Randa Abdel-Fattah

Would this threaten Honduran sovereignty?

Still, in 2013, under a cloud of controversy, a law greenlighting charter cities was passed.

But afterwards, the Honduran Congress, led by members of the president's party, ousted four members of the Honduran Supreme Court.

On top of this, there was a lack of transparency, which didn't sit well with Paul Romer, that economist whose ideas had kick-started all of this.

The tech billionaire backers funding Prospera and the constitutional crisis were pushing the project in a direction he wasn't comfortable with, becoming what he called a libertarian fantasy.

Early signs of the network state movement.

But the project continued without him.

In 2017, Honduras Prospera Inc.

purchased its first plot of land, 58 acres that bordered a small local fishing village whose residents say they were not properly consulted.

Over the years, Prospera has come to own more than 1,000 acres.

Some local landowners protested.

Not all residents have formal property titles, and they fear their land claims are being undermined.

Amid that, construction got underway on new housing and research facilities, employing some locals.

Prospera has its own labor systems, which aren't clearly spelled out.

When one worker died in an accident on the job, Prospera's management said the family was compensated, quote, appropriately, but details were not made public.

And that's by design.

The point of a place like Prospera is that there isn't really a public to answer to.

In other words, it's not pure exit in the classic libertarian mold.

It's using the system's power to exit while shaping the system for others.

Critics of Prospera say it echoes colonial dynamics familiar to Roatan.