President Donald Trump pardoned former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence in a US federal prison for drug trafficking 400 tonnes of cocaine to the United States. In announcing this on the day before the Honduras presidential elections on November 30, Trump continued his pattern of overt interference in Latin American elections. This was most blatantly apparent in the case of Argentina, where he announced in October a $20 billion rescue package to the Milei government, conditional upon the ruling coalition winning in the then-upcoming local and provincial elections.

Yet, to pardon Hernandez (who was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan in March 2024) just at the time when the US is about to launch a military attack on Venezuela, on the basis on unproven drug smuggling charges of fentanyl to the United States (no ship has ever been detained in the Caribbean with fentanyl on it) and a fictional “Cartel de los Soles” supposedly headed by Venezuelan government officials, exposes the hoax which the Trump administration’s widely trumpeted war on drugs actually is. 

This pardon debunks Washington’s narrative to justify its illegal military operations against Venezuela, which have led to the sinking of 21 embarkations, the killing of 83 crew so far, and the closing of the country’s air space. It also debunks any pretence about fighting real drug cartels, like Mexico’s Cartel de Sinaloa, one of the deadliest and most effective of them.

As Ann Milgram, the then-administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) put it in March 2024 when Hernandez was convicted, “When the leader of Honduras and the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel work hand-in-hand to send deadly drugs to the United States, both deserve to be accountable”. 

What led to Hernandez’s arrest in January 2022 in Tegucigalpa, and his extradition to the United States, a first for any Latin American president?

The answer is straightforward, and it is one that makes this pardon especially unfathomable. Hernandez, who ruled Honduras from 2014-2022, in close collaboration with the Sinaloa Cartel, built Honduras into a narco-state, a key transit point for cocaine flowing into the United States. The cartels gained access to top government officials and the security forces, while the drug trade became a key driver of the Honduran economy. The services of Hernandez and those of his brother Tony Hernandez, who once served in the Honduras Congress, were so highly valued by the Sinaloa Cartel that it named a specific type of cocaine after him – the “TH”. Tony Hernandez was convicted on four drug trafficking charges in Florida in 2019, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He has been behind bars since then. Will Tony be pardoned as well by The White House, making it into a blanket family pardon? The Sinaloa Cartel would presumably love that.

Not surprisingly, in his trial, former president Hernandez refused to admit being associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, but there is abundant evidence pointing in that direction. In one trial held in New York City, one drug trafficker on the dock testified that Hernandez took bribes for “helping cocaine reach the United States”. Additional testimony indicated Hernandez had received two bribes in 2013, before being elected to the presidency. One cartel leader declared having paid $ 250,000 to Hernandez, in “protection money”, so that he would not be arrested.

During Hernandez’s eight years in office (he served for two terms, although the Honduras Constitution explicitly states that presidents are barred from serving two consecutive terms, and his 2017 reelection took place under highly suspicious circumstances) while the United States looked the other way. The Pentagon, which highly values the US Air Force Soto Cano base in Honduras, continued to pump tens of millions of dollars into beefing up the Honduras military and police forces, despite numerous allegations of corruption and human rights abuses, including the murders of numerous journalists.

Still, it is one thing for Washington to look the other way while such shenanigans were taking place in Honduras. It is quite another to pardon the main culprit of them once he has been convicted in federal court on the weight of plenty of evidence of association with some of the worst criminals in the Americas and is now serving time for it. The message to Latin American leaders could not be clearer: you can associate yourself and do business with organised crime leaders that target the United States as much as you want, but as long as you find yourself on the right side of the occupant of the Oval Office, you will be all right.

Beyond the specific implications of this pardon, though, the White House announcement exposes the sham of US policy towards Latin America under the Trump administration. The military manoeuvres in Venezuela and the threats of bombing the Sinaloa cartel sites in Mexico have nothing to do with the drug trade (otherwise, why pardon a Sinaloa cartel associate?) and everything to do with performance acts designed to appeal to the MAGA base and especially to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s electoral base in Florida, made up of many exiled Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans. The latter, who massively backed Trump in the November 2024 elections, and now feel betrayed by the mass deportations of their compatriots in the course of 2025, need acts of reassurance, and regime change in Venezuela is as powerful such an act as it gets.

In two centuries of US-Latin American relations, the US has invaded and militarily attacked many Central American and Caribbean nations, including Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada, among others. It has never done so with a country on the South American mainland. That Washington is gearing up to do so now with Venezuela under false pretexts, in an exercise designed to appeal to the electoral base of one Cabinet official, takes inter-American relations to a new low.

Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to India, is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington D.C. His new book, coauthored with Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami, The Non-Aligned World, is out from Polity Press.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.