Honduras did not experience civil war in the 1980s, but its geography (bordering El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua) made it a key location for US military operations: training Salvadoran soldiers, a base for Nicaraguan contras, military exercises for US troops. The notorious Honduran death squad Battalion 316 was created, funded and trained by the US. The state-sponsored terror resulted in the forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of approximately 200 people during the 1980s. Many more were abducted and tortured. The 2009 military coup d’etat spawned a resurgence of state repression against the civilian population that continues today. A corrupt government gutted the public electricity utility and doled out shady contracts. Now the state faces multibillion-dollar lawsuits for attempting to reclaim control.
This report uncovers how solar energy projects affect local comunities, the states econmy, it's sovereignity and how Investors use neo0cololonial means to foster their interests.
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
Under trade agreements, corporations are given the right to sue governments using a controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS), which allows private sector lawyers to determine whether the country has treated foreign investors fairly. Even though the government of Honduras announced its withdrawal from ISDS in February 2024, companies continue to sue governments for policies that may impact their profits, such as reforms to make electricity more affordable.
Given that Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Central America, the lawsuits from various corporations (totaling $19.4 billion, an amount equivalent to roughly 53% of the country’s GDP in 2024) add immense pressure on the government to implement policies that favor the companies’ interests. These actions often come with harmful consequences for environmental protection and human rights, as communities adjacent to the companies’ projects have denounced for years.
During the first dozen years after the coup in Honduras, tThe arrangement between drug traffickers and the Honduran political elite was straightforward and mutually beneficial. On the one hand, political actors received kickbacks or other economic benefits from the projects they awarded. On the other, drug traffickers were afforded new ways to disguise their illicit proceeds, build up their social capital, and fortify their facade as seemingly legitimate business actors. But as the coup presidents opened a window for these corrupt networks to expand their wealth and consolidate power, the environment, and those working to protect it, suffered greatly.
In the nearly 15 years since Honduras was declared open for business, deforestation has increased at an alarming rate alongside the expansion of the extractives industry. During this same time, the country has also seen an unprecedented wave of violence directed at environmental defenders. The non-governmental organization Global Witness recently said that “nowhere on earth are you more likely to be killed for protesting the theft of land and destruction of the natural world than in Honduras.”
This week, from July 14-16, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Transnational Institute (TNI), Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) and TerraJusta will co-host a three-day convening with local partners, the Network of Women Human Rights Defenders (RADDH), MASSVida y Caritas Honduras, in Choluteca, Honduras: ‘Without Human Rights, Energy Sovereignty Does Not Exist: A Meeting of Communities Affected by Energy Projects in Southern Honduras.’ The Central American country is facing an onslaught of international arbitration claims in secretive corporate courts, over a third of which have arisen from the renewable energy sector. This convening will shine a critical spotlight and offer an in-depth look at the negative impacts and community-driven opposition to the solar energy projects that benefited from deepening privatization and slew of renewable energy contracts approved in 2014, during the period known as the narcodictatorship.
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. 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).
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.
SUMMARY
IRTF has been a member of the Honduras Solidarity Network since the coup 16 years ago that ousted their democratically-elected president, Mel Zelaya. Although the current government is considered post-coup, the administrations since 2009 implemented a lot of changes that benefit the oligarchy at the expense of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and campesino communities. Although state-led repression is less now, the network of coup proponents, corrupt actors and organized crime continue to have influence and to act, even violently, against the peoples’ movements.
Read our full statement on the anniversary of the coup here.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras President Xiomara Castro and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem discussed immigration and border security in their first meeting Wednesday, after Castro had previously rejected President Donald Trump’s calls for ramped up deportations. Noem was the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Honduras. |
