Central America
From target to enforcer: Honduras minister vows ‘surgical’ cartel fight
AFP
Forced into hiding after targeting a drug cartel with alleged ties to the then-government, Honduras’s hounded police chief-turned interior minister has vowed to extract criminal tentacles in the State with “surgical” precision.
Ramon Sabillon, minister in the new cabinet of leftist Xiomara Castro, told AFP he was fired from his former job as police chief after dismantling a drug cartel in 2014 without informing then-president Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Hernandez is today awaiting extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges.
The cartel he had hit, named Valle Valle, “had penetrated the structures of State” under Hernandez, Sabillon told AFP in an interview.
Hernandez had him fired, he said, and “threatened with death, I had to leave the country… I had to either save my life or continue in the police… I preferred life.”
Now Sabillon is back as Castro’s interior minister, and in a twist of irony one of his first tasks was to execute an arrest warrant for Hernandez.
Hernandez, who held office from 2014 to early this year, is accused of having facilitated the smuggling of some 500 tons of drugs — mainly from Colombia and Venezuela — to the United States via Honduras since 2004.
In return, he allegedly received millions of dollars in bribes as well as protection money from drug kingpins such as Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Hernandez’s brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
– ‘A mafia’ –
“When organized crime gets embedded in the State, it becomes a mafia because it holds the power of the State. So it is a surgical job that we have to do, democratically, by enforcing the law,” Sabillon told AFP.
Extraditing a former president, he added, “sends a strong message to the entire population, to those seeking public office, that the State will not tolerate” such actions.
At least 40 Hondurans are sought by the United States on drug allegations.
The minister said a number of coca plantations and laboratories have been dismantled since the beginning of the year.
Cartels are seeking to become more autonomous, he explained, with production in Honduras itself, “so they need not depend on the point of origin” in South American countries such as Colombia and Peru.
Hernandez, a right-wing lawyer, left office on January 27 when leftist Castro became president of the country with a poverty rate of at least 60 percent among its 10 million inhabitants.
The country’s first woman president faces an uphill struggle to reform a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Tens of thousands of its citizens have tried to flee to the United States.
She has vowed to tackle deep-seated government corruption.
Central America
Panama confirms drug contamination of El Salvador coffee shipment occurred on its territory
A container originating from El Salvador and carrying coffee for export was contaminated with more than 1,152 packages of drugs while in transit through Panama, according to official information confirmed by the Panamanian government this Tuesday.
The case, which had previously generated political controversy in April 2025 after opposition sectors attempted to link the Salvadoran government to drug trafficking, has now been clarified through renewed investigations.
Authorities confirmed that the container departed from the port of Acajutla after being properly inspected, with no illicit substances detected at the time of export.
According to statements previously provided by El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino Monroy, the shipment traveled first to the port of Balboa in Panama, where it remained stored for several days before being transferred to another vessel bound for Manzanillo in Colón.
It was at that terminal that Panamanian authorities discovered the drugs and identified tampering with the container seals, indicating that the illicit alteration occurred during its transit in Panama rather than in Salvadoran territory.
The findings align with earlier explanations provided by Salvadoran officials and confirm that the contamination of the cargo took place outside of El Salvador’s jurisdiction.
Central America
Uber Eats adds Puntarenas and Turrialba to growing Costa Rica network
Uber Eats announced that it is continuing to expand its presence in Costa Rica with the launch of operations in the cities of Puntarenas and Turrialba, further strengthening the company’s growth in the country.
With this expansion, the delivery platform is now available across all seven Costa Rican provinces and works with more than 6,000 partner businesses. Its offerings include prepared food, supermarkets, pharmacies, pet stores, and other specialty retailers.
As part of the announcement, Uber Eats also introduced Marco Nannipieri as its new Regional General Manager for the Andean Region, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Nannipieri will oversee the company’s operations in Costa Rica along with seven other countries in the region.
“Costa Rica is a key market for Uber Eats in the region, with growing adoption of technology among users and businesses. Over the past five years, more than 1,000 restaurants and merchants have joined the app, and today we are entering a new stage of expansion that will allow us to reach more cities outside the Greater Metropolitan Area, creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs across the country,” Nannipieri said.
Central America
Report questions direction of Nasry Asfura after 100 days in office
The Center for the Study of Democracy warned Tuesday that the government of Nasry Asfura, which marks its first 100 days in office on Wednesday, has failed to show a “significant change in direction” and continues to follow a model characterized by exclusion, inequality, and external dependence.
In its report titled “100 Days of the Nasry Asfura Government: Concerns and Demands,” Cespad stated that the administration has maintained an economic and political model that prioritizes debt payments, the promotion of extractive projects, and the strengthening of the security apparatus over social investment.
The organization argued that the current policies have not addressed structural problems affecting large sectors of the Honduran population and warned that inequality and economic dependence remain key challenges for the country.
Nasry Asfura won the general elections held on November 30, 2025, in a process marked by allegations of fraud and delays in the vote count that lasted nearly a month due to a series of technological failures.
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