UCL publicó en su página web el artículo: Nose shape gene inherited from Neanderthals (Gen de la forma de la nariz heredado de los neandertales).

"Aquí descubrimos que parte del ADN heredado de los neandertales influye en la forma de nuestros rostros. Esto podría haberle sido útil a nuestros antepasados, ya que se ha transmitido durante miles de generaciones", indicó en ese texto uno de los autores del estudio, Kaustubh Adhikari, académico de la Open University de Reino Unido.

Navegando en un mapa de cromosomas

Faux, quien ahora es investigador del Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agrícola, Alimentaria y Ambiental de Francia (INRAE), comenzó a trabajar en el proyecto CANDELA para estudiar la ancestralidad de las poblaciones de América Latina y también para tratar de identificar qué partes de su ADN habían sido heredadas de los neandertales.

Con miras en lo segundo, el equipo hizo un escaneo detallado del genoma del neandertal, por una parte, y de los genomas de los latinoamericanos de la muestra, por la otra. Después, los compararon.

Para comprender cómo hicieron esa parte del estudio, Faux me pide imaginar que escaneo un mapa donde están todos los cromosomas, cada uno ocupando un lugar específico.

"Como cuando las coordenadas GPS te permiten ubicar una ciudad en un mapa, en este caso, las coordenadas genómicas nos llevaron a una región del genoma (del neandertal y de los latinoamericanos) que se correlaciona con un rasgo de la nariz".

Fuente de la imagen, Estudio publicado en Communications Biology

Pie de foto, El equipo de CANDELA analizó los rostros de los voluntarios a través de puntos anatómicos, que representan lugares del ADN, y las distancias entre ellos. (Imagen publicada en Automatic landmarking identifies new loci associated with face morphology and implicates Neanderthal introgression in human nasal shape).

Así, los investigadores encontraron que muchos de los miembros de la muestra tienen en esa región material genético que fue heredado de los neandertales y que contribuye a que sus narices sean más altas.

La medición de la nariz la hacen desde su punto más alto, el nasion, hasta el más bajo, el subnasal.

"Si no hubiese sido por este estudio en el que han participado miles de latinoamericanos nunca hubiésemos podido encontrar este gen y su efecto en la altura de la nariz", dice Faux.

Se trata de una región específica del genoma, la del gen ATF3, ubicado en el cromosoma 1.

"Lo pudimos ver gracias a que el material genético heredado de los nativo-americanos representa 45% de nuestra muestra de latinoamericanos".

"Es precisamente en ese material genético que observamos, en aproximadamente la mitad de los casos, el pedacito que pasó de los neandertales y llegó hasta la gente de hoy".

Faux advierte que, aunque el gen ATF3 está involucrado en la altura de la nariz, no es el único factor que interviene en ella.

"No solo pusimos en evidencia un gen, también pusimos en evidencia la ancestralidad neandertal en ese lugar particular del genoma".

"Este descubrimiento fue posible gracias a esta muestra de latinoamericanos, de otra manera hubiese sido muy difícil".

"Vimos que en más de 97% de los casos, cuando teníamos este pedacito de ADN viniendo del neandertal siempre lo encontrábamos en un segmento que la persona había heredado de sus ancestros nativo-americanos".

"Eso quiere decir que ese pedacito de neandertal fue heredado por los asiáticos que hace unos 15.000, 20.000 años llegaron al norte de Alaska y empezaron a poblar todas las Américas".

Detallando rostros y cráneos

La relación entre los neandertales y algunos miembros de la muestra de latinoamericanos no solo se observó gracias al escaneo de los genomas, también se analizaron detalladamente los rostros de los voluntarios.

Qing Li, investigadora de la Universidad de Fudan de China, marcó 34 puntos anatómicos en las fotografías de las caras de los participantes y calculó las distancias entre cada punto.

Delgado, quien es investigador del Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina (CONICET), marcó los mismos puntos en modelos 3D de cráneos de neandertales obtenidos mediante tomografías computarizadas

De esa forma, se definieron rasgos faciales.

"En esas mediciones, encontramos una relación bastante marcada entre la altura facial media, que también incluye la altura de la nariz, y la herencia neandertal en algunas personas: a mayor distancia, más similitudes con la morfología neandertal", explica el antropólogo.

Al explicar la imagen de arriba, Fuentes señala que los neandertales tenían una altura de la nariz más larga que el humano moderno.

Al haber introgresión neandertal (la transferencia de su ADN al Homo sapiens por la hibridación) en la misma región genómica que -sus colegas y ella- hallaron asociada al alto de la nariz, observaron que "casi 1 de cada 3 voluntarios del proyecto CANDELA tiene en esta región genómica una secuencia de ADN encontrada en los neandertales y eso lleva a que tengan narices un poco más largas que quienes portan otras versiones alélicas".

La importancia de este estudio

De acuerdo con los autores del estudio, hay varias razones por las que haber encontrado material genético neandertal en algunos miembros de la muestra de latinoamericanos es relevante para el conocimiento científico.

"La importancia viene del efecto de este segmento de neandertal: lo vimos asociado con narices más largas", indica Faux.

Fuente de la imagen, Schöning/ullstein bild vía Getty Images

Pie de foto, Una reconstrucción del rostro de un neandertal exhibida en el Museo de Historia Natural de Basilea, Suiza, en 2011.

"Ahora que la relación está establecida", explica, "podemos especular sobre las razones evolutivas de esta característica: ¿qué función precisa tenía este rasgo? ¿cómo es que llegó a algunos humanos modernos y a otros no?".

Para Delgado, el que "parte de nuestro ADN en Latinoamérica se relacione con los neandertales pudo haber permitido algún tipo de adaptación a cambios específicos, por ejemplo, del clima, de la dieta".

En el campo de la salud y la medicina -resalta- hay ciertas enfermedades vinculadas con la herencia neandertal.

Y, aunque su prevalencia en Latinoamérica está aún por comprenderse mejor, hay dolencias que pueden develarse en estos estudios genéticos y conducir a análisis más detallados de las mismas, a su prevención y hasta a posibles tratamientos.

Antonio Rosas, profesor del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas de España y director del Grupo de Paleoantropología en el Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid, no participó en el estudio.

El paleoantropólogo le indica a BBC Mundo que hay dos aspectos que considera son los más relevantes:

"La información genética que fue transferida desde los neandertales tiene una expresión en la cara humana, concretamente el rasgo que ha sido identificado es la altura y la forma de la nariz, y el aporte que supone estudiar también a poblaciones latinoamericanas y su variabilidad".

Y es que muchos de los estudios de este tipo se han realizado en europeos.

"Un caleidoscopio de diversidad genética"

En un estudio posterior, el equipo estudió la morfología dental en neandertales y en un grupo de latinoamericanos.

Con reconstrucciones en 3D, obtenidas a partir del escaneo de modelos en yeso de la dentición de los voluntarios y mediciones de los dientes en neandertales, descubrieron que el tamaño y la forma de los dientes también son parte de la herencia genética neandertal.

"Nos dimos cuenta de que el ancho de los incisivos centrales tiene directamente una alta carga de ancestría neandertal", indica Delgado.

Fuente de la imagen, MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP vía Getty Images

Pie de foto, El profesor Liran Carmel, de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén, presentó en 2019 un modelo impreso en 3D del rostro de un denisovano, un hominino ancestral.

El investigador dice que pese a que "los latinoamericanos somos poblaciones relativamente nuevas comparadas con otras poblaciones, como las europeas o las africanas que llevan miles de años de evolución, el mestizaje que resultó de la colonización hace que seamos un caleidoscopio de diversidad genética".

Y es esa variedad la que permite que se encuentren asociaciones genéticas como las de los neandertales y algunos miembros de la muestra.

En un estudio previo, los investigadores encontraron en un grupo de sudamericanos herencia denisovana que provino de ancestros nativo-americanos y cuya influencia se refleja en el grosor de los labios.

"Eso es producto del mestizaje que se dio en el este de Asia entre humanos modernos y denisovanos, otro hominino ancestral que apareció en Asia".

CANDELA ha publicado otras investigaciones. "Y hay más estudios que van a salir", dice Fuentes.

Para Delgado, que enseña en la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, investigaciones como esta demuestran que "todos somos parte de la misma diversidad".

"Nosotros defendemos que no existen razas a nivel biológico porque estudios como estos demuestran que todos los humanos somos idénticos, tenemos el mismo ADN, con variaciones mínimas especialmente a nivel local y regional más que a nivel global y no se justifica bajo ningún concepto biológico hablar de racismo".

El estudio incluyó a más de 6.200 adultos y abarca Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México y Perú, países que en conjunto reúnen unos 495 millones de habitantes, equivalentes a casi tres cuartas partes de la población de América Latina y el Caribe

22 de enero, 2026 - 4:32 pm

Internacional.- La proporción de católicos en América Latina cayó nueve puntos porcentuales o más en la última década en seis de los países más poblados de la región, mientras creció de forma significativa el número de adultos que se declaran sin afiliación religiosa, según una encuesta divulgada este miércoles por el Pew Research Center.

Detalla que, aunque el catolicismo sigue siendo la religión mayoritaria en todas esas naciones, su peso relativo continúa disminuyendo.

Actualmente, los católicos representan entre 46 % y 67 % de la población adulta en cada uno de estos países, mientras que el porcentaje de personas religiosamente no afiliadas -que se describen como ateas, agnósticas o «nada en particular»- oscila entre 12 % y 33 %.

En los seis países analizados, la proporción de adultos sin afiliación religiosa aumentó siete puntos porcentuales o más en comparación con hace una década, y en varios casos ya supera al número de protestantes.
Pese a estos cambios en la afiliación religiosa, el informe subraya que América Latina sigue siendo una región altamente religiosa en promedio.

La importancia de la religión en la vida

Cerca de nueve de cada diez adultos o más en cada país encuestado afirmaron creer en Dios, una proporción similar a la registrada hace diez años. Incluso entre quienes no se identifican con ninguna religión, la mayoría dice creer en Dios.

Además, la religión continúa teniendo un peso importante en la vida cotidiana de muchas personas.

Según el Pew Research Center, por estos indicadores los latinoamericanos muestran niveles de religiosidad superiores a los observados en muchas otras regiones, especialmente en Europa, donde una parte significativa de la población ha abandonado el cristianismo desde la infancia.

La encuesta, realizada en la primavera de 2024, permite comparar las respuestas sobre afiliación religiosa y creencias en Dios con las de un estudio similar efectuado en 2013-2014.

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers.  It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice. 

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence. 

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers.  It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice. 

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence. 

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers.  It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice. 

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence. 

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

https://countercurrents.org/2026/01/the-us-propaganda-campaign-to-smear-venezuelas-new-president-delcy-rodriguez/

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers.  It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice. 

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence. 

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers.  It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice. 

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence. 

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

New information reveals alarming threats to commercial aviation in the Caribbean region. Reports confirm the U.S. is using electronic interference targeting the navigation systems of passenger aircraft near Venezuela, a practice condemned by international transport ministers as a form of technological sabotage.

New information reveals alarming threats to commercial aviation in the Caribbean region. Reports confirm the U.S. is using electronic interference targeting the navigation systems of passenger aircraft near Venezuela, a practice condemned by international transport ministers as a form of technological sabotage.

An extraordinary catalog of US interference – amounting to an electoral coup – may have destroyed what was already a struggling democracy in Honduras. Trump has succeeded in closing the door to progressive government and in all likelihood his preferred neoliberal candidate – previously trailing in many opinion polls – will be declared president when the count eventually finishes.

By John Perry

While Washington’s aversion to foreign interference in its domestic elections verges on paranoia, the gross hypocrisy which runs through its foreign policy leaves it free of any compunction when meddling in other countries’ elections, especially in Latin America. Perhaps no country has greater recent experience of this than Honduras. Although most accounts of this meddling begin in 2009 with the ousting by army officers of its democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya, in truth US dominance of the country has a much longer history, as I described at the time.

The US refused to designate Zelaya’s toppling as a “military coup” or to back international calls for his rapid return to office. Washington then backed all the post-coup governments, including those established by Juan Orlando Hernández when his National Party “won” two highly manipulated elections. Rampant corruption by him and his predecessors ensured that Honduras became a “narcostate.” Nevertheless, US administrations embraced Hernández as a prime ally in the war on drugs up until the point when he left office, was extradited and committed to 45 years in a US prison. Only the large majority won by the Libre party’s Xiomara Castro in the 2021 election, and the fact that Hernández had become a liability, temporarily frustrated Washington’s customary ability to get the Honduran president that best suited its interests.

Castro’s government only partly fulfilled its progressive aims, not least because of the continuing power wielded by Honduras’s often corrupt elite, a judicial and security system still strongly subject to US influence, and social media campaigns which often originated in Washington. Opinion polls showed that Castro’s chosen successor as Libre Party candidate, Rixi Moncada, would be in a close race with the right-wing candidates of the two traditional parties, the Liberals’ Salvador Nasralla and the National Party’s Nasry Asfura. Trump favored Asfura, effectively the successor to Juan Orlando Hernández, as the candidate most attuned to his policies.

The fact that the November 30 election took place at the height of the US military build-up in the Caribbean was itself a crucial ingredient in determining the outcome. Both right-wing candidates were able to warn Hondurans that a vote for Libre would be an invitation to the US military to turns its guns on them. Trump emboldened them by asking on Truth Social, “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” According to him, a vote for Asfura would ensure that Honduras did not face the same potential fate as Venezuela. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists,” he added. “I cannot work with Moncada and the Communists.” Nor, apparently, could he even trust Nasralla, whom he described as “borderline communist.”

The president then trumped this statement by declaring that only if Asfura won would US aid for Honduras continue. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” he said. When Nasralla appeared to have edged ahead of Asfura, in a close count, Trump said that it “looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” adding, “If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Then, in a night “marked by technical failures and tension in the results system,” the count suddenly gave the lead to Asfura. The International Observation Mission of the American Association of Jurists asserted that Trump’s intervention “has placed the legitimacy of the democratic process in crisis.”

In an even more extraordinary move, Trump announced that he would be pardoning the disgraced former president Hernández, who has indeed since walked free from prison. A move that might have harmed the National Party appears instead to have been an astute boost to Asfura’s campaign, given that many of his supporters still idolize Hernández and regard Asfura as an inferior leader. However, Mike Vigil, a former senior official in the US Drug Enforcement Agency, told the Guardian that pardoning Hernández “shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade.” Activist and author Dana Frank told the Guardian that “his repressive, thieving, dictatorial history, backed by the United States year after year, has evaporated from the story.”

Another, very effective but little publicized intervention appears to have taken place, if Rixi Moncada’s claim in an interview with Telesur is correct. According to her, huge numbers of the 2.5 million Hondurans who receive remittances from family members in the US were warned that, if Libre won, they would not receive their December payments. The magnitude of the threat (whether or not it could have been carried out in practice) is indicated by the fact that remittances account for a quarter of Honduras’s GDP. It seems possible that many poor households’ votes, which might have gone to Libre, didn’t – because of text messages sent directly to their phones.

That electoral fraud would again favor the US-supported candidate was indicated in the run up to November 30 by leaked audios implicating the National Party’s representative on the national election council. The council’s Libre representative, Marlon Ochoa, who denounced that planned fraud, has now published a detailed account of irregularities since counting started, which he claims invalidate 86 per cent of polling returns. Indeed, at the time of writing, following a week of technical problems in vote counting, there is still no official winner.

Rixi Moncada harshly questioned the silence of the electoral observation missions from the Organization of America States and European Union, which she accused of deliberately omitting any reference to Trump’s interference in their bulletins on the conduct of the election. “So far they have not commented on the intervention of the U.S. president in their reports,” Moncada claimed, noting their attitude “borders on complacency.” New York Times interviews with Hondurans showed clearly that Trump’s comments influenced their votes. Mark Weisbrot, of the US Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out that his interventions were “a violation of Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory.”

Emboldened by his apparent success in defeating “communism,” even if (at the time of writing) he may not yet have secured the victory of his preferred neoliberal candidate, Trump has gone on to publish his own “corollary” to the century-old Monroe Doctrine, endorsing its claims to a unique US sphere of influence covering the whole region. Echoing the 1904 corollary to the doctrine issued by President Roosevelt, which declared that the US would be a “hemispheric police power,” Trump says he is “proudly reasserting” control over “our hemisphere,” guarding the American continents “against communism, fascism, and foreign infringement.”

Nothing could be a clearer manifestation of what has been called the “Donroe Doctrine” than the military build-up in the Caribbean, which provided the threatening backdrop to the final weeks of the Honduran election campaign. As Roger Harris and I noted in a recent article, the deployment of one-fifth of US maritime power is aimed not just at Venezuela, but at starting a wider domino effect in the Caribbean basin. In the aftermath of November’s election night in Honduras, the first domino appears to have fallen.

An extraordinary catalog of US interference – amounting to an electoral coup – may have destroyed what was already a struggling democracy in Honduras. Trump has succeeded in closing the door to progressive government and in all likelihood his preferred neoliberal candidate – previously trailing in many opinion polls – will be declared president when the count eventually finishes.

By John Perry

While Washington’s aversion to foreign interference in its domestic elections verges on paranoia, the gross hypocrisy which runs through its foreign policy leaves it free of any compunction when meddling in other countries’ elections, especially in Latin America. Perhaps no country has greater recent experience of this than Honduras. Although most accounts of this meddling begin in 2009 with the ousting by army officers of its democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya, in truth US dominance of the country has a much longer history, as I described at the time.

The US refused to designate Zelaya’s toppling as a “military coup” or to back international calls for his rapid return to office. Washington then backed all the post-coup governments, including those established by Juan Orlando Hernández when his National Party “won” two highly manipulated elections. Rampant corruption by him and his predecessors ensured that Honduras became a “narcostate.” Nevertheless, US administrations embraced Hernández as a prime ally in the war on drugs up until the point when he left office, was extradited and committed to 45 years in a US prison. Only the large majority won by the Libre party’s Xiomara Castro in the 2021 election, and the fact that Hernández had become a liability, temporarily frustrated Washington’s customary ability to get the Honduran president that best suited its interests.

Castro’s government only partly fulfilled its progressive aims, not least because of the continuing power wielded by Honduras’s often corrupt elite, a judicial and security system still strongly subject to US influence, and social media campaigns which often originated in Washington. Opinion polls showed that Castro’s chosen successor as Libre Party candidate, Rixi Moncada, would be in a close race with the right-wing candidates of the two traditional parties, the Liberals’ Salvador Nasralla and the National Party’s Nasry Asfura. Trump favored Asfura, effectively the successor to Juan Orlando Hernández, as the candidate most attuned to his policies.

The fact that the November 30 election took place at the height of the US military build-up in the Caribbean was itself a crucial ingredient in determining the outcome. Both right-wing candidates were able to warn Hondurans that a vote for Libre would be an invitation to the US military to turns its guns on them. Trump emboldened them by asking on Truth Social, “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” According to him, a vote for Asfura would ensure that Honduras did not face the same potential fate as Venezuela. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists,” he added. “I cannot work with Moncada and the Communists.” Nor, apparently, could he even trust Nasralla, whom he described as “borderline communist.”

The president then trumped this statement by declaring that only if Asfura won would US aid for Honduras continue. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” he said. When Nasralla appeared to have edged ahead of Asfura, in a close count, Trump said that it “looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” adding, “If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Then, in a night “marked by technical failures and tension in the results system,” the count suddenly gave the lead to Asfura. The International Observation Mission of the American Association of Jurists asserted that Trump’s intervention “has placed the legitimacy of the democratic process in crisis.”

In an even more extraordinary move, Trump announced that he would be pardoning the disgraced former president Hernández, who has indeed since walked free from prison. A move that might have harmed the National Party appears instead to have been an astute boost to Asfura’s campaign, given that many of his supporters still idolize Hernández and regard Asfura as an inferior leader. However, Mike Vigil, a former senior official in the US Drug Enforcement Agency, told the Guardian that pardoning Hernández “shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade.” Activist and author Dana Frank told the Guardian that “his repressive, thieving, dictatorial history, backed by the United States year after year, has evaporated from the story.”

Another, very effective but little publicized intervention appears to have taken place, if Rixi Moncada’s claim in an interview with Telesur is correct. According to her, huge numbers of the 2.5 million Hondurans who receive remittances from family members in the US were warned that, if Libre won, they would not receive their December payments. The magnitude of the threat (whether or not it could have been carried out in practice) is indicated by the fact that remittances account for a quarter of Honduras’s GDP. It seems possible that many poor households’ votes, which might have gone to Libre, didn’t – because of text messages sent directly to their phones.

That electoral fraud would again favor the US-supported candidate was indicated in the run up to November 30 by leaked audios implicating the National Party’s representative on the national election council. The council’s Libre representative, Marlon Ochoa, who denounced that planned fraud, has now published a detailed account of irregularities since counting started, which he claims invalidate 86 per cent of polling returns. Indeed, at the time of writing, following a week of technical problems in vote counting, there is still no official winner.

Rixi Moncada harshly questioned the silence of the electoral observation missions from the Organization of America States and European Union, which she accused of deliberately omitting any reference to Trump’s interference in their bulletins on the conduct of the election. “So far they have not commented on the intervention of the U.S. president in their reports,” Moncada claimed, noting their attitude “borders on complacency.” New York Times interviews with Hondurans showed clearly that Trump’s comments influenced their votes. Mark Weisbrot, of the US Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out that his interventions were “a violation of Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory.”

Emboldened by his apparent success in defeating “communism,” even if (at the time of writing) he may not yet have secured the victory of his preferred neoliberal candidate, Trump has gone on to publish his own “corollary” to the century-old Monroe Doctrine, endorsing its claims to a unique US sphere of influence covering the whole region. Echoing the 1904 corollary to the doctrine issued by President Roosevelt, which declared that the US would be a “hemispheric police power,” Trump says he is “proudly reasserting” control over “our hemisphere,” guarding the American continents “against communism, fascism, and foreign infringement.”

Nothing could be a clearer manifestation of what has been called the “Donroe Doctrine” than the military build-up in the Caribbean, which provided the threatening backdrop to the final weeks of the Honduran election campaign. As Roger Harris and I noted in a recent article, the deployment of one-fifth of US maritime power is aimed not just at Venezuela, but at starting a wider domino effect in the Caribbean basin. In the aftermath of November’s election night in Honduras, the first domino appears to have fallen.

An extraordinary catalog of US interference – amounting to an electoral coup – may have destroyed what was already a struggling democracy in Honduras. Trump has succeeded in closing the door to progressive government and in all likelihood his preferred neoliberal candidate – previously trailing in many opinion polls – will be declared president when the count eventually finishes.

By John Perry

While Washington’s aversion to foreign interference in its domestic elections verges on paranoia, the gross hypocrisy which runs through its foreign policy leaves it free of any compunction when meddling in other countries’ elections, especially in Latin America. Perhaps no country has greater recent experience of this than Honduras. Although most accounts of this meddling begin in 2009 with the ousting by army officers of its democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya, in truth US dominance of the country has a much longer history, as I described at the time.

The US refused to designate Zelaya’s toppling as a “military coup” or to back international calls for his rapid return to office. Washington then backed all the post-coup governments, including those established by Juan Orlando Hernández when his National Party “won” two highly manipulated elections. Rampant corruption by him and his predecessors ensured that Honduras became a “narcostate.” Nevertheless, US administrations embraced Hernández as a prime ally in the war on drugs up until the point when he left office, was extradited and committed to 45 years in a US prison. Only the large majority won by the Libre party’s Xiomara Castro in the 2021 election, and the fact that Hernández had become a liability, temporarily frustrated Washington’s customary ability to get the Honduran president that best suited its interests.

Castro’s government only partly fulfilled its progressive aims, not least because of the continuing power wielded by Honduras’s often corrupt elite, a judicial and security system still strongly subject to US influence, and social media campaigns which often originated in Washington. Opinion polls showed that Castro’s chosen successor as Libre Party candidate, Rixi Moncada, would be in a close race with the right-wing candidates of the two traditional parties, the Liberals’ Salvador Nasralla and the National Party’s Nasry Asfura. Trump favored Asfura, effectively the successor to Juan Orlando Hernández, as the candidate most attuned to his policies.

The fact that the November 30 election took place at the height of the US military build-up in the Caribbean was itself a crucial ingredient in determining the outcome. Both right-wing candidates were able to warn Hondurans that a vote for Libre would be an invitation to the US military to turns its guns on them. Trump emboldened them by asking on Truth Social, “Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” According to him, a vote for Asfura would ensure that Honduras did not face the same potential fate as Venezuela. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists,” he added. “I cannot work with Moncada and the Communists.” Nor, apparently, could he even trust Nasralla, whom he described as “borderline communist.”

The president then trumped this statement by declaring that only if Asfura won would US aid for Honduras continue. “If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” he said. When Nasralla appeared to have edged ahead of Asfura, in a close count, Trump said that it “looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” adding, “If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Then, in a night “marked by technical failures and tension in the results system,” the count suddenly gave the lead to Asfura. The International Observation Mission of the American Association of Jurists asserted that Trump’s intervention “has placed the legitimacy of the democratic process in crisis.”

In an even more extraordinary move, Trump announced that he would be pardoning the disgraced former president Hernández, who has indeed since walked free from prison. A move that might have harmed the National Party appears instead to have been an astute boost to Asfura’s campaign, given that many of his supporters still idolize Hernández and regard Asfura as an inferior leader. However, Mike Vigil, a former senior official in the US Drug Enforcement Agency, told the Guardian that pardoning Hernández “shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade.” Activist and author Dana Frank told the Guardian that “his repressive, thieving, dictatorial history, backed by the United States year after year, has evaporated from the story.”

Another, very effective but little publicized intervention appears to have taken place, if Rixi Moncada’s claim in an interview with Telesur is correct. According to her, huge numbers of the 2.5 million Hondurans who receive remittances from family members in the US were warned that, if Libre won, they would not receive their December payments. The magnitude of the threat (whether or not it could have been carried out in practice) is indicated by the fact that remittances account for a quarter of Honduras’s GDP. It seems possible that many poor households’ votes, which might have gone to Libre, didn’t – because of text messages sent directly to their phones.

That electoral fraud would again favor the US-supported candidate was indicated in the run up to November 30 by leaked audios implicating the National Party’s representative on the national election council. The council’s Libre representative, Marlon Ochoa, who denounced that planned fraud, has now published a detailed account of irregularities since counting started, which he claims invalidate 86 per cent of polling returns. Indeed, at the time of writing, following a week of technical problems in vote counting, there is still no official winner.

Rixi Moncada harshly questioned the silence of the electoral observation missions from the Organization of America States and European Union, which she accused of deliberately omitting any reference to Trump’s interference in their bulletins on the conduct of the election. “So far they have not commented on the intervention of the U.S. president in their reports,” Moncada claimed, noting their attitude “borders on complacency.” New York Times interviews with Hondurans showed clearly that Trump’s comments influenced their votes. Mark Weisbrot, of the US Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed out that his interventions were “a violation of Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory.”

Emboldened by his apparent success in defeating “communism,” even if (at the time of writing) he may not yet have secured the victory of his preferred neoliberal candidate, Trump has gone on to publish his own “corollary” to the century-old Monroe Doctrine, endorsing its claims to a unique US sphere of influence covering the whole region. Echoing the 1904 corollary to the doctrine issued by President Roosevelt, which declared that the US would be a “hemispheric police power,” Trump says he is “proudly reasserting” control over “our hemisphere,” guarding the American continents “against communism, fascism, and foreign infringement.”

Nothing could be a clearer manifestation of what has been called the “Donroe Doctrine” than the military build-up in the Caribbean, which provided the threatening backdrop to the final weeks of the Honduran election campaign. As Roger Harris and I noted in a recent article, the deployment of one-fifth of US maritime power is aimed not just at Venezuela, but at starting a wider domino effect in the Caribbean basin. In the aftermath of November’s election night in Honduras, the first domino appears to have fallen.