source: CATRA (Calan Institute for Transterritorial Justice)
In January 2026, the Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a criminal proceeding in the Criminal Court of Santa Rosa de Copán against six environmental and Indigenous rights defenders living in and around the mining-affected community of Azacualpa. Javier López Miranda, Antonio Hernández Pesquera, Higinio Caballero, Gerardo García Peréz, Efrain Pesquera Vásquez and Javier Madrid Rodríguez 1 are accused of usurping land owned by Honduran mining company Minerales de Occidente S.A. de C.V. (MINOSA), subsidiary of transnational corporation, Aura Minerals. 2
The environmental defenders are scheduled to have a pre-trial hearing known as an audiencia inicial on May 5, 2026. Here, the judge will decide whether sufficient evidence exists to formalize the charges and continue onto trial. This article argues that the prosecution of the Azacualpa Six is a gross misuse of the Honduran criminal justice system and an outgrowth of severe institutional failure.
Protecting Cerro Los Hornillos
Cerro Los Hornillos is a forested area in the municipality of La Unión, Copán Department, in western Honduras. Sitting between MINOSA’s San Andrés gold mine and a smattering of rural communities and smallholdings, the area has been earmarked to facilitate the expansion of the mine for many years. 3
On July 8, 2025, local community members published video evidence that MINOSA had started logging Cerro Los Hornillos, preparing for mineral extraction. Community members, including those of the local Maya Chortí Indigenous community, denounced the mine for failing to consult affected peoples prior to initiating work in the area. They questioned the authority under which the company was operating and expressed concern that the destruction of Cerro Los Hornillos could affect the geological integrity and waterways on which communities rely. Concerned community members installed a peaceful encampment in Cerro Los Hornillos in September 2025. In order to protect the environmental and community well-being, the encampment has refused to allow the mine to continue operating in the area.
The encampment has become the focus of MINOSA’s well-known intimidation tactics. 4 In January 2026, the Azacualpa Six began to receive paperwork indicating that the Public Prosecutor’s Office would prosecute them on behalf of MINOSA for their participation in the encampment. On February 12, 2026, encampment members were confronted by a contingent of military soldiers dispatched to the area to support MINOSA’s operations.
Criminalization As Institutional Failure
In February 2026, our team reviewed proceedings filed with relevant administrative agencies to evaluate the authority under which MINOSA moves to exploit Cerro Los Hornillos–referred to in filings as Tajo La Buffa–and the potential environmental and social impacts. We reviewed documents filed with the Honduran Institute for Geology and Mining (INHGEOMIN - Instituto Hondureño de Geología y Minas) and the Secretariat of Natural Resources and Environment (SERNA - Secretaría de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente), which together regulate mining through concession and environmental permitting schemes. We also reviewed documents filed with the Institution for Forest Conservation (ICF - Instituto de Conservación Forestal), the entity charged with regulating logging activities.
Our review indicates that MINOSA moves to exploit Cerro Los Hornillos/Tajo La Buffa without express permission from INHGEOMIN or SERNA. Tajo La Buffa sits within a concession that expired in 2023. The renewal application that MINOSA submitted to INHGEOMIN in 2022 and an opposition subsequently filed by community lawyers is pending final resolution. 5 Similarly, SERNA filings reveal that MINOSA’s 2022 application for an environmental permit and a legal challenge made by community lawyers remain unresolved. 6
MINOSA did receive a logging permit from the ICF, which is unusual given that Honduran law requires that a mining applicant receive an environmental permit before requesting permission to log. Documents indicate that MINOSA successfully argued that it does not need explicit permission from INHGEOMIN and SERNA to exploit Cerro Los Hornillos, citing a provision of Honduran law that stipulates that administrative actions, properly presented, are presumed granted after a certain period of administrative silence. 7
MINOSA’s legal theory is dubious and has not undergone robust review. The ICF is the only state institution that has evaluated MINOSA’s position. 8 Neither SERNA nor INHGEOMIN have confirmed that MINOSA’s actions are authorized via administrative silence or any other legal theory. The Public Prosecutor’s criminalization effort is in part founded on the ICF logging permit, the legitimacy of which they have not examined.
It is also dangerous. Anthropological documentation confirms that Cerro Los Hornillos is sacred to the Indigenous Maya Chortí people of the region and a historically significant site. 9 SERNA filings have also confirmed community concerns about severe environmental risks– the project is listed as a category 4, a classification reserved for projects with the highest environmental risk, while a preliminary environmental report indicates moderate to severe impacts on the air, soil, water, and biological environment. 10 Adding insult to injury, MINOSA’s reported “community consultation” is a joke. Their 2021 “consultation” consisted of one virtual meeting with an abysmal 26 people, 23 from the community of San Andres Minas and 3 from Azacualpa. No efforts were made to consult the Indigenous Maya Chortí community of Azacualpa. 11
The heart of the institutional failure in this case is this: Despite the severe social and environmental risks that this project poses, MINOSA is moving towards exploitation without any sign of institutional oversight. Their unilateral action is rewarded–both the military and the country’s judiciary have moved to act in their favor. To protect the environment and community well-being, environmental defenders are forced to also act. 12 They face jail time.
History Repeats Itself
The criminalization of environmental defense work—the labor that is often the last line of defense for vulnerable communities faced with institutional negligence—is so common a dynamic in Honduras, that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights mentioned it in their last country visit report. Abusive companies and complicit state institutions most commonly use the offense of usurpation—refered to as the “unlawful occupation of a premises and coercion”—to criminalize, undermine, and discredit rights defenders. 13
The Honduran state famously criminalized Indigenous leader Berta Caceres for her environmental defense work even as they ignored her numerous complaints that corporate actors threatening Lenca communities were involved in serious acts of corruption and had been harassing Berta. 14 It took her murder, one ordered by a construction company’s chief executive, for the state to take the allegations seriously.
In this case, environmental defenders impacted by the San Andres mine have been criminalized no less than three times since transnational mining company, Aura Minerals acquired MINOSA in 2009. 15 The systematic disregard of community concerns and the criminalization of legitimate rights defense work have been disastrous for the environment and the well-being of the communities surrounding the San Andres mine. 16
In 2022, Aura Minerals/MINOSA destroyed a 200-year-old cemetery, considered the cultural patrimony of the Maya Chortí community of Azacualpa, despite a Supreme Court sentence explicitly prohibiting its removal. 17 In April 2026, the mine’s impact spread to a regional highway where cyanide sodium cargo owned by MINOSA spilled during a vehicular accident. National news characterized the event as an example of a tragic accident, the impacts of which were successfully mitigated. This narrative ignores key facts, namely the suspension of MINOSA’s International Cyanide Management Code certification in May 2025 and MINOSA’s frequent and unchecked cyanide spills contaminating waterways surrounding the San Andres mine. 18
Things will get worse without effective intervention. Although Aura Mineral’s latest technical report indicates that the mine is reaching the end of its life, with around four years of mineral extraction left, MINOSA has applied for six additional concessions surrounding the original one, contemplating the radical expansion of its operation and its disastrous impacts. INHGEOMIN has granted two 10-year exploration concessions and denied one so far, while three others are still pending. 19
Who Benefits?
For over forty years, communities surrounding the San Andres mine have suffered the social and environmental impacts of its operation. The costs are justified with the promise of jobs, tax revenue, and "charitable gifts” that never quite manage to pull surrounding communities out of extreme poverty. This is because year after year, the profits–extracted from the ruins of ancestral cemeteries, destroyed communities, and disappeared waterways and forests–exit the country. Aura Minerals made US$95.2 million in net profit from the San Andres mine last year. The funds were distributed amongst its majority shareholder, Brazilian businessman Carlos de Brito, and a handful of others. 20
FOOTNOTES
1 On April 19, 2026, community leader Javier Madrid was appointed president of the newly conformed Indigenous Maya Chorti Council of Azacualpa (Consejo Indigena Maya Chortí de Azacualpa).
2 Usurpation is the unlawful occupation of a premises. It is an offense under article 378 of the current criminal code of Honduras.
3 Karen Spring, Mining in a State of Impunity: Coerced Negotiations and Forced Displacement by Aura Minerals in Western Honduras (Mining Watch Canada, 2016) at p.12.
4 For a discussion of how MINOSA has previously deployed intimidation tactics to crush overwhelming community opposition to the destruction of the Azacualpa cemetery, see Allison Lira, “We Don’t Even Know Where the Remains of our Loved Ones Are” (NACLA, 2022).
5 MINOSA, File 45, INHGEOMIN. For MINOSA’s renewal request, see volumes 33-37. For the opposition filed by the Studies for Dignity Law Firm (BED - Bufete Estudios Para La Dignidad), see volume 40.
6 See MINOSA, Application 12873, SERNA for the environmental permit application. Studies for Dignity Law Firm (BED - Bufete Estudios Para La Dignidad), has a copy of the challenge to all environmental permits granted and pending that favor MINOSA.
7 Aura Minerals, NI 43-101 Technical Report (2025) at p.19-20. MINOSA makes another, more obtuse argument, which it claims that the ICF accepted. MINOSA claims that one of the first environmental permits that it received is a lifetime permit that covers the whole concession area, thereby authorizing exploitation within the entire concession, including Tajo La Buffa. This fails to explain why MINOSA has applied for and received environmental permits for individual areas of intended exploitation within the concession area for the last fifteen years, as this legal theory would make this practice superfluous.
8 The logging permit has been challenged by community lawyers, Studies for Dignity Law Firm (BED - Bufete Estudios Para La Dignidad). A decision from the ICF is pending.
9 Andrés Marcelo Morales, Tres siglos de minería y despojo: continuidad histórica y amenaza persistente a las manifestaciones culturales del pueblo maya chortí en San Andrés Minas, Azacualpa y San Miguel, La Unión, Copán (1678-2023) (Honduran Institute of History & Anthropology, 2025).
10 MINOSA, Application 12873, SERNA.
11 MINOSA, Application 12873, SERNA. Note that at the time of application submission, SERNA required that those seeking an environmental permit for a category 4 project submit proof of project socialization and community approval through a cabildo abierto (town-hall meeting).
12 Note that for years, community members have worked with lawyers to challenge MINOSA’s concession and environmental permits. They established a peaceful encampment for the protection of Cerro Los Hornillos when the risk of social and environmental harm became imminent.
13 Visit to Honduras:Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, A/HRC/40/60/Add.2 (UNGA, 2019) at ¶20.
14 Berta was also accused of usurpation. Visit to Honduras: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, A/HRC/40/60/Add.2 (UNGA, 2019) at ¶42.
18 A brief online search reveals at least two cyanide spills before Aura Minerals acquired MINOSA, one in 2003 and another in 2009. Cyanide spills have occurred under Aura Minerals/MINOSA at least three times. There were incidents in 2017 and 2021. Documents filed with INHGEOMIN indicate that MINOSA was fined in 2023 for failing to report a cyanide spill to authorities, see MINOSA, File 45, volume 49, INHGEOMIN
19 Aura Minerals, NI 43-101 Technical Report (2025).
20 Paulo Carlos de Brito together with his son Paulo Carlos de Brito Filho hold roughly 50% of Aura Mineral’s shares, see Aura Minerals, Form 20-F (2026) at p. 220. For information about profits, see Aura Minerals, Consolidated Financial Statements for 2025, found on the company’s SEDAR Profile.
