Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) led a hearing this week to examine the influence of Honduran President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. As the chair of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Salazar discussed how Zelaya’s policies have affected the U.S. – Honduras relationship.
Salazar called Zelaya’s administration a proxy government used to manifest communist influence from both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. In turn, she argues that Zelaya and her husband Manuel Zelaya threaten the stability and economic prosperity of the country.
“For the last decade, the beautiful country of Honduras has been fighting for its political life,” she said, adding that “earlier this year, President Castro announced that her government was following in the footsteps of Hugo Chavez.”
“When somebody tells you they don’t like the United States and they don’t like capitalism, listen to them, and act accordingly,” Salazar warned.
The Florida Republican noted that Castro has threatened to expropriate foreign companies, changed Honduras’ recognition to the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan, and she has also issued comments denouncing capitalism as an ideology that “only causes misery.”
This raises concern because the Biden administration has developed a partnership with Honduras in the region, calling the country a “success story.”
Because of this, the Subcommittee has called on senior officials of the Biden administration to testify regarding U.S. – Honduras policy.
The individuals in question are Ms. Mileydi Guilarte, the Deputy Assistant Administrator within the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean and Mr. Eric Jacobstein, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere.
In 2022, President Castro expressed an immediate interest in reestablishing a relationship with Venezuela.
After arriving in Tegucigalpa, the head of the Venezuelan delegation, Governor of Miranda state Hector Rodriguez, commented on the effort to reestablish the relationship.
“We want to restore political relations now and we hope that the President will also soon send us her ambassador, to resume all those ideas that Mel Zelaya and Hugo Chavez had built of unity, of unity of Latin America, in energy, in economics, social, to unite as a people,” Rodriguez said.
