Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Honduras received in 2021 with the devastation caused by COVID-19 and the one caused by the tropical storms Eta and Iota suffered in 2020, to which are added an economic, political and social crisis that has dragged on since 2009.
Only the COVID-19 pandemic, which began to spread in March 2020, left the country at the end of December, 3,141 dead and 122,763 infected, according to official figures.
To the damage of the pandemic, which also paralyzed all economic activity for more than three months, were added the havoc caused by Eta and Iota which left about a hundred dead, thousands injured and numerous material losses.
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According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras, the damage left by the pandemic and storms exceeded 100 billion lempiras (more than $ 4.140 billion), which represents a hard blow for a country with 9.5 million inhabitants, of which more than 60% are poor.
Priorities in 2021
According to analysts and private sector sources, reconstruction due to infrastructure damage and the recovery of the economy must be the priorities in 2021, A year that will be by-elections in March and general elections in November, the eleventh since the country returned to democracy in 1980.
Managers of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP) estimate that some 600,000 jobs were lost due to the pandemic, many of which will not be recovered because many micro, small and medium-sized enterprises closed and others were forced to cut staff.
The country also needs to recover the infrastructure destroyed by storms Eta and Iota, mainly in the north and west, which were the most affected regions.
The two phenomena left havoc on primary, secondary and tertiary roads, bridges, containment edges, crop loss, housing, public, private buildings and many flooded industries, among other damage.
In some low regions of the vast and fertile Sula Valley in the north, there is still stagnant water in which housing heads are raised the owners expect the level to drop to see if they will rebuild in the same place, as is the case of the Dúnia Ponce, in the Municipal district, of the Lima.
“I couldn’t get anything out, I lost everything, my house is still flooded, I can’t get in, I’m waiting for the water and mud we still have here to come down,” he said.
Dunia, 37, a single mother with three children, the eldest 17, and the two children aged 6 and 3, is living in a space in her father’s house that she used as a winery, which is located in about 20 meters from where it is submerged.
To subsist, Dunia is engaged in “the sale of corn tortillas and baleadas” (wheat flour tortilla, folded, with fried beans and grated cheese or butter).
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The Dúnia family is one of the more than 1,500 that were affected by the floods in northern Honduras between November 4 and 20, when the heaviest rains that left Eta and Iota occurred.
Some of these damaged families, Two months later, they continue living under bridges, like in the sector of Chamelecón or in improvised camps that raised to the border and averages of boulevards between the cities of San Pedro Sula, La Lima and the Progress.
Primary and general elections
Honduras, which is poorer than 40 years ago, when it returned to the constitutional order, will hold primary elections in March this year, which will only make the three largest parties (National, in power Freedom and Refoundation, first force of opposition, and Liberal) of a dozen who will participate in the November generals.
Without having solved the crisis of 2009 and 2017, Honduras began the countdown of a political year that, for some opposition leaders, the ruling National Party would be seeking to remain in power, they do not even rule out that Hernandez intends to remain in power, although the governor has reiterated that he will not seek a new term in the Presidential House.
On the electoral process, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez said politicians who aspire to come to power “must think of the common good.”
200 years of independence
Honduras, like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, will remember this year the 200th anniversary of its independence from the Spanish Crown, a feat achieved on September 15, 1821.
The anniversary of independence, for which the Honduran government has planned cultural events, will be remembered amid the pandemic, the first vaccines are expected to arrive in March, the destruction left by Eta and Iota, poverty and an electoral process what is expected to be transparent so that the fragile country democracy does not fail.