The Island of Roatán is best known as a diving paradise in the Caribbean. It is Honduras’s largest island and part of a chain that runs parallel to the north coast of Honduras south East of Belize (formerly West Honduras). Older people still speak English on this island chain formerly associated with British Honduras (now Belize). The islands still have more of a Caribbean than a Central American culture and lie just south of the wildlife sanctuary of Half Moon Caye in Belize.
Apart from diving tourism revenue at the West End resorts on Roatán, the island has also historically been used to run cocaine to eager markets further north. US coastguard vessels used to dock in the private ferry port of the Island’s governor. Roatán now hosts a strange new experiment in corporate sovereignty, locally resented schemes called ZEDEs which were introduced by Honduran president Hernández jailed for 45 years in the US in 2024 for drug exporting. ZEDE is short for “Zone for Employment and Economic Development”. They grew out of experimental legislation conveniently added to Honduran law by the disgraced President.
A “ZEDE” is similar to a duty free port but the concept of a ZEDE goes beyond tax to national sovereignty. ZEDES replace the nation state (becoming nations within nations). A ZEDE is a ministate, something like a modern day principality like Monaco or Liechtenstein. ZEDEs may have their own currencies, their own laws, private police and even private corporate courts. Rather than principalities where royalty reigns supreme, a ZEDE is run as a corporation. Many of the Próspera corporations on Roatán offer experimental medical procedures that are not yet permitted in any real nation yet. Their patients are often very rich Silicon Valley men trying to extend their miserable lives beyond a century by subjecting themselves to experimental procedures in human longevity (first signing waiver agreements of course).
Hernández served less that two years when he was pardoned and released by Donald Trump. He had been convicted for exporting about four and a half billion bumps of nose candy to the US. That is about 400 Tonnes of cocaine. Hernández’s ZEDES were so unpopular in Honduras they became an election issue helping his opponent Xiomara Castro beat him. She became president between 2022 and 2026. Xiomara Castro removed some of the legal basis for the ZEDES but pressure from two US Senators “to strongly encourage the commencement of good faith consultations and negotiations with U.S. investors in ZEDEs” and a law suit against the Honduran State for $11 Billion Dollars in the World Bank ICSID court by associates of Peter Thiel with investments in Próspera. Próspera remained open though in legal limbo.
Castro, in a surprise vote, lost her re-election bid to Hernandez’s partner Nasry Asfura, the president at the time of writing. Asfura is from the same party as the disgraced drug-runner. The 2026 election was curious, to put it mildly. Nasry Asfura had a miracle win for the anti-communist, conservative, Honduran National Party. Within days Donald Trump pardoned and released former president Hernández. Telephone conversation audio recordings leaked in what was to be called “HondurasGate” gave tantalizing evidence on Trump’s plans for Hernández, they also reveal that Hernández had his own intentions to get back to power treating the new president like a vicepresident.
Hernández had taken on a little disinformation job, sort of like a privatised CIA run by cocaine mafia. This little office in the US was to focus on right wing attack journalism and lawfare to sue opponents in Honduras and elsewhere. The office is to be headed up by himself but financed illegally by Trump and Milei to attack left-wing governments in Latin America. The fake-news team, run out of the US, had two first targets for their disinformation campaigns: Presidents Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico and soon to be former president Gustavo Petro of Colombia. Hernández himself is recorded in many of these ‘HondurasGate’ audio recordings explaining his new role to Asfura.
His illicit group (Hernánez calls them an information cell) were tasked with attacking progressive governments in psyops involving staff journalists and lawyers. Hernández, in the leaked recording, asks Asfura to send the seed money to start this group referring to the Zelaya family which are the National Party’s political adversaries on the left of centre. Xiomara Castro was married to former president José Manuel “Mel” Zelaya ousted from power by a right wing coup in 2009. In another leaked telephone conversation from May, 2026 we hear Juan Orlando Hernández revealed how he had been given $350,000 dollars by Javier Milei to fund his lawfare and disinformation campaigns.
ASFURA: “I’ll transfer it to you from a friend’s account. Let’s see if they can give it to you in cash, but explain to me – what are we going to do with that? What’s in it for us?”
HERNÁNDEZ: “We’re going to set up a cell, President. From here, from the United States, an informational one, so they can’t track us down in Honduras. It’s going to be like a Latin American news site. I was on a call with President Javier Milei and it went well. Very, very, very good, and I think at this point we can do great things for all of Latin America. There are cases coming against Mexico, cases coming against Colombia, and most importantly against Honduras – in this case, against the Zelaya family.”
HondurasGate: leaked audio links Asfura, Hernández, Trump, Milei, Netanyahu in anti-left plot, Pablo Meriguet
Back in the US the ZEDES are important to Trump’s Silicon Valley friends (who own or invest in medical corporations that have offices there). Trump is transactional and pays his political debts so in another audio on that site we can hear the two presidents (Hernández and Asfura) discussing how they are working to expand the Próspera ZEDE, with a new airport in Roatán, as well as cancelled contracts for Chinese companies, new ones for US corporations and plans for US military bases.
Trump’s MAGA followers are anti “deep state” but Trump himself is not above using the NSA or the CIA to further US geostrategic interests, if this also helps his sponsors in Silicon Valley then all’s the better. His new approach revealed in HondurasGate seems to want to privatise the deep state using a mafia model, to expand US influence in the rest of Latin America using narcotics and political contacts. Something like an electronic Plan Condór, a dirty media war, sponsored by Silicon Valley and aided by Mossad operatives.
In May of 2026 the International Reactionaria exposed Honduras Gate and noted that the Website for international journalism on the topic hosted at HONDURASGATE.CH had been the victim of cyberattacks most of which originated in Israel. Cyberattacks on the site continue. In june the HONDURASGATE.CH Website was again taken down for more than a week by another attack, it came back up later. What has been revealed by HONDURASGATE seems to be a template for implementing Trump’s declared interest in managing what he calls his hemisphere, an implementation of his Don-Roe Doctrine, a term he borrowed from mixing Donald Trump with the Monroe Doctrine from former president James Monroe who declared his neo-colonial interest in all of the Americas. Trump is quite proud of his upgrade of a 200 year old colonial exploit in the original Banana Republics of Central America.
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