A US ally in the Americas was stealing an election in plain sight. The foreign election monitors raised objections, and the Organization of American States issued an immediate report detailing “irregularities, mistakes, and systemic problems.” Its top official called on the Honduran electoral tribunal not to announce a winner until all “the serious doubts” were resolved. When the tribunal went ahead anyway and declared Hernández the victor, the Organization of American States called for new elections.
The country with the greatest ability to stop the fraud had the strongest sense of loyalty to the fraudster. At first, the US refused to intervene. Eventually, it backed the electoral tribunal. On the same day that the vote count was halted—just before the computers mysteriously crashed—the secretary of state signed a document confirming that the Hernández government had qualified for more aid money. There were twelve conditions that had to be met for such a document to be signed, including that Honduras “combat corruption” and “protect the right of political opposition parties and civil society activists.”
In the next month, as Hernández made a show of vetting the election results, the government flouted the conditions in spectacular fashion. During large public protests over the election, security forces killed twenty-two demonstrators. By the middle of December 2017, the results were officially certified. Honduras had a newly elected president.
The six-month period after the election revealed the American position for what it was. Outright fraud followed by mass protests had barely registered as a cause for concern in Washington. Members of the Trump administration needed to portray Honduras as a success story. Doing so freed up the anti-immigration stalwarts to end temporary protected status for the sixty thousand Hondurans living legally in the US for more than a decade, whom they now wanted to send home once and for all.
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