Yeah, and most of the money comes from the War on Drugs budget despite everyone knowing how directly tied the TIGRES and cartels are financially. US funding also accounts for a small fraction of the military police budget (I think it’s 2%), because Pepe Lobo nearly doubled security spending (while decimating social service funding to run a deficit which is popular in the large far-right aligned populace) and then Hernandez increased it even further - to more than double the spending under Zetaya.
It’s also important to note that Lobo was very popular, and the party partisans ignore literally all his faults. Hernandez is much, much less popular, but the government already installed its security state by the 2014 elections and it’s extremely likely the 2014 elections were fraudulent.
Add in the US GOP’s love of Honduran National party, and you wind up with a huge spike in security spending in Honduras by the US in the past couple years (the spending to doubled as soon as the House was taken over meaning most of that funding came in the past couple years). Previously, the Obama administration had cut the funding in 1/3 before the 2009 election because of the constitutional crisis - it’s why Fang & Mackey chose to show the federal security funding figures starting from 2009, it further obscures how many steps the US took in not supporting the National party’s constitutional crisis.
Just listening to the news on the ride into work this morning, where they talked about the students who went to Tallahassee, the GA state house here in Atlanta, and up in DC… it struck me that the politicians were actively either avoiding those kids/activists or were evasive when they were cornered. Bunch of cowards afraid of teenagers, sounded like to me.
This relates to my experience so much. In high school the kids I was with I had to keep a tally of what I owed who or else they would be passive aggressive and annoying about it with hurt feelings, but the kids in Pontiac I hung out with just traded who picked up the check and we skipped who couldn’t afford it discretely and never thought about it again.
