Drug-Trafficking Mayor Ravaged a Local Economy, Fueling the Flight from Honduras
September 26, 2021 2:32 AM
Reuters
EL PARAISO, HONDURAS —
Abel Bautista looked out at the vast pastures around him and frowned. "Once," he said, "there were lines of people here for the harvest."
Now, instead of coffee, these verdant hills near the Honduran border with Guatemala boast few trees and almost none of the eager workers, like him, who once picked them.
Times are so hard here in his hometown that Bautista, a 40-year-old farm worker, recently made the long, perilous trek with a 15-year-old son across two national borders in a failed attempt to enter the United States. More than a dozen others from his extended family, including a teenage daughter, have made similar journeys in recent years, most successfully crossing the Rio Grande.
One nephew and his infant son, family members say, disappeared along the way.
It's not just that cattle have replaced the more labor-intensive coffee crop in this highland corner of the third-poorest country in the Americas. Worse, drug trafficking and violence have overtaken the streets of El Paraiso and nearby towns and converted surrounding farms into passageways for cocaine headed north.
More:
https://www.voanews.com/a/drug-trafficking-mayor-ravaged-a-local-economy-fueling-the-flight-from-honduras/6244173.html
Abel Bautista
Alexander Ardon
a.h. cattle rustler/narcotrafficker/mayor
= new reply since forum marked as read
Newsroom El País
October 7, 2019
12:36 pm
New York. The former mayor of El Paraíso, Copán, Alexander Ardón Soriano, confessed this morning, during questioning by the prosecution, that he murdered 56 people in Honduras and injured at least 6.
Ardón, leader of the AA Brothers cartel, is a witness for the prosecution and maintains a collaboration agreement in the hope of reducing the sentence. He was charged on January 23, 2019 by the New York Court and surrendered on February 4 in Guatemala.
The former mayor clarified that he was not extradited but negotiated his surrender with the DEA authorities. He claimed to have done so last March.
When consulting him about his illicit activities, he acknowledged being “the leader of a drug gang, drug trafficking, homicides, money laundering and the use of automatic weapons. The prosecution asked:
How many murders have you participated in? To which he replied: 56 murders and six wounded. He also admitted to having tortured people.
More:
https://www.elpais.hn/2019/10/07/alexander-ardon-confiesa-que-asesino-a-56-personas/
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Earlier article from Spain's El Pais, also:
According to Ardon. "Tony" Hernández met with El Chapo at the Valle Valle farm
Newsroom El Pais- 8 OCTOBER 2019
New York, Oct 8 (EFE) .- Former Honduran mayor Alexander Ardón said this Tuesday in a New York court that the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, dismissed the director of the Police in 2014 for criticizing that Tony Hernández, brother of the president and prosecuted for drug trafficking in that US court, he was not arrested.
The president's brother “said that Juan Orlando Hernández was going to remove” the then director of the Police, Ramón Sabillón, because “he had said some statements about why he did not capture Tony Hernández and me, that we were drug traffickers,” said Ardón, who He pleaded guilty in the US to running "a drug gang."
On his second and final day of testimony, Ardón offered more details about the alleged payments he made to rig Juan Orlando Hernández's campaign in the November 2017 elections, in which the president was re-elected.
According to his testimony, the Honduran president asked him to finance the campaign of the National Party in the departments of Copán and Lempira "because the polls were very low in these departments."
Ardón indicated that Tony Hernández requested $ 500,000 from Lempira and that to allegedly bribe the mayors of Copán he paid 1.6 million.
More:
https://www.elpais.hn/tag/amilcar-alexander-ardon-soriano/
Ardón on the left, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the Prez. of Honduras, in the center, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, on the right.