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Honduras: News & Updates

Honduras did not experience civil war in the 1980s, but its geography (bordering El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua) made it a key location for US military operations: training Salvadoran soldiers, a base for Nicaraguan contras, military exercises for US troops. The notorious Honduran death squad Battalion 316 was created, funded and trained by the US. The state-sponsored terror resulted in the forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of approximately 200 people during the 1980s. Many more were abducted and tortured. The 2009 military coup d’etat spawned a resurgence of state repression against the civilian population that continues today.

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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras 10/23/2020
October 23, 2020
Environmental defender Arnold Joaquin Morazán Erazo of the Guapinol community in the municipality of Tocoa, Colón Department, was assassinated on October 13. Arnold Morazán was one of 32 environmental defenders in Tocoa who have been criminalized for their involvement in a community encampment set up to defend the Guapinol River from the iron ore mining industry. The murder of Arnold Joaquín Morazán occurred at a decisive moment in the ongoing trial of eight Guapinol environmental defenders and reveals the systematic threats faced by the Guapinol community, where violence is employed to punish their work in defense of water and the environment. We are urging that officials in Honduras: 1) carry out an exhaustive and impartial investigation into the murder of Arnold Joaquín Morazán, publish the results and bring those responsible to justice; 2) cancel the concession to the iron ore mining company Los Inversiones Los Pinares
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 10/12/2020
October 12, 2020
A group of armed men arrived at the Garífuna community of Vallecito, whose residents have been victim to harassment, intimidation and threats over their land for many years. Attempts at forcible seizure of their territory (sometimes successful) has come from drug traffickers and African palm growers. In recent years, private investors (including many from the US and Europe) have been looking at Vallecito and other Garífuna communities on the Atlantic Coast to build their Model Cities, which was authorized under the ZEDE (Economic Development Zone) legislation passed in 2013. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has criticized the government of Honduras for not adhering to its mandates to protect Garífuna ancestral lands and adequately investigate the murders of Garífuna community leaders. As recently as May 2019, the Court acknowledged that Garífuna community members are still experiencing "direct death threats," "blackmail, increased robbery," and "profiling of leaders."
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News Article
How Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries to defend natural resources
October 6, 2020

“Every day that passes we know less about him. He’s weak, he’s had Covid symptoms; we worry about his health and safety in the prison.” Gabriela Sorto expresses great concern for her father Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, a 48-year-old builder and farm worker, who is one of eight protesters from Guapinol held in pre-trial detention since September 2019 for alleged crimes linked to their opposition to an iron oxide mine which threatens to contaminate their water supply. The community of Guapinol (named for its river) is in the fertile, mineral-rich Bajo Agua region, where for years subsistence farmers and indigenous Hondurans have been forcibly displaced, criminalized and killed in conflicts with powerful conglomerates over land and water. “My dad has been jailed for defending a river which gives our community life, for trying to stop the exploitation of natural resources by rich companies who the government helps to terrorize us,” said Gabriela Sorto.

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News Article
Traición a la patria
October 5, 2020

The ZEDEs (Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo) -- also known as "model cities" -- continue stirring up controversy on the pages of the daily newspapers and on the streets of Honduras in the form of organized resistance. Edmundo Orellano is the former foreign minister and former defense minister of Honduras. In this article published in La Tribuna, he describes the ZEDEs this way: "We are handing over the territory and sovereignty, displacing the population and stripping it of its real estate, to establish small States ['model cities"] in a territory that will no longer be ours, populated by foreigners, that are like the ones that appear provoking the islanders in the video went viral on the networks, they will be, for the most part, louts."

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News Article
Isleños de Roatán no “ZEDEran” sus bienes comunes
October 5, 2020

A "model city?" According to Edmundo Orellano, the former foreign minister and former defense minister of Honduras: "We are handing over the territory and sovereignty, displacing the population and stripping it of its real estate, to establish small States ['model cities"] in a territory that will no longer be ours, populated by foreigners, that are like the ones that appear provoking the islanders in the video went viral on the networks, they will be, for the most part, louts." This article looks at local resistance on the island of Roatán to the model city (aka ZEDE, or Zona de Empleo y Desarrollo) called Próspera .

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Event
US Intervention and Popular Resistance in Latin America and the Caribbean
October 4, 2020
This informative webinar features four experts speaking on Honduras (Karen Spring, Honduras Solidarity Network), Nicaragua (Nan McCurdy, United Methodist missionary), Haiti (Pierre Labossiere, Haitian Action Committee), and Venezuela (Ricardo Vaz, journalist based in Venezuela)
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras 10/01/2020
October 1, 2020
On September 27 in Comayagua, as journalist Luis Almendrares, age 35, was getting out of his car to go into a store for groceries, two men wearing hoods drove up on a motorcycle, shot him repeatedly, and fled. Luis Almendares began taping the scene of his own attack with his cellphone. He died the next day at a hospital in Tegucigalpa. The Honduran Press Association (APH, Asociación de Prensa Hondureña) has affirmed that "the problems of the press in Honduras begin with reports of journalistic investigations into corruption of officials or the political class.” On his Facebook page, Periodista504, the journalist had published information about corruption by local elected officials in Comayagua and violence committed by the police. Luis Almendares is at least the third journalist to be assassinated in Honduras in 2020, and at least the 85th since 2001. The National Human Rights Commission of Honduras (CONADEH) reports an impunity rate of 91% for the murders of journalists.
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News Article
Interview: Climate & Agriculture in Central America
September 17, 2020
We discussed how climate and weather impact their crops, the farmer’s likes and dislikes of farming, and what organizations readers can reach out to support farming in Central America (original Spanish included).
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News Article
Climate Change in Central America: Migration
September 4, 2020
Governments all over the world can and must take action right now to reduce the amount of people forcibly displaced because of climate change. According to a United Nation’s Report, we, as a global community, still have a window of opportunity to establish policies and strategies to ameliorate both the issues leading to climate migration and the issues directly caused by climate migration.
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News Article
Climate Change in Central America: Adaptation Strategies and Policies
September 2, 2020
We have already emitted enough greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as CO2, to change the very composition of our atmosphere. Scientists, researchers, policymakers, and governmental officials alike know this; they know that the effects of climate change are occurring now and will continue into the not-so-distant future. We now face the question: will we act now to limit the consequences of climate change by reducing emissions or continue with the status quo and suffer the consequences?
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