Hondurans Fight Private Cities Run by US Companies Amid Legal Battle

By Amy Goodman & Juan González , DEMOCRACYNOW!
Published June 28,

In Honduras, communities are fighting back against privatization and foreign exploitation after Honduran President Xiomara Castro and Congress repealed a law that established so-called Economic Development and Employment Zones, where private companies have “functional and administrative autonomy” from the national government. Now a Delaware-based company called Próspera has launched a case to challenge the repeal of the law under the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement and is seeking almost $11 billion, which amounts to nearly two-thirds of the country’s entire 2022 budget. This is an example of the “extreme investor rights” of this international trade agreement directly opposing Honduran sovereignty, says Melinda St. Louis, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. We also speak with local leader Venessa Cárdenas of Crawfish Rock, the area directly impacted by the Próspera ZEDE on the island of Roatán, about the stress of losing control over their community. “We don’t know when our home will be taken from us,” says Cárdenas. “We, of course, have the rights to be free and previously consulted on any type of project that is being done in our community.”


TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to Honduras, where communities are fighting back against privatization and foreign exploitation. The Honduran President Xiomara Castro and Congress repealed a law enacted by the previous right-wing administration that established what are known as Economic Development and Employment Zones, or ZEDEs. The law also allowed the private cities and special economic zones to have functional and administrative autonomy from the national government, which opponents say is a threat to Honduran sovereignty and livelihood of local communities.

Now a Delaware-based corporation called Próspera has launched a case to challenge the repeal of the law under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement. The company established one of the zones on the island of Roatán and is now seeking almost $11 billion, which amounts to nearly two-thirds of Honduras’s entire 2022 budget.

Last month, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and 32 others in the U.S. Congress released a letter calling on the Biden administration to intervene, writing, quote, “Large corporations have weaponized, and continue to weaponize, this faulty and undemocratic dispute settlement regime to benefit their own interests at the expense of workers, consumers, and small businesses globally.”

More:
https://truthout.org/video/hondurans-fight-private-cities-run-by-us-companies-amid-legal-battle/