 After decades of U.S. intervention in Latin America, we're talking about resource exploitation, U.S.-backed coups, neoliberal experimentation. People in Latin America have had enough, and country by country, they are standing up and they are taking back their power, and that is really encouraging to see. Love them or hate them, Venezuela was one of the few countries in Latin America to successfully thwart a U.S. coup attempt, at least up until this point. And now we see change happening in Chile, in Bolivia. It's possibly going to happen in Brazil, depending on the outcome of the next presidential election, and it looks poised to happen in Honduras as well. Because guess what? The socialist seems poised to win the presidential election. And as Kenny Stansel of Common Dreams explains, leftist presidential candidate Zayamara Castro took a decisive lead in Honduras' election on Sunday, setting her up to defeat the right-wing incumbent party's candidate, though progressive observers stressed they need to remain vigilant as ballots continue to be counted and reactionary forces ramp up misinformation following an apparently unsuccessful attempt to suppress voting. A victory by Castro would represent a repudiation of U.S. intervention in Central America. Honduras' potential next president is the wife of Manuel Zelaya, the president's former progressive president who was deposed in a Washington-backed coup in 2009, after which narco-violence surged under the watch of an authoritarian, neoliberal regime installed by the Obama administration and supported by subsequent administrations. If she wins, Castro would be the first Honduran president to be democratically elected on a socialist platform, as well as the first woman to lead the country. With just over half of ballots processed, the leader party's Castro had garnered 53.6 percent of the vote, compared with 34 percent for Najri Asfura, the candidate from the right-wing national party, which has ruled the country for the past dozen years. Castro hopes to restore diplomatic relations with China, legalize abortion and same-sex marriage and defend the interests of the poor and working class, according to Telesore. Now, this is really encouraging news, but there is a little bit of a caveat. You should remain cautiously optimistic, because this is a very, very new democracy. It's a very fragile democracy, and even before a single vote was counted, the incumbent party declared victory. So they kind of pulled Donald Trump, albeit to a much more extreme level. On top of that, there's allegations of vote buying by the far right, and there's concerns that the party won't actually relinquish power peacefully in the event this socialist party beats them. So it's a little bit up in the air. This is still encouraging, because she won, or is poised to win. You may very well know the results by the time you see this video. She won because there was massive turnout. People in Honduras showed up in droves to make their voices heard, to reject US imperialism and reject the far right policies that have been pushed upon them over decades. I mean, I talked about neoliberal experimentation. This is the case in many Latin American countries, but what we try to do is we try out certain policies in Latin America. And if they work there, then we try them in the United States. One issue is the privatization of Social Security in Chile. Now they're undoing that, or they're trying to undo that with a new government and rewriting their constitution. But the problem is if you have all of these external forces constantly influencing the direction of your country, it's really hard to push back against that, because the deck is stacked against you. And it just really goes to show you that there is power in people. And if enough people come out, if enough people show up and care, that they can actually make a difference. So, you know, at the time that I'm recording this, the election has not been called. But I wouldn't be surprised if in a day or so, or certainly by the time you watch this, it is called for the leftist party. And I'm most likely butchering her name, Xiomaro Castro, I apologize in advance. But if there's anyone from Honduras in my audience who's watching this, please chime in in the comments down below, because we'd love to hear from you. What does this mean going forward? Are you optimistic? Do you think that the Socialist Party will actually be able to implement changes given, you know, the strength, the relative strength, I should say, of the far away party? So it's a little bit of hope, and whenever there's hope, whenever there's a reason to be optimistic, I want to share that with you. That being said, it's going to be a tough road ahead, because again, this is a brand new democracy and it's incredibly fragile. But if Xiomara can be successful if she takes power and she does implement successful socialist reforms, then that could help to consolidate democracy itself that can restore trust or create trust in these newly democratic institutions. And that's really important. So yeah, great news.