Ricardo Maduro

Ricardo Rodolfo Maduro Joest (Panama, Panama, April 20, 1946) is a Honduran politician and businessman with a Panamanian father and a Honduran mother. He was the 6th constitutional president of the Republic of Honduras since the 1982 constitution, from January 27, 2002 to January 27, 2006.

During his government, he combated youth gang violence with dubious results and achieved visible successes in stabilizing the economy and reducing foreign debt, but he left intact the problem of enormous poverty. He joined Honduras in CAFTA and dispatched troops to Iraq.

Biography

Studies and training as

Maduro was born in Panama, where his father is from and maintained professional activity. His family settled permanently in Tegucigalpa at the end of the forties, where Ricardo Maduro completed his primary studies. Later he was sent to Pennsylvania, United States, where he attended high school. He continued his stay until he obtained his BA in Economics at Stanford University in 1969, to which he added a postgraduate qualification in Industrial Engineering. So many years of training in the United States allowed him to learn the English language very well.

Upon his return to Honduras, the young Ricardo Maduro embarked on a prosperous business career in the private sector. He served as general manager of the Honduran delegation of the Xerox photocopying company. He became executive director of Inversiones la Paz in 1976, from where he founded, organized and promoted several companies individually and collectively, such as Aquacultivos de Honduras, Granjas Marinas San Bernardo, Jestereo, Comercial Ultramotor, Automundo, Fuji de Honduras, Banco de la Production, Supermercados Todos, Centro Comercial Multiplazas and the Hotel Camino Real Intercontinental. Later he started his own businesses until he formed a family emporium in the early eighties that at the time of his presidential candidacy included the importation of consumer equipment, the trade in the food and automotive sectors, and shrimp aquaculture, without neglecting investments in tourism and real estate projects.

Early political career

Ricardo Maduro Joest began his political career around 1984, as a founding member of the Unity and Change Movement within the Honduran National Party (PNH), which led the candidacy of Rafael Callejas, who lost to the liberal José Azcona Hoyo in the 1985 elections. The businessman returned to direct the presidential campaign of Callejas in 1989, who on this occasion prevailed over Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé and governed from 1990 to 1994.

President Callejas rewarded him for his efficient collaboration by naming him President of the Central Bank of Honduras (BCH) and coordinator of the Economic Cabinet. Defender of the free market and deregulations pleasing to the neoliberal model, Maduro was in charge of designing and then supervising the exchange rate and fiscal measures for the sake of the structural adjustment of the economy that the IMF demanded.

In the 1993 elections, at the request of Callejas, Maduro renounced his aspirations to seek a seat in the National Congress. The president wanted to keep him at the head of the BCH, however, he did not oppose Maduro running for deputy for Honduras in the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), where he won a seat. After the change of government in January 1994, Maduro returned to his business activities, as well as to occupy the position of first member within the Central Committee of the PNH.

Presidential candidacy

On August 4, 1999, Ricardo Maduro announced his decision to run in the PNH primaries the following year. The polls quickly placed him at the head of the presidential candidates, a reflection of a general popularity and respectability that was partly related to the population's condemnation of the personal tragedy he had experienced two years earlier, when his eldest son was murdered product of organized crime,

Registration impediment

Given Maduro's popularity, the ruling Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH) launched a campaign to highlight his Panamanian origin and rejection of everything foreign. After Maduro registered his Arriba Honduras movement, the PLH presented on October 2000, a challenge before the National Elections Tribunal (TNE) requesting the review of the nationality of Maduro and the other candidates for the presidency. Days later, he extended his challenge by questioning the nationality of Maduro's mother. Previously, on October 4, the TNE had excluded a pre-candidate from that movement, for which reason Maduro sent a letter that same day to the Human Rights Commissioner, Leo Valladares Lanza, concerned about the threat of a violation of his right to participate as a candidate, as part of a political maneuver of the government party. The Commissioner's opinion was issued on October 19, when the TSE had not yet decided on the challenge presented. It concluded as main points:

1. That Ricardo Maduro was legitimately Honduran by birth and that he had occupied for the period of 18 years public office that only a Honduran by birth could occupy, without being questioned.
2. That for the previous ones and for having made the challenge at the last moment after 14 months of operation of the Arriba Honduras movement and by the party in power; the challenge seemed a political manoeuvre to prevent Maduro's participation.

And it recommended to the TSE the immediate registration of the nationalist candidate.

In view of the political tension generated by the TSE's reluctance to register Maduro: on November 3, 2000, the Government and the two political parties in confrontation, plus two minority parties, signed a Patriotic Agreement, at the request of President Flores. Through the Agreement, a Commission of 3 jurists was created: one appointed by the PLH, another by the PNH, and another appointed by mutual agreement by the two previous jurists; to determine, among other matters, the nationality of Maduro. On November 22, the Brazilian João Grandino Rodas was chosen as the third jurist. The lawyers began their analysis in Brasilia on November 26. On November 30, and with the refusal of the liberal jurist, the majority of jurists determined that Ricardo Maduro was Honduran by birth and met the requirements to be president of the Republic.

Feeling cornered by the TSE, Maduro temporarily dropped his aspirations and appointed his campaign manager, Luis Cosenza, who became the "interim" while Maduro asserted his right, Cosenza obtained 83 percent of the more than 800,000 votes registered in the primaries.

Maduro assumed the presidency of the Central Committee of the National Party, as his movement won the internal elections, while Cosenza made his candidacy "available" of their leader. On March 12, 2001, the liberal majority in Congress approved a constitutional reading that validated Maduro's aspiration and the following day the TNE accepted Cosenza's resignation and registered Maduro as the winner of the nationalist primaries.

Campaign and elections

During his presidential campaign, Ricardo Maduro Joest stood out in his profile as a competent, bilingual economist with an international perspective, capable of selling Honduras abroad and attracting investment. Based on this, Maduro set out to create a government program based on basic pillars for the development of the country, such as the renegotiation of the foreign debt, job creation and the reform of the education sector, but, fundamentally, he focused his speech on the promise to fight poverty and crime, real scourges of Honduran society.

On November 25, 2001, general elections were held. In the end, the proposals made by the nationalist candidate turned out to be the most attractive to voters. In this way, Maduro prevailed over his main rival, Rafael Pineda Ponce of the ruling Liberal Party with 52.21% of the vote (1,137,734 votes); against 44.26% percent of Pineda Ponce.

Presidency (2002-2006)

On January 27, 2002, Ricardo Maduro Joest was inaugurated as the sixth constitutional president of Honduras since 1982. The inauguration was attended by the presidents of Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize. In his speech, Maduro promised that he would fight "with energy"; poverty and corruption, and that would reduce impunity for public employees.

"I have been chosen to fight primarily against insecurity, murder, kidnapping and robbery... and defeat the offender, who today feels unpunished."

Ricardo Maduro in his inauguration.

Once in the presidency, Maduro immediately set to work on the execution of his main electoral motto, and within a few days there were already spectacular results, contradicting those who had suspected demagogy in his campaign promises.

On February 8, the police seized a formidable arsenal, including rocket launchers, that was hidden by a gang of kidnappers and robbers that operated in coordination with the drug cartels of Mexico and Colombia, and that had their base of operations in Lempira, near the Salvadoran border. The captured head of the organization, the Salvadoran José Benedicto Villanueva Ortiz, was accused of a plan to assassinate Maduro on January 25, taking advantage of his visit to San Pedro Sula to witness the inauguration of the new mayor. attempt on his life, President Ricardo Maduro declared that the evidence presented was not conclusive.

This initial success encouraged the Ministry of Public Security, headed by Óscar Álvarez, to apply itself in the persecution of the maras —violent gangs typical of Central American countries. On August 7, 2003, the National Congress of Honduras, led by the National Party, approved a reform to the Criminal Code to punish gang members with up to 12 years in prison, it is supposed to reduce the actions of gang members tending to physically assault, damage property, threaten or extort people, or commit any other act constituting a crime. Gang members who are not leaders were penalized with a penalty "reduced by one third" compared to the punishment that those who lead the gangs would receive.

Taking the tattoos used by the gang members as a reference to distinguish their condition, the Police launched a vast raid that, however, produced two pernicious effects. On the one hand, the massive arrests of gang members multiplied the prison population and increased the risk of riots and confrontations between inmates from rival gangs, such as the one that devastated the El Porvenir Penal Farm, near La Ceiba, in April 2003, where 70 inmates died. of the shots or the flames in circumstances that were not fully clarified.

On the other hand, the gangs themselves challenged the Maduro government with acts of savagery, such as the indiscriminate murder of passengers on urban transport buses, taken by gunmen commandos who fired at the occupants at point-blank range. The worst of these atrocities, which left 28 bodies, took place in San Pedro Sula on December 23, 2004.

President Maduro condemned these actions as acts of barbarism and cowardice that constituted an attack against all Hondurans and promised the punishment of those responsible. The National Police accused the Mara Salvatrucha of multiple crimes and, indeed, the confessions of people arrested and brought to justice confirmed this.

The San Pedro Sula massacre led to a heated political debate on the opportunity and need to further toughen the Penal Code, to punish gang leaders with sentences of up to 30 years in prison and even restore the death penalty —repealed in 1946— for those convicted of extremely serious crimes.

Acknowledgments

• Businessman of the Year in 1983, by the Honduran-American Chamber of Commerce (HAMCHAM), for its innovative career.
• Man of the Year, by newspaper El Heraldo in 1991.
• Boris Goldstein Award as the most outstanding entrepreneur in 1997, by the Associate Managers of Honduras (GEMAH).

Family and private life

His parents are Osmond Levy Maduro Cardoze, a Jew and member of a prominent family of Panamanian businessmen and politicians whose ancestors were Dutch Jews who emigrated to the American continent, and María Cristina Joest Midence, a Honduran national, although a native of Guatemala.

He was married for 25 years to the Salvadoran Miriam Andreu, whom he divorced in 1996. With her he had 4 children: Carolina, Cecilia, Lorena and Ricardo Ernesto. The latter was a victim of organized crime, being assassinated at the age of 25 in an attempted kidnapping in San Pedro Sula on April 23, 1997. As a result of this incident, the National Congress approved the modification of the Constitution to introduce the life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for extremely serious crimes. Maduro currently has four grandchildren.

In the last third of 2001, while he was running the presidential campaign, he met the Spanish Aguas Ocaña, who was working as chancellor of the Spanish embassy in Tegucigalpa. He married her on October 10, 2002 in an intimate ceremony to which the press did not have access. Their divorce process began in January 2006, for which reason Ocaña did not accompany Maduro to the transfer of presidential command on the 27th. of that month, and the next day he was back in Spain with the three children that the couple had adopted.

Maduro remarried on December 5, 2009, with the Honduran Melissa Callejas Cantero, after almost three years of dating, in a ceremony that the press did not have access to. Callejas is the founder of the Casa de Oro jewelry store and has a daughter from a previous marriage named Giulia.