Honduras: News & Updates

Five members of the Indigenous Garifuna communities of Trujillo and Sante Fe are being prosecuted for defending their ancestral lands; their names are Cesia Guillén, Cindy Fernández, Gilma Bernárdez, Luis Calderón, and Cesar Geovanny Bernárdez. All of the defendants are members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), an organization that has been helping the Garifuna in their fight to defend collective property. 

The defendants have been unjustly accused of forced displacement and aggravated usurpation by Dagoberto Castillo Castillo and Niobi Constantinidi Padilla. Castillo claims to be a bona fide purchaser of a property in the San Antonio area of Santa Fe Colón, despite the fact that the Garifuna people hold its property title dating back to 1882. Their fight is supported by a report from the National Agrarian Institute (INA), indicating that the land is located within Garifuna ancestral territory and that its sale is void.

This state-backed legal attack is part of a systematic act of dispossession against Garifuna communities. Central to its execution has been the repression of land defense movements through deliberate criminalization and persecution of those leading the defense of their ancestral homes. 

The courthouse in Trujillo, which is now effectively dedicated to the persecution of the Garífuna people, was built on Garifuna territory. The initial hearing for the five defendants was held there on August 11.

The people of Honduras continue to pursue justice for the militarized repression that occurred during and following the coup d’etát on June 28, 2009.

Thousands gathered to protest near the Toncontín airport in Tegucigalpa on July 5, 2009 and were met with militarized violence. Isy Obed Murillo, age 18, became the first martyr of the coup era when he was shot in the head by army snipers. Honduran soldiers also seriously injured another young man, Alex Zavala.

Finally on January 5, 2025, former military general Romeo Vásquez Velásquez (a graduate of the infamous School of the Americas) was arrested, along with two other former military officers: Venancio Cervantes (former Deputy Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and Carlos Puerto (former commander of the Joint Operations Command).  Romeo Vásquez Velásquez has been a fugitive since March 19, after failing to appear at his court hearing. The other two voluntarily presented themselves and are currently being held in a federal penitentiary. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, meanwhile, evades accountability and flaunts his fugitive status as he remains active on social media and even issues messages to government officials.

We join with human rights organizations in Honduras in calling for a comprehensive search for (and detention of) fugitive Romeo Vásquez Velásquez.

The Garífuna people, desendants of Indigenous peoples from the Caribbean and formerly enslaved Africans, have lived on the Atlantic coast since 1797. Despite having collective land title to many of their communities on the  northern coast, local mayors and other authorities have illegally sold and issued building permits to developers looking to get rich with tourist golf resorts, ports for cruise ships, and luxury retirement villages. The national government has mostly turned a blind eye, despite having been condemned three times by the Inter-American Court of Human rights for violating the Garífuna people’s right to collective land ownership in three separate communities.

One of the most notorious foreign investors is Randy Jorgensen of Canada. Late last year, more than 3,500 archaeological artifacts belonging to several Indigenous and pre-Columbian cultures—including sacred items likely taken from burial sites—were found in Jorgensen’s former property near Trujillo, Colón Department. Although the Attorney General did seize 233 of Jorgensen’s ill-gotten properties, Jorgensen has not been arrested or charged in relation to the property seizures. Furthermore, the Attorney General has taken to public action to investigate the illegal collection of cultural artifacts.

We echo the demands of OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) and call on authorities to:

(1) arrest Randy Jorgensen and conduct a full criminal investigation into the charges of land usurpation, money laundering, and illegal possession and trafficking of cultural artifacts

(2) protect the recovered cultural artifacts, with a commitment to returning them to the rightful Indigenous communities.

(3) fully enforce land titling decisions in favor of the Garífuna and hold accountable public officials who failed to protect Indigenous rights.

The families of the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Enterprise in the community of Panamá, Colón Department—like too many farming families in the Bajo Aguán Valley—have experienced violence for many years, much of it the result of violent conflicts between campesinos and the palm oil giant Dinant Corporation. The cooperative farm is named for Gregorio Chávez, who was brutally murdered (presumably by private security guards of Dinant) while going about his daily farming activities in July 2012.

More recently, Josué Esaú Aguilar Cárcamo, the 22-year-old son of Guadalupe Cárcamo, one of the leaders of the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Cooperative, was assassinated on May 31, at about 6:30pm, riddled with bullets as he rode his motorcycle in the nearby community of Rigores. That followed the killing of two other members of Gregorio Chávez in late January of this year. The campesino coalition Agrarian Platform (Plataforma Agraria) has accused Dinant of bankrolling Los Cachos, a criminal organization often described as a “death squad,” to provide private security for Dinant. 

We are urging that the government of Honduras:

(1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to discover the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Josué Esaú Aguilar Cárcamo, publish the results, and bring them to justice

(2) implement the agreement signed on April 23 with the United Nations, which awarded Honduras $2 million dollars toward “preventing and managing social conflict in Bajo Aguán through the protection of human rights and access to justice”

(3) fully install and activate the Bajo Aguán Truth Commission (also known as the “Tripartite Commission”) to investigate the causes of and those responsible for unpunished violence

(4) install a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission and guarantee its independence

El Tumbador, a farm in the campesino community of Guadalupe Carney, Trujillo, Colón Department, has long been a central area of dispute between campesinos and the palm oil giant Dinant corporation; the farming families have been victims of violence for many years. Douglas Alexander Pereira was likely targeted for his leadership and security role, placing him in direct opposition to the control over the farm land in the Bajo Aguán Valley that Dinant hopes to maintain.  He was shot and killed on May 13 by two armed men while carrying out his security duties for the cooperative’s small convenience store. Community members persist in their demands for justice and accountability in their friend’s assassination.

We are urging that authorities in the Honduran government: 

(1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to discover the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Douglas Alexander Pereira, publish the results, and bring them to justice

(2) work with campesino organizations in the Bajo Aguán Valley to devise and implement a protection mechanism for the campesino families and leaders who face extreme violence for defending land promised to them under the Agrarian Reform 

(3) conduct a complete and unbiased investigation into the criminal ties between agroindustrial companies (like Dinant) and illegally armed groups