In 2018, the president’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former member of the Honduran Parliament, was arrested in the United States for his association with the Cartel de Sinaloa, the Mexican drug cartel. This entity valued his services so much that they named a particular strain of cocaine after him, stamping the bags as “TH.” Tony Hernández was convicted on four charges in 2019, sentenced to 30 years in prison, and has been in U.S. federal prison ever since.

President Hernández denied any association with the cartel, but the evidence pointed to the contrary. As reported in The Economist, in a New York City trial, one accused drug trafficker alleged that Hernández took bribes for “helping cocaine reach the United States.” Another witness testified that the president had taken two bribes in 2013, before being elected; a former cartel leader testified that the president had been paid $250,000 to protect him from being arrested.

Given Hernández’s history in Honduras, the repeated claims of U.S. government officials that they simply didn’t know of his crimes ring hollow.

Honduras became a narco-state, in part, because U.S. policymakers looked the other way as it did so. They embraced Hernández because he was ideologically more palatable and subservient to Washington’s wishes compared with his rival, Zelaya. But as the trial verdict in Manhattan makes clear, it was a decision with disastrous consequences.

As one State Department official put it, “Today’s verdict makes all of us who collaborated with (Hernández) look either complicit or gullible.”

The latter may be the more charitable assessment. But the truth is more uncomfortable.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

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I am a member of the Party for Democracy in Chile and and affiliated with the Foro de Political Exterior, a Chilean foreign policy think tank.