Prospera is trying to create its own Government in Honduras

Prospura, a United States corporation is suing the Honduran government for $11 billion. That's two thirds of the annual budget of the entire Honduran government. They're trying to bankrupt them. All because they want the Honduras government to cede control over sections of Honduras to the corporation. We talk about colonialism. That's not a thing of the past here. That's happening now. 

Here's what's going on. Groups of international investors got together and helped pass a provision in CAFTA, which is the Caribbean Free Trade Agreement. And inside that, they allow for something called a ZEDE, which is a Zone for Economic Development. The idea there is to set up mini governments within Latin American countries, such as Honduras.

So it allows a corporation to come in and purchase large areas of land, and then designate them as these development areas. Basically to set up their own governments inside of there. The idea is you will pay taxes to this mini government that will then run all of the administrative and the legislative. They will decide what laws apply and as well the judiciary in those areas. So they'll run the courts as well. Then they collect the taxes and they'll give a percentage of that to the Honduras government or the Mexican or the Belize government.

In the end they get to keep most of the taxes. So this United States company comes to the president of Honduras and asks him to set up some of these development zones. Now that president is sitting in the United States federal prison now for corruption and drug running. He got all behind it for whatever reason. Now the Honduran Supreme Court said, no, you can't do this.

You can't give away our sovereignty to some United States corporation. So the Honduras president, he packs the Supreme Court, puts on four new Supreme Court members, kicks other ones off, and suddenly the Honduran Supreme Court says, it's legal. 

So this United States company comes in and sets up one of these zones where they get to become their own government. So the old president, he gets kicked out, the new president comes into Honduras. She passes legislation that invalidates these prior agreements. The Honduran government are saying the United States corporation cannot operate a separate government inside of our country. We're not going to let you do that anymore. That company gets mad and files a lawsuit for $11 billion against the Honduran government. 

Now to put that in perspective, that's two thirds of the annual budget of the entire Honduran government. They're basically saying, if you don't do what we demand. We're gonna put you out of business. Now the court where that happens is important, right? If it happened in a Honduran court, you'd think that the Honduran court wouldn't let a US corporation come up and make a mini government.

If this situation happened in the United States court, they probably wouldn't allow it either. So they take it to somebody else. Under CAFTA, they're allowed to set up a three-person judiciary, its own separate court to handle this. And these private judges, they have been terrible for the countries that are fighting against these mini United States corporation governments.


In the last few years, they have awarded $23.8 million against Latin American countries to foreign corporations. So the battle right now is to stop these kangaroo courts. And so a number of United States senators, as well as the Honduran government and other governments that are being just decimated by this are petitioning the Biden administration to put an end to these extrajudicial court. And that's where it's at right now.

The Biden administration has not stepped up to stop this practice. And if they don't, then they may not get $11 billion, but they're going to get enough power to try and force through these kind of shadow governments in Honduras. That's colonialism. It's United States corporations who are just trying to make money and drain the money out of places like this. It needs to stop.