Honduras: News & Updates

On Thursday, The Honduran Parliament conferred the National Heroine title to the Indigenous Lenca environmentalist Berta Caceres, who was murdered in March 2016 for defending the rights of her community over the Gualcarque river. "Our decision seeks to recognize and preserve the legacy of Caceres for Honduras," legislators stated and urged the national educational system to include the life of this environmentalist in its programmatical contents.

In July it will be two years since four residents of the El Triunfo de la Cruz community, Tela, Atlántida, were kidnapped by men in military and police clothing. Families in the community continue to wait for news and to be reunited with their loved ones. Garifuna fighter and leader Clara Flores told Radio Progreso that the long wait is extremely painful. She says that every morning when she passes by the community selling bullets, she remembers how Snyder Centeno, one of the disappeared, would buy and they would talk about the community reality. “Remembering that is still painful because we live in constant anxiety, waiting to find out where they are, what has happened to their lives. It doesn't matter what government is, if our rights continue to be violated, we will continue to fight. We demand that the government be able to strengthen our autonomy,” she says.

After decades in which Honduras served as a bridge state along the cocaine highway from South America to the United States, coca plantations are now spreading across the country like an invasive plant whose seeds are carried in the wind. In 2021, authorities eradicated a record amount of coca plants. This year, hardly a week has gone by without the discovery of another plantation, and authorities are already on the verge of shattering last year’s record. Cocaine production in Honduras is still in its infancy and unlikely to ever come close to the levels of the biggest three cocaine producers: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. But if left unchecked, it could give rise to a new generation of drug traffickers, and refortify clans of old, much like the shifting of drug routes from the Caribbean to Central America did at the turn of the century.

Discussions about the possible installation of an International Commission Against Corruption and Impunity (CICIH) —president Xiomara Castro's campaign promise— has stirred up lobbying to control the Judiciary and the Public Ministry.  There are intense movements in the National Congress to adjust the election processes of the Attorney General and the 15 new magistrates of the CSJ in 2023. To analyze this situation, the experiences of the CICIG in Guatemala and of the CICIES in El Salvador are useful, as they are similar commissions despite being in different contexts. 

For many years, the jungle region known as La Mosquitia in northeast Honduras has been an ideal corridor for international drug trafficking. However, another criminal economy has emerged at the same time: illegal cattle ranching. As a result, the region has been plunged into a state of terror, where criminals threaten the land and the Indigenous communities that inhabit it. The Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve is the largest protected reserve in Honduras. It’s located in a region known as La Mosquitia, covering the departments of Gracias a Dios, Colón and Olancho in the far northeast reaches of the country along the border with Nicaragua. The majority of this area is covered by jungle and ancestral territory for a number of Indigenous communities. According to the reserve's Indigenous communities, settlers come to La Mosquitia to find land to raise bovine cattle, which are primarily used for their meat. The settlers ride around openly through the jungle in jeeps, cutting down trees with chainsaws, setting fire to the land and planting pastures to feed thousands of cattle, despite this being a protected area. These individuals also come heavily armed, and have other reasons for cattle ranching: facilitating cocaine trafficking and laundering the illicit proceeds it generates.

The Associated Press reports: “A plan to create special self-governing zones for foreign investors in Honduras has been thrown into limbo with the new government’s repeal of a law many criticized as surrendering sovereignty. [The zones for employment and economic development known as ZEDEs are] free from import and export taxes, but could set up their own internal forms of government, as well as courts, security forces, schools and even social security systems." The article refers to the zones already being developed, including Prospera (a 58-acre development on the island of Roatan) and Orquidea (an agro-industrial park near the city of Choluteca that produces peppers and tomatoes for export).

Since their initial arrest in 2018, IRTF followed the trial of activists Raúl Álvarez and Edwin Espinal with great concern. While being detained in a maximum-security prison on false charges for about 20 months, they had to endure inhumane conditions and received death threats from other inmates, lacking any support or security by prison authorities. Raúl Álvarezfinally received his official letter of release on May 12, 2022.