For decades, wealthy Honduran elites and the global tourism industry have been violently destroying ancestral Garifuna lands along the Carribean shoreline in Honduras. Following U.S. intervention in Honduras' election in November 2025, violent disposession of Garifuna communities has spiked, including the July 6 illegal detention of five Garifuna land defenders.
Was a Canadian military/security consultant company complicit in the 2016 assassination of Indigenous Lenca land defender Berta Céceres? Did they financially benefit? What was their role in broader intimidation efforts against Indigenous land defenders?
According to a report published by The New York Times , by 2024 Honduras Próspera Inc., the main company behind the charter city located in Roatán and based in the United States, had raised around $120 million in investments, including contributions from venture capital funds backed by Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation.
Recently, Jorge Constantino Colindres, technical secretary of Próspera, recalled that the project was the first ZEDE established in Honduras and stated that “its vision is to build in Honduras the best place in the world to do business, live, and work, with legal stability, physical security, and individual freedom. It does not receive funds from the central government, does not issue passports, has no army, and transfers 12% of its tax revenue to the national government and municipalities. What Próspera does have is what Honduras has needed for decades: a world-class regulatory environment .”
These statements contrast with the massive demonstrations in which millions of Hondurans participated between 2020 and 2021 to express their rejection of the ZEDEs and, in particular, of Prospera.
The reopening of the Fenix nickel mine in Izabel (northeastern Guatemala) is moving ahead despite pushback from the affected indigenous communities who were not informed prior, defying the Inter-American court of Human Rights who ruled that the continuation or modification of the Fenix mining project must be supported by prior, free, informed, and culturally appropriate consultation with the Maya Q'echi' community. In addition to violating the local community's rights, the mining project has significant environmental impacts that poullte water, air, and soil quality.
The legal persecution and violence waged on Indigenous farming communities is chronic in Guatemala. The current government indicated that there might be a change coming when it met with CUC (Committee of Campesino Unity) and other land rights groups and drew up an agreement called the Acuerdo Agrario (Agrarian Agreement), signed by President Arévalo on February 7, 2024. Still, the government continues to file undounded criminal charges of usurpation against Indigenous campesinos, filing more than 8,429 cases in the last six years. With only 1% ultimately resulting in any form of conviction, this demonstrates that most of them do not have any basis. Disputes over rights to Indigenous lands also result in deadly violence; 15-25 people are being killed every year.
Working for the organization Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC), José Acté has been an important leader and defender of Indigenous rights. On June 17, while returning home from work in the village of El Rancho, municipality San Agustín Acasaguastlán, Guatemala Department, he was stopped and arrested. He was unjustly accused of usurpation, theft, and aggravated robbery and put into detention. Because the government prosecutors did not appear at a scheduled judicial hearing this morning, his detention has been prolonged.
In our letter to authorities, we urged his release and dropping of the unfounded criminal charges.
Good News: Two weeks after our letter, a judge dismissed the case, ruling that it did not have sufficient merit to proceed. José Acté was greeted by friends and supporters as he left the courthouse, now a free man (for the time being).
Please join us for an evening of discussion and reflection on Cooperative Culture!
The world we live in greatly favors domination culture. We see this culture in our work places, in our government, in our schools, and even in some of our houses of worship. We are constantly presented with organizational structures that divide, and alienate us. Ways of living and working that focus on control, authority, and management.
Mega-projects like hydroelectric dams are promoted to international financiers as progress to help poor countries. But peak behind the curtain and we see the investor-profit motives of private actors, both foreign and domestic.
The International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 (commonly known as ILO 169) is a binding international convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, adopted in 1989, which guarantees their rights and requires prior consultation for measures affecting their territories, such as the construction of hydroelectric dams or large-scale mechanized mining. In the Western Highlands of Guatemala (Huehuetenango Department), Indigenous communities have been organizing resistance to the Pojom I and Pojom II dam projects. Although both were already under construction (in violation of ILO 169), in August 2025 the Supreme Court ordered the Ministry of Energy and Mines to complete a consultation process within 12 months while allowing construction to continue. Communities have challenged that ruling before the Constitutional Court, arguing that a consultation after the continued construction cannot satisfy the requirement that it be “prior.”
As is common, defenders of land rights have been criminalized in this case. Rigoberto Juárez and Ermitaño López were arrested in 2015 for their peaceful role in opposing the hydroelectric projects. After being declared not guilty of serious charges in 2016 and released, an Appeals Court in 2021 reversed the ruling and significantly increased their sentences (to 8 and 24 years). After the Constitutional Court confirmed these sentences in February 2026, IRTF has joined with Indigenous rights organizations to review their convictions and address the documented procedural violations that led to their sentencing.
Nahua Indigenous communities in the states of Michoacan and Guerrero—already victim to criminal organizations for decades—are now being forcefully displaced and targeted by military grade weaponry as the territorial disputes between the groups “Los Tlacos” and “Los Ardillos” are intensifying. Using high-caliber weapons, surveillance drones, and paramilitary tactics, the rivaling groups have encircled villages, burned homes, cut electricity and phone service, and fired shots at residents from the hillsides. There have been more than 2,000 people displaced at least five reported murders.
We are concerned that the forced displacement might be linked to corruption and economic motives. Considering that the municipalities under attack hold forests, aquifers, fertile farmland and over 2,000 hectares that have already been granted as concessions to mining companies, there are surely other beneficiaries to the communities being forcibly removed.
While the Trump administration is exploiting this crisis to create a narrative to justify threats of military intervention in Mexico—a framing that we at IRTF entirely reject—the answer to what is happening cannot be silence or inaction.
Human rights groups around the world are calling for an investigation into the death of political prisoner Brooklyn Rivera, Indigenous leader and Yatama political party leader.
After speaking out against the government of Nicaragua before the United Nations, Brooklyn Rivera was subjected to enforced disappearance and imprisoned in September 2023. Since that time there had been no confirmation of his imprisonment, and his family was barred from seeing him. But just a few days before he died on May 30, 2026, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed Rivera’s detention and published photos of him intubated in a hospital. The government attributed his death to a COVID infection, but human rights groups demand an independent investigation.
In IRTF’s letter to Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosa Murillo, we urge (1) an independent, transparent and thorough investigation on what happened exactly to Brooklyn Rivera, (2) an account of the specific conditions of his detention, including whether he had access to adequate medical care, and the exact sequence of events that led to his death, and (3) release of all arbitrarily detained persons and assurance that detention centers fully comply with international human rights standards
On April 7, 2026, indigenous leader Reinaldo Campos was assassinated after being kidnapped in the department of Arauca, Colombia. Campos was governor of the Macarieros Indigenous Reserve of the Makaguan people in Tame (Arauca) and former president of the Association of Councils and Traditional Authorities (ASOCATA). He also served as a liaison for the Special Consultation Mechanism for Development Programs with a Territorial Focus (PDET), which worked to transform Colombia’s countryside and fulfill the rights and needs of communities in the most conflict-affected areas.
The death of Reinaldo Campos marks the 37th murder of a social leader in Colombia in 2026, a stark reminder that the promises of Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement to protect Indigenous peoples and human rights defenders remain unfulfilled. As the situation for human rights defenders and community leaders in Colombia remains critically dangerous, we are calling on Colombian authorities to take immediate action to protect those most vulnerable to violence, and carry out a thorough investigation into Campos’ murder.
