Next January 27, the president-elect of Honduras in Central America, a country known to live off the drugs trade and international aid will be taking office. Xiomara Castro, the first woman president of the country, and an icon of the left-wing progressive parties of Latin America promised during her campaign that her administration would cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish full relations with Beijing, as recently happened in neighboring Nicaragua.
The Puebla Group, a gathering of left-wing leaders from Latin America and Spain held a meeting in Mexico on Tuesday to celebrate the victory of Xiomara Castro in the Honduran presidential election and looked forward to similar triumphs by Chilean candidate Gabriel Boric in December and hopefully Lula da Silva next year in Brazil.
Chavist candidate Xiomara Castro seemed on track Monday morning to become the first female president of Honduras after 38.94% of the votes had been counted. Castro, a former first lady whose husband Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a coup in 2009, had obtained 53.44% of the votes, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE), after Sunday's elections.
Both leading presidential candidates in crime-wracked Honduras declared victory late Sunday, setting the stage for a possible round of street protests and violence in one the world's deadliest countries. With more than half the votes counted, conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez was ahead with 34% against 29% for populist Xiomara Castro.
Four years after her husband was ousted in a coup, Honduran populist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro is threatening to break the century-old dominance of right-wing parties in Sunday's elections.