In Honduras, Empty Promises and a Deteriorated Road

( LA PEÑA #2, Honduras) —On a recent sunny noon, a car lies stalled in the middle of a three-mile dirt road in the small village of La Peña #2, Valle department in southern Honduras.

A tall, white-skinned man steps out of the driver’s door, looks at the front of his truck, and nods in frustration. “The wheel is stuck in a pothole,” says Alex Fuentes while a group gathers to help him. The poor road infrastructure in the southern part of Honduras is a risky adventure that many car and motorcycle drivers must navigate daily. ”

I seldom drive my car, every time I drive it, it comes back with scratches and is hit by rocks,” says Irvis Fuentes, a resident of La Peña #2. Due to the faulty road, the cars have to drive at a minimum of 5 miles per hour, and commercial activities refuse to make deliveries in the area due to the dangerous conditions of the street. A mother of four who uses the road to transport her groceries has been waiting for months for a repair service to her refrigerator because the retail company says they cannot risk the safety of their employees and send their cars to the area due to the poor conditions of the road. People who have suffered from serious medical conditions have died on the road while they are being rushed to the nearby hospital since the cars have to drive at extremely slow speeds, even in life-or-death circumstances.

Residents say that during the rainy season, the scene is chaotic. No car dares to cross the road, which, far from looking like a road, is more like an extensive mud ravine, and they directly blame the local government for ignoring the infrastructural misery. “By February 2024, the road repair process will begin,” said Fabricio Sandoval, who has served as a Congressman for the Valle department for six years. At the beginning of January, Sandoval sent machinery to begin the first phases of repair, such as surface scraping; however, after two days of work, the machinery and personnel abandoned the work without any notice. Sandoval withdrew the construction machinery under the promise that the rehabilitation of the road would be completed in the next two months. “It is a process, but this year I will get it done,” said the Congressman. Residents of La Pena #2, El Bonito, and Santa Rita expressed feeling betrayed and disappointed since they elected Sandoval because he promised to repair the disastrous road.

According to documents published by the White House in 2021, the Biden-Harris administration launched the program Call to Action and the Partnership for Central America (PCA) to provide economic relief to developing countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. One of PCA’s biggest interests is repairing damaged road infrastructure like the one in La Peña #2 village. White House papers say that from 2021 to 2024, a total of $5.2 billion has been distributed between Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The office of Octavio Pineda, the minister of the Secretary of Infrastructure and Transportation (SIT), said that in the last three years, a lot of money has been invested in repairing roads in the Valle department. Yet, he admitted having no knowledge why delegate Sandoval, also known as “Pepsi,” has neglected small communities such as La Peña #2, El Bonito, and Santa Rita. Sandoval said that the financial assistance provided by the Secretary of Infrastructure and Transportation has been invested in the repair of urban roads as the greatest vehicular and commercial traffic congregates in urban areas.

While political corruption seems to have power over Honduras, a country whose former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was found guilty and sentenced to 45 years in prison for having ties to Mexican cartels in a New York court early in 2024, residents of the southern village of La Peña #2 remain hopeful that for the next elections, the new political candidates will provide them with quality infrastructure. Yet, congressman Fabricio Sandoval, for half a decade, has continued to make promises to improve the condition of the road; however, the visual panorama remains the same, and the dozens of people who live in the rural communities of La Peña #2, El Bonito, and Santa Rita have to face the sentence of traveling on roads with extremely dangerous conditions every single day.