Rapid Response Network

The Indigenous Lenca Council and affected communities in Reitoca (Francisco Morazán Department) oppose the illegal development of a dam project (Proyecto Hidroeléctrico Río Petacón) by the company PROGELSA on their ancestral territory. The project poses severe threats to their lands, livelihoods, spiritual beliefs, and cultural activities. The affected communities, who hold legal titles for the land dating back to 1735,  remain unwavering in demanding the cancellation of the hydroelectric concession.  They did not give their free, prior, and informed consent, as required by international law.  Because of their resistance to the dam, they have faced violent repression and criminalization.

Xinka Indigenous communities in Jutiapa, Santa Rosa and Jalapa face threats and heightened security risks because of their ongoing struggle to defend their health, water, forests, lands, and territory against the threat of megaprojects like energy generation and mining. In a letter to the US State Department in September 2023, 13 members of the US House of Representatives expressed concern for the security of the Xinka people.  A month later, Noé Gómez Barrera, a well-respected  Xinka Indigenous community leader was assassinated in Jutiapa on October 28, 2023.  The 69-year old leader was a member of the ancestral authorities of the Xinka Parliament of Guatemala. Since 2002 he fought for Xinka rights in Jutiapa against the company Renewable Energy Alternative (Alternativa de Energía Renovable).

Violent attacks against the Garífuna people along the north coast of Honduras are a systematic process perpetuated by powerful economic interests with the collusion of the State. Foreign and Honduran tourist interests, mining and energy companies, developers of the Zones of Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs), and agro-industrial companies operate in full complicity with elements of the military, police, local authorities, and organized criminal groups.

Community leader Norma Lino was injured in an armed attack on September 26 in the Garífuna community of Puerto Castilla, Colón Department. Armed men entered reclaimed ancestral property and began shooting. After receiving treatment at a hospital, Norma Lino and others who were injured proceeded to file a complaint at the National Police office in Trujillo, about 20 km south of Puerto Castilla. They were met with dismissive and racist remarks.

The freedom and impunity that national and international companies in the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras have to operate and maintain irregular possession of some of the best agricultural lands in the country, with the help and complicity of the government, is unparalleled and shameful.

In 1984, the government of Honduras awarded a property title for 4,036 hectares to the Empresa Asociativa Campesina de Isletas (EACI). By 1990, a subsidiary of the transnational company Dole Food Company (called ASISA) had forcibly taken control of EACI campesino lands through multiple violations of the legal system and with the assistance of the Honduran military and death squads.  Today, the dispute over rightful ownership of the land continues, and it occasionally erupts into violence.

In Trujillo, Colón, on October 14, the National Police shot live ammunition indiscriminately at peasant farmers who were carrying out a public action to claim their legitimate right to land. Kevin Azahel Meza, a 24-year-old farmer who was a member of the Empresa Asociativa Campesina de Isletas (EACI), died due to the excessive use of lethal force by the National Police.

Communities in the Pacific coastal department of Nariño have reported an increase in arbitrary acts of violence against young people, especially women. Residents are left without protection or support as their homes become the locations of armed confrontations between the different armed groups that are present in the area.

On September 26, illegally armed actors arrived in the community of Nueva Isla del Consejo Comunitario Unión Patía Viejo and murdered Milena Valdez, age 26, an Afro-descendant community leader.  Her body was found three days later in a state of decomposition. Milena Valdez was a member of the Unión Patía Community Council. According to other community members, the young woman was pregnant. Those responsible for the murder reportedly belong to the FARC-dissident 30th Front.

The National Health Forum (FNS) of El Salvador has reported that since the State of Exception was initiated in March 2022, sexual violence against girls, teens, and adult women committed by state security forces (National Police or Armed Forces) has intensified.  

On the night of September 23 in the rural village of Santa María Mizata, Tetotepeque municipality, La Libertad Department, six members of the military separated a 13 year-old girl from her friends. One of the teenage friends who tried to stop the officer in charge from taking her was beaten by the other soldiers. She was raped and left on the side of a highway. A truck, later identified as property of the mayor’s office, picked up the soldiers. Residents called the police, who took 40-60 minutes to arrive. Police detained the military officer but released the other five military subordinates. The police did not release the names of the six military personnel.

In a survey of Salvadorans’ encounters with security forces since March 2022 by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University, it was reported that 18% of respondents reported threats, 17% surveillance, 16.6% arbitrary detention, and 14.8% mistreatment or torture by police officers and soldiers. We are urging that government authorities thoroughly investigate sexual offenses committed by members of Armed Forces and the National Civilian Police and bring those responsible to justice.

The residents of the Campesino Reserve Zone (ZRC) El Pato-Balsillas (municipality of San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá Department), are at risk from the escalating conflict and struggle for dominance between the armed groups Central General Staff (EMC, a FARC-dissident group) and the Second Marquetalia. On October 7, the EMC named three social leaders as military targets: Javier Güependo, legal representative of the Municipal Association of Colonos del Pato (Amcop); Javier Sotto, prosecutor of Amcop and manager of the COOPABI cooperative; and Darwin Manchola, signatory of the Final Peace Agreement, president of the Guayabal Community Action Board, and current candidate for the San Vicente del Caguán Council. 

The government negotiated with EMC to begin a three-month ceasefire, which began on October 16, but agreements have been broken in the past, and the community continues to hold increasing fear of being attacked by the dissident groups present in the region.

Community leader Bruno Plácido Valerio played a significant role in addressing crime in Guerrero. The former member of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC) co-founded the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG) in 2013. Bruno Plácido Valerio rose to prominence by organizing rag-tag teams of farmers to capture suspected gang members. His group held about 50 suspects for weeks in improvised jails, before handing them over to civilian prosecutors. By 2014, UPOEG had a presence in 41 of Guerrero’s 81 municipalities, with a strong presence in Chilpancingo.

On October 17, Bruno Plácido Valerio was shot to death along with his driver by a group of hitmen, who fired about 20 shots, outside the Guerrero Health Secretariat in Chilpancingo, the state capital. Two others were also hit; one of them has died as well. The assassination of Bruno Plácido Valerio occurred just a few days after another UPOEG co-founder, Juan Carlos González Olívar, was executed by a hitman.

There has been a blood bath of assassinations in the Aguán Valley this year. Among the land defenders assassinated so far: Alí Dominguez and Jairo Bonilla (cf our letter 24 JAN 2023), Omar Cruz Tomé and his father-in-law Andy Martínez Murillo (cf our letter 22 FEB 2023), Santos Hipólito Rivas and his son Javier Rivas (cf our letter 24 MAR 2023), Emerson Martínez (cf letter 24 APR 2023), José Gilberto Martínez Cardona (cf letter 12 MAY 2023), and Oscar Oquelí Domínguez Ramos (cf our letter 21 JUN 2023).

In this letter we express our outrage to learn of yet another land defender brutally killed—in his home on a Sunday afternoon! José David Fortín, general secretary of the Cooperativa Agropecuaria Campesina Tarros Limitada, was murdered on September 24 in his home in the village of Los Tarros in Trujillo, Colón Department. Two hitmen arrived on a motorcycle at 2:00pm, entered his home, and shot him. With serious wounds he was transferred to a hospital in Tocoa, where he died.

According to the peasant rights organization Plataforma Agraria, there are strong rumors in the community that third parties who claim ownership of the disputed land hired hitmen.

The government of Honduras made a commitment in February 2022 to install a Tripartite Commission with the mandate to investigate violence and human rights violations against the peasant movement. We join our voices with those of campesino cooperatives in demanding that the comission be implemented. We also echo the call to dismantle the criminal structures that operate alongside organized crime in the Bajo Aguán, many in conjunction with corrupt officials.

The Pech Indigenous peoples were the original inhabitants of the Bay Island of Roatan but were relocated to the mining areas of the mainland by the Spanish during the early colonial period. The total population of Pech Indigenous peoples in Honduras today is only about 6,000, and they are divided into nine communities. About 90% of the Pech live in Olancho Department; others are in Colón and Gracias a Dios Departments. Resisting total assimilation, about half still speak their native Pech language. 

Residents of the community of Pueblo Nuevo Subirana in Dulce Nombre de Culmí, Olancho Department, found the bodies of Juana María Martínez and an unidentified companion the morning of September 23. Both had gunshot wounds and their bodies had been burned.

Julián Mass, Pech Indigenous chief of the Vallecito community in Dulce Nombre de Culmí, told the media that Juana María Martínez was a local leader of entrepreneurship projects who was dedicated to working on behalf of the Pech, actively participating in assemblies of Indigenous organizations.