Hernández’s “mano Dura”: an Enduring Barrier to Reform

Four months after being sworn in as president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández has carried out some security-oriented initiatives to battle his country’s rising murder rate. [1] Apart from creating the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), Hernández’s security forces succeeded in capturing a drug kingpin in March, and also have successfully managed to pressure cell phone companies into creating a perimeter around prisons that cuts off satellite reception. Since the implementation of these policies, about one thousand new soldiers have been integrated into the PMOP, the captured drug lord, Carlos Arnoldo Lobo, has been extradited to the U.S., and extortions have gone down 75 percent. [2] [3] [4]