Exploited Labor: News & Updates

Campesino land defenders continue to face great risks in Honduras: from large landholders, agricultural companies, and agents of the government—judges, prosecutors, and security forces like the National Police.

In the early hours of the morning of August 20, private security guards and employees of the sugar company AZUNOSA used excessive force to evict campesino families in La Sarrosa Village, in El Progreso, Yoro Department.  They beat, assaulted and seriously injured the families, using stones, machetes and firing firearms indiscriminately. Seriously injured was María Munguía Betancourt, who fell to the ground unconscious after receiving several blows with stones. For two hours, AZUNOSA employees blocked the main road, preventing the local fire department’s emergency medical team from providing assistance.

Campesino organizations are struggling for their legitimate right to land, food and a dignified life free of violence. The state must end its complicity in the harassment, stigmatization, and criminalization of campesino leaders, as well as its participation in violent evictions.

Campesino land defenders continue to face great risks in Honduras. Organizations like the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) hold large agricultural corporations and large landholders—like the infamous Dinant Corporation and its owners in the Facusse family—responsible for human rights crimes. They also decry collusion among those powerful economic interests, state security forces, public prosecutors, and judges who write illegal eviction orders.

As coordinator of the Campesino Movement of Ceibita Way (a local affiliate of the CNTC), Olman García Ortiz was dedicated to promoting access to land and land tenure for small farmers.  On the afternoon of August 4, hitmen shot him multiple times while he was riding his motorcycle in the village of Ceibita Way, municipality of Esparta, Atlántida Department. His lifeless body fell to the pavement. The CNTC reports that he had requested protection measures, but the government denied that request.

Nolvia Alberta Obando Turcios,  a respected Christian pastor and leader of the Las Galileas Women’s Rural Movement in the La Bomba community of Jutiapa, Atlántida Department, is being falsely criminalized and persecuted through irregular judicial proceedings. 

Nolvia Obando is scheduled for trial on charges of land usurpation on August 12. She and 60 other members of the women’s farming cooperative were evicted from land disputed by a private landholder in March 2023. She spent five months in pretrial detention, released only after paying a $2,000 bail.  Both before and after her arrest, Nolvia Obando has suffered many human rights violations, including defamation and stigmatization from police authorities and news agencies who baselessly claim that Las Galileas is a criminal gang engaged in terrorist activities.

The criminalization of Noliva Obando is part of a larger attack of systemic criminalization against women’s rights workers and land defenders.  In its 2024 Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Honduras, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warned: “The use of criminal offenses such as incitement to violence, usurpation, insults and slander are the most commonly used to criminalize human rights defenders, especially those who defend the environment, land and territory. ” The judicial process has violated Nolvia Obando’s procedural rights and has done harm to her personal, emotional, and mental integrity.

Her defense attorney is concerned that the proceedings have been prejudicial against Noliva Obando. IRTF is urging that authorities investigate the possible complicity of judges, magistrates, police, and the Public Prosecutor’s office with the private landholder of the disputed territory of Las Galileas.