Honduras News - Daily News about Honduras

When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya visited Washington this past June, he had two security-related requests for President Bush. The first was to convert the Colonel Enrique Soto Cano airbase (also commonly known as Palmerola) into a commercial air cargo terminal, while the second was to deploy U.S. Special Forces along the Mosquitia region in eastern Honduras to help combat drug-trafficking along the Caribbean coast. At the time of President Zelaya’s visit, there were numerous media reports indicating that a military facility would be built in the Mosquitia with Washington aid that would, most likely, house some form of a U.S. military presence.

Soto Cano
The U.S. has used the Soto Cano base for several decades, saddling it with a somewhat infamous record. During the 1980s, Palmerola was part of a sizeable tract of land, assigned on a de facto basis, which became known as the Contras’ “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” From there, raids were launched by the U.S–backed irregulars into Nicaragua. The toll from this deadly sport of stalk and kill amounted to over 30,000 fatalities. Recently, there has been a growing debate about the facility’s future. If Soto Cano becomes a mixed-use civilian facility, it seems very likely that the Pentagon will move ahead to help create the proposed replacement facility along the Mosquitia coast, which would also have important anti-drug functions. Should the construction of the base and transfer of U.S. personnel come to pass, it is likely that its overarching role would be to support Honduras’ war against drug traffickers. More importantly, it is unclear what other U.S. security operations will take place at the air base under the rubric of safeguarding this country’s national interests. But it is instructive to remember that U.S. military ties usually do not come without long and very binding strings attached.

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