By MARLON GONZÁLEZ
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras President Xiomara Castro ’s comments earlier this week threatening to stop her country’s cooperation with the U.S. military if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on promised mass deportations have generated political heat at home, even as the U.S. government has remained silent.
In a New Year’s Day speech on a national television channel, Castro said that if Trump goes ahead with massive deportations, Honduras would reconsider military cooperation with the U.S.
“Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change of our cooperation policies with the United States, especially in the military realm,” Castro said.
She said the U.S. had maintained a presence in Honduran territory for decades without paying a cent and if Hondurans are expelled en masse that presence would cease to have any reason to exist in Honduras. She added that she hoped the Trump administration would be open to dialogue.
It was just the latest response in the region to early pronouncements from Trump.
His threat to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t do more to stop illegal migration and drug trafficking was met with a suggestion of retaliatory tariffs from that government. More recently Trump criticized charges to transit the Panama Canal and suggested the U.S. could take it back, something Panama’s president emphatically rejected.
The main U.S. military presence in Honduras is at Soto Cano Air Base outside the capital. While it is a Honduran base, the U.S. has maintained a significant presence there since 1983 and it has become a key U.S. launching point for humanitarian and anti-drug missions in Central America.
It is home to Joint Task Force Bravo, which the U.S. Defense Department has described as a “temporary but indefinite” presence.
The U.S. Defense Department declined to comment, noting that it “pertains to campaign statements and not policy.” U.S. Embassy in Honduras did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Castro’s political opposition, however, has been quick to denounce the president’s comments.
Jorge Cálix, a probable presidential aspirant for the Liberal Party in Honduras’ Nov. 30 elections, said Castro had put Honduras “in grave danger” for personal and ideological reasons.
Olban Valladares, a political analyst contemplating his own run for office for the Innovation and Unity Party, panned Castro’s threat.
“She knows we don’t have the ability to threaten the United States in any way, that the damages it would cause Honduras would be terrible,” Valladares said. He said the threat could make Honduran migrants even more of a target for the Trump administration.
