Xiomara Castro
Xiomara Castro has been president of Honduras since January 2022, the first woman in the office. She is the wife of the Zelaya the army put on a plane in 2009, and the leader of the party, Libre, that was founded in the resistance to the coup and that won the election of November 2021 with fifty-one per cent, the largest vote the country had cast, against the National Party of Hernández, twelve years after the coup and on its account. She had led the marches of 2009 while her husband was in the Brazilian embassy. She had stood in 2013 and lost to Hernández in an election Libre did not accept. She had stood aside in 2017 for the alliance that Hernández's count defeated. She won in 2021 by taking the Liberal vice-presidential candidate onto her ticket. The presidency began with the extradition of Hernández, whom she handed to the Americans in April 2022 with a satisfaction the country shared. There was the repeal of the ZEDE charter cities law the same month, which the investors have taken to arbitration for eleven billion dollars. There were the electricity subsidy for the poor, and the state of exception against the gangs declared in December 2022, on the Salvadoran model and renewed since. There was the UN anti-corruption commission she promised and has not, at the UN's price, accepted. There was the switch of recognition from Taiwan to Peking in March 2023, which took the shrimp exports with it. There is her husband, who has no office and sits in the cabinet meetings, and whose nephew is the defence minister. That is how Honduras is governed. The Libre congressmen split from the Liberals within a month of taking office over the presidency of Congress. She has governed since without a majority and with the army's commanders, appointed by her, on her side. The opposition says that is the other thing the coup taught. She was born in Tegucigalpa, and studied business administration. She married Zelaya at seventeen and was first lady from 2006 to 2009, when she became the movement's face because her husband could not be. The election of November 2025 to replace her was won by the National Party. The presidency she leaves in January 2026 is one the country's courts, Congress and army have all been asked, at one point or another, to keep her in.
- Lived: 1959 CE – ?
- Nationality: Honduran
- Roles: president, politician
