Honduras: News & Updates

President-Elect Xiomara Castro’s plans to overhaul Honduras suffered a major setback on Friday. A rebellion within her leftist Libre party has deprived her allies of control of Congress, threatening her ability to pass laws and appoint officials even before she has taken office. Ms. Castro’s party split apart after she tried to fulfill a campaign promise and install a member of an allied centrist party as congressional speaker on Friday morning. A group of 22 Libre lawmakers opposed the move. If Ms. Castro fails to live up to Hondurans’ widespread desire for change, even more citizens could flee to the United States border because of violence and political instability, said Tiziano Breda, Central America analyst at the International Crisis Group. The rebellion further complicates the Biden administration’s policy in northern Central America, which has endured a series of autocratic and corrupt leaders, on the right and the left.

Violent organized crime continues to disrupt Honduran society and push many people to leave the country. Journalists; environmental activists; human rights defenders; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals; and people with disabilities are among the groups targeted for violence. Impunity remains the norm. Efforts to reform public security institutions have stalled. Marred by corruption and abuse, the judiciary and police remain largely ineffective. This is the Human Rights Watch 2022 World Report for Honduras.

On September 16, 2021, a military helicopter appeared and began firing—seemingly indiscriminately—from above. The unsuspecting residents of Ibans, a small Afro-Indigenous community on the northeastern coast of Honduras, ran for cover from the stream of bullets raining down. The authorities, including DEA, initially tried to cover up the Ahuas incident and subsequently to justify it as a matter of security: they alleged that the commercial passenger boat was involved in trafficking drugs and that it opened fire on the military helicopter. Illicit drugs do transit parts of this region in Honduras, and much of the rest of it. In fact, since the Ahuas massacre, cocaine transit through the region has remained, on average, unchanged despite ongoing U.S.-funded enforcement. In this context, these extrajudicial killings have come to represent an ongoing counter-narcotics operation that serves not to stop illegal drug trafficking, but rather to perpetuate violence and impunity through the militarization of Indigenous territories in Honduras. The cost of this overzealous response and intentional neglect can be seen in the lives of Miskitu, Tawhaka, Garifuna, and other Indigenous Peoples.

In Aguán, groups like Juan Moncada’s, a murdered cooperative farmer, have dwindled, mostly because of migration. Once boasting 248 families, the cooperative is now half that size. Those who remain are intensifying efforts to reclaim land, occupying disputed palm plantations and stepping up campaigns to authenticate titles they say prove ownership of some plots. Moncada's murder is part of a free-for-all in northern Honduras that pits peasants, landowners, public and private security forces, criminal gangs and government officials against one another. Decades in the making, the conflict is a growing source of bloodshed and a record tide of migration by people seeking to flee land grabs, violence, poverty, and the widespread corruption and impunity that fuel them.