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Gangsters from MS-13,<\/span> a Trump-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization<\/a>, intimidated Hondurans not to vote for the left-leaning presidential candidate, 10 eyewitness sources told The Intercept, in most cases urging them to instead cast their ballots in last Sunday\u2019s election for the right-wing National Party candidate \u2014 the same candidate endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n Ten residents from four working-class neighborhoods controlled by MS-13, including volunteer election workers and local journalists, told The Intercept they saw firsthand gang members giving residents an ultimatum to vote for the Trump-endorsed conservative candidate or face consequences. Six other sources with knowledge of the intimidation \u2014 including government officials, human rights investigators, and people with direct personal contact with gangs \u2014 corroborated their testimony. Gang members drove voters to the polls in MS-13-controlled mototaxi businesses, three sources said, and threatened to kill street-level activists for the left-leaning Liberty and Refoundation, or LIBRE, party if they were seen bringing supporters to the polls. Two witnesses told The Intercept they saw members of MS-13 checking people\u2019s ballots inside polling sites, as did a caller to the national emergency help line.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people for LIBRE didn\u2019t go to vote because the gangsters had threatened to kill them,\u201d a resident of San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, told The Intercept. Mareros<\/em>, as the gang members are known, intimidated voters into casting their ballots for Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura, known as Papi a la \u00d3rden or \u201cDaddy at your service.\u201d Multiple residents of San Pedro Sula alleged they were also directed to vote for a mayoral candidate from the centrist Liberal Party.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miroslava Cerpas, the leader of the Honduran national emergency call system, provided The Intercept with four audio files of 911 calls in which callers reported that gang members had threatened to murder residents if they voted for LIBRE. A lead investigator for an internationally recognized Honduran human rights NGO, who spoke anonymously with The Intercept to disclose sensitive information from a soon-to-be published report on the election, said they are investigating gang intimidation in Tegucigalpa and the Sula Valley \u201cbased on direct contact with victims of threats by gangs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t follow the order, we\u2019re going to kill your families, even your dogs. We don\u2019t want absolutely anyone to vote for LIBRE.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cPeople linked to MS-13 were working to take people to the voting stations to vote for Asfura, telling them if they didn\u2019t vote, there would be consequences,\u201d the investigator told The Intercept. They said they received six complaints from three colonias in the capital of Tegucigalpa and three in the Sula Valley, where voters said members of MS-13 had threatened to kill those who openly voted for the ruling left LIBRE party or brought party representatives to the polls. The three people in the Sula Valley, the investigator said, received an audio file<\/a> on WhatsApp in which a voice warns that those who vote for LIBRE \u201chave three days to leave the area,\u201d and \u201cIf you don\u2019t follow the order, we\u2019re going to kill your families, even your dogs. We don\u2019t want absolutely anyone to vote for LIBRE. We\u2019re going to be sending people to monitor who is going to vote and who followed the order. Whoever tries to challenge the order, you know what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The MS-13 interference took place as the U.S. president, who has obsessed<\/a> over the gang<\/a> since his first term<\/a>, extended an interventionist hand over the elections. On November 28, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Honduras if voters didn\u2019t elect Asfura while simultaneously announcing a pardon<\/a> for Asfura\u2019s ally and fellow party member Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras convicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking and weapons charges last year.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social. \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is.\u201d <\/p>\n The election remains undecided over a week after the fact: Asfura holds a narrow lead over centrist Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, while Rixi Moncada, the LIBRE party candidate, remains in a distant third. As people await the final results, one San Pedro Sula resident said, \u201cthere\u2019s been a tense calm.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely the MS-13 interference led to LIBRE\u2019s loss, since the ruling party had already suffered a significant drop in popularity after a lack of change, continued violence, and corruption scandals<\/a> under four years of President Xiomara Castro. But the LIBRE government pointed to a raft of other electoral irregularities, and a preliminary European Union electoral mission report recognized that the election was carried out<\/a> amid \u201cintimidation, defamation campaigns, institutional weakness, and disinformation,\u201d though it ignored LIBRE\u2019s accusations of \u201cfraud.\u201d The Honduran attorney general announced<\/a> their own investigation into irregularities in the election last week, and on Monday, two representatives for the National Electoral Council informed Hondurans that the electronic voting system wasn\u2019t updated for over 48 hours<\/a> over the weekend, while results are still being finalized.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is clear and resounding evidence that this electoral process was coerced by organized crime groups,\u201d said Cerpas, who is a member of the LIBRE party, \u201cpushing the people to vote for Nasry Asfura and intimidating anyone who wanted to vote for Rixi Moncada.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is clear and resounding evidence that this electoral process was coerced by organized crime groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Gerardo Torres, the vice chancellor of foreign relations for the LIBRE government, told The Intercept via phone that manipulation of elections by maras <\/em>is a well-established practice \u2014 but that the timing of the threats was alarming given Trump\u2019s simultaneous pardoning of Hern\u00e1ndez and endorsement of Asfura. \u201cWhen, a day before the elections, the president of the United States announces the liberation of Hern\u00e1ndez, and then automatically there is a surge in activity and intimidation by MS-13,\u201d Torres said, it suggests that the gang members see the return of the former president as \u201can opportunity to change their situation and launch a coordinated offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt would seem like the U.S. is favoring, for ideological reasons, a narco-state to prevent the left from returning to power,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The White House, Asfura, and the National Party did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n All witnesses who alleged election interference have been granted anonymity to protect them from targeting by MS-13. <\/p>\n Bumping over potholed dirt roads on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula the day before the presidential election, a motorcycle taxi driver informed their passenger of MS-13\u2019s latest ultimatum: The mototaxis \u201cwere strictly prohibited from bringing people from LIBRE to the voting stations on election day,\u201d recalled the passenger. \u201cOnly people for the National Party or the Liberal Party \u2014 but for LIBRE, no one, no one, not even flags were allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n Gangs like MS-13 \u201ccontrol the whole area of Cort\u00e9s,\u201d the passenger said, referring to their home department. \u201cTotal subjugation.\u201d <\/p>\n The gang members closely monitor the movements of those within their territories, in many cases by co-opting or controlling mototaxi services to keep track of who comes and goes. Three other sources in San Pedro Sula and one in Tegucigalpa confirmed MS-13\u2019s co-optation of mototaxis in the area; another source with direct, yearslong contact with gang members on the north coast of Honduras confirmed that MS-13 was pushing residents in their territories of San Pedro Sula to vote for Asfura by the same means. When members of MS-13 passed through Cort\u00e9s warning that those who voted for LIBRE \u201chad three days to leave,\u201d the mototaxi passenger said, residents surrounded by years of killings, massacres, and disappearances by the gang knew what might await them if they defied.<\/p>\n MS-13 was formed in the 1980s in Los Angeles, California, among refugees of the Salvadoran civil war who the George H.W. Bush administration then deported en masse to Central America. In the \u201990s, local gangs of displaced urban Hondurans morphed with the Salvadoran franchise. Over the years, the Mara Salvatrucha, which MS stands for, evolved into a sophisticated criminal enterprise: first as street-level drug dealers, then extortionists, assassins for hire, and cocaine transporters who have been documented working in league with high-level traffickers and state officials for at least two decades.<\/p>\n If Honduras has been a home turf of gangs, the country is also an anchor for U.S. power in the region, hosting the second-largest U.S. military base in Latin America and a laboratory for radical experiments<\/a> in libertarian far-right \u201cprivate cities.\u201d In 2009, the Honduran military carried out a coup<\/a> under the passive watch of U.S. authorities, ousting then-President Manuel Zelaya<\/a>, a centrist and husband of current President Xiomara Castro. The homicide rate skyrocketed, turning the country into the world\u2019s most violent, per U.S. State Department rankings, by the 2010s.<\/p>\n The chaos gave rise to ex-president Hern\u00e1ndez, whom U.S. prosecutors later accused of turning Honduras into a \u201ccocaine superhighway\u201d as he directed the country\u2019s military, police, and judiciary to protect drug traffickers. Last week, Hern\u00e1ndez was released from a West Virginia prison after a pardon from Trump, and on Monday, the Honduran attorney general announced<\/a> an international warrant for his arrest.<\/p>\n \u201cGangsters were going from house to house to tell people to vote for Papi.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n As Honduran voters processed the latest cycle of U.S. influence over their politics, the more immediate menace at the polls extended to the local level. \u201cGangsters were going from house to house to tell people to vote for Papi [Asfura] and el Pollo<\/em>,\u201d said a San Pedro Sula resident who volunteered at a voting booth on election day, referring to the city\u2019s mayor, Roberto Contreras of the Liberal Party. Two other sources in the city, and one government source in Tegucigalpa, also said gang members were backing Contreras.<\/p>\n \u201cThe team of Mayor Roberto Contreras categorically rejects any insinuation of pacts with criminal structures,\u201d said a representative for the mayor in a statement to The Intercept. \u201cAny narrative that tries to tie [support for Contreras] with Maras or gangs lacks base, and looks to distract attention from the principal message: the population went to vote freely, without pressure and with the hope of a better future.\u201d<\/p>\n Gang intimidation of voters isn\u2019t new in Honduras, where, within territories zealously guarded and warred over by heavily armed gangs, even the threat for residents to vote for certain candidates is enough to steer an election in their district. \u201cRemember that they control these colonias,\u201d said one of the San Pedro Sula residents. \u201cAnd given the fact that they have a lot of presence, they tell the people that they\u2019re going to vote for so-and-so, and the majority follow the orders.\u201d<\/p>\n The human rights lawyer Victor Fern\u00e1ndez, who ran for mayor of San Pedro Sula as an independent candidate but didn\u2019t get on the general election ballot, said he and his supporters also experienced intimidation from MS-13 during his campaign. After his own race was over, he said he continued to see indications of gang intervention in the presidential campaign for months leading up to election day.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth before and during the elections on November 30, gangsters operating here in the Sula Valley exercised their pressure over the election,\u201d he said, explaining this conclusion was drawn from \u201crecurring\u201d testimonies with residents of multiple neighborhoods. \u201cThe great violent proposal that people have confirmed is that gang members told them they couldn\u2019t go vote for LIBRE, and that whoever did so would have to confront [the gang] structure.\u201d<\/p>\n Minutes after submitting a highly publicized<\/a> complaint<\/a> to the Public Ministry on Monday, Cerpas, of the National Emergency call system, told The Intercept that her office received 892 verified complaints of electoral violations on election day. \u201cIn those calls,\u201d she said, \u201cthere was a significant group of reports regarding intimidation and threats by criminal groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Four audio recordings of residents calling the emergency hotline, which Cerpas shared with The Intercept, reflect the wider accusation that mareros<\/em> used murderous intimidation tactics to prevent people from voting for LIBRE and vote, instead, for Asfura. <\/p>\n In one of the files, a woman calling from Tegucigalpa tells the operator that members of MS-13 had \u201cthreatened to kill\u201d anyone who voted for LIBRE while posing as election observers at the voting center. \u201cThey\u2019re outside the voting center, they\u2019re outside and inside,\u201d she says, referring to members of MS-13, her voice trembling. \u201cI entered, and they told me, \u2018If you vote for LIBRE, we\u2019ll kill you and your whole fucking family.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For days before the election, a resident from a rural region of the country, whose time in a maximum-security prison called La Tolva put him in yearslong proximity to gang members, had received messages from friends and family members living in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. They all reported a variation of the same story: Gang members on mototaxis informing everyone in their colonias, \u201cVamos a votar por Papi a la \u00d3rden<\/em>.\u201d (\u201cWe\u2019re going to vote for\u201d Asfura.)<\/p>\n A former mid-level bureaucrat for the LIBRE government told The Intercept that, during the lead-up to the election, \u201cLIBRE activists who promoted the vote \u2026 were intimidated by members of gangs so that they would cease pushing for the vote for LIBRE.\u201d The former official didn\u2019t specify the gangs, though they said the intimidation took place in three separate neighborhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cAll day, the muchachos<\/em> [gang members] were going around and taking photos of the coordinators,\u201d read messages from local organizers shared with The Intercept. The gang members \u201csaid that they needed to close themselves in their houses.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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\u201cThey Control These Colonias\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\u201cVamos a votar por Papi a la \u00d3rden\u201d<\/h2>\n