source: Calan Institute for Transterritorial Justice
May 12 2025
On Saturday, April 12, 2025, Max Gil Castillo, a Garifuna youth from the Punta Piedra Community, was disappeared by people who identified themselves as police officers.
Max is the brother of Tomás Castillo, president of the Punta Piedra Community Council, and a well-known leader in the struggle for the restitution of the ancestral land title of Punta Piedra. Formal complaints and a habeas corpus were filed before Honduran courts to begin the search process. Yet, to date, Max’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Max Castillo’s disappearance takes place in the same context of the struggle for land restitution as the disappearances of the Garifuna leaders of Triunfo de la Cruz in 2020, whose whereabouts are still unknown and who were also disappeared by people who identified as police officers.
Meanwhile, the Investigative Unit of the Police (DPI in Spanish), portrays Max as a criminal, alleging that he is a member of the “18” Street Gang. This is a racist strategy that the Honduran Police commonly deploys, criminalizing land defense in an effort to discredit Garifuna land defenders.
Shortly after Max’s disappearance, Miriam Miranda – OFRANEH’s General Coordinator – denounced that Garifuna leaders, including herself, were receiving death threats via an audio message. In the audio, the person who identified as the private security guard of the tourist enclave in the Triunfo de la Cruz community called Rosa Negra said: “We will take you out of your houses, and we will kill you.”
These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a series of violent acts and intimidation against members of the Garifuna Community who defend their ancestral territory.
The disappearance and death threats occurred shortly after Garifuna leaders and community members, including those of the Punta Piedra and Triunfo de la Cruz communities, joined a mobilization to Tegucigalpa where they:
- Demanded the restitution of their community's territory and respect for their ancestral land title, and
- Declared the demise of the 2024 High-Level Commission for Compliance with International Judgments (CIANCSI in Spanish) due to government inaction and boycotts from state institutions in the enforcement of the judgements.
These violent acts are directly tied to the demands of the Garifuna leaders for the State of Honduras to comply with the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In 2015, the Inter-American Court condemned the State of Honduras for violating the collective property rights of the Punta Piedra community, primarily because the State, through the National Agrarian Institute and the Municipality of Iriona, issued private titles to third party settlers in the Rio Miel sector, which they now illegally occupy, violating the community's ancestral title.
In the same year, the Inter-American Court also condemned the State of Honduras for violating collective property rights of the Triunfo de la Cruz community, namely because due to the sale and transfer of the community’s land for industrial and tourism purposes and the creation of a national park within ancestral land.
