With just days to go before the 2025 general elections in Honduras, this Central American nation faces one of the most challenging electoral processes in its recent history. The crisis extends beyond mere accusations of fraud or technical irregularities; it is a structural issue: Honduran democracy has been co-opted by networks of organized crime, drug trafficking, and political elites that recycle themselves to maintain the same prevailing system.
This scenario raises a troubling question:
Can Honduras hold free elections when the competing actors are, to varying extents, intertwined with the same power circles that have captured the state for decades?
The three candidates representing the same system
Although there appears to be plurality, the Honduran political landscape is shaped by three actors orbiting around the same core of power.
Rixi Moncada (Libre): Continuation of 21st Century Socialism
The official candidate, backed by Xiomara Castro and Manuel Zelaya, Moncada embodies the project of 21st Century Socialism, which has governed through a hybrid model: revolutionary discourse, yet alliances with groups whose tentacles reach into financial structures linked to organized crime.
Her rise to power would affirm the continuation of the Castro-Zelaya clan, consolidating an ecosystem of institutional and partisan dependency.
Nasry “Papi a la Orden” Asfura (National Party): The Shadows of the Past
Asfura represents the National Party, whose elite is deeply marked by the era of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), currently convicted for drug trafficking in the United States.
Despite Asfura’s attempts to show distance, the party’s ties to money laundering networks, illegal financing, and agreements with cartels remain a burden that the system never purged.
Salvador Nasralla (Liberal Party): From Anti-System to Part of the Corrupt Model
The most emblematic case is that of Salvador Nasralla, who began as an anti-corruption figure and ended up integrated into the very system he once denounced.
His alliances with Libre, legislative agreements, and closeness to Mel Zelaya turned him into a functional element of the 21st Century Socialism project.
What he promised to overthrow, he now sustains.
Nasralla transitioned from an alternative to becoming a bridge that legitimizes the recycling of the old political class.
A Weakened and Penetrated CNE: The Factory of Technical Fraud
Accusations of fraud are not conspiracy theories:
- The National Electoral Council lacks independence.
- Parties divide key positions among themselves.
- External audits are either partial or delayed.
- There are reports of manipulation in records, transmission centers, and parallel counting.
Fraud in Honduras does not occur just on election night; it is brewed months in advance.
Institutional vulnerability opens the door for organized crime to insert operators into electoral logistics, transportation of ballot boxes, polling centers, and even strategic areas of the population registry.
The “Silent Narco-state”: Honduras as a Hub of Organized Crime
The weakness of democracy is not an accident: it is the result of years of state capture by criminal networks.
Honduras has become a neuralgic point (HUD) for organized crime in Central America for four reasons:
- Strategic geography: a natural corridor for cocaine and fentanyl.
- Weak institutions: prosecutors, judges, and police are infiltrated.
- Co-opted parties: campaign financing with drug money.
- Structural impunity: the state neither punishes nor holds criminal operators accountable.
The case of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH)—a former president extradited for drug trafficking—demonstrated that in Honduras the boundary between politician and kingpin is blurred.
Today, those networks have not vanished. They have reorganized. And they seek to ensure that any of the three candidates keeps their interests safe.
Democracy as a Façade: Elections Without Real Alternation
The vulnerability of Honduran democracy manifests on three levels:
1. The Vote Does Not Define Real Power
Even though the public votes, it is the criminal networks and pacts between elites that determine governance.
2. The System Recirculates
Regardless of who wins—Moncada, Asfura, or Nasralla—
the prevailing system survives.
3. Organized Crime Acts as an Invisible Arbiter
It controls financing, territories, local actors, communications, and even electoral operations.
A System That Refuses to Die
Twenty-first Century Socialism in Honduras has shown an extraordinary ability to adapt, reorganize, and co-opt figures that initially presented themselves as the renewal.
The integration of Salvador Nasralla into the power structure confirms that:
the system does not absorb opponents; it neutralizes them by turning them into allies.
Thus, the illusion of electoral competition hides a harsher reality:
Honduras experiences a captured democracy, compromised and functional to criminal interests.
What’s at Stake on November 30
Honduras is not just electing a president. It defines whether it allows organized crime to continue shaping the state or if it can recover institutional spaces.
The 2025 elections do not represent a struggle between left and right, but between:
A political system corroded by organized crime vs. The hope—still fragile—of rebuilding democracy.
Without profound reforms, without judicial purification, and without a real break from criminal elites, Honduras will remain trapped in a cycle where democracy exists… but does not govern.