Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Honduras received 2021 with the devastation of COVID-19 and that caused by the tropical storms Eta and Iota suffered in 2020, to which is added an economic, political and social crisis that has lasted since 2009.
Only the COVID-19 pandemic, which began to spread in March 2020, left the country at the end of December, 3,141 dead and 122,763 infections, according to official figures.
To the damage of the pandemic, which also paralyzed all economic activity for more than three months, were added the devastation caused by Eta and Iota which left about a hundred dead, thousands of victims and considerable material losses.
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According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras, pandemic and storm damage exceeded 100 billion lempiras (more than $ 4.14 billion), which is a severe blow to a country with 9.5 million inhabitants, of which over 60% are poor.
Priorities in 2021
According to analysts and private sector sources, reconstruction due to deteriorating infrastructure and the recovery of the economy should be priorities in 2021, a year that will be the March internal elections and the November general elections, the eleventh since the country returned to democracy in 1980.
The directors of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprises (Cohep) estimate that about 600,000 jobs have been lost due to the pandemic, many of which will not be recovered because many micro, small and medium-sized companies have closed and others have been forced to reduce staff.
The country also needs to recover the infrastructure destroyed by the Eta and Iota storms, mainly in the north and west, which were the hardest hit regions.
The two phenomena left damage to primary, secondary and tertiary roads, bridges, retaining edges, crop losses, housing, public and private buildings and many flooded industries, among other damage.
In some lower regions of the vast and fertile Sula Valley in the north, there is still stagnant water in which houses whose owners are waiting for the level to fall to see if they will build again on the same place, such as Dunia Ponce, in the municipal district La Lima.
“I couldn’t get anything out, I lost everything, my house is still flooded, I can’t get into it, I’m waiting for the water and mud we still have here to come down,” he said.
Dunia, 37, a single mother with three children, the eldest being 17 and the two minors aged 6 and 3, lives in a space in her father’s house which she used as a warehouse. is located at about 20 years old. meters from where your sink is.
In order to survive, Dunia dedicates itself to “selling corn tortillas and baleadas” (wheat flour tortilla, folded, with fried beans and grated cheese or butter).
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The Dunia family is one of the more than 1,500 that were affected by the floods in northern Honduras between November 4 and 20, when the heaviest rains left Eta and Iota.
Some of them affected familiesTwo months later, they continue to live under bridges, such as in the Chamelecón sector or in makeshift camps they built on the banks and middle of the boulevards between the cities of San Pedro Sula, La Lima and El Progreso.
Primary and general elections
Honduras, which has poorer people than 40 years ago, when it returned to the constitutional order, will hold primary elections this year in March, which will be held only by the three largest parties (national, in power Libertad y Refundación, the main opposition force and Liberal) out of a dozen who will participate in generals in November.
Unresolved the crisis of 2009 and 2017, Honduras has begun the countdown of a political year that, for some opposition leaders, the ruling National Party would seek to remain in power, they do not even rule out that Hernández intends to continue in power, although the president has reiterated that he will not seek a new term in the Presidential House.
Regarding the electoral process, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez said that politicians who aspire to come to power “must think about the common good”.
200 years of independence
Honduras, like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, will remember this year the 200th anniversary of its independence from the Spanish crown, a feat accomplished on September 15, 1821.
The anniversary of independence, for which the Honduran government has planned cultural events, will be remembered between the pandemic, whose first vaccines are expected to arrive in March, the destruction left by Eta and Iota, poverty and an electoral process that hopes to be transparent. the fragile democracy of the country should not fail.