Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Honduras 2021 with the devastation caused by COVID-19 and that caused by tropical storms suffered by Eta and Iota in 2020, adding an economic, political and social crisis that has dragged on since 2009.
Only the COVID-19 pandemic that began to spread in March 2020 left the country at the end of December, according to official figures, 3,141 deaths and 122,763 infections.
To the damage of the pandemic, which also paralyzed all economic activity for more than three months, came the devastation caused by Eta and Iota this resulted in about 100 deaths, thousands of victims and significant material losses.
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According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras, the damage caused by the pandemic and storms amounted to more than 100 billion lempiras (more than 4.14 billion dollars), which is a severe blow . for a country with 9.5 million inhabitants, of which more than 60% are poor.
Priorities in 2021
According to analysts and private sector sources, reconstruction as a result of damage to infrastructure and recovery of the economy would cause the economy priorities in 2021, a year with internal elections in March and general elections in November, the eleventh since the country returned to democracy in 1980.
Directors of the Honduran Board of Private Enterprises (Cohep) estimate that around 600,000 jobs have been lost as a result of the pandemic, many of which will not be recovered as many micro, small and medium-sized businesses have closed and others have been forced to cut staff.
The country also needs to restore infrastructure devastated by the storms Eta and Iota, mainly in the north and west, the regions most affected.
The two phenomena have caused damage to primary, secondary and tertiary roads, bridges, retaining edges, loss of agricultural crops, houses, public and private buildings and many flooded industries, among others.
In some lower regions of the vast and fertile Sula Valley, to the north, there are still stagnant waters in which houses appear whose owners are waiting for the level to fall to see if they will rebuild on the same site, as is the case is in Dunia Ponce, in the municipal district of La Lima.
“I couldn’t get anything out, I lost everything, my house is still flooded, I can’t get in, I’m waiting for the water and mud we still have here to go down,” he said.
Dunia, 37, a single mother with three children, the eldest of 17, and the two minors, ages 6 and 3, lives in a room in her father’s house that she used as a warehouse, which is about 20 feet from where yours is submerged.
To survive, Dunia devotes herself to “selling corn tortillas and baleadas” (wheat flour tortilla, folded, with baked beans and grated cheese or butter).
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Dunia’s family is one of more than 1,500 affected by the floods in northern Honduras between November 4 and 20, when the heaviest rains left Eta and Iota.
A few of those affected familiesTwo months later they are still living under bridges, such as in the Chamelecón sector or in makeshift camps they built on the banks and in the middle of the boulevards between the cities of San Pedro Sula, La Lima and El Progreso.
Primaries and general elections
Honduras, which has poorer people than it did 40 years ago when it returned to constitutional order, will hold primaries in March this year, which will only be held by the three largest parties (national, in power Libertad y Refundación, the main opposition force , and Liberal) of a dozen who will join the generals in November.
Without it crisis of 2009 and 2017Honduras began counting down a political year that, for some opposition leaders, the ruling National Party would try to stay in power, they do not even rule out Hernández’s intention to remain in power, although the president has reiterated that he no new period in the presidential house.
Regarding the electoral process, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez said that politicians who want to come to power “need to think about the common good”.
200 years of independence
Honduras, like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, will this year commemorate the 200th anniversary of its independence from the Spanish Crown, a feat achieved on September 15, 1821.
The anniversary of Independence, for which the Honduran government has planned cultural events, will be remembered between the pandemic, the first vaccines of which are expected to arrive in March, the destruction left behind by Eta and Iota, poverty and an election process he hopes will be transparent. will be so that the country’s fragile democracy does not fail.