Category: Chapter 9

Olancho: three thousand dead in a decade of violence without end

Chapter 9 / A Culture of impunity

For: Proceso Digital Especial (proceso.hn)

28th February 2025

This website has already included numerous articles and reports about illegal logging within the Honduran department of Olancho and the violence that this activity caused for many people there, but especially for the Movimiento Ambiental de Olancho (MAO, Olancho Environmental Movement) and its leader Padre Andrés Tamayo. In February this year, the Honduran online newssheet Proceso Digital, spurred by the most recent and distressing homicide figures for the department of Olancho, produced an alarming summary of violence within the department over the previous ten years.

We are grateful to Jorja Oliver for her translation of the report. The original Spanish version is also included in the website.

 

Tegucigalpa- Things aren’t going well for the Olanchanos; the maelstrom of violence marked the biggest department of Honduras since the first day of 2025, with the first femicide of the year; an instance that occurred in Catacamas, the bastion of the presidential family, the Zelaya Castro:

– In 2024, there wasn’t a single Olanchano municipality that didn’t register any homicides.

– The official figures register 965 violent deaths in the Olancho department in the 3 years and 54 days of the administration of President Xiomara Castro.

– The mayor of Catacamas: “we are already used to picking up bodies, taking them to the morgue and delivering them to their families”.

Angie Nicolle Rivera Galeano, a young mother of barely 20 years old, lost her life at the hands of the person whom she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with, her partner. The man attacked her during the night close to the municipal market and fled the scene of the crime with her baby.

The young woman became the first violent death to be registered in Olancho in 2025, generating repudiation from the Catacamenses. But this is not the only municipality where blood has been spilt by the Olanchanos. By the 23rd of February, there were 37 registered homicides in Olancho, only surpassed by the 42 registered in the department of Francisco Morazán, although the population of the latter is bigger.

These figures remain lower than those registered in 2024, when on the same date, according to the public registers of the national police published through the Police Online Statistical System (SEPOL), 38 people died of violent causes, just one more than this year.

In 2025, four of the twenty most violent municipalities in the country are in Olancho: Catacamas, 14 deaths, the third most violent municipality in Honduras, superseded by Tegucigalpa DC with 36, and San Pedro Sula with 18, according to data from SEPOL. The Olancho departmental capital, Juticalpa, is in ninth place, with 7 deaths this year; number 15 is occupied by the municipality of Dulce Nombre De Culmi, with 5 deaths: Guata, in north Olancho, where this year has been the scene of 4 deaths, is in 18th place. The violence in the municipality of Catacamas has motivated the Argentine newspaper INFOBAE to dedicate a report titled “what’s going on in Catacamas? The new kilometre zero for narcotics trafficking and death in Honduras.”

 

A decade of blood

In 2024, Olancho reported 264 violent deaths, the most violent municipality being Catacamas, with 74 homicides, followed by Juticalpa with 64 deaths, Patuca 19. Culmí 17 and San Esteban 12.

Last year, there wasn’t a single Olanchano municipality that didn’t register any homicides, according to Sepol.

In 2013, the figures showed 54 homicides. Ten years ago in 2015, there were 39. In the 3 years and 54 days (to 23rd February 2025) of the LIBRE party’s administration, the cradle of the presidential couple, things aren’t going well for the Olanchanos, who have cried for the 965 dead.

2022, the first year of Xiomara Castro’s governance was the deadliest in Olancho in the last 11 years and 54 days – SEPOL registered 355 violent deaths that year. In comparison to the first 3 years and 54 days of the administration of the first period of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the Olanchanos cried for 644 loved ones, that is to say 321 people less than the administration of Xiomara Castro, in the same period.

In the meantime, in the second term of Hernandez, the number of violent deaths in the first three years and 2 months, was 860. When comparing the three terms, the footprint of blood that this violence has left in Olancho is 2,469 people.

If this sum is from 2014 to the 23rd February, the date in which SEPOL provided up-to-date data, the trail of violent deaths in Olancho rounds up to 3 thousand, specifically 2,946. In recounting this blood it is important to remember that Olancho is the cradle of three of the last four former presidents of Honduras, if we take into account that the current, Xiomara Castro and former president Porffirio Lobo, have resided the larger part of their lives in the vast department. and Manuel Zelaya was born there.

 

Violent February

The chain of attacks that occurred on the 14th and 15th of February, that left at least seven dead and at least a dozen throughout Honduras, brought to the mind of the Catacamenses the time of the peak of drug trafficking, in 2007 and 2013, when the planes circulated daily, the massacres had become daily events and the crossfire didn’t respect time or place.

On the night of the 14th of February, a gunman entered a bar and started shooting, killing 4 people n there. This modus operandi was repeated in three other canteens and a barbers, all in less than 24 hours.

After the incident on the Day of Love and Friendship, the mayor Marco Ramiro Lobo said that in Catacamas “we are already accustomed to just picking up bodies, taking them to the morgue and delivering them to their families.” The police deployment continues in the city after the recent incidents, where five attacks occurring in less than 24 hours scared the population; locking them in their houses and leaving the streets totally deserted.

“On that weekend going out frightened everyone, including to the corner shop, these shootings happened in plain sight, close to the church, to the shopping centre, just like confrontations happened in a full market or petrol stations some 15 or 20 years ago,” remembered an Olanchan woman.

The woman remembered that in 2009 a plane landed in a football field in San Pedro de Catacamas, a rural area around 15 kilometres from El Carbon, where the presidential family has their residence

.

Generalised violence in the department

The liberal deputy Samuel García García said that the violence that shakes the municipality of Catacamas also exists in the whole area of Olancho and pointed out that it is linked to the movement of drugs. “There’s lots of crime; people turn up dead in any place, on paths, on roads, machine-gunned in a bullet-riddled car. What is going on is lamentable, the violence is growing more each day in the department”, he said, stressing that the police effort has remained limited. García said that in Olancho there had never been a wave of crime this strong in less than 24 hours, and “really the origin of all these situations, we all know that Olancho has become a place for drug trafficking, as well as organised crime”.

 

Deaths yes, drug decommissioning no 

Despite the fact that, as deputy García points out, “whatever it says in the vox populi, what we are hearing are territorial fights, associated with drugs.” According to Proceso Digital in 2024, a record year for the decommissioning of drugs, no strong operations happened in Olancho.

The minister of security, Gustavo Sánchez, loyal defender of the state of exception which he judges to have led to the decommissioning of some 15 thousand firearms and the confiscation of more than 26 tonnes of cocaine. The official data confirms that 2024 was a record year for the confiscation of cocaine, such that even in the times when the most prolific drug cartels flourished, no more than 25 tonnes of cocaine had ever been confiscated.

In 2012, the country became the most violent in the world with a rate of 86 homicides per every 100 thousand inhabitants. According to the National Observatory of Violence from January to December of 2012, only the department of Olancho exceeded this rate, reaching a rate of 92.5 pccmh[i] with 491 homicides.

Although the figures of current homicides differ from those registered in the strongest time of drug trafficking in the department that inspired the works of the poet Froylán Turcios, with 37 deaths this year, more than 950 in what is the administration of Xiomara Castro and close to three thousand in the last decade, the truth is that things aren’t going well for the Olanchanos.

[i]  Pccmh – personas por cada cien mil habitantes; persons for every 100,000 inhabitants.

Impunidad y conflictividad llevan al OACNUDH a instalar oficina de terreno en el atlántico de Honduras

Chapter 9 / A Culture of impunity

En las adiciones de este mes al sitio web https://theviolenceofdevelopment.com incluimos el siguiente informe de Proceso Digital (https://proceso.hn) sobre la situación en la costa atlántica de Honduras. También incluimos una traducción en inglés (por Jill Powis – agradecimientos). Estamos agradecido a Proceso Digital por su obra y su información.

Por: Especiales Proceso Digital

Impunidad y conflictividad llevan al OACNUDH a instalar oficina de terreno en el atlántico de Honduras

26 de mayo de 2025 

Palabras claves: Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (OACNUDH); derechos humanos; Costa Atlántica de Honduras; impunidad; defensores del territorio y del ambiente; Bajo Aguán; Garífuna.

 

Tegucigalpa (Especial Proceso Digital) – El anuncio de la OACNUDH no es para celebrar, es una advertencia sobre los niveles de conflictividad social y de impunidad que imperan en la región atlántica de Honduras, que amerita la instalación de una oficina de terreno para conocer y registrar in situ la situación de los derechos humanos. Es la segunda oficina de esa naturaleza que se abre en América Latina, después de Colombia.

– En septiembre de 2024 se registró el asesinato del ambientalista y líder religioso Juan López, quien incluso antes de su muerte responsabilizó a políticos oficialistas si le pasaba algo.

“Hoy no es un día cualquiera; con la apertura de esta oficina en La Ceiba, Honduras se convierte en el segundo país del continente, después de Colombia, en contar con una presencia de terreno del Alto Comisionado”, expresó Bardia Jebeli, representante Adjunto y Oficial a Cargo de OACNUDH en Honduras, el 16 de mayo cuando hizo oficial la instalación de esa dependencia, en una zona donde la conflictividad social por diversos motivos se encuentra a flor de piel.

La violencia e inseguridad sumada a las demandas por acceso a la tierra son algunos de los factores que hacen de esa zona del atlántico hondureño una de las más inseguras del país, pues afloran en paralelo bandas del crimen organizado, grupos paramilitares y otras redes de criminalidad que mantienen en zozobra a la población en vista que la autoridad y la institucionalidad estatal parecen haber sido rebasadas por la presencia de este tipo de actores.

[LEER] El Aguán, una violencia diferenciada con muchas aristas

La Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (OACNUDH) ha venido registrando en sus informes todos estos focos de conflictividad y violencia, alertando al gobierno y al Estado de Honduras sobre la gravedad de lo que acontece en esa zona, al punto que se está convirtiendo también en una de las principales regiones del país caracterizada por el desplazamiento forzoso de personas y familias.

Previo a la instalación de su oficina de terreno, como le denomina el OACNUDH, funcionarios de esta dependencia internacional socializaron la iniciativa con diversos sectores locales de la zona para reafirmar el compromiso del Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas de acompañar al Estado de Honduras en el cumplimiento de sus compromisos y obligaciones internacionales relacionadas con el respeto de los derechos humanos.

Después de una pausa prolongada, la OACNUDH en Honduras ha salido a la luz pública con planteamientos puntuales relacionados con el respeto a los derechos humanos en materia de defensa de la vida de los activistas humanitarios, la defensa de la libertad de expresión, la necesidad de reforzar el Mecanismo de Protección, que a 10 años de su creación, se mantiene desmantelado; la abolición del estado de excepción por sus abusos y violaciones humanitarias, acompañamiento a las comunidades garífunas, y demanda por el cese de la impunidad en el crimen del ambientalista y defensor de los territorios, Juan López, en la región de Tocoa.

[LEER] Asesinan a líder ambientalista y regidor de Tocoa, Colón, Juan López

Las funciones de una Oficina en Terreno

Ahora anuncia la instalación de una oficina in situ en la ciudad de La Ceiba para un mejor registro y acompañamiento de los casos de abuso y violaciones a los derechos humanos. Honduras, según el OACNUDH y otras dependencias de Naciones Unidas y la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), es uno de los  países más mortíferos para los defensores de los derechos humanos, con mayor énfasis a quienes se dedican a defender el medio ambiente y los territorios.

«Las autoridades recibieron con entusiasmo la noticia de la apertura de esta oficina y recalcaron su disposición para trabajar de forma colaborativa ante los desafíos que enfrenta la zona norte. Esperamos que esta colaboración se traduzca en resultados concretos en favor de los derechos humanos», afirmó Bardia Jebeli.

Después de Colombia, un país con una alta conflictividad social tras la firma de los acuerdos de paz, Honduras es el segundo país en América Latina que abre una oficina regional para tomar el pulso a los derechos humanos.

La labor de estas “oficinas en terreno” se circunscribe a estar más de cerca de las comunidades y de las situaciones de derechos humanos en el territorio. Contribuyen a fortalecer las capacidades locales y nacionales al apoyar a las instituciones estatales, la sociedad civil y otras organizaciones para que puedan promover y proteger los derechos humanos de manera efectiva.

Asimismo, proporciona asistencia técnica y asesoramiento al gobierno en la implementación de políticas y programas de derechos humanos. La oficina en terrenos monitorea la situación de los derechos humanos en la zona y presenta informes al Consejo de Derechos Humanos de la ONU, según señala el OACNUDH en la conceptualización de los alcances de esta oficina regional.

Su función también se centra en trabajar con organizaciones de la sociedad civil, instituciones estatales, organizaciones regionales e internacionales para lograr los propósitos de la OACNUDH, al tiempo que contribuir a promover la justicia transicional, la promoción de la verdad y la reparación a las víctimas, además de trabajar en la prevención y protección de los defensores de derechos humanos contra las amenazas y ataques que son objeto.

En Honduras, la región del atlántico es de acuerdo con las organizaciones de derechos humanos, una de las más conflictivas, marcada por la violencia por ser estratégica en las conexiones para las operaciones del crimen organizado, en especial el narcotráfico, así como por poseer vastas extensiones de tierras de vocación agrícola, ganadera y minera, así como de riquezas culturales ancestrales. El acceso a la tierra es uno de los problemas más visibles, que cada vez se torna más complejo ante la presencia de actores paralelos de poder.

Una de esas zonas del atlántico hondureño donde se ha concentrado mucha conflictividad y violencia es la región que comprende el Bajo Aguán, muchos campesinos han muerto y han sido asesinados por este motivo, la impunidad es el denominador común de estos casos y los distintos gobiernos no han podido encontrar soluciones al conflicto, pese a firmar sendos acuerdos. La justicia no termina de llegar a esa zona del agro.

Iguales demandas reclaman los grupos garífunas y de los pueblos originarios ante la falta de cumplimiento a las sentencias internacionales emitidas por la Corte Interamericana de Justicia (Corte-IDH) por parte del Estado de Honduras.

[LEER] Misquitos y garífunas, los indígenas con mayor desplazamiento forzado en Honduras

Primeros desafíos por enfrentar

De ahí que la oficina en terreno del OACNUDH, en cuanto a la zona del Bajo Aguán, deberá dar seguimiento a un convenio de 15 puntos suscrito entre el gobierno de la presidenta Xiomara Castro y los sectores organizados del Aguán en 2022, donde algunos de los compromisos suscritos se relacionan con la presencia en las zonas de conflicto del Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, la Secretaría de la Presidencia, la Corte Suprema de Justicia, la Secretaría de Derechos Humanos y la Fiscalía de Derechos Humanos con mandato suficiente para: investigar las violaciones a los derechos humanos, proponer medidas de reparación a las víctimas, determinar las causas que dieron origen a las violaciones en la región del Aguán en los últimos 30 años.

También, la instalación de un mecanismo de investigación, seguimiento y reparación de violaciones a derechos humanos de las víctimas del conflicto agrario del Bajó Aguán. El mecanismo tendrá una estructura acordada entre las partes conformes de la comisión tripartita. Asimismo, la instalación de un mecanismo de investigación, seguimiento y reparación de violaciones a derechos humanos de las víctimas del conflicto agrario del Bajó Aguán.

Se encuentra también el compromiso de Investigar el accionar de las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado y empresas de seguridad privada, sus vínculos con estructuras irregulares y su papel en actos de violencia contra campesinos en el Bajo Aguán y, en caso de comprobar su participación en actos delictivos, trasladar ante las instancias judiciales las respectivas denuncias y demandas derivadas de dicha investigación. A ello se suma asegurar el cumplimiento de las medidas cautelares otorgadas por la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos para los defensores del Bajo Aguán.

Ninguno de estos acuerdos se ha podido cumplir a cabalidad, y la nueva oficina del OACNUDH ya tiene al menos una ruta diseñada de los seguimientos que debe hacer para lograr el cumplimiento de los mismos y contribuir a bajar los niveles de polarización y conflictividad en esa zona.

A inicios del 2025, más de 65 organizaciones que laboran en la zona emitieron un comunicado de emergencia para llamar la atención de lo que ahí estaba sucediendo. Casi seis meses después de ese llamado, el OACNUDH ha anunciado que abre su primera oficina regional de terreno para atender los problemas, registrar las denuncias, dar seguimiento a los acuerdos, generar alertas de advertencia, proteger los derechos humanos.

El inicio de esa oficina regional de terreno, así como la llegada al país hace varios años de la OACNUDH, lejos de ser celebrada por un Estado, es sinónimo de que la situación de los derechos humanos no pasa por su mejor momento, el deterioro se ahonda, la institucionalidad sigue debilitándose, y el Estado es incapaz de atender a sus ciudadanos para dar las garantías mínimas de respeto a sus derechos y libertades en países en un coma democrático como Honduras. (PD)

Impunity and conflict lead OHCHR to set up field office on Honduras’ Caribbean coast

Chapter 9 / A Culture of impunity

The following special report by the Honduran digital newspaper has been translated for The Violence of Development website by Jill Powis who spent a year accompanying Garífuna leaders on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. We are very grateful for her efforts for the website. The original Spanish is also included in the August 2025 additions to the website. We are also grateful to Proceso Digital for their work and information – https://proceso.hn .

By: Especiales Proceso Digital

Impunidad y conflictividad llevan al OACNUDH a instalar oficina de terreno en el atlántico de Honduras

26 May 2025

Key words: Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); human rights; northern Honduras; impunity; environment and land defenders; Bajo Aguán; Garífuna.

Tegucigalpa (Especial Proceso Digital) – The announcement by the OHCHR (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) is no cause for celebration; it is a sad indication of the levels of social conflict and impunity in Honduras’ Atlantic region which have reached such extremes that a field office is needed to investigate and document the human rights situation on the ground. It is the second such office to be opened in Latin America, after Colombia.

September 2024 saw the murder of environmentalist and religious leader Juan López who, before his death, said that if anything happened to him, pro-government politicians would be responsible.

‘Today is not just any day; with the opening of this office in La Ceiba, Honduras becomes only the second country on the continent, after Colombia, to have a field presence of the High Commissioner’, said Bardia Jebeli, Deputy Representative and Officer in Charge of the OHCHR in Honduras, on 16 May, when he officially opened the office in a region where social conflict, for a  variety of reasons, is spiralling out of control.

Violence and lack of security, coupled with land claims, are some of the factors that make this area of the Honduran Atlantic coast one of the most dangerous in the country, with organised crime, paramilitary groups and other criminal networks all active in the region, keeping the population in a state of fear, as state authority and institutions seem to be impotent in the face of these groups.

[LEER] El Aguán, una violencia diferenciada con muchas aristas

The OHCHR has been documenting these flashpoints of conflict and violence in its reports, alerting the government and the Honduran state to the seriousness of the situation in this region, which is on such a scale that it is becoming one of the worst in the country for the forced displacement of people and families.

Before the field office was set up, OHCHR officials raised awareness of the initiative among various local organisations and institutions, reaffirming the UN High Commissioner’s commitment to supporting the Honduran government in meeting its international human rights commitments and obligations.

After a long hiatus, the OHCHR in Honduras has come to the fore with specific proposals on the protection of human rights defenders, the defence of freedom of expression, the need to reform both the Protection Mechanism which is still totally inadequate a full 10 years after its inception, the abolition of the state of emergency due to the human rights violations committed under it, support for Garifuna communities, and a demand for an end to impunity for the murder of Juan López, the  environmental and land defender, in the Tocoa region.

[LEER] Asesinan a líder ambientalista y regidor de Tocoa, Colón, Juan López

The murder of environmentalist Juan López in Bajo Aguán was a crime that shook Honduras in 2024.

 

The role of a Field Office

A field office has been set up in La Ceiba so that human rights abuses and violations can be better documented and followed up. Honduras, according to the OHCHR and other UN agencies, as well as the Organisation of American States (OAS), is one of the deadliest countries for human rights defenders, in particular for those who defend the environment and land.

“The authorities enthusiastically welcomed the news that this office was opening and stressed their willingness to work collaboratively on the challenges facing the north of the country. We hope that this collaboration will translate into concrete results for human rights,” said Bardia Jebeli.

Honduras is only the second country in Latin America to host a regional office to monitor human rights after Colombia, a country with a high level of social conflict since the signing of the Peace Accords.

The role of field offices is to be closer to communities and human rights situations on the ground. They contribute to strengthening local and national capacities by supporting state institutions, civil society and other organisations to promote and protect human rights effectively.

It also provides technical assistance and advice to the government on the implementation of human rights policies and programmes. The field office monitors the human rights situation in the region and reports to the UN Human Rights Council, stated the OHCHR when explaining its scope.

It also focuses on working with civil society organisations, state institutions, regional and international organisations to achieve the OHCHR’s aims, while contributing to the promotion of transitional justice and of truth and reparation for victims, as well as working on the protection of human rights defenders, seeking to prevent the threats and attacks against them.

The Atlantic region is, according to human rights organisations, one of the most conflict-ridden in Honduras, marked by violence due to its strategic connections with organised crime operations, especially drug trafficking, as well as its vast tracts of agricultural, livestock and mining land, along with ancestral cultural riches. Access to land is one of the most obvious problems, and it is becoming increasingly complex due to the presence of “parallel power groups” (illegal groups presenting a direct challenge to the power of the state).

One region of the Honduran Atlantic which is a flashpoint for conflict and violence is the Bajo Aguán, where many campesinos have been murdered due to land disputes.  Impunity is the common denominator in these cases and governments have failed to find solutions to the conflict, despite signing agreements. Justice has yet to reach this agricultural region.

Similarly, Garífuna and indigenous peoples’ groups are protesting in view of the Honduran state’s failure to comply with international judgments issued by the Inter-American Court of Justice regarding the protection of their territories.

[LEER] Misquitos y garífunas, los indígenas con mayor desplazamiento forzado en Honduras

The OHCHR field office should monitor implementation of the 15-point agreement between President Xiomara Castro’s government and organisations in the Bajo Aguán, signed in 2022.  The commitments in the agreement include the presence, in the areas subject to land disputes, of the National Human Rights Commissioner, the Secretariat of the Presidency, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Human Rights Secretariat and the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office.  These have a mandate to investigate human rights violations, propose reparations for victims, and determine the factors that gave rise to the human rights violations and abuses in the Bajo Aguán region over the last 30 years.

The agreement also provides for a mechanism to be established to investigate, follow-up and provide reparations for the violation of the human rights of the victims of the land conflict in Bajo Aguán. The mechanism’s structure would be agreed by the members of the tripartite commission.

There is also the commitment to investigate the actions of the state security forces and private security companies, their links to illegal groups and their role in acts of violence against campesinos in Bajo Aguán.  If their participation in criminal acts were proven, the lawsuits arising from these investigations would be brought before the courts. In addition, compliance with the precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for the human rights defenders of Bajo Aguán must be ensured.

 

Bajo Aguán is a centre of conflict due to multiple factors that converge there.

None of these commitments has been fully met, but this means that at least the new OHCHR office already has a route mapped out for monitoring compliance with them and for helping to reduce polarisation and conflict in the area.

In early 2025, over 65 organisations working in the area issued an urgent statement to draw attention to the situation there. Almost six months later, the OHCHR has announced that it is opening its first regional field office in Honduras to address the issues, receive reports of human rights violations, monitor implementation of the commitments under the Agreement, issue early warning alerts and protect human rights. 

The opening of this regional field office as well as the arrival of the OHCHR in the country several years ago, far from being a cause of celebration for a state, is a stark indication that the human rights situation is not at its best and is deteriorating, state institutions are becoming increasingly fragile, and the state is incapable of providing its citizens with the minimum guarantees for the respect of their rights and freedoms in countries such as Honduras which are in a democratic coma. 

 

Structural violence underpins land disputes in Guatemala

Chapter 9 / Emergency in Guatemala

We are grateful to the Latin America Bureau of London for their permission to include the following article by Leonie Malin Höher in our monthly additions to The Violence of Development website.

By Leonie Malin Höher

May 6, 2025, Latin America Bureau

In the latest of ongoing violent attacks against the rural community of Lajeb Kej, private security forces destroy the resident families’ homes and force them off their land located in Alta Verapaz, a department in the mountainous northern and central highland regions of Guatemala, infamous for land disputes and forced displacement.

On 22 January 2025, a community of families living near Tucurú, Alta Verapaz, was forcibly displaced from the land they had been inhabiting. Denominated unofficially as Lajeb Kej, this Maya Q’eqchi community has had to vacate their home after years of legal and social struggle to defend their rights to land, housing, and health.

After concerted community efforts to resolve the legal battle regarding the land in question and to halt violent intimidations of the families, private security forces finally decided to destroy the families’ houses, forcing them to flee.

Sandra Calel, coordinator of Ixoq Mayaj, a women’s association focused on supporting young people and Maya women in rural areas, and expert on the Lajeb Kej case, has made a statement referring to the displacement on social media: ‘The families’ crops and houses were destroyed. Supposedly, this was a peaceful displacement. They say it is peaceful, but it is violent. They are destroying the people’s cultural identity, which affects the communities’ human rights’.

Calel collaborates with members of a network of farming communities supported by the umbrella organization Unión Verapacense de Organizaciones Campesinas (UVOC). Before meeting with government officials about land conflict, Calel stated, ‘We know that defending a right means risking your life and losing your territory. That’s why we are here [at the National Palace], looking at how the government can help resolve land issues’.

In her role as a member of UVOC, Calel participates in regular dialogues with the current administration under Bernardo Arévalo to address land conflict in Q’eqchi’ territories, but institutional support for vulnerable rural communities has been difficult to establish under a municipal political structure that regularly prioritizes private companies’ and landowners’ interests over community wellbeing.

Notably, just 5 km from Lajeb Kej, the hydroelectric company Santa Teresa began installing a dam in 2006 to extract resources from the Polochic River. It has been documented that community members have been offered money in exchange for their land under the guise of advancing hydroelectric works.

The ¡No más desalojos en Guatemala! [no more displacement in Guatemala] campaign (a collaboration between Land Rights Now, International Land Coalition de América Latina y el Caribe, Plataforma por la Defensa de la Tierra y el Territorio, and Coalición Nacional por la Tierra Guatemala) represents a collective effort to highlight patterns of displacement and community experiences that are ignored and repressed. The campaign confirms that private motivations to enrich extractive companies continue to put local communities at risk.

The corrupting power of private land ownership 

The case of the Lajeb Kej community’s struggle to defend their right to land, water, and health is not unique to the area. Alta Verapaz, a department located in the mountainous northern and central highland regions of Guatemala, is well-known for land disputes, forced displacement, and socio-economic vulnerability in Indigenous communities.

The territory upon which the modern map of Alta Verapaz was drawn pertains to Indigenous peoples of Maya Q’eqchi’, Achi, and Poqomchi’ heritage. Having inhabited the area and cultivated the land for centuries, these communities persist in the defence of their cultural and communal claims to live safely within the territory.

Q’eqchis, Achis, and Poqomchis have experienced a long history of land dispossession, from initial Spanish colonization of their lands 500 years ago to the local and multinational exploitation of their lands today. At the crux of the matter is conflict between individualistic and communitarian approaches to land.

In the late 19th century, after the Guatemalan Liberal Revolution of 1871, the idea and practices of private property took hold more strongly in the country and greatly changed Mayan communities’ experiences of life and land. Within the Mayan cosmovision, land was never something to be bought, sold, or owned by an individual. According to many Indigenous philosophies and worldviews, land is conceptualized within a broader framework of territory that encompasses much more than the physical characteristics of a piece of land. It includes community-oriented visions of land and territory as material, spiritual, and life-giving; to be taken care of collectively.

Under today’s economic conditions in Guatemala, like in most parts of the globe, individualistic notions of land as private property dominate. According to the International Land Coalition, the long-standing agrarian conflict in the country seriously affects Indigenous and peasant communities, exacerbating violence and inequality in rural areas.

The families of Lajeb Kej, who survived through subsistence agriculture in the small land area they lived on before their forced displacement, were exposed directly to the imposition of private property.

The families of Lajeb Kej have a photocopy of an 1894 land title stating the community as owners of their territory. But this document, which has been passed down from generation to generation, is no longer recognized by the authorities.

The area that the families of Lajeb Kej inhabited was designated by the Registro de Informacion Catastral (RIC) as terreno baldío. In Guatemala, terreno baldío refers to land that does not have an owner. Despite this official designation, the people of Lajeb Kej were not safe from displacement. Throughout several years, a private landowner, armed with private security forces and supported by an institutional narrative painting subsistence farmers and local Indigenous communities as dangerous “usurpers” of private property, laid claim to land that technically pertains to the state.

These private security forces carried out systemic attacks against the community In January, the private imposition upon the terreno baldío culminated in the forced displacement of 186 people.

Long time, no solution

Since 2021, UVOC has been accompanying the Lajeb Kej community, lending support on legal and logistical matters in their fight to recuperate their rights. This comes after multiple attacks – including the destruction of their homes by chainsaw and fire in 2010, the beating of a local leader in 2023 and his son’s ear being cut off by attackers, as well as regular disturbance from drones and gunshots fired into the air.

After many years of advocacy, members of UVOC were hopeful about making progress with land dispute cases when Bernardo Arévalo took office in January of 2024. ‘[We had] so many years of suffering, without being able to express the needs of the communities. We believed that with this new government, there would be an opportunity’, UVOC’s general director Carlos Morales stated in an interview in February 2025.

In a positive political turn, the current administration did not take long after Arévalo’s inauguration to prioritize land issues and to sign the Acuerdo Agrario, committing to direct collaboration with community organizations to advance on conflicts related to land distribution and ownership.

However, the institutional barriers to change have proven to be significant, with over 1,000 land conflicts continuing actively in the country. Guatemalan media outlet Factor 4 has called out how little national and international attention is given to these conflicts, especially to the “silent crisis” of forced internal displacement. Often, public rhetoric follows a narrative blaming vulnerable populations for their circumstances, describing community members as “invaders” and “property usurpers”.

This narrative serves to protect private interests over collective welfare. In the case of Lajeb Kej, it is important to remember the link between private land ownership and extractive industries, such as hydroelectricity.

For the members of UVOC, the current administration has provided a window of opportunity to advance on solutions Q’eqchi’ community leaders have been advocating for since the early 2000s. For example, a robust government mechanism of attention to crisis, a stop to forced displacement, the provision of alternative housing in cases of legal displacement, reform of land policy, recognition of community-held and ancestral land rights, to name a few.

The recent displacement of the families of Lajeb Kej is just one piece of a larger puzzle of the structural violence underpinning land disputes in the country. Land disputes that are rooted in decades, if not centuries, of inequalities and unjust land management practices.

However, as the second year of Arévalo’s administration begins and violent displacements continue, it is clear that these solutions are still far from being actualized. The recent displacement of the families of Lajeb Kej is just one piece of a larger puzzle of the structural violence underpinning land disputes in the country. Land disputes that are rooted in decades, if not centuries, of inequalities and unjust land management practices.

UVOC’s Morales verbalizes the communities’ desires to best make progress: ‘we want to make structural changes. People with lots of power have been criminalizing the Indigenous and farming sectors. […] If we can improve the mechanism of attention to crisis, I believe things will get better. Things must change’. What the communities UVOC accompanies require is actually quite simple, even though the historical and political context have made them almost unattainable: peace and land access, to allow for small-scale subsistence farming and rural community development.

As long as socio-political divisions remain stark, whether rural-urban, public-private, or Indigenous-ladino, progress will remain slow. To ensure forced internal displacements finally come to an end, to attend to the varied land crises in Indigenous territories, and to support communities in their rights to land and life, structural change is non-negotiable.

Leonie Malin Höher is a University of St Andrews (International Relations and Sustainable Development) and Oxford (Latin American Studies) graduate who specializes in research, writing, and advocacy around a variety of social justice-focused topics. She is especially interested in adaptation responses to the climate crisis (e.g. migration), social movements led by environmental defenders, state-society interactions regarding the regulation of corporate interests, and female leadership of justice movements.

Header image: composite of author’s photo of the mountains surrounding Lajeb Kej and still from the documentary ‘Lajeb Kej, la resistencia del valle Polochic – Todas Somos Defensoras’.

Edited and Published by: Rebecca Wilson

Republishing: You are free to republish this article on your website, but please follow our guidelines.

This article was originally published by Latin America Bureau here https://lab.org.uk/maya-qeqchi-community-forcibly-displaced-by-the-power-of-private-interests/   Sign up to Latin America Bureau’s newsletter for similar stories.’

Los Horcones, Honduras: Reflections on a Massacre and Its Legacy

Chapter 9 / US Intervention

By  James Phillips, Covert Action Magazine

June 25, 2025

We are grateful to James Phillips for this article which is available for public use since its publication online by Covert Action Magazine. The original (22nd June 2025), is available at: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/06/25/los-horcones-honduras-reflections-on-a-massacre-and-its-legacy/

[Source: cac.unah.edu.hn]

June 25 marked the 50th anniversary of the Los Horcones massacre, a gruesome and desperate event that still haunts Honduran society and is emblematic of major forces that have shaped much of modern global history.

[Source: goodreads.com]

A thorough and well-sourced description of the Los Horcones massacre and its context is provided in Penny Lernoux’s now-classic, Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America [(New York: Doubleday, 1980), 109-114]. Her account is disturbing but worth reading, if only to help us understand the savagery that resides in the plans of those who must dominate and control at all costs, and the events we see today in Honduras and elsewhere. Here, I can only briefly outline what happened.

The massacre occurred in the Lepaguare Valley, in the municipal district of Juticalpa, in the Department of Olancho, on the hacienda “Los Horcones,” There, a group of military officers and landowners (or their paid agents) tortured and murdered 15 people, including 11 peasant farmers, two young women, and two Catholic priests—Ivan Betancur (a Colombian citizen) and Casimir Cypher (a U.S. citizen from Wisconsin).

Casimir Cypher [Source: uscatholic.org]

The priests were singled out for the worst torture and their bodies were mutilated while they were still alive. The peasant farmers were burned to death in a bread oven. The perpetrators threw the bodies in a well on the Los Horcones property and dynamited the well. There was at least one witness hidden in the woods at a distance.

The peasants were leaders and members of the National Peasant Union (Union Nacional de Campesinos, UNC), an organization influenced by the social teachings of the Catholic Church that emphasized social justice, human rights, and a ”preferential option for the poor.” The UNC had organized a “March of Hunger,” to highlight their demands for land that they felt was illegally and unjustly being monopolized by the large ranchers. The large landowners in the region decided to eliminate this threat, and the Honduran military government colluded with them in doing so.

The military blocked the march, but that was only the catalyst for a vicious campaign against the peasants and their Catholic Church supporters. The landowners set a price of $10,000 for the head (literally) of the progressive Catholic Bishop of Juticalpa, Nicholas D’Antonio (a U.S. citizen from New York). They also paid the military commander of the region $2,500 to kill Father Betancourt whom they saw as a supporter and enabler of the peasants. (In current dollars, those sums would be considerably higher.)

It soon became clear that the Honduran military government under General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro was deeply involved. The government responded to the Los Horcones massacre by giving a few military officers jail sentences, but it also raided and destroyed the offices of the UNC, hunted other UNC leaders, and effectively ordered the expulsion from Honduras of all foreign priests.

[Source: honduras2etc.wordpress.com]

General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro [Source: alchetron.com]

Bishop D’Antonio was out of the country during the massacre. Had he been in Honduras he would almost certainly have been killed and beheaded. He could not return to Honduras and was forced to close the diocese.

As Lernoux documents, the campaign against peasant organizations and progressive elements of the Catholic Church had been going on for months before Los Horcones, with arrests, beatings and imprisonment of priests and peasants in different parts of Honduras.

In 2013, Honduran Jesuit priest and human rights leader Ismael Moreno (Padre Melo) wrote that the Los Horcones massacre was probably the starkest example of government repression against the Catholic Church in recent Honduran history, and that it caused Church leaders and many others to move away from their support of popular demands for social justice. But its significance goes beyond even that.

Ismael Moreno (Padre Melo). [Source: nonosolvidamosdehonduras.blogspot.com]

I first visited Honduras in 1974, one year before the Los Horcones massacre. What I saw was a very different scene. One afternoon, the Jesuits with whom I was staying took me to a ranch where a group of peasant farmers was busy preparing a plot of land for cultivation. The ranch belonged to a beef and hamburger fast food corporation in the U.S. The peasants were occupying without permission a small portion of the huge ranch.

Such land occupations (tomas de tierra) were and still are a regular event in Honduras where rural communities desperately need land to plant food crops, while large corporations and landowners hold thousands of acres of unused land. A contingent of Honduran soldiers was loitering in the road beside the plot where the peasants were working. The soldiers did nothing to stop them, but they did prevent the corporation’s security guards from forcibly evicting the peasants.

I was aware that this was a very rare scene in Honduran history. The military government, in a very brief liberal moment under General Oswaldo López Arellano, had passed the Agrarian Reform Law of 1974 that embodied the principle (in theory) that all Hondurans had the right to a piece of land. Peasant groups took that seriously as they occupied unused lands. “We are the agrarian reform,” they sometimes said. The contrast between this and the events of 1975 could not have been more stark.

Much of recent Honduran history has been marked by such contrasts. The government of President Carlos Roberto Reina (1994-98) managed to exercise some civilian control over the military and to sign international agreements for the rights of the country’s Indigenous people, only to have these advances ignored in practice and undone in the following decade.

Carlos Roberto Reina [Source: timetoast.com]

General Oswaldo López Arellano [Source: thetimes.com]

Manuel Zelaya, who became Honduran president in 2006, was the son of the owner of Los Horcones. Given his family background, the Honduran landowning elite and the U.S. government expected President Zalaya to remain faithful to the interests of his landowning social class.

[Source: pencanada.ca]

When he declared a moratorium on large mining projects and began to consult peasant groups about their needs and concerns, the elite regarded him as a class traitor. He was forcibly deposed and sent into exile on June 28, 2009.

There followed 12 years of right-wing repression and corruption, mostly under President Juan Orlando Hernández, one of the organizers of the 2009 coup. Those years were marked by the increasing power of foreign corporations, drug lords and criminal gangs, and the killing, criminalization and displacement of peasant communities and environmental defenders and their organizations. People began to refer to the country as a narco-dictatorship.

Juan Orlando Hernández [Source: prensalibre.com]

The United States was, to say the least, not unhappy about the 2009 coup, and continued to support Hernández until it became clear that his unpopularity and the rising level of anger among the Honduran population was likely to lose him the 2021 election.

I was in Honduras for that election. Hernández’s National Party operatives tried to bribe peasants by offering them money and other desirable goods if they promised to vote for him. Some later said they accepted the bribe but did not vote for him. Hernández’s hand-picked successor was defeated. (Powerful rulers who underestimate the “simple” rural people are often shocked by the result. Somoza made a similar mistake in Nicaragua in the 1970s.)

Thus, in yet another apparent contrast, Hernández’s party lost to Xiomara Castro, who promised a major reform and an end to corruption. When Hernández lost, the U.S. demanded his extradition to stand trial in New York for drug trafficking. He was convicted, sentenced to 45 years in prison, and remains in a U.S. prison. From staunch ally of the U.S. to convicted criminal, he seems to be yet another “victim” of U.S. imperial expediency.

During these past four years, Xiomara Castro’s government has been a classic example of the difficulties facing reformist efforts in a country largely controlled by a determined and ruthless elite that has the support of the U.S. and powerful U.S. corporate interests. In a previous article (CAM, May 3, 2023), I wrote about the dilemmas facing her government. Beyond these dilemmas, Castro has endured veiled and public warnings from the U.S. Embassy that her reforms might be her undoing.

Xiomara Castro [Source: the-independent.com]

As president, Xiomara Castro and her government have managed to make some meaningful changes, but change is difficult in the face of a deeply entrenched network of repression and corruption. Disillusionment and frustration among Hondurans at the failure of more sweeping change is something the Honduran elite and its Washington allies want to channel to undermine her government. They would prefer to have her term become simply another short period of attempted liberalization rather than the start of an ongoing tide of change in Honduran history.

This 50th anniversary year of Los Horcones also happens to be an election year in Honduras. National and local elections are scheduled for November. It is certain that the United States will, as always, be deeply involved in shaping the outcome. Whoever wins the election in November, significant change is unlikely, or it will be slow and costly in coming unless, perhaps, the United States as the major influence in Honduras supports significant change—something that would require change in the U.S. itself.

In a global context, Los Horcones at 50 years is part of a much larger conflict that has deeply shaped the past century, especially in Latin America and parts of Asia and Africa. Anthropologists, rural sociologists, and political economists have written about it. In the 1970s, Sidney Mintz wrote about what he and others called the proletarianization of peasant communities in the colonial Caribbean.

Sidney Mintz [Source: hub.jhu.edu]

At the same time, Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1970), Ernest Feder (1971) and others were documenting and critiquing the massive displacement of rural communities by corporate extractive industries in Latin America, and the millions of displaced small farmers who roamed the continent looking for work—a cheap labor force and a growing urban population of desperately poor people. More recently, Mexican anthropologist Sergio Quesada-Aldana and others have used the term descampesinizar (to de-peasantize) to refer to the elimination of rural communities and peasants from the land.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen [Source: eluniversal.com]

This elimination takes place in several ways: making people landless, criminalizing their way of life, killing them, undermining their cultural values. Making people landless is accomplished by legal and illegal machinations; by making environmental conditions so bad that communities cannot survive and must move or scatter; or by killing community leaders so as to frighten others. Local elites and foreign corporations enlist the muscle of national governments and their security forces in these thefts.

The global corporate economy uses the land for its own profit while harnessing landless people as a cheap labor pool. Two centuries ago, half the world’s population were rural small farmers, peasants. They were the food suppliers and the foot soldiers (often under duress) of empires.

Today, their numbers are a fraction of what they were. Their land-rooted way of life is considered obsolete in the global commercial economy. Empire today depends on direct control of land and resources and a large, landless and cheap labor pool.

Now and in the near future, even this labor force of recycled peasants is quite likely to become a victim of mechanization and advanced technology, making them entirely superfluous in the plans of global capital—not needed as workers and too poor to be consumers. We already see the result of that in cities filled with displaced peasant families whose children grow up in poverty, vulnerable to gang recruiters and to other threats to body and soul. The cost, in endless conflict and misery, is incalculable.

The landless poor in Honduras: victims of extractive capitalism and the plunder of Central America by foreign corporations. [Source: archivo.tiempo.hn]

Around 2015, landowners in another part of Honduras offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who would kill the local Catholic pastor, a Jesuit priest from the U.S. whom I knew. His support for the peasant communities’ demands made him an enemy of the landowners as they systematically seized land and murdered local peasant leaders. That was one of many similar situations. [NOTE: These four lines look like there is more space between each line than normal.]

It does not have to be this way. There are examples of thriving peasant communities that maintain their way of life, their identity, and their ability to make important decisions while contributing to the food security and economy of their country. Many studies have shown that peasant farmers and cooperatives are often more productive than large plantations. What is required is a government that believes in the worth of peasant communities and is willing to support them while curbing the worst predations of large landowners and corporations. This shift in a country’s political economy and mentality is seldom easy and never perfect.

Many peasant communities are thriving in Honduras, including especially those run as cooperatives. [Source: kairosphotos.com]

Los Horcones happened and continues to happen in Honduras and in many other places, in ways large and small so that global capital can have the world at its disposal, unencumbered by self-reliant communities of small farmers on the land.

Los Horcones is emblematic of the insatiable forces that drive this situation. That is why we must remember horrific events like Los Horcones today. The courage and sacrifice of the peasants and their supporters reminds us of what is at stake.

[Note: In descriptions of the Los Horcones massacre, the three foreign priests are named and, thanks to Lernoux, we know the names of the two young women—Maria Elena Bolivar who would have become Fr. Betancur’s future sister-in-law, and Ruth Garcia, a Honduran university student. I have not found anywhere the names of the eleven peasant members of UNC. There might be a story in that. If anyone knows their names, please share them. They deserve to be remembered by name. JP]

 

You couldn’t make it up – I – the case of Rodrigo Rosenberg

Chapter 9 / Emergency in Guatemala

This is a slightly fuller text version of Box 9.2 (p. 173) in the book. In particular this website version provides more information about the sources that may be consulted for further information about the subject.

It was a murder that spawned a macabre YouTube sensation and threatened to topple Guatemala’s government. Hitmen shot dead Rodrigo Rosenberg, a lawyer, in Guatemala City soon after he recorded a sombre video blaming his imminent assassination on President Colom.

Rosenberg was thought to be in a suicidal state, following the assassination of his close friends Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, the recent death of his mother and separation from his wife and children. He had been investigating the deaths of the Musas and had been romantically involved with Marjorie Musa.

An investigation by the UN International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) involved 300 officials and analysed more than 100,000 telephone calls and many videos, CCTV recordings, photographs and documents. Rosenberg had contracted his cousins Francisco José Valdés Paíz and José Estuardo Valdés Paíz to hire a hitman to carry out the murder of a supposed extortionist who was blackmailing Rosenberg. The identity of the target was allegedly unknown to the Valdés Paíz brothers, but they are now seen as the masterminds of the murder and are currently avoiding arrest. The machinations involved in the scheme would be of great fascination to dramatists, conspiracy theorists and fantasists, but are far too complex to be detailed here.

Ultimately the hit was carried out by a group led by Willian Gilberto Santos Divas, a former member of the police. Rosenberg was shot three times in the head, once in the neck and once in the back. In September 2009, nine suspects, including members of the police and military, were arrested for the murder.

The CICIG investigation concluded that the lawyer, in a state of depression over personal problems and angry with the government, sacrificed his own life in an elaborate sting. Rosenberg made the video knowing that two days later assassins he had hired would ambush him near his home. He apparently hoped the video would render him a martyr.

The Head of CICIG, Carlos Castresana, said they had found no evidence to link the President to Rosenberg’s death.

Sources:
CICIG (2010) ‘Caso Rosenberg: Resultados de la Investigación’, Guatemala City, United Nations CICIG, 12 January 2010.
Rory Carroll (2009) ‘Lawyer in YouTube murder plot video hired his own assassins – UN’, The Guardian, London, 14 January 2010.
Danilo Valladares (2009) ‘Guatemala: Police, Military arrested for lawyer’s murder’, IPS, 14 September 2009.
Julie Chappell (UK Ambassador to Guatemala) (2010) ‘The Rosenberg Assassination and Justice in Guatemala’, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 13 January 2010.
Moon Travel Guide (2010) ‘Rosenberg planned his own execution, UN commission says’, 14 January 2010: www.moon.com/blogs/guatemala/ (accessed 24.01.10).
Gilberto López (2010) ‘La frase lapidaria, ……’, Semanario Universidad, www.semanario.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/mainmenu-mundo/ (accessed 10.01.10).
Martin Barillas (2010) ‘Guatemala: murdered lawyer planned his own death’, Spero News, 12 January 2010, www.speroforum.com/a/25412/ (accessed 24.01.10).
Central American Politics (2010) ‘Rosenberg orchestrated his own murder?’, 12 January 2010, http://centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com/2010/01/ (accessed 24.01.10).

Costa Rica: land of natural wonders and threats to those who defend them

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome environmentalists

This is an extended version of Box 9.3 which appears in the book (page 182).

A small selection of the threats suffered by Costa Rican environmentalists follows:

1989 – the death in suspicious circumstances of the indigenous Antonio Zúñiga, who opposed illegal hunting in the Ujarrás Indigenous Reserve.

1992 – the death from shooting of Oscar Quirós, a leader in the fight against deforestation in Sarapiquí.

1994 – the death in a fire, whose cause was never satisfactorily explained, of Oscar Fallas, Jaime Bustamente and María del Mar Cordero, leaders of the Costa Rican Ecologists Association (AECO) who had run a strong campaign against the Stone Forestal company, then a subsidiary of Stone Container, a US company.

1995 – the death of David Maradiaga, a poet, ecologist and leader of AECO, after a mysterious disappearance for three weeks.

1995 – simultaneous house fires of the homes of Wilfredo Rojas (a geologist) and Elizabeth González, both professional members of the Campaign Against the Landfill Dump in Cordel de Mora.

1990s – constant threats received by members of the country’s ecological movement after denouncing environmental damage; cases include Ana Cristina Rossi (writer), Patricia Sánchez (journalist) and León González (forestry engineer).

1999 – repression and arrest of ecologists on a peaceful march to demand a moratorium on deforestation in the Osa Peninsula.

2005 – Didier Leitón Valverde – see Box 2.1 (page 35) in the book.

2007 – the lawsuit intervening against a programme on the University of Costa Rica Channel 15 made by ecologists Marielena Fournier and Fredy Pacheco.

2000s – intimidation against Alcides Parajeles, a campesino who opposes illegal hunting and felling in the Osa Peninsula; threats include the destruction of his stock fencing and firearms pointed at his family.

2008 – threats to the residents of the Perla de Guácimo as a result of their complaints against the contamination of their water by pineapple cultivation.

2009 – Aquiles Rivera – see Box 2.1 (page 35) in the book.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, other Costa Ricans who have been the subject of threats and intimidation as a result of their defence of the environment and rights include: Carlos Arguedas, Abel Sánchez, Marco Tulio Araya, Orlando Barrantes, Marta Blanco, Era Verde, Cristino Lázaro, Yamileth Astorga, Marielena Fournier, Fredy Pacheco, Ronald Vargas and Santos Coronado – amongst others.

Facussé threatens human rights activists, beheads peasants

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome Lawyers and Human Rights Defenders

04/26/2011 | AP

If you are wondering, dear reader, why I didn’t post on last week’s assassinations, including beheadings, it was because I simply could not handle it. It’s no excuse, the campesinos in Aguán aren’t backing off. But sometimes even the secondhand trauma is too much. It’s one of those dilemmas of violence research- one’s own pain is voluntary, in a sense, and thus cannot be legitimately compared to the pain of those who are experiencing the evident, immediate trauma (except within a theoretical framework of a violence continuum, using a million caveats). But perhaps my twisted gut, this sense of nausea and impotence can provide some small insight, even thousands of miles away, into the terror embodied by those facing the barrels of Facussé’s assassins’ guns.

In any case, when he’s not busy ordering the murders of campesinos who get in the way of the WWF-eco-certified African Palms he has on the lands he stole from them, Facussé, who has admitted on national television that his guards kill peasants (and yet has never been investigated by the government for his role in these murders) is now fighting back. Tired of people calling him out, he took out a full-page ad in La Tribuna to publicly denounce/threaten the human rights defenders who have affected the only thing he cares about- his profits. What’s really astounding—and not just speaks, but shouts to the level of US-backed impunity in Honduras—is that, in order to personalize this threat against his opponents, he not only names them, but quotes exactly what they have to say about him, just as unapologetically as he admitted to doing exactly what many of them accuse him of- murdering campesinos. The ad, included below as an image, reads as follows:

To the Honduran Nation and International Community:
We write here to inform you that we are being subjected to a smear campaign using false accusations of national and international NGOs. Said campaign has the aim of destroying over 50 years of work to provide Hondurans and Central Americans with products of the highest quality, investments in the billions of lempiras, the creation of more than 8,000 direct jobs, the generation of more than US$100 million in profits annually, and the creation of more than 100 thousand indirect jobs.

The most recent campaign is aimed at blocking the certification of the company by the UN for the sale of carbon credits for the development and implementation of clean energy projects and projects for environmental conservation; to stop international financial institutions from financing our companies, thus putting at risk the investment so desperately needed by the country and finally to promote the boycott of our products.

We ask you all to not be fooled by these people and groups that denounce us internationally irresponsibly and with sinister intent, not only with the aim of destroying the hard work of thousands of Hondurans and Central Americans in making the Dinant Group what it is today, but also of undermining the environment for investment and development in Honduras.

We call upon the corresponding Honduran authorities to investigate what we have stated here.

To the Honduran nation and international community, we reiterate here our commitment to continue helping the development of the country, through business practices committed to the conservation of the environment and through proper corporate social responsibility.

Miguel Facussé Barjum, President, Dinant Corporation/ Exporter of the Atlantic

“To affect [his/its] business, profits and image is an important tactic, and we will do whatever we can to ensure that these projects do not continue receiving funding”,
said to Sirel the representative of FIAN Honduras, Ana María Pineda

“We, Artists in Resistance, Feminists in Resistance, and many allied groups along with the youth, have a boycott campaign against the products of Miguel Facussé”…
Karla Lara, of Artists and Feminists in Resistance of Honduras

As such, the decision to launch a boycott campaign against the products of the Dinant Corporation means joining together the desire of thousands of Hondurans who want to deal a blow to the economic and political power of Miguel Facussé, one of the leading exponents of this structure”
Lorena Zelaya, member of the FNRP

Miguel Facussé is “an assassin and thief straight out of Hell” who will “make himself owner of the entire country using the same methods he uses here”:
Father Fausto Milla, in relation to Zacate Grande

“The soldiers and police are commanded by Miguel Facussé, despite the fact that they are paid by the Honduran people, but they obey the orders of the de facto powers that have taken control of the nation”.
Bertha Oliva, COFADEH

“Save the Rainforest makes an urgent call to send a message to the British government to withdraw authorization from these two projects that will directly benefit Miguel Facussé Barjum, repeatedly indicated by campesinos organizations to be the primary individual responsible for the violence and violation of human rights in the Bajo Aguán”.
Save the Rainforest, German NGO in relation to the projects of carbon credit sales

“the loans that are being provided to this man [Facussé], who has become the number one criminal in Latin America, for now, with the ability of mobilizing an army that at this moment, openly patrols the streets of the Aguán, in Tocoa and in Trujillo, carrying out acts of terror in the numerous cooperatives in the palm agrarian sector in the Aguán”.
Andrés Pavon, CODEH

What I have seen is outrageous and Facussé is a criminal”
Mirna Perla, Salvadoran judge and member of the parallel True Commission set up by the FNRP

We have confirmed the lack of seriousness of the Attorney General and a generalized dissatisfaction in the region, which could lead to a dangerous increase in conflict. Furthermore—explained the leadership of FIAN International—, international standards are not being applied with regards to evictions. They are premeditated violent acts, without legal backing, and represent crystal-clear violations of human rights”,
Central American coordinator of FIAN International, Martin Wopold Bosien.

Quotha content by Adrienne Pine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Quotha content by Adrienne Pine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Impunity through the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office

Chapter 9 / A Culture of impunity

Extracts from an interview with Berta Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), 23 August 2010, Tegucigalpa, conducted by Martin Mowforth and Lucy Goodman.

The international human rights institutions ask us: “Have you already made a denunciation to the Public Prosecutor?” By doing so we are strengthening a broken and criminally corrupt institute of the state. The worst thing for us to do is to make a serious denunciation and to name witnesses. We’ve had so many witnesses who have been assassinated.

On 30th July 2009 a teacher in a protest march was assassinated – he was called Roger Iván Murillo. There was a teacher ready to give his testimony about Roger’s assassination to the Public Prosecutor. He was a witness who knew who shot Roger because he was close to his colleague. Prior to his testimony the Public Prosecutor offered to give him protected witness status and within the month he was assassinated.

In September there was a lad who filmed when they entered the barrios and shot a union president. He went to the Public Prosecutor with his film to say that he had the proof and that if they would guarantee his safety he would give it to them because on the film you can see and identify who shot him. The event was on the 22nd September, and he went to the Public Prosecutor on the 25th September. In December his wife was killed. She was driving their vehicle and it was an attempt on his life, but they killed his wife instead.

Berta Oliva gave a number of other examples of how citizens’ resort to the Public Prosecutor gave rise to attacks on the person of those who had tried this approach.

How on earth can people go to give testimony in a legal action to the Public Prosecutor when the first thing they do is kill them? That is an indefensible situation in a failed state; that is what little hope we have in justice.

‘Anyone Can Murder A Woman In Honduras And Nothing Will Happen’ Women and girls in the barrios live in constant fear of sexual attack and a violent death

Chapter 9 / Troublesome women

We are grateful to Rights Action for permission to reproduce this article by Sorcha Pollak.

By Sorcha Pollak, May 11, 2015

The windowless room in downtown San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second city, bustles with activity as more than a dozen women take their seats at a long oak table. Water bottles are distributed and the electric fan switched to full blast to alleviate the oppressive summer heat creeping through the half-open door.

As the chatter dies out, Dicsa Bulnes clears her throat, introduces herself and begins to speak. “As a woman I feel trapped. I am a prisoner in my own home, there’s nowhere for me to go. I have no freedom.”

Bulnes, who is from the marginalised Afro-Caribbean Garífuna community, pauses for a moment to take a sip of water before she continues. “My partner nearly killed me. He still sends me threatening messages on my mobile attacking me. I’ve tried reporting him but the authorities won’t do anything. It feels like they are forcing women to buy their own coffins, to return to the attacker and suffer through the violence.”

Bulnes is a member of the Foro de Mujeres por la Vida (Women’s Forum for Life), an organisation which campaigns for women’s rights in a country that increasingly turns a blind eye to the violence and persecution that plagues the lives of countless women.

The forum has called a meeting in its small San Pedro Sula office so a female journalist from a safe western country can hear about the daily battles endured by the women of this small central American nation.

Aside from having one of the highest murder rates in the world – a national homicide rate of 79 per 100,000 – Honduras is rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous places on Earth for women.

Over the past decade, this nation of just over eight million people has witnessed a sharp increase in domestic and sexual violence and gender-based murder, a phenomenon known as femicide.
According to the University Institute for Democracy, Peace and Security in Honduras, 531 women were murdered in 2014, the majority of these aged between 15 and 24. Although this number was slightly lower than that of the previous year – there were 636 recorded murders of women in 2013 – the lack of accountability for this violation of a woman’s most basic human right has normalised the concept of femicide.

Between 2005 and 2013 the number of violent deaths of women increased by 263.4 per cent.
Carolina Sierra, spokeswoman for Foro de Mujeres por la Vida, says any attempts made to improve women’s rights before the 2009 military coup, which ousted reformist president Manuel Zelaya, were erased by the current administration.

“The increased militarisation of the country means all measures now focus on weapons and the military, while any measures that were taken to protect women’s rights have been completely abandoned,” says Sierra. “It’s almost like there’s a carte blanche for the assassination of women. Anyone can murder a woman in Honduras and nothing will happen.

“With this lack of accountability, women’s bodies are being used to send a message of fear and hate to the rest of the population.”

In 2014, the United Nations reported that 95 per cent of cases of sexual violence and femicide in Honduras were never investigated, while only 2.5 per cent of cases of domestic violence were settled.

Living in fear
Maria Teresa Meza, who lives in a small shack in the Bordo Gavión riverside slum of San Pedro Sula with her children, says sexual violence is the daily lot for most young women in the community. “Rape is a real danger for young women living in the bordos. If you let your daughter step outside her home she will either be raped or forced into selling drugs.”

Teenage girls living near the bustling food markets in the capital, Tegucigalpa, face the same level of violent abuse. Sarai (19) says many of her friends became pregnant when they were only 12 or 13 after meeting gang members in the marketplace. She says gangs “own the barrios” of Tegucigalpa, controlling how women walk, talk and dress. “They walk around the area monitoring everyone who comes in and out. They know exactly what’s going on and every single detail of our lives.”

Wendy (14) says women and girls are the first to suffer under this brutal culture of drugs, extortion and violence. Freedom of speech doesn’t exist in a world where themaras youth gangs rule the streets. “All I can see around me is violence; there never seems to be any light. Women don’t have the freedom to walk down the street without worrying about being attacked. The men rule and the women must follow.

“Some young women are raped by their own families,” she adds quietly. “They’re raped by their uncles and fathers.”

Supaya Martínez, co-director of the Centre for Women’s Studies Honduras, says gangs govern every aspect of a woman’s life, down to the colour she uses to dye her hair. “If a woman dyes her hair the wrong colour, the local gang will kill her.”

Martínez says people have learned to justify femicide by arguing that female victims are involved in gangs or connected with drug traffickers.

Murder of beauty queen
Last November the bodies of the Miss Honduras beauty queen, María José Alvarado, and her sister were found in the region of Santa Barbara in western Honduras. The sister’s boyfriend was found guilty of murdering the women in a jealous rage. However, Martínez says the government claims the young women were connected to drug-traffickers.

“It’s as if it was their fault. They place the blame on the victim and basically say she was responsible for her own death.

“There hasn’t been a strong enough response from the government to end this. Women die every day but no one is punished and so the crimes just continue.”

Last year UN special rapporteur on violence against women Rashida Manjoo called for the Honduran government to address the “climate of widespread and systematic crime, corruption and impunity”.

Supports cut
However, as part of its process of restructuring in 2014, the government actually downgraded the status of the National Institute for Women, cut funding to women’s rights groups and abolished the police emergency telephone line for female victims of violence.

“We’re living in a country where women don’t feel safe enough to report acts of violence to the authorities,” says Sierra, adding that many women who speak up about injustice must pay for it with their lives.

“Men are killing women with rage, fury and cruelty. We’re scared to speak out but this is the daily lot we’re living.

“We’re forced to live in a culture of violent machismo which has become a natural, accepted part of Honduran society.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/anyone-can-murder-a-woman-in-honduras-and-nothing-will-happen-1.2207043

Rights action: www.rightsaction.org