What appeared impossible has been achieved: the people of Honduras have broken the perpetuation, through electoral fraud and thuggish violence, of a brutal, illegal, illegitimate, and criminal regime.

By means of sheer resistance, resilience, mobilization, and organization, they have managed to defeat Juan Orlando Hernández’s narco-dictatorship at the ballot box. As presidential candidate of the left-wing Libre Party (the Freedom and Refoundation Party, in its Spanish acronym), Xiomara Castro obtained a splendid 50-plus percent of the vote — between 15 to 20 points more than her closest rival, National Party candidate Nasry Asfura — in an election with historic high levels of participation (68 percent).

The extraordinary feat performed by the people of Honduras takes place under the dictatorial regime of Hernández (aka JOH) in an election marred by what appears to be targeted assassinations of candidates and activists. Leading up to October 2021, sixty-four acts of electoral violence, including eleven attacks and twenty-seven assassinations, had been perpetrated. And in the period preceding the election (November 11–23), another string of assassinations, mainly of candidates, took place.