(Translation by Rights Action. All mistakes in translation are ours)
In Choloma, northern Honduras, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez was a timber businessman and ambitious drug trafficker. He developed his narco-laboratory in the most remote part of the El Merendon mountain range.
There, with the complicity of municipal, military and police authorities, with the backing of a Canadian transnational company and the financing of an international bank, he created an illegal mine, a forestry project and ended up fraudulently mortgaging more than 1,300 hectares of land inhabited and cultivated by communities.
Today, three years after the capture of Geovanny Fuentes, the villagers continue to live under the threat of eviction, since the institutions that allowed the dispossession are not being held accountable.
In the Sierra del Merendón, also called by the locals the "Sacred Mountain" north of Choloma, there is a large shadow, covering thousands of hectares and a dozen villages. It has a face and a name, but it is not pronounced. The inhabitants say "el señor", "el hombre" or "el que se fue para Miami". Many times they just say "he", and then you have to make sure that we are talking about the same man.
Edwin* is one of the few who pronounces Geovanny Fuentes' name without lowering his voice. Perhaps because he knew him from up close when one day the drug trafficker burst into his house, like a guest who should be attended to even if he was not welcome, asking him to sell him a piece of land.
First Look: The Tamarindo Mine
Fuentes burst into Edwin's life in 2012 with two bodyguards. At the time, it was not well known who Geovanny Fuentes was. People only whispered that he owned some land in Cerro Negro, in the municipality of Choloma. There was no talk of drugs.
Fuentes sat down on Edwin's couch and told him that he wanted to buy his land to extract minerals. Edwin informed him that there was already an interested man, a Don Manuel, and that they had a contract. Fuentes left, but returned a few days later to meet him at a restaurant in San Pedro Sula. To his great surprise, Don Manuel was there, with Geovanny and his brother, Cristian. They agreed that Don Manuel would receive US$18 per ton of ore extracted.
"After the meeting, I heard nothing from Don Manuel. He never paid me for the sale and purchase. I don't know what was done. From there Geovanny entered my land without warning with his machines and started digging," he recalled. When Edwin saw the intrusion, he kept quiet because he thought that with that kind of character it is not advisable to look for a fight.
Weeks later, Fuentes proposed negotiating the price of the mineral. They met at the property of Fuad Jarufe, the owner of a rice mill in Choloma that laundered Geovanny Fuentes' money, and offered him a six-month contract for four dollars a ton. Edwin accepted, but on the day of signing the contract, he saw that the conditions had changed. It was a 30-year contract for one dollar per ton, and prepared outside of the country's legal framework for mining, without a mining concession contract or an environmental license.
Edwin recalls the lawyer who presented that contract - Julio César Barahona, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Justice and mentioned in the Geovanny Fuentes narco-trial [in New York City] - because Fuad Jarufe's accountant declared that Barahona received 300,000 lempiras to hinder the police investigation against a narco-laboratory that Fuentes had set up.
That day, Geovanny told him: "if you want to sign, if you don't want to, don't sign". Edwin signed. He was not given a copy.
They searched for gold, iron, silver and bronze. "Geovanny left me the land scrubbed," Edwin summarized. At the open pit mine, a man from the community who had helped Fuentes agreed to talk to ContraCorriente. He received 2,500 lempiras (about 100 dollars) a fortnight to feed those who worked in the mine and the police, because "behind him, there were always two patrol cars," he said. He also hid weapons in his house, when asked to do so.
"The first time he came, the man told me "Do you know that place? Those stones over there look very shiny, like silver". I showed him the stones on Edwin's land and accompanied him to another piece of land in Agua Blanca. Nah man", he said, "you're done, I'm going to give you a car and a gun".
Fifteen days later he returned and asked his guards, "How do we repay him? "Let's give it to him with shots," said one of them. I got scared and kept looking at him. I saw that they were all pawing at their pistols. One of Fuentes' two henchmen was the president of the board of trustees of La Jutosa, the largest village in this area in the foothills of El Merendon.
If there is one thing that Geovanny Fuentes handled well, aside from the weapons (AR 15 and nine millimeter, according to the US Attorney General's Office), it was his political connections. Another of his allies was the then mayor of Choloma, Leopoldo Crivelli.
"The mayor of Choloma [then Leopoldo Crivelli] came here with Geovanny. They were at the house, they made me a proposal about the minerals. I told Crivelli that I didn't have a mining permit. He replied, "It's worth nothing to you. We are going to give you 250,000 lempiras, the only requirement is that you lend us your name for the exports". I will not lend my name, I told him. Then Geovanny got angry, " Fuck, we can't even set up a business with you".
In a telephone interview with this newspaper, Leopoldo Crivelli strongly denied having helped Fuentes in his business dealings: "I am not very much given to going up in the mountains. I have a phobia of heights. That's why I don't go to the mountains myself," he said when asked about his alleged visit to the area accompanying Fuentes, whom he also described as a "cipote" (little kid) from Choloma.
"I was a friend of his father's. I worked for Mr. Fuad Jarufe. I am a rice specialist. I managed a project in the lowlands of Choloma. And when I went to Jarufe to collect my paycheck, Fuentes was always there. From there, we talked normally. But nothing more. I am a public man, mayor of Choloma for 16 years. You can ask in Choloma who I am, and people will tell you. I have no relationship with any narco. I don't even know cocaine, I have never carried guns, I have always walked alone, I have not even smoked marijuana in my youth. Polo Crivelli's word before God, I don't know anything about all this", he said.
Crivelli insisted that he never saw an "investigation that Geovanny was involved in drug trafficking," but that he was seen as "a dangerous guy, capable of killing someone. Everyone was afraid of him."
At that time, when the mine was happening, [U.S. Government’s sentencing submission, case against Geovanny Fuentes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kWAwme8pw-9CcDQtdrDB9d9IwBiH7G0n/view], several men had already been killed by Geovanny Fuentes. First, he bought the sympathy of Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, the head of the Cachiros cartel, by killing a mechanic who spoke ill of him. Just as a cat shows its owner a dead prey, Geovanny showed a photo of the corpse to Maradiaga, while Melvin Sanders, the president of the Atlético Choloma soccer club, told him that Geovanny "was a good person to have on your side [...] he can kill anyone if we ask him to."
Leonel Maradiaga refused to participate in the laboratory business because he considered it preferable to bring the cocaine from Colombia and not manufacture it in Honduras.
However, after that show of loyalty, Fuentes began moving drugs from the Cachiros in Honduras to the ranch of Juan Carlos "El Tigre" Bonilla - a former Honduran police chief now awaiting trial in New York - or the Los Valle Cartel, the most powerful cartel in western Honduras before its dismantling in 2014.
Geovanny fulfilled his missions of moving drugs, but without giving up his narco-laboratory in Cerro Negro, which produced between 200 and 300 kg of cocaine per month, employing two Colombian cooks and a dozen guards.
In addition, after a raid in Cerro Negro in 2011, two other murders occurred that reverberated in Choloma as acts of retaliation. The police officer who organized the raid was abducted by Fuentes and his men. The U.S. prosecutor's request described that "the defendant and his accomplices tortured the officer, hit him in the face and suffocated him with a plastic bag. They stuck his fingers with pins [...]. The torture served to interrogate him because the defendant wanted to know if his money launderer and benefactor, Fuad Jarufe, was involved in the investigation against his laboratory. After finding out that he was not, the defendant killed the officer with three shots in the head".
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, nothing was found during the raid because Leopoldo Crivelli's son leaked the police investigation and Chepe Handal, another San Pedro drug trafficker and laboratory collaborator, tipped off the operation. [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kWAwme8pw-9CcDQtdrDB9d9IwBiH7G0n/view]
Another murder was that of Denis Muñoz [https://proceso.hn/matan-a-regidor-de-alcaldia-de-choloma/ ], then a councilman in the Choloma mayor's office whose property adjoined Fuentes' in Cerro Negro. According to the inhabitants of the Merendón villages, Muñoz denounced Fuentes for environmental crimes. But to this day, that crime remains unpunished. In 2015, his son was gunned down in La Jutosa and the circumstances have not been clarified. [https://www.laprensa.hn/sucesos/acribillan-a-balazos-a-hijo-del-victimado-regidor-dennis-munoz-MWLP826820#image-1]
Regarding these violent deaths, Crivelli declared: "I don't know anything about that. I am a man who is very friendly with people, I am incapable of going around with this kind of nonsense.
In March 2020, the DEA arrested Geovanny Fuentes in Miami for cocaine importation. He was sentenced in February 2022 to life imprisonment by the Southern District of New York.
In El Merendón, on the edge of a road to El Tamarindo, there is an abandoned house, completely collapsed. The inhabitants say it is the refuge of malicious spirits. However, in those parts, the specter of death is not just a legend. The man who worked with Fuentes in the mine often says "Here are alive those who never said "no" to Geovanny".
Second approach: the Forestry Project
"Judge, he [Geovanny Fuentes] is 52 years old. He is Honduran. He grew up in humble circumstances in a violent country. He worked hard. He has a bachelor's degree. He worked as a farmer. He started in a rice mill where he worked as a sweeper. But he excelled, Judge. He worked in a textile company as a manager for 26 years. He had nothing at the beginning and worked his way to the top. Between 2013 and 2018, he had a biomass company. I could say a forestry company," is how attorney John Burke defended Geovanny Fuentes during his trial at the sentencing hearing following the court's conviction. Burke was demanding 40 years in prison for his client. [https://drive.google.com/file/d/19KSp-VSDNe2sZuD-hgHpYaxFQHW_hfS3/view]
Gustavo Mejía, the current mayor of Choloma affiliated with the Libre party, who has been a councilman since 2014, told ContraCorriente that "we always saw Geovanny Fuentes as a timber businessman. For me he was the biggest deforester there was in Choloma in full view of the authorities. We never saw him as a drug trafficker. He was not a flamboyant guy like many narcos who go around with guns, drunk; he was a very reserved guy. Maybe in his environment he did his own thing. I knew him from his biomass business. Then, one of the most critical things he did is that he took a lot of money from land that was not his. That is the worst crookedness he did. And all those who endorsed that are from the same municipal administration".
A few months before mortgaging his land, Geovanny Fuentes met with the inhabitants of two villages in El Merendón - San Antonio de las Quebradas and La Jutosa - to present his new project to "develop" the communities. This was the second approach.
Don Rafa, leader of Las Quebradas, remembers well the arrival of Fuentes and Crivelli to his house at the end of 2012, when they were already operating the illegal mine of Tamarindo.
"A man showed up and said he was coming to build nurseries to reforest the sector. There was a meeting where I showed up with two neighbors to listen to the proposals. Three gentlemen came, supposedly lawyers, to talk about the work plan - Mayor "Polo" Crivelli and well-armed men. They said that the project included opportunities to help the communities: road repairs, medical clinics, good salaries for those who were going to work in the nursery. The man said he was going to build a school for us in Las Quebradas, but that in exchange, we had to plant trees and that the forest around us had already given its useful life and could be cut down," he said.
The tree Fuentes wanted to grow was the guaje. A not very robust tree that even serves as food for cattle. We answered, "Why destroy what is already there?" recalled Rafa.
That was a constant in Agroforestal Fuentes' business technique: to take advantage of land rich in biodiversity to pulverize its trees and produce sawdust. Biomass is a renewable energy generated from the combustion of organic matter, but it is different if the organic matter comes from waste (such as sugarcane waste, African palm waste, roots) than if it comes from oak, mahogany, pine, kapok and guanacaste trees.
In 2015, the Environmental Prosecutor's Office in San Pedro Sula requested an arrest warrant for Fuentes and filed a prosecutorial request for "illegal cutting and harvesting of forest products for aggravated commercial purposes".
But the facts for which Fuentes was charged were not those of Choloma, but other areas in the municipality of Santa Cruz de Yojoa in the department of Cortés. The Municipal Environmental Unit submitted a report to the prosecutor's office describing how Agroforestal Fuentes operated without a permit from the Forest Conservation Institute (ICF) on private land: "We discovered that trees were being cut, which were introduced into a chipping machine. The sawdust was used to generate biomass and was sold to the company Gildan [Activewear Corporation]".
See the document here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S-eguhR9khRgJIcPbli70FVs8clCsBJi/view
Gildan Activewear: Biomass energy, loans and money laundering
Gildan is a Canadian textile company that owns and operates several maquilas in Choloma. It also owns a power boiler on the outskirts of the city that produces energy. On its website, Gildan proudly champions its social and environmental responsibility. "From our energy and water use, we take responsibility and pay as much attention to what goes into the work as what comes out of it," they say.
