Hondurans Fight Private Cities Run by US Companies as Gov't Sued for Outlawing "Neocolonial Project"

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez as we turn to Honduras where communities are fighting back against privatization and foreign exploitation the Honduran president Shamara Castro and the U.N Congress repealed a law enacted by the previous right-wing Administration that established what are known as economic development and employment zones or said this the law also allowed the private

cities in special economic zones to have functional and administrative autonomy from the national government which opponents say is a threat to enduring sovereignty in the livelihood of local communities now a delaware-based corporation called prospera 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 ratan and

is now seeking almost 11 billion dollars 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 continued to weaponize this faulty and undemocratic dispute settlement regime to benefit their own interests at the expense of workers consumers and

small businesses globally for more we're going to Brussels Belgium to speak with Melinda St Louis director of public citizens global trade watch and in Honduras we're joined by Vanessa Cardenas the leader of the community council of crawfish Rock the area directly impacted by the prospera zede on the island of Roatan we welcome you both to democracy Now we're going to begin in Honduras with Melissa rather

with Vanessa can you explain what's taking place for people to understand around the world you've got U.S corporations running cities Vanessa um I think she's not hearing us so we're going to go to Melinda St Louis if you can explain what's happening in Honduras well yes uh it's it's great to be here thank you so much and I really look forward to hearing from Vanessa it

is absolutely outrageous that in Honduras after the coup uh in 2009 there was this radical project to create these zevis as you mentioned private cities that U.S corporations could come in and base and control the territory the territory was removed from Municipal jurisdictions and then they had then the power as a corporation to set their own regulatory standards tax policy money monetary policy Security forces have

their own separate court system and basically run their own government and in um in the case of Roatan this this company uh prospera came in and established this private Zone where the governance structure does not allow for a representative democracy from the people of the community and um at first the people in the community didn't even know that this was happening it's happening in such a

opaque take a format and once people understood how what this meant in terms of taking away Hunter and sovereignty and taking away land from from communities there was massive Uprising indigenous people uh Community organizations even the largest Business Association in Honduras opposed this opposed this corrupt law and so through the Democratic process fortunately they managed to overturn this corrupt law this Yamada Castro Administration ran on

a platform of repealing this law and they did so they made good on their promise they uh the the National Assembly overturned or repealed the law and that really should be the end of the story it's a victory for democracy in Honduras after a very dark period of of right-wing Rule and then that's not the end of the story because of the trade agreement that no

one knew about and you know kind of these secretive trade rules that Empower corporations to be able to challenge Democratic policies outside of the court system this isn't in a U.S court it's not in a Honduran court it's in a private tribunal of private sector lawyers three arbitrators who will decide whether to basically ransack the the treasury of the tiny country of Honduras to the tune

of 11 billion dollars with a B uh which is which again as you mentioned is uh would bankrupt the country so the company is using this as an additional tool to try to bully the government to not implement the Democratic will of the people and so it's very complicated but it's actually very simple it's once again uh kind of this neocolonial project of uh you know

of U.S companies uh going to the region but in this very radical way yeah I think we have a Vanessa Cardenas uh in Honduras now and I wanted to go to her Vanessa when I was in Honduras as a reporter back 30 years ago they were already a very large export processing zones basically for for to uh manufacture goods and send them to the United States

but this is a whole other stage here of whole cities could you talk about how your community a crawfish rock found out about this and what the what the previous government uh had done to keep the the basic information from the people yes hello uh well we have we didn't hear it from the government of course we hired through a community leader and she practically was

telling us underneath because she was so scared but she had to her she wanted to a community to know I actually got it from a colleague of mine and she sent it through a WhatsApp messages and we were you know we had to do so much study we had to knock on so many doors because everyone that be hacks acts was like no one knew about

it yeah third is knew nothing about it so first of all we need to know that this is this city and especially say that Prosperity is not like the rest of the the autonomous or independent soon this is a state within the state which will have its own Judicial System it is run by a technical secretary to somebody camp and the camp itself is in the

shadow no one knows all the members of the camps are and of course the link that it has to the North State of Orlando's were concerning to us in their lack of transparency they have not been transparent in anything they have done this community is a small community it's an ethnic community and we of course has uh the rights to be free and previously consulted on

any type of project that has been done in our community maybe have not been so you know we have totally the stress of prosperity and the power that the treaties and the the city the law gives them as so much concern we are so very concerned about that you know I was looking at the ads to attract businesses um and it talked about these Eddies it

said around the world there's something like 5 000 of these zones but 500 of them 10 percent are in Latin America um here in Pros um if you can talk about your community how it's impacted and the fact that this was imposed by the previous president Joe as he's called joh uh Juan Orlando Hernandez who is extradited to the United States for drug trafficking for corruption

even though it was repealed how it's being enforced right now in your community and the particular effects on your on your community a very negative impact on our community it has had our psychological impact as well as physical impact why I would say psychological because the mental stress that we are under we have we don't know when we will have our home will be taken from

us and we have all people we have uh single mothers we have widows and you know it's a problem to be stressed in a word all the time when we will have to leave our community in a physically because there was not the community was stuck in a limbo no one wanted to do anything with it there was no developing after the law was abolished in

last year you would anyone that is from here can see that there are the numbers construction many homes have been people have started to build home to to fix first before that because of the say the problem that we have and we still have you know people didn't even wanted to fix their fences because it was like you know we don't know why we have to

move and it was a constant stress as well as the environmental destruction that is being done in our community we have torn down a complete hell a hill that has so many species of animals species of of trees as well as our our main source of water we already have well that has been dried up so it's so many things that have impact us negative that

it they they're little they Promise Jobs and their it's very little job set up that we can apply to or the people that have gotten that the person the corner is more you know negative than positive yeah I wanted to ask Melinda St Louis who is this firm prospera that did this Delaware firm who runs it and also uh given the fact that these many companies

previously had the right to manufacture uh in many of these countries what's different in terms of uh what these private cities offer to foreigners uh is this another Haven for uh for uh for a crypto Utopia for for Tech millionaires yes well I think it really remains to be seen because it's quite a shadowy operation you know I Prosperity as you mentioned it is a delaware-based

uh company it was created as for the zedi to create the zede in Honduras and as far as we can tell there is not a a goal to do manufacturing to to really have major jobs it can look like on the surface a tourist Community like a residential uh Community but my what it looks like is really more of a political project I mean there was

uh certainly there are a number of members of the prospera community who are very active in the cryptocurrency movement they have made Bitcoin legal tender they have created an opportunity to become an e-resident so you don't have to live there but if you pay a fee you can be an e-resident and then you can open up a business using the uh the the very uh lacks

regulatory framework where you can propose your own regulatory code and um and and and basically operate outside of the jurisdiction of the United States or or Honduras uh and so they you know I think that is really more what the project is of and of of prosperity so in terms of of contributing to development that seems very unclear and yet and in this case that they

have launched against the government out of Honduras they are claiming that 11 billion dollars is what their expected future profits might be in the future and that's why they are claiming that under these Extreme Rules investor rights that are included in the the the trade agreement that they should be able to be compensated and less Honduras basically lets them do whatever they want according to uh

the law that they previously invested under that was put into place under the regime of Juan Orlando and explain that they signed can you explain the role of Captain this we have less than a minute to go and the letter that Senator Warren and others have signed what you're demanding of the Biden Administration yeah so in kafta there are these extreme investor rights that corporations can

sue governments outside of the court system to demand billions or millions or billions in taxpayer compensation and this is a very radical element of our past trading system so much so that it is no longer considered to be a viable thing to include in trade agreements the Biden Administration is no longer seeking to include these extreme corporate rights in agreements and yet it exists in kafta

and so this company is utilizing it so Senator Warren and 30 members of Congress are calling on the Biden Administration to weigh in on behalf of Honduras in this case so that they do not bankrupt this country and also to seek to remove these extreme investor rights from kafta and other free trade agreements given that now there now that there's bipartisan opposition to this very these

very extreme rules that are exploited by corporations like prospera Linda St Louis want to thank you for being with us public citizens global trade watch and Vanessa Cardenas leader of the community council of crawfish Rock the area directly impacted by the prosperous zede on the island of Roatan in Honduras go to democracynow.org to hear this interview in Spanish oh and a happy belated birthday to John

Randolph if I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez