The Narco President Walks Free and With His Head Held High

So, as of last Tuesday (December 2, 2025), Mr. Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras, would-be dictator and convicted drug trafficker, is officially a free man. He walks free thanks to a pardon from President Trump, who claimed he had been a victim of a plot hatched by the Biden Administration. A plot that, apparently, would have deceived the US justice system.

If I believe this movie, justice was asleep at the wheel: the evidence that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Juan Orlando enriched himself by facilitating cocaine trafficking to the United States was pure fabrication. The judge should have known that. In short, the man is, according to Trump, a victim to be pitied.

On the other hand, his brother, Tony Hernández, was not pardoned. He is still in prison for the same crimes. He was the real bad guy, I guess, the one guilty of the confusion that harmed the “good” Hernandez: two brothers, same last names, talking to the same bad guys, but the judge did not understand that one did it from goodness (Juan Orlando) and the other, from greed (Tony). By not paying attention to this, the judge made a righteous man pay for a sinner.

So, case closed, no problem… and yet I am going to make a fuss, because there are several inconsistencies. The wildly different fortunes of Tony and Juan Orlando is one of those inconsistencies, but not the only one. More fundamental is this: for several weeks now, Trump has been threatening to blow up the dictator Maduro, whom he accuses of flooding the United States with drugs. That is how furious he will be with anyone who, according to him, poisons Americans. He says he would bomb Mexico. But Juan Orlando is free and will undoubtedly return to Honduras to weave his not-so-angelic webs of power. So?

I’m counting the days until Maduro goes to hell. He should have left of his own accord long ago and spared so much suffering. But why stroll around Honduras? The obvious answer is that Trump doesn’t care about that small, battered country, still in the grip of narco-power and corruption. Or perhaps he does care—as a war trophy: because in addition to freeing Juan Orlando, Trump plunged into that country’s electoral campaign, urging voters to support the candidate from Hernandez’s party. In short, JOH “may be an SOB… but he’s one of ours.” Given all this, I’m worried that some little bird will whisper to him to start meddling with Costa Rica.

*This article was originally published in La Nación.