Jacob Silverman

Mangrove trees line tons of the coastline.

You have pretty beaches on either side.

Google was started within a garage within our lifetime.

Facebook was started from a dorm room within our lifetime.

There was a very long back and forth with the Prospera people about coming in as a journalist.

This is around 2008, 2009.

Honduras had just undergone a coup.

The Honduran government learned about this man and his ideas, and they got interested in what he was proposing.

This goes back all the way to right after the First World War when the idea of banana republics were starting to pop up in the region.

It creates a particularly core irony when we think about Prospera as a libertarian hope, being able to be created because of this strongman approach.

For years, the island of Roatan was actually kind of a disputed territory between colonial powers, including the Spanish and the British.

And when I speak to them about Prospera, they tend to describe it as a learning experience for this movement, not so much the model that they want to replicate.