Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento is the first woman to serve as President of Honduras, elected on November 28, 2021, as the most voted presidential candidate and with the highest voter turnout in the country’s history.
Born in Tegucigalpa on September 30, 1959, and the wife of former President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Xiomara Castro is a national and regional political leader. From the outset, she was an active member of the Rotary Club of Catacamas and the founder of the Day Care Center for Children in Catacamas, created to support single-parent households headed by women. Between 2006 and 2009, as First Lady, she led the National Board of Social Welfare from her office, spearheading pioneering efforts such as programs for communities living in extreme poverty and dignified healthcare services for people living with HIV.
Following the 2009 coup d’état carried out by the national economic and military elites, Xiomara Castro led the popular resistance demanding a return to democratic and constitutional order. She founded the National Front of Popular Resistance and the Liberty and Refoundation Party. She was a presidential candidate in 2013 and again in 2017, the year she withdrew her candidacy to form an Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship of the National Party. In 2016, she was elected president of the Women’s Committee of the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America (COPPPAL).
During her administration, she has prioritized social investment and the reduction of economic inequality, with a focus on public infrastructure, access to healthcare, education, energy, environmental protection, security, and rural development. Under her leadership, national poverty was reduced by more than ten percentage points and extreme poverty by more than thirteen points, as a result of an integrated strategy of restoring citizens’ rights and reclaiming public institutions. In 2023, she received international recognition for her school feeding program, one of the most extensive in Latin America.
In 2023, President Xiomara Castro assumed the Pro Tempore Presidency of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations; in 2024, the Pro Tempore Presidency of the Central American Integration System (SICA); and later that same year, the Pro Tempore Presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Under her international leadership, Honduras has consolidated itself as a central actor in regional and global debates on the self-determination of peoples, respect for sovereignty, regional integration, environmental protection, and social justice for the peoples of Latin America and the Global South.