Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

[Yehuda]

Haitians hold historic mobilization in defense of their constitution

On the 34th anniversary of the Haitian Constitution, various social and progressive organizations from across the globe demonstrated in different parts of the world in support of the struggle of the Haitian people against the de-facto president Jovenel Moïse

March 30, 2021 by Tanya Wadhwa

Since January, tens of thousands of Haitians have been mobilizing against Jovenel Moïse’s decision to hold a constitutional referendum in June, and presidential and legislative elections in September. Photo: Eugene Puryear/BreakThrough News

March 29 marked the 34th anniversary of the referendum adopting the Haitian Constitution of 1987. The constitution is the main achievement of the democratic movement of 1986 that led to the fall of the 29-year-long Duvalier family dictatorship. On February 7, 1986, dictator François Duvalier’s son Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown in a popular uprising and fled to France, giving way to the democratic transition in Haiti. A year later on March 29, 1987, the constitution, which was drafted following the fall of the dictatorship and represented the victory of the people over the authoritarian regime, was approved with an overwhelming majority of 99.8% of the votes.

In commemoration of the historic achievement and in the face of the attack against it under the current illegitimate regime, yesterday, thousands of Haitians took to the streets across the country in defense of the constitution. They also mobilized in rejection of the de-facto president Jovenel Moïse’s decision to replace it with a new one that provides for the return to a presidential regime.

In the capital Port-au-Prince as well as in other cities, several large demonstrations were held. The protesters also demanded that Moïse respect the constitution and leave the presidency citing that according to the Article 134-2 of the constitution his term officially ended on February 7, 2021. Further, they called on governments part of the Core Group, the US, the EU, the UN and the OAS to withdraw their support for Moïse, who has overstayed his term and is ruling by a decree with a non-functional parliament since January 2020.





International solidarity

Meanwhile, as a part of the International Day of Solidarity with Haiti, organized on the same day, various social and progressive organizations from across the globe demonstrated in different parts of the world to support the struggle of the Haitian people against the unconstitutional government and its illegitimate call to hold constitutional referendum in June, and presidential and legislative elections in September.

Various solidarity actions were organized in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, South Africa, the US, Venezuela, Zambia, among other countries, to demand an end to Moïse’s dictatorship, US imperialism and plundering in Haiti.

Members of various organizations in Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Puerto Rico demonstrated outside the US embassies, the UN and the OAS offices to demand respect for the self-determination and sovereignty of the Haitian people and an end to their interference in Haiti.

A large number of people took to social media platforms to express their support. Hashtags such as #NoDictatorshipInHaiti, #DownWithUSImperialism, #LongLiveHaiti, #FreeHaiti #HandsOffHaiti, #HaitiCantBreathe, among others, flooded social media networks.



Several organizations wrote letters or petitions denouncing the crisis in Haiti and urging their governments to stop recognizing Moïse’s government. In Argentina, representatives of various social movements and groups held a meeting in the Chamber of Deputies to organize support for a state policy that respects the sovereignty and rights of the Haitian people.

Likewise, numerous international organizations issued a solidarity letter, demanding an end imperialist interference. “Taking into account the importance of this struggle and that this dictatorial regime still enjoys the support of imperialist governments such as those of the United States, Canada, France and international organizations such as the UN, the OAS, the EU and the IMF, we call to listen to the people of Haiti who demand the end of the dictatorship as well as respect for their sovereignty and self-determination and the establishment of a political transition regime controlled by Haitian actors that has enough space to launch a process of authentic national reconstruction,” stated the organizations.

They also demanded justice and reparations for the crimes committed by the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). “We call in particular on the UN and the OAS -which certainly have no right or morality to interfere in elections and other internal affairs of member countries- and on the governments of all countries, especially those who lent themselves to “occupy Haiti humanely” for 13 years -through MINUSTAH-, to stop behaving as if Haiti were their colony. Enough of interference! Their duty is to ensure justice and reparations for all the crimes they have committed against that people and country, including the introduction of cholera, rape and sexual abuse, impunity for their electoral manipulation and the use of “cooperation” to their own ends,” they claimed.

The International Solidarity Day was called for by Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti (KOMOKODA), Community Movement Builders, CODEPINK, Alba Movimientos, the Dessalines Brigade, Organization of Human Rights and Democracy, Instituto Simon Bolivar, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Comuna Caribe, Coalition Haïtienne au Canada contre la Dictature en Haïti, Solidaridad Dominicana con Haïti, CREFODEL, Family Action Network Movement (FANM), and received the support of the Via Campesina, the International Week of Anti-Imperialist Struggle, the COPASP, KONBIT, PAPDA and the FPP.



Haitians hold historic mobilization in defense of their constitution

 

[Yehuda]

Solidarity With The People of Haiti in their Struggle for Democracy, Justice, and Reparations

To the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres

To the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro

To the governments of the member countries of the UN and the OAS

To the people of Haiti and their organizations

For consideration:

Haiti is once again going through a profound crisis. Central to this is the struggle against the dictatorship imposed by former president Jovenel Moïse. Since last year Mr. Moise, after decreeing the dismissal of Parliament, has been ruling through decrees, permanently violating Haiti's constitution. He has refused to leave power after his mandate ended on February 7, 2021, claiming that it ends on February 7 of next year, without any legal basis. This disregard of the constitution is taking place despite multiple statements by the country's main judicial bodies, such as the CSPJ (Superior Council of Judicial Power) and the Association of Haitian Lawyers. Numerous religious groups and institutions that are representative of society have also spoken. At this time, there is a strike by the judiciary, which leaves the country without any functioning judicial power.

At the same time, this institutional crisis is framed in the insecurity that affects practically all sectors of Haitian society. An insecurity expressed through the savage repression of popular mobilizations by the PNH (Haitian National Police), at the service of the executive power. They have attacked journalists and committed various massacres in poor neighborhoods. Throughout the country, there have been assassinations and arbitrary arrests of opponents. Most recently, a judge of the High Court was detained under the pretext of promoting an alleged plot against the security of the State and to assassinate the president, leading to the illegal and arbitrary revocation of three judges of this Court. This last period has also seen the creation of hundreds of armed groups that spread terror over the entire country and that respond to power, transforming kidnapping into a fairly prosperous industry for these criminals.

The 13 years of military occupation by United Nations troops through MINUSTAH and the prolongation of that guardianship through MINUJUSTH and BINUH have aggravated the Haitian crisis. They supported retrograde and undemocratic sectors which, along with gangsters, committed serious crimes against the Haitian people and their fundamental rights. For this, the people of Haiti deserve a process of justice and reparations. They have paid dearly for the intervention of MINUSTAH: 30 THOUSAND DEAD from cholera transmitted by the soldiers, thousands of women raped, who now raise orphaned children whose fathers, still alive, returned to their countries without assuming any responsibility. Nothing has changed for the better in 13 years, more social inequality, poverty, more difficulties for the people. The absence of democracy remains the same.

The poor's living conditions have worsened dramatically as a result of more than 30 years of neoliberal policies imposed by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), a severe exchange rate crisis, the freezing of the minimum wage, and inflation above 20% during the last three years.

It should be emphasized that, despite this dramatic situation, the Haitian people remain firm and are constantly mobilizing to prevent the consolidation of a dictatorship by demanding that former President Jovenel Moïse immediately leave office. Recently, on February 14 and 28, hundreds of thousands of citizens clearly expressed in the streets their rejection of the dictatorship and their firm commitment in favor of respecting the Constitution.

Taking into account the importance of this struggle and that this dictatorial regime still has the support of imperialist governments such as the United States of America, Canada, France, and international organizations such as the UN, the OAS, the EU, and the IMF, we call on you to listen to the people of Haiti who are demanding the end of the dictatorship as well as respect for their sovereignty and self-determination and the establishment of a transition government led by Haitians to launch a process of authentic national reconstruction.

We especially call on the UN and the OAS - which certainly has no right or morals to interfere in elections and other internal affairs of member countries -, on the governments of all countries, especially those that lent themselves to the "humanitarian occupation" of Haiti for 13 years, through MINUSTAH -, to stop behaving as if Haiti were their colony. Enough of intervention! Their duty is another: to ensure justice and reparations for all the crimes they have committed against that people and country, including the introduction of cholera, rape and sexual abuse, the impunity of their electoral manipulation and the use of "cooperation" for their own ends.

Only the Haitian people can decide on their future, but in this effort, they can count on our solidarity and willingness to support them with all the actions within our reach. We support the people and movements of Haiti so that they can elect a popular transitional government and a Constituent in a democratic way.

For a Free and Sovereign Haiti.

Brazil, São Paulo, March 29th, 2021

SIGNATURES:

INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS

1. IPA – International Peoples’ Assembly

2. International Week of Antiimperialist Struggle

3. ALBA Movimientos

4. Foro de São Paulo

5. Jubileo Sur

6. La Via Campesina

7. PIE – Partido de la Izquierda Europea

8. WIDF – Women´s International Democratic Federation

9. WMW – World March of Women

LATIN AMERICA and CARIBBEAN

10. Argentina, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora Nora Cortiñas

11. Argentina, Premio Nobel de la Paz Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

12. Argentina, SERPAJ - Servicio Paz y Justicia

13. Argentina, Amigos de la Tierra Argentina

14. Argentina, Así Cultural IMPA La Fábrica

15. Argentina, CAPOMA Bs As

16. Argentina, Casa de la Amistad argentino-cubana-venezolana de La Matanza

17. Argentina, Cátedra Libre Salvador Allende. UBA

18. Argentina, CEMIDA (CENTRO DE MILITARES PARA LA DEMOCRACIA ARGENTINA)

19. Argentina, ChavismoSUR

20. Argentina, Colectivo Sanitario Andrés Carrasco/ALAMES Argentina

21. Argentina, Comité argentino de solidaridad por el fin de la ocupación de Haití

22. Argentina, Corriente Nacional Emancipación Sur

23. Argentina, Corriente Nacional Martín Fierro

24. Argentina, Diálogo 2000-Jubileo Sur Argentina

25. Argentina, Encuentro de Profesionales Contra la Tortura

26. Argentina, Envar El Kadri

27. Argentina, Estudiante

28. Argentina, Familiares de desaparecidos y detenidos x razones políticas de Córdoba

29. Argentina, Frente Patria Grande

30. Argentina, Grupo de Estudios sobre América Latina y el Caribe

31. Argentina, Haiti, EE.UU., Camerùn, Tanzania, Italia, Francia, Bélgica, Gran Bretaña, Irlanda, La Santa Unión de los Sagrados Corazones

32. Argentina, Marabunta Corriente Social y Política

33. Argentina, Movimiento Centroamericano 2 de Marzo

34. Argentina, Movimiento Patriótico Revolucionario Quebracho

35. Argentina, Negras(si)Marronas

36. Argentina, Nuestramerica Movimiento Popular

37. Argentina, Organizaciones Libres del Pueblo-Resistir y Luchar

38. Argentina, Partido de la Liberación PL

39. Argentina, Resumen Latinoamericano

40. Argentina, Todo en sepia asociación de mujeres afrodescendientes en la Argentina

41. Argentina, Unidad Popularclozano

42. Brazil, ABJD - Associação Brasileira de Juristas pela Democracia

43. Brazil, CMP - Central de Movimentos Populares do Brasil

44. Brazil, Comitê Anti-imperialista general Abreu e Lima

45. Brazil, CONEN - Coordenação Nacional de Entidades Negras

46. Brazil, Consulta Popular

47. Brazil, CPP - Conselho Pastoral dos Pescadores

48. Brazil, FUP - Federação Única dos Petroleiros

49. Brazil, Jubileu Sul Brasil

50. Brazil, Levante Popular da Juventude

51. Brazil, MAB - Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens

52. Brazil, MAM - Movimento Pela Soberania Popular na Mineração

53. Brazil, MCP - Movimento Camponês Popular

54. Brazil, MPA - Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores

55. Brazil, MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

56. Brazil, PJR - Pastoral da Juventude Rural

57. Brazil, SPM

58. Brazil, UJS - União da Juventude Socialista

59. Chile, Angie

60. Chile, Izquierda Libertaria

61. Colombia, Coordinación Política y Social Marcha Patriótica

62. Colombia, Corporaciòn Josè Martì Pèrez

63. Dominican Republic, Accion Afro Dominicana

64. Dominican Republic, c00nadeco

65. Ecuador, ACCIÓN ECOLÓGICA

66. Ecuador, Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo

67. El Salvador, Movimiento por la Salud Dr Salvador Allende-ALAMES

68. El Salvador, RACDES

69. Honduras, CONAMINH

70. Mexico, Cátedra Libre de Pensamiento Latinoamericano "Ernesto Che Guevara"

71. Mexico, Comité de Derechos Humanos de Base de Chiapas Digna Ochoa

72. Mexico, Observatorio Latinoamericano de Geopolítica

73. Mexico, Partido Popular Socialista-Agrupación Política Nacional Popular Socialista

74. Peru, CENTRO DE DESARROLLO ETNICO - CEDET

75. Peru, Federación de Trabajadores de Lambayeque CTP

76. Puerto Rico, Colectivo Ilé

77. Puerto Rico, COMUNA Caribe

78. Puerto Rico, Plena Combativa

79. Trinidad & Tobago, Assembly of Caribbean People

80. Trinidad & Tobago, Oilfields Workers' Trade Union

81. Uruguay, Coordinadora en defensa de la Autodeterminación del pueblo Haitiano HAITÍ

82. Uruguay, PCR-Partido Comunista Revolucionario

83. Venezuela, Coalición de Tendencia Clasista (CTC-VZLA)

84. Venezuela, Coordinadora Simón Bolívar

85. Venezuela, Frente Francisco de Miranda

86. Venezuela, Mala madre

87. Venezuela, OCV. Organización Comunitaria Venezuela

NORTH AMERICA

88. United States, Anti-Imperialist Action Committee

89. United States, CodePink

90. United States, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

91. United States, Latin America Solidarity Coalition of Western Massachusetts

92. United States, Massachusetts Peace Action

93. United States, PEP - Popular Education Project

94. United States, TPF - The People’s Forum

ASIA

95. East-Timor, Conselho Nacional da Ressureicao de Maubere (CNRM)

EUROPE

96. France, France Insoumise Amérique Latine

97. Italy, Potere al Popolo!

98. Spain, CIG - Confederación Intersindical Galega

99. Spain, Comunidad Cristiana Vanguardia Obrera

100. Spain, Ongd AFRICANDO

101. Russia, Vanguard of Red Youth of Labour

102. Ukraine, Union "Borotba"

#NoDictatorshipInHaiti #DownWithUSImperialism #LongLiveHaiti

Solidarity With The People of Haiti in their Struggle for Democracy, Justice, and Reparations

 

[Yehuda]

“Poor rich Haiti” or how imperialists and local oligarchy have sought to destroy agriculture in Haiti

From Haiti, Lautaro Rivara unpacks the tired trope of “poor rich Haiti,” highlighting the role of foreign capital and local elites in the destruction of life in the countryside

March 28, 2021 by Lautaro Rivara

Photo: Lautaro Rivara

Does the oft-repeated refrain that “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” explain anything? Is it a poor country or an impoverished country? Or perhaps it is unsuspectedly rich? Are its indifferent friends in the West really not interested in the country? Why then do the United States and European countries seem to be so zealous about the “Haitian thing”? In a series of notes and based on fieldwork carried out in four departments of the country, we will focus on understanding the “poor rich Haiti” and some of the initiatives of what has been called its “reconstruction” since 2010. We will discuss the economic interests of Western powers, expressed through initiatives such as industrial parks, mining operations, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free zones.

Haiti’s borders are curious. The small country is bordered to the east by the Dominican Republic, dividing in two the territory of the island of Hispaniola. To the west it borders the Caribbean Sea and to the south, a forgotten maritime border with the Republic of Colombia. But what interests us here is a border that is not entirely imaginary: to the north and northeast, although the maps would like to indicate otherwise, Haiti borders the United States.

It is here, in this region, that most US economic interests – and also those of its smaller partners – are concentrated. This is the case of Canada, that peculiar North American colony that in turn colonizes others. But also those of France, Germany and other European nations. In this and the following notes, we will talk about industrial parks, mining and speculation, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free trade zones. This does not include some unholy initiatives in other parts of the country, such as the seizure of entire islands, drug trafficking or tax havens where the money comes in dirty and goes out free of guilt and sin.

But it is in the northeast region of this “poor rich” country that the power enjoyed by the current de facto president, Jovenel Moïse, has been amassed. He has made this territory his personal fiefdom. His modus operandi has been land grabbing and the true foundation of his power, his economic alliances with transnational capital, both legal and extralegal.

For this, we will travel to the heart of the communities affected by what, after the devastating earthquake of 2010, has become known as the “Reconstruction of Haiti”. In this first note, we will talk – paraphrasing Eduardo Galeano – about the “Banana King” Jovenel Moïse and his numerous agricultural courtiers. But first, let’s take a look at the situation of the rural areas and the local peasantry.

Barefoot

One out of every two inhabitants of the country lives in the countryside. But an even higher percentage of the population, around 66%, depends on and subsists in relation to rural areas and agricultural production. According to a study by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the urban population has only overtaken the rural population in the last five years, and the current difference is only about 100,000 people.

Peasant youth children are the most affected by land grabbing policies. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

Land everywhere is finite and vital. But it is even more so in a territory covered by extensive mountain ranges, and where the agricultural frontier is receding with every meter gained by deforestation and desertification – today the country retains barely 2 percent of its original vegetation cover. It is not surprising, then, that a large part of the peasant population is poor: they are the so-called pyè atè, the “pata en tierra”, the barefoot.

For a long time, however, an unprecedentedly radical measure was at least able to guarantee Haitians a piece of land on which to produce and reproduce life. Since the revolutionary constitution of 1805, land ownership was denied to foreigners on the grounds of sovereignty and national dignity, becoming an obstacle to the full implementation of capitalism on the island. At least until the definitive abolition of this prohibition in 1915, under the mantle of the American occupation.

Today, there are around 600,000 farms in Haiti, organized in small plots – jaden – of between 0.5 and 1.8 hectares. Peasant agriculture is mostly family and traditional, but there are many different forms of land ownership, work and usage: family landowners, tenant farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers, sharecroppers, etc. The tools used are rustic, often no more than the traditional pickaxe and machete, usually without draft animals, without any kind of machinery, without chemical fertilizers, with native seeds, all under a rain-fed agricultural regime. Despite the enormous contribution of peasant agriculture to national wealth – around 25 percent of GDP – the state’s contributions to the sector are practically nonexistent.

On the other side of rural life, a select group of families, usually living abroad, as well as a handful of transnational corporations, still concentrate around half of the available land and in many cases, worse still, keep it unproductive.

A requiem for the free market

Eat what you don’t produce and don’t eat what you produce. This is the secret of the offshoring and financialized export agriculture that has been promoted in the country in recent decades. A fundamental milestone in its implementation was the policy of trade and financial liberalization imposed in the mid-1980s, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, the US State Department and the enthusiastic action of the ineffable Bill Clinton – a self-styled “friend of Haiti” whose friendship, however, nobody here wants to reciprocate.

In the mid-1990s, this policy deepened, with tariffs on rice imports falling from 35 percent to 3 percent under external pressure. In the same year, the US invested 60 billion dollars to subsidize its own rice production. So-called dumping resulted in Haiti’s production falling by over 50% from 130,000 to 60,000 tons. The selling prices of the peasantry, exposed to unfair competition with the hyper-subsidized American farmer, led to the ruin and exodus of thousands and thousands of peasants. A vicious circle of agricultural ruin, unemployment, hunger, foreign food aid, impossibility of competing with the “free” food sent to the country, and again more ruin, unemployment, hunger, etc., was generated.

The Artibonite Valley, the heart of the country’s rice production, has been in terminal crisis since the 1990s. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

As a result, Haiti went from being practically self-sufficient in the production of the staple grain of its national diet to importing it massively. Although the case of rice is the most dramatic, it is far from the only one. The nation went from importing less than 20 percent of its food in the early 1980s to importing more than 55 percent from abroad today, mainly from the United States and the Dominican Republic.

This cycle resulted in the partial destruction of traditional peasant agriculture. Some may call it “subsistence”, but for the local peasant it was instead an agriculture of “abundance”, if we consider how trade liberalization has generalized the phenomenon of hunger today. On the other hand, the relationship between food assistance and hunger is direct, as was the case with the “Tikè Manje” program and others developed by USAID, through voucher systems that only allow the population to have access to North American products.

 

[Yehuda]

Agritrans S.A.: the flagship

In this scorched earth scenario, after the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the project of transnational, deterritorialized and financialized agriculture began to take shape. Transnational, due to the dominant influence of external capital, beyond the resounding publicity of certain local “entrepreneurs”. It is deterritorialized because the local space becomes a kind of non-place for the capitals that mold the territory in their image and likeness: bananas from Haiti or Guadeloupe, soya from Brazil or Paraguay, sugar cane from the Caribbean or European beet sugar, etc., are all the same. And it is financialized because what this agriculture tends to produce is not food, but foreign currency. In short, it is an agriculture that satisfies only the hunger for capital accumulation.

A cautious detour with a good local guide allowed us to enter the lands of Agritrans S.A., the company of de facto president Jovenel Moïse, which became famous for its involvement in one of the largest embezzlements of public funds in the country’s history, amounting to a quarter of the national GDP. This was confirmed by Senate investigations – before its closure in January 2020 – and by the Supreme Audit Court, before its reduction, by presidential decree, to nothing more than a mere consultative body.

The inhabitants of the Limonade and Terrier-Rouge area, in the North-East Department, are in awe of all things related to this fabled expanse of land. And for those who feel neither fear nor respect, there are armed guards to remind them. They told us to stop and threatened to shoot as soon as the motorbike we were traveling on around their perimeter on National Route 6 slowed down. Unable to film or photograph the accesses, we had to clandestinely enter the estate through some twisted wire fences on the side of a canal. Surprisingly, a barren plain then spread out before us. Whether because of the environmental damage resulting from intensive production without crop rotation, or perhaps because the tenure of these lands today serves more the assertion of local power than the process of real accumulation, we saw not even a trace of a cultivated field. Today, Agritrans S.A. is a huge, uncultivated estate, surrounded by crowds of peasants who cannot even get access to a “handkerchief of land”, as the locals eloquently put it.

The “Nourribio” project was set up here in 2013, on the land of the man who would later become the country’s president. The 1,000 hectares in front of us were donated for a project that envisaged the intensive production of bananas, mainly for export to Western countries. It also took the form of a free zone, exempt from taxes and other charges. The land for its establishment was expropriated from 3,000 peasants and granted in concession for a renewable term of 25 years. The aforementioned promises of employment fell far short of expectations: only 200 people were being employed, according to information from 2014. And the people who lost land? The small amount of their compensation was spent on the basic necessities of everyday life. With no land to work or produce, their “beneficiaries” soon found themselves unemployed, expelled to the capital, expelled abroad, or reduced to starvation, if not a combination of all of the above.

According to the specialist Georges Eddy Lucien, in the face of the banana production crisis in the French overseas departments (Guadeloupe and Martinique), “the Northeast – of Haiti – appears in the eyes of investors and international institutions as an ideal alternative territory, where production costs (labor, available land) are much lower…”. The impoverishment of Haitian workers has meant that the wages of an agricultural worker can be 25 times lower – 25 times! Not to mention if we compare it with the average wages of a Frenchman or a North American.

History is a boomerang. The first shipment of Agritrans bananas arrived at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2015. The same port that flourished during the slave trade and during the reign of Leopold II. A century ago, thousands of kilos of ivory and rubber, the product of slave exploitation in the Belgian Congo, arrived there. Today, it is bananas from Haiti, produced by one of the most impoverished workforces on the planet.

Operation dispossession

However, at least the construction of Agritrans S.A. involved mechanisms that we will call quasi-legal – although not moral – through the expropriation and compensation of peasant properties, measures taken perhaps because of the international visibility of the project.

But the policy of land grabbing has deepened in recent years, according to the leaders of the main peasant organizations during a recent colloquium on the subject held in the central region. There, for example, the national government ceded by decree no less than 8,600 hectares of fertile land to the Apaid family, one of the richest in the country. Another agricultural free trade zone is supposed to be built there, but this time for the production and export of stevia for the multinational Coca-Cola.

Christiane Fonrose and her husband prepare charcoal on reclaimed land in Terrier Rouge. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

But back to the Northeast. After long walks along impassable rural roads, flooded by rain, mud and state neglect, we were able to visit several communities that have suffered and are today facing the dispossession of their lands by local landowners, foreign companies and armed gangs.

In Terrier Rouge, Irené Cinic Antoine of the “Small planters” movement told us that she has owned a large plot of 6,000 hectares of land since 1986. In 1995, under the progressive government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the process to legalize their tenure began. Since then, the common lands have been divided between agriculture, charcoal trees and livestock. Their ownership rights were even published in the official state newspaper, but the documents were later disappeared by anonymous hands.

We also talk to Christiane Fonrose and her husband, as they stoke the fire on the mountain of earth inside which burns the wood that will be turned into charcoal. It is one of the few remaining means of survival in the region, although its ecological costs are well known to all, particularly to the peasantry. From his unshakeable faith, Fonrose tells us: “The land is God’s thing, which God created for us. Before creating his children, God created the earth. (…) But then they took the earth out of our hands. Today we have nowhere to plant, nowhere to graze some small animals, the children cannot go to school (…) We are in a very difficult situation”.

We were also able to visit peasant organizations in Grand Basin who are currently resisting the permanent hostility of invisible actors who are trying to take over land that was ceded to them by the state, again during the Aristide era. After another long trek along the difficult rural roads, our interview had to be conducted in the pouring rain, as even the roofs and doors of the small house on the plot were stolen. Here, on the edge of mineral-rich mountains, 1,500 organized peasants have been able to work 148 kawo of land (about 200 hectares) to produce sugar cane, maize, manioc and even honey and kleren – a peasant sugar cane brandy – in a sovereign and agro-ecological way.

The farmers of MOPAG have been resisting eviction attempts in Grand Bassin for years. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

A little over a year ago, a heavily armed group broke in, disrupting their crops, stealing or killing their animals, destroying fences, buildings and their meager agricultural implements. Evidently these were neither neighbors nor amateurs, as the operation involved the deployment of expensive bulldozers. Even today, the land that was taken remains unproductive, and the peasants are constantly threatened not to try to recover it. So far, no state body has given them any response. “Without the land, outside the land, we peasants are worthless. We voted for them ourselves, but it seems that they don’t need us anymore,” concludes Antoine.

Today there are barely 350 people left, including only a handful of young people: most of them have been forced to migrate to the capital Port-au-Prince or even abroad. In the long siege they have been suffering since then. The National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INARA) has hardly dared to take sides with them. Coincidentally, according to recent reports, the Moïse government is seeking to eliminate this body in the new constitution it is now preparing. According to Wilson Messidor, leader of MOPAG, the project to dispossess them of their land would be closely linked to the mining resources in the area, and to the construction of the so-called villages, semi-closed residential neighborhoods that USAID is building for the workers in the free trade zones.

USAID appears, in fact, as the de facto civil authority in these territories, and its projects are constantly growing and multiplying, as indicated by the numerous signs on the roadsides. According to an anonymous Cuban engineer, the US mega-cooperation organization operates through loans and projects, indebting the state and the communities, in order to guarantee control of strategic areas for their water and mineral resources.

“Poor rich Haiti” or how imperialists and local oligarchy have sought to destroy agriculture in Haiti

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[Yehuda]

CONADECAFRO celebrates nine years promoting the advancement of Afro-descendants in Venezuela

By Iralva Moreno A | March 23, 2021

One of the most emblematic achievements is the collective construction of the Afro-descendant Sector Plan of the 2019-2025 Economic and Social Development Plan.

The National Council for the Development of Afro-descendant Communities of Venezuela (CONADECAFRO, for its acronym in Spanish) celebrates, this March 24, nine years of the announcement of its creation by the supreme leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, who conceived this instance for the advancement and defense of the Afro-descendant population in Venezuela.

Its creation was consolidated four days later, on March 28, 2012, published in Official Gazette No. 39,893 and by Presidential Decree No. 8,860. Since its creation, it has been chaired by Professor Norma Romero Marín.

One of the institution's most significant achievements is precisely the signing of Decree No. 3,335 for the implementation of the National Decade for People of African Descent, whereupon Venezuela complied with the United Nations (UN) resolution that proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent in the period 2015-2024.

With this, Venezuela reached a historic milestone, whose event, led by the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, was held on March 24, 2018 at the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry in Caracas in the context of the 164th anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery in Venezuela, in order to reject discrimination and segregation of the Afro-descendant population and to stimulate the full enjoyment of their economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.

Another of the most emblematic achievements is the collective construction of the Afro-descendant Sector Plan of the 2019-2025 Economic and Social Development Plan, where social movements of the country participated in territorial assemblies together with the Ministry of Popular Power for Planning.

This body is attached to the Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness of the Ministry of Popular Power of the Office of the Presidency and Monitoring of Government Management and was created with the premise of promoting, strengthening and consolidating public policies suitable for the Afro-descendant population.

CONADECAFRO celebrates nine years promoting the advancement of Afro-descendants in Venezuela

 

[Yehuda]

Afro-descendants chapter of the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples promotes the banners of the struggle for an inclusive society model, with equality and social justice

Caracas, February 20, 2021

“The Afro-descendants chapter of the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples is a process where more than 59 municipalities from all over the country are in permanent assemblies to elaborate the banners of the movement, in order to promote the organization in the struggle for an inclusive society model, with equality and social justice”, said this Saturday the Sectorial Vice President for Social and Territorial Development, Aristóbulo Istúriz.

The statements were given by Istúriz in order to carry out, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Popular Power for Education, the Afro-descendants chapter of the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples, where he stated that, thanks to the inclusion policies of Commander Hugo Chávez, consciousness was generated to make the leap from the capitalist model to the socialist model.

“Ruled by the principles of equality, solidarity and social justice, the Afro-descendant Movement is committed to deepening the momentum of State policies. Starting with this Congress we are uniting all the Social Movements, understanding the construction of a great Social Movement that achieves the victories of our people”, he said.

The participation of this Movement in the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples takes firm steps towards the plenary session that will take place on February 27 and 28 for the construction of the 2021–2030 agenda.

Afro-descendants chapter of the Bicentennial Congress of the Peoples promotes the banners of the struggle for an inclusive society model, with equality and social justice

 

[Yehuda]

Bolivia Reduced Drug Trafficking By Expelling the DEA: Interview

February 10, 2021

The United States ‘War on Drugs’ in Latin America is synonymous with militarization and armed conflict which remains as fierce today as it has ever been. The U.S. government, for many decades, has invested vast sums in training Latin American security forces to fight the narcotraffickers who meet the demands of the North American consumer. However, the trade is as lucrative as ever and has only grown in size despite the billions spent in fighting it. Furthermore, rather than challenge the narcos, the U.S.-trained forces have instead focused largely on waging a brutal war on impoverished campesino farmers, drowning rural areas in permanent violence.

In Bolivia, DEA and U.S. military bases were established during the neoliberal with the aim of eradicating the coca leaf. Coca is one ingredient used in the production of cocaine, however, the plant has a huge legitimate market within the country and has been a central component of indigenous culture for over a millennia. In the effort to eradicate coca, Bolivian troops were placed at the service of U.S. commanders who led numerous massacres in the coca-growing regions of the Chapare and the Yungas. Coca grower union leaders, like Evo Morales, were jailed, persecuted, and in some cases even assassinated. Evo has recounted numerous times how he witnessed DEA officials taking part in the massacre of indigenous farmers in the town of Villa Tunari.

In 2005 Evo Morales was elected President and proceeded to expel all U.S. interference in Bolivia and rejected the U.S. model for the ‘War on Drugs’. The result? A reduction in the production of coca and cocaine. Meanwhile, countries that cooperate with the U.S., such as Colombia and Peru, have seen sharp increases in production during the same period.

Kawsachun News spoke to Jaime Mamani Espindola, Bolivia’s Vice Minister for Social Defense and Illicit Substances, about how Bolivia has managed such success after rejecting the U.S. model.

The interview was conducted by Oliver Vargas and Kathryn Ledebur

OV: Why has Bolivia rejected the U.S. ‘war on drugs’? What do you mean by the ‘nationalization of the struggle against narcotrafficking’?

JME: Across the world, and in Bolivia, the U.S. ‘war on drugs has failed. When there was the DEA and U.S. military presence in this country, there was a higher production of coca, and there were a larger number of criminal groups involved in narcotrafficking. Their approach was to target coca leaf producers through forced eradication, they were persecuted and tortured, while narcotraffickers never received that treatment. There were human rights violations on a massive scale. These policies were drawn up abroad and imposing them was a condition for receiving international aid and cooperation. In the period 1996-2005, 60 coca leaf farmers were murdered, 5 disappeared, 700 injured with bullet wounds, 523 arrested.

After 2009, our country began the nationalization of the struggle against narcotrafficking, which is a model that has won international praise because it’s based on consensus and inclusive decision making and on community control. What do we mean by community control? It’s when local unions are given the power to supervise and stop growth in coca production. Part of our success in this approach is the economic aspect, providing alternative forms of income and production for coca growers. In the past 12 years of this model, the government has invested $US 539 million in these communities. Another important aspect is purchasing our own military equipment to monitor coca production and for anti-drug operations, rather than depending on other countries, so we purchased 6 helicopters ‘Superpuma’ costing $US 221 million. This past year, the Anez government abandoned this model and Bolivia became a transit country for drugs from Peru. Last week I was in Beni to announce the recent seizure of drugs coming from Peru that were passing through Bolivia en route to Brazil, before that we seized a similar amount that was passing through La Paz, with the same origin and destination.

We have fought to defeat narcotrafficking and to defeat the big fish of the trade, but Bolivia is not a country that consumes narcotics. Countries, like the U.S., with high rates of consumption, have to make more of an effort to reduce that. With our model, we’ve managed to reduce the production of coca thanks to our ‘law on coca’ that allows a small level production, 22 thousand hectares across the whole country, for the legitimate market. Our success has been because this strategy is our own, not foreign. Since the return of democracy in Bolivia under the leadership of President Luis Arce, we’ve returned to this model. We’re committed to the fight against drugs and narcotraffickers, who have done so much to damage our country and its image.

OV: The link between coca growers and the state was broken after the coup in November 2019. If the coup had lasted several years, do you think all the progress against narcotrafficking could’ve come undone?

JME: It’s important for the world to know what happens when Bolivia drops the model we built since 2009 in Evo Morales’ government. There have been awful results for the 11 months of the coup. They used the Ministry I’m in now to persecute and attack coca leaf growers rather than real narcotrafficking. They paralyzed international cooperation on this issue, they paralyzed the purchase of radars necessary for anti-drug operations.

KL: The 6 Federations and Evo Morales have long been keen to promote the success of Bolivia’s fight against drugs. Can this model be exported to other countries that produce coca? and what are plans for international cooperation?

JME: We work with the UN’s drug agency for monitoring coca production. They help by taking satellite images and we do the work of going out those areas and verifying if there is illegal production. We always promote our model of community control in international forums. We explain that if coca growers are brought on board and guaranteed their right to a small unit of production, then it’s easier to reduce overall production. Countries that have adopted the U.S. model have failed to achieve the reductions that we have. Our achievements are thanks to the cooperation of the coca growers unions in the Trópico of Cochabamba and Yungas, we’ve built a model that’s praised around the world. Nevertheless, we still need to strengthen international cooperation on this issue, we should create an international organization to train people and share experiences.

OV: Another success of the Bolivian model seems to be the low levels of violent crime in the country. Of course, there does exist delinquency and petty crime, but we are nowhere near the homicide rates of countries like Colombia or Mexico which have historically adopted the U.S. model.

JME: Thanks to the nationalization of the fight against narcotrafficking, we no longer have groups of international organized crime within the country. We’ve done this by drawing up a policy within the country and working alongside those it affects and who have knowledge of the territory. This would not work if foreign forces came in to fight the war on drugs, because their war on drugs is not about drugs, it’s about entering and taking control of our natural resources. That is why their war on drugs was focused on persecuting union leaders in our country. There was a higher level of drug trafficking here in the 70s and 80s and onwards, and that’s when they, for example, assassinated the historic coca growers union leader Casimiro Huanca. We need instead, cooperation across Latin America, to ensure that international crime groups do not enter our country, the damage they would do is huge.

Bolivia Reduced Drug Trafficking By Expelling the DEA: Interview

 

[Yehuda]

 

[Yehuda]

 

[Yehuda]

Pity the Nation: Honduras Is Being Eaten from within and without

APRIL 12, 2021

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Me lo dijo el río / The river told me so, Honduras, 2021

Co-publication with Peoples Dispatch and the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH)

Part 1: The Coup of 2009

On 28 June 2009, President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a coup d’état engineered by the Honduran oligarchy and the United States government. The reverberations of the coup extend into present-day Honduras, which continues to struggle to maintain its political sovereignty.

For the past seven decades, interference by the United States government has seriously compromised Honduras’ political sovereignty. The United States engineered coups in Haiti (1991 and 2004) and Bolivia (2019) as well as set in motion a long-term – failed – coup process against Venezuela beginning in 1999.

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Salgamos a jugar / Let’s go play, Honduras, 2020

Why was President Zelaya overthrown? Nothing in his personal history as the son of a rancher, a businessman, and the manager of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada, COHEP) or in the history of his party, the Liberal Party of Honduras (Partido Liberal de Honduras, PLH), suggested either his radicalisation or that he would be the victim of a coup. Elected in 2006, Zelaya saw the merit of a broad reform agenda.

Great disparities and social infirmities in Honduras held back social progress for the people of Honduras, for which reason Zelaya’s government introduced free public education for children, a higher minimum wage, and a range of social welfare policies, including cash transfers and free electricity. It is by now well-acknowledged that social indignities cannot be overcome if the rights of women are set aside, so Zelaya vetoed a decree that sought to ban emergency contraception pills (a measure overturned immediately by the coup regime). As a consequence of the actions of Zelaya’s administration, absolute poverty was reduced in Honduras.

In 2009, Berta Cáceres Flores, a leader and co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), reflected on why this coup took place:

Because of the rich, the oligarchs, [and] the far right – with support from the mafia of Miami [and] the Cuban and Venezuelan counter-revolution – these are the consultants of these coup supporters. Their worry is that the Honduran people could decide what to do with strategic resources like water, the forests, the land, our sovereignty, with our labour rights, the minimum wage, women’s rights, constitutional rights, the self determination of the Indigenous and Black people. So many things that we, as Honduran people, dream of, the possibility of having an inclusive, democratic, equitable state and society with direct participation of the people. The coup-supporting oligarchs know all of this. That is why there was a coup. And this coup is against all of the processes of liberation of our continent.

To advance the agenda of reform further, Zelaya affiliated his country with the ALBA’s (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) process of regional integration and with PetroCaribe, a social democratic oil agreement that provides low-cost Venezuelan oil to the region. Up to this point, Honduras’ fuel industry had been surrendered to the major oil giants. Zelaya sought to change this relationship by subjecting the fuel industry to an international bidding process, which enabled Honduras to gain $200 million from Esso, Shell, and Texaco. Due to Honduras’ affiliation with ALBA, ties with Cuba increased. About 480 Cuban doctors had already been in the country since Hurricane Mitch in 1998. By 2009, hundreds of Hondurans had graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Cuba and worked to build the public health institution. Some, like Dr. Luther Castillo, a member of the Garifuna community, served under Zelaya as vice-minister of cooperation with ALBA.

The domestic reforms angered the oligarchy, while the linkage to the ALBA process angered Washington, DC. US Ambassador Charles Ford described Zelaya unkindly as ‘almost a caricature of a landowner and caudillo in terms of his leadership style and tone’. Ford accused Zelaya of being beholden to ‘powerful, unnamed interests’. Zelaya’s days were numbered.

Zelaya proposed the formation of a National Constituent Assembly to revise the 1982 Constitution, which had been written in the aftermath of a long period of the military dictatorship from 1955 to 1982 to defend the interests of US firms such as United Fruit (the US Ambassador in Tegucigalpa was known colloquially as the ‘pro-consul’). People’s movements backed the idea, while the oligarchy and the US government opposed it on the grounds that a new constitution might deepen the process of social reform in Honduras.

For the November 2009 elections, Zelaya proposed that, in addition to voting for a new president, congress, and municipal officials, the electorate also vote for a National Constituent Assembly in a fourth ballot. However, he wanted to leave the question of whether or not there should be a fourth ballot to the Honduran people; in March 2009, he proposed that the public vote in a referendum on 28 June 2009. A dirty tricks campaign run by the opposition began to suggest that Zelaya wanted to extend his term of office, although he told El País in June 2009 that he planned to leave office when his term ended in January 2010. On the same day that the people of Honduras were set to vote in the referendum, the military arrested Zelaya and dismissed his cabinet.

The United Nations General Assembly condemned the coup, and so did US President Barack Obama (although Obama’s secretary of state Hillary Clinton contradicted him immediately). The US role in the coup requires some explanation. On the surface, the US government, including US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens, said in public that, while the US opposed the direction Zelaya had taken, they were opposed to a coup against the 1982 Constitution. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the US military, represented by US Military Group commander in Honduras Colonel Kenneth Rodriguez, was in direct contact with the head of the Honduran military General Romero Vásquez Velásquez right through the coup. Vásquez was trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1976 and 1984.

In leaked emails, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the case against following the Organisation of American States (OAS) process, through which Zelaya’s ALBA allies could have driven the agenda and likely could have restored him to office. Instead, Clinton successfully put pressure for the negotiations between the coup regime and Zelaya’s government to take place in San José, Costa Rica under the watchful eye of US ally Costa Rican president Óscar Arias. The end result of the Clinton process was to legitimise the coup. It was clear that the US wanted the policies pushed by Zelaya nullified, and the Honduran military chiefs – close to the US officials – concurred.

There is nothing new about US military intervention in the country. In the 1980s, Honduras was used as a launching pad for US-backed wars of destabilisation against the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the same period, the US took charge of the Soto Cano (Palmerola) Air Base outside of Tegucigalpa for its own purposes, including to carry out the dirty wars inflicted on El Salvador and Nicaragua. Decades later, Zelaya wanted to turn that base into a commercial airport, which the US government opposed. In 2008, US Ambassador Charles Ford wrote that the US needed to maintain a ‘low public profile’ while working to ‘protect US security interests at Soto Cano’.

After Ford left his post as Ambassador, he went to work at US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the US combat command for Latin America and the Caribbean. When Zelaya was arrested, he was brought to Soto Cano. US soldiers manned the control tower, which gave permission to the aircraft that took Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica. SOUTHCOM’s assessment of the political situation prevailed over any liberal hesitancy about the coup: ‘To defeat Zelaya, the de facto government [of Roberto Micheletti] needs only to endure until new elections occur’. This election was held in November 2009 under military rule. It resulted in the victory of the right-wing National Party’s Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who reversed the process of reform started by Zelaya.

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Senderos latinos / Latino paths, Honduras, 2019

Part 2: The Swift Descent into the Extreme Right

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, the military and the police arrested and harassed those who opposed it. The threats and acts of violence did not abate with the election of Lobo, with at least eighteen journalists, human rights defenders, and movement leaders killed in the months after his inauguration.

None of these documented cases of violence perpetrated by the coup regime could come before the courts. This was largely because of the actions of the Supreme Court, which endorsed the coup on the day that it happened, rejected any constitutional appeals that challenged the Micheletti government, and – in May 2010 – removed four judges who questioned the coup’s legality. Despite immediately suspending aid after the coup, the US government soon resumed military aid, USAID money, and money through the anti-drug trafficking Mérida Initiative. The Obama administration openly lobbied for the governments of Micheletti and Lobo; its military and civilian aid publicly validated US recognition of the coup regime.

Lobo’s government gave amnesty to the coup plotters, amongst whom was Juan Orlando Hernández, who became the president of the Congress in January 2010. Hernández used his post to create an effective dictatorship of the National Party, with the military right behind it at every step. There was the Anti-Terrorism Financing Law (2010), the Special Law on Wiretapping (2011), and a law that created the National Security and Defence Council (2011). These laws weakened the Congress and the judiciary and centralised power in the office of the presidency. Faced with judges unwilling to go ahead with the Lobo-Hernández plans for privatisation and with Hernández’ desire for a second term, Hernández fired judges in the middle of the night in what has come to be called el golpe técnico (‘the technical coup’).

The social impact of the coup regime’s lawlessness was almost immediate. The National University’s Observatory on Violence tracked the increase in criminality. The data was so dramatic that it led the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to release reports that warned of Honduras’ slide into general social violence. For example, the IACHR noted:

For years, the Inter-American Commission has monitored the high levels of citizen insecurity in Honduras and its effects on the effective enjoyment of human rights. The State recognizes that in the last decade it has been one of the most violent countries in the world, having reached in 2011 a rate of 86.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. It also indicates that drug dealing and organized crime constitute a factor generating violence, which have infiltrated several state institutions.

It is this general violence that led the mass migrations out of Honduras to triple in the years following the coup, including in 2021.

In the aftermath of the coup, Cuban Ambassador Juan Carlos Hernández Padrón, with the support of the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan ambassadors, opened the doors of his embassy åto protect the lives of those whom the coup sought to persecute. Zelaya’s foreign minister Patricia Rodas took shelter there after it became clear that the military had her in its sights.

 

[Yehuda]

Having legitimised the coup and strengthened the presidency, the right-wing candidate and coup plotter Juan Orlando Hernández ran for the post in 2013 and won against Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife. He had the full support of the National Party of Honduras (PNH) and the military, as well as the United States. Allegations of fraud dogged that election. Salvador Romero, who headed Bolivia’s election agency and who was hired by the US government’s parastatal agency, the National Democratic Institute, worked in Honduras during the election process. Confronted with evidence of fraud and state violence – including the assassination of two leaders of the National Centre of Farmworkers (CNTC) María Amparo Pineda Duarte and Julio Ramón Maradiaga – Romero told the New York Times that, despite ‘the general perception of fraud’, the election was legitimate. The US government backed this assessment as did the Honduran agencies controlled by the oligarchy.

New structures, such as the National Interagency Security Force (FUSINA) and the Military Police for Public Order (PMOP), enabled Hernández to exercise control over both the military and the police. Both structures – already pliant to the post-coup National Party regime – now became institutionally subordinate to the presidency. Many key PMOP officials were trained by US Southern Command and several of them have been accused of murder, torture, and sexual violence. A general atmosphere of impunity pervades the presidential security state run by Hernández.

Such harsh measures fell into place to reverse Zelaya’s social democratic advances and to sell the country (vendepatria) to the overall interests of key sectors of international capital. Hernández pushed through an array of laws to privatise energy, water, social security, health, education, and the mining sector. Zelaya’s moratorium on mining concessions was revoked and new policies were put in place that discarded the possibility of any consultation by the communities that lived where the mining was to take place. Evictions of the poor – especially the indigenous poor – came alongside the granting of concessions to foreign companies that had collaborations with a few wealthy Honduran families.

The situation of the indigenous and afro-descendants has worsened since the coup, with conflicts rife over their land for mining and tourism projects. There are roughly 837 potential mining projects on what amounts to 35% of Honduran land, according to a 2015 IACHR report. A large number of the sizable projects are on indigenous and afro-descendant land, including 98 mining concessions in the Departments of Lempira and Santa Bárbara, where the Indigenous Lenca people live, and where much of COPINH’s organising takes place. Additionally, there are 76 hydroelectric projects in 14 of the 18 departments of the country.

These concessions were consolidated through the creation of Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDE), which allow private, often foreign, firms a free hand to manage labour and the land. In October 2012, the Supreme Court said that the ZEDEs were legal entities; this was further established through the legislature in June 2013 by the Organic Law of Employment and Economic Development Zones.

Over three hundred concessions were given out for hydroelectric projects and a hundred other concessions were given for mining operations. Many of the ZEDE projects opened up one third of the Caribbean coast of Honduras to tourism, ports, and mineral exploration (including for oil). A combination of tax exemptions and guaranteed investments with zero losses provided foreign and Honduran capital with enormous advantages. Former military men, such as Roberto David Castillo Mejía, exchanged their uniforms for suits and profited from the coup regime. Honduras, the National Party-military regime announced, is open for business.

Reflecting on the ZEDE laws, Berta Cáceres Flores of COPINH said:

the ZEDEs or ‘model cities’ are a complete surrender of what was left of the sovereignty of what is known as the State of Honduras. The laws and Free Trade Agreements that they promote don’t even have to go through the National Congress. It is pure neoliberalism; they are handing over huge swaths of land to transnational companies, which will have their own armies, their own migratory systems, legislative systems, their own systems of government, their own system of justice. It is so ridiculous that they have already made a committee, and they call it ‘good practices’. This is the discourse of the transnational companies. They talk about ‘mitigation’. There is a committee of 21 very powerful businessmen; 17 of them are foreigners. It is one of the most aggressive instances of plundering and displacement that we have seen, and they already have defined the places where they will begin. They are Indigenous and black lands of the peasant and fishing communities in the south of the country. It is one of the worst things that we, as Honduran people, are suffering.

The coup regime has been led by three administrations under the National Party: Roberto Micheletti (2009-2010), Porfirio Lobo Sosa (2010-2014), and Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-present). Each of these administrations is beholden to the Honduran oligarchy, the Honduran military forces, and the United States government. As a consequence of the coup regime’s policies, poverty rates in Honduras escalated; as of 2018, 62% of the population lives in poverty, with 38.7% in extreme poverty.

Roberto Paz, Un registro de nuestro legado lenca / A record of our Lenca heritage, Honduras, 2019

The nature of the coup regime became clear once again in 2015 when Hernández announced that he would seek re-election in 2017. This was despite the fact that one of the reasons given for the overthrow of Zelaya was that he allegedly wanted to seek a second term in violation of the Constitution’s one term limit. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo Electoral, TSE) backed Hernández by a narrow vote, which allowed him to lead the National Party to the polls. The election that took place in November 2017 was marked by widespread accusations of fraud. The fact that Hernández ran for the election – despite constitutional term limits that had earlier been used as a pretext to overthrow Zelaya – and that there were proven accusations of fraud mark the nature of this regime.

From the day of the election onwards, the country was swept into a historic wave of protests, surpassing the levels of mobilisation seen in 2009 against the coup. Road blockades and mobilisations were documented in 15 of Honduras’ 18 departments and were organised at 150 points across national territory. The slogan Fuera JOH (‘Get out JOH’, referring to Juan Orlando Hernández) appeared on walls across the country. This remains a key slogan of progressive forces. Later, the UN Human Rights Council (OHCHR) office in Honduras investigated human rights violations; its 2017 report provided factual evidence of the annulment of democracy in Honduras. The OHCHR report detailed the state’s intimidation of the political opposition and journalists:

At the time of completing this report, on 27 January, OHCHR had registered that at least 23 people were killed in the context of the post-electoral protests, including 22 civilians and one police officer. Based on its monitoring, OHCHR considered that at least 16 of the victims were shot to death by the security forces, including two women and two children, and that at least 60 people were injured, half of them by live ammunitions.

In addition, OHCHR found that mass arrests took place, and that at least 1,351 people were detained between 1 and 5 December for violating the curfew. OHCHR also received credible and consistent allegations of ill-treatment at the time of arrest and/or during detention. It also received reports of illegal house raids conducted by members of the security forces. Another concern during the period under review is the surge in threats and intimidation against journalists, media workers, social and political activists.

The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) released an independent report on the repression after the election, which estimated that at least 33 people had been killed between 26 November 2017 and 23 January 2018; 232 people had been injured between 26 November and 31 December; and a minimum of 1,396 people had been detained, with charges filed against 117 of them. Media reports on 4 December 2017 suggested that at least 1,350 people had been detained.

Before the violence had even ended, the US State Department’s spokesperson Heather Nauert congratulated Hernández while using boiler-plate language about the need for a ‘national dialogue’ to ‘heal the political divide’. After the US recognised Hernández’s ‘victory,’ other countries followed suit.

Meanwhile, filings in US Courts in 2021 revealed that the US government’s own Drug Enforcement Agency had evidence that Hernández, his brother Tony Hernández, and the former president Porfirio Lobo had used ‘drug trafficking to help assert power and control in Honduras’. In 2018, a case was opened against Tony Hernández in the Southern District of New York for being central to a conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. The US prosecutors said that Hernández had ‘accepted millions of dollars in drug-trafficking proceeds and, in exchange, promised drug traffickers protection from prosecutors, law enforcement, and [later] extradition to the United States’.

US Prosecutor Jason Richman accused President Hernández of being the recipient of $1 million in cash from the Mexican drug baron Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. President Hernández denied these charges. This avalanche of accusations came alongside the weakening of criminal laws in Honduras to the benefit of criminal conspiracies, including drug traffickers. For example, before the highly partisan court had finished its investigation, changes to the law of the Court of Audit (Tribunal Superior de Cuentas) and the Criminal Procedure Code weakened the ability of the Attorney General to start corruption cases and conduct surprise searches of suspects.

Honduras’ Congress passed a new criminal code in 2020 after four years of debate by the weakened opposition and by institutions such as the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH). MACCIH, an independent body set up by the OAS to investigate corruption in the country, said in a detailed study that the new law ‘would affect the investigation and criminal prosecution of crimes related to corruption in the country’. Two years earlier, in 2018, MACCIH had handed investigators the results of a probe into corruption allegations against officials from the ruling National Party. The ‘Pandora Corruption Case’ revealed that 38 former and current members of Congress, most of whom were from the National Party, were accused of diverting public funds for political campaigns and receiving money from drug traffickers. Several deputies were arrested in July 2018 but were released shortly after. No wonder that MACCIH and other institutions have been defanged by these ‘reforms’.

Muralists with COPINH, 2016

 

[Yehuda]

Part 3: The Vicious Attack on the Honduran Left

After the coup d’état, the country was paralysed for months by a series of mass mobilisations that called for the reinstatement of Zelaya. Daily protests took place in Tegucigalpa; these went on for months as communities outside the capital formed caravans to drive – and, after the military took their vehicles, to walk – to the capital city. Almost all social and political movements of the left and the centre-left joined together during these mobilisations to form the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP). A discussion within the FNRP took place at several large assemblies around the question of whether to remain a front of mobilisation or to transform itself into a political party.

Two years after the coup, in 2011, the FNRP along with a range of people’s movements and labour unions launched the political party Liberty and Refoundation, or Libre, with Zelaya as its president. Gerardo Torres, international secretary of Libre, told us about the three blocs that make up his party:

The first bloc is made up of the Liberal Party [of Honduras] that left along with Zelaya after the coup d’état. The second is made up of groups that had never participated in politics; these are groups that were formed in the struggle against corruption, groups that had a critique of the traditional vendepatria [traitor] of Honduran politics. The third bloc is made up of those of us from the traditional Left … which has always been anti-imperialist and has survived in one way or another despite everything that happened in the region: exile, the dictatorship, disappearances, guerrilla struggles. We inherit the legacy of the FMLN of El Salvador, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. In Honduras, we had our own processes of liberation, such as the Lorenzo Zelaya Popular Revolutionary Forces, the Cinchoneros Movement, and others, but they were unable to develop like those of our neighbours. This is partly because, for a long time, we have had the largest US military base in Latin America, the one in Palmerola. Creating a guerrilla movement with the capacity to liberate the country was very difficult precisely because of the presence of the Marines some 80 kilometres from Tegucigalpa. This small Left that survived took up a significant part of the leadership of the FNRP after the coup. With Libre, we have a broad platform of popular resistance from the Left to the centre Left. With Libre’s leadership, we have been able to bring together everyone who is against this puppet government, come to an agreement, and raise proposals.

Libre has helped organise struggles against the coup regime and build an apparatus to contest elections. Despite the repression – including the assassination of its leaders – and widespread election fraud, Libre’s percentage of votes in the presidential election increased from 29% (2013) to 41.4% (2017). Austerity policies by the government increased the viability of a left project while at the same time demoralising society and making it difficult to conduct political activities. Nonetheless, in the period since 2009, a range of political projects have emerged including the revitalisation of the Communist Party of Honduras and the formation of an Anti-Corruption Party (Partido Anticorrupción, PAC), which is led by centre-right Salvador Nasralla (the presidential candidate of Libre in 2017).

Waves of revolt shaped the opposition to the coup regime. In 2015, a series of anti-corruption protests developed around the antorchas (torches) and indignados (indignant) manifestations. This anti-corruption movement pointed its finger at the rot in public health and public infrastructure, two domains where embezzlement had shaped the decline in services and institutions. Demands to create a proper commission of enquiry into corruption (such as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, CICIG) were met with an anaemic response and the creation of the OAS’s MACCIH in 2016, which was weakened every year thereafter and was eventually dismantled in 2020.

In May and June 2019, health care workers and educators took to the streets to defend public health and public health sectors from the virus of privatisation. They demanded immediate investment to save these key sectors, which had been hollowed out by the neoliberal policies of the previous decade. At the heart of these protests was Fuera JOH, the demand to end the coup regime led by Hernández.

The approach of the coup regime for the past decade has been to fragment mobilisations, to destroy the Left, and to undermine its confidence by picking off one social movement leader after another. According to a report by the Washington Office on Latin America, between 2014 and 2017, a total of 141 human rights defenders were killed and attempts were made against the lives of 13 others. Ten of those who were killed had been awarded precautionary security measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This did not help.

Numbers of murders of social movement leaders since 2009 have not been easy to get. The information is fragmented, and government agencies have no interest in keeping track of disappearances and deaths. However, it is safe to say that upwards of 200 such leaders have been killed between 2009 and 2020. Many of those killed were leaders of indigenous and afro-descendent communities who have struggled against the expropriation of their lands. The IACHR points to three general areas of concern:

1. The creation of grave insecurity and violence resulting from the imposition of plans and projects for resource extraction and energy development in ancestral lands.
2. The forced pillage of and displacement from these lands using excessive force.
3. The persecution and criminalisation of indigenous leaders for motives directly linked to their defence of their lands. The violence against indigenous leaders and communities emerges directly from the struggle over land.

To explore this in greater detail, we will look at the 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres Flores, a leader and co-founder of COPINH; the attack on trade unions; and, most recently, the forced disappearance of Garifuna social leaders.

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Plumas en cantos / Feathers in song, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 2020

The Assassination of Berta Cáceres

On 15 July 2013, COPINH, led by Berta Cáceres Flores, went to protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. This river in western Honduras is considered to be sacred by the indigenous Lenca community, but no one from the company that wanted to build the dam had talked to them. The company, Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA), is owned and controlled by one of the most powerful families in Honduras, the Atala Zablahs. The Honduran Army, at the behest of DESA, guarded the site.

During the protest, the soldiers opened fire at the protesters and killed Tomás García. Almost three years later, on 2 March 2016, gunmen broke into the home of Berta Cáceres and assassinated her. Berta’s assassination was soon followed by the 15 March 2016 murder of Nelson Noé García of COPINH and the 18 October 2016 murders of José Ángel Flores and Silmer Dionisio George of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán, or MUCA.

After Berta’s assassination, a concerted campaign to demand justice was launched by COPINH as well as Berta’s family, with support from organisations globally. Even under immense international pressure, the Honduran investigators limited themselves to the arrest of the main shooters and some of their immediate handlers. These handlers include Douglas Bustillo, a former head of security at DESA who ran the operation; Sergio Rodríguez, an executive at DESA; and Roberto David Castillo Mejía, the president of DESA. Berta’s killer and some of their immediate handlers have been sentenced to prison terms that will run from 30 years to 50 years.

However, none of the intellectual authors of the crime have been arrested. Evidence presented in the court – including phone logs and WhatsApp conversations – shows quite conclusively that these assassins, many of them veterans of the Honduran army, acted on the orders of the executives of DESA. None of the owners of DESA, including members of the oligarchic Atala Zablah family who were part of these WhatsApp chats, have been charged with a crime.

The owners of DESA and members of the government are also among the intellectual authors of these assassinations, with David Castillo being the senior-most DESA official who was arrested. Authorities detained him on 2 March 2018 while he was attempting to flee to the United States, where he had bought a luxury house worth USD 1.4 million in Houston, Texas just 8 months after Berta’s assassination. The call logs and WhatsApp messages show that he had participated in the conspiracy and served as the key link between the financers and those carrying it out. However, the case against him has stalled. The reiterated delay has opened up the possibility that his preventative detention could expire, leading to his release.

Authorities have been shielding the Atala Zablah family and the ruling party, which had itself tried to collude in the cover-up. After Berta was assassinated, President Hernández’s minister of security Julián Pacheco Tinoco wrote to Pedro Atala Zablah, one of the leaders of the Atala Zablah family and a board member of DESA. He wanted to assure Atala Zablah and his family that the government would not pursue the case with any seriousness; the case, he said, would be seen as a ‘crime of passion’. Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, Berta’s daughter and now the general coordinator of COPINH, reiterated this level of collusion: ‘neither the army nor the company acted alone’. Rather, there is ‘coordination between the economic and military power centres, which is the essence of the dictatorship under which we live in Honduras’.

Indeed, the investigation – and the court records – show a very high level of collusion. DESA officials would meet in the presidential house as they plotted how to undermine COPINH. This should raise eyebrows about the complicity at the highest level in the murder of Berta Cáceres. But this has been set aside. So have the many WhatsApp messages that show the Atala Zablah family members urging the team to do something about Berta Cáceres in very coded language.

There is ample evidence of DESA officials bragging about how they have the government – and in particular the armed forces and police – in their pocket. In 2013, DESA’s chief financial officer, Daniel Atala Midence, said ‘I have spent a lot of money and political capital to get those three arrest warrants’; within a very short time Berta Cáceres, Tomás Gómez Membreño, and Aureliano Molina were arrested. This showed the extent of Atala Midence’s influence. At another point in the WhatsApp conversations, Pedro Atala Zablah said that the DESA officials, who had already used the Honduran Army and police to guard their site and attack COPINH activists, should pay the police ‘with something more than food’ to get them to do its bidding.

In August 2019, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights went to Honduras. This is a group that tries to get countries to adopt the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The principles are rather empty, but at the very least they suggest that companies must not behave in a criminal way nor should business deals be made in secret. In their public report, the Working Group made two important points. First, they said that even though the Ministry of Environment (MiAmbiente) says that they hold open consultations when environmental licenses are being considered, most of these meetings are held only after the licenses have been granted. This is precisely what happened in the case of the Agua Zarca dam case and is the basis for another case brought forth by COPINH against David Castillo and 15 other public functionaries alleging that fraud was committed during the granting of operation licenses for the Agua Zarca project. Second, the law (Legislative Decree 418-2013) and two ministerial decrees (725-2008 and 1402-2018) allow the ministry to classify elements of the Environmental Impact Study and whatever they deem as ‘Secret Information’. What this means is that those concerned about a case have no access to free and fair information to deliberate its merits; the government can easily shuffle the paperwork through in a thoroughly undemocratic manner.

 

[Yehuda]

Laura Zúniga, one of Berta’s daughters and also part of COPINH, said in her victim’s impact statement in 2018:

From the moment my mom was murdered, we were excluded from the process, and we don’t agree with it. We don’t agree with being denied the possibility of having an observer present during my mom’s autopsy, of not receiving information. We’ve had to fight for information at every moment, every step of the way. We didn’t do it on a whim, we did it because we are prepared to do everything necessary to get to the truth because we understand that it’s our right, because we understand that it’s the right of the Honduran people, because we want to establish precedents for justice.

Muralists with COPINH, 2016

The Sustained Attack on Trade Unions

In the lead-up to the tenth anniversary of the coup in 2019, a wave of protests took place in Honduras. In the leadership of this upsurge was the Platform for the Defence of Health and Education or La Plataforma, a joint front of teachers and medical workers. On 30 May, thousands of health care workers dressed in scrubs and white coats, alongside teachers and students, paralysed Tegucigalpa with their street demonstrations. Protestors marched to the Toncontín International Airport while a dump truck unloaded rocks and dirt on the main road into the airport. The police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd, but the tear gas drifted into the airport and shut it down. It did not stop the protests, which grew over the next few weeks.

The immediate impulse for the protests organised by La Plataforma was the Hernández government’s drive to privatise the health care and education sectors. In January 2019, Hernández pushed through special decrees that declared ‘national emergencies’ in the health and education sectors. The government created special commissions that would reorganise the health and education professions along lines that strike at the relative autonomy of the public sector. The names of the bills passed by the Congress are instructive: the Special Commission for the Transformation of the National Health System (PCM 026-2018) and the Special Commission for the Transformation of the Education System (PCM 027-2018). In April, the Honduran Congress passed the Law of Restructuring and Transformation of the National Health and Education System, whose purpose was to advance the privatisation of these two sectors. Because of the protests by the education and health care workers, the Congress nullified the law on 30 April.

Behind Hernández stood the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has long called upon Honduras to ‘rationalise’ its spending and to ‘institutionalis[e] fiscal prudence’; this last phrase appears in the July 2019 staff report on Honduras. When the IMF talks about ‘fiscal prudence’, it means budget cuts to the public sector, with the most frequent cuts in the health and education sectors. Stung by the resistance of La Plataforma, Hernández moved – through the National Roundtable on Health and Education – to ‘decentralise’ health and education delivery to local governments that are largely starved of funds. This is a sure way to get these local governments to hand over the provision of health and education to non-governmental entities and to the private sector. This is privatisation in the name of decentralisation.

The repression of the protests came alongside threats and violence against union leaders. In 2019, the International Trade Union Confederation found that Honduras has ‘no guarantee of rights’ for union members. A UNHCR report found that, between 2010 and 2019, 90 teachers – many of them union leaders – were murdered. In December 2019, the Honduran Network Against Anti-Union Violence affirmed the dangerous nature of unionism in the country; on 16 November, labour leader Jorge Alberto Acosta Barrientos of the Tela Railroad Company Workers’ Union (SITRATERCO) was shot to death. Other union leaders agree that the threats and violence against workers are pressing dangers, among them María Gloria García of the Federation of Trade Unions of Agro-industrial Workers (FESTAGRO), Tomás Membreño Pérez of the Union of Agro-industrial and Allied Workers (STAS), Sonia Margarita Banegas of the Workers’ Union of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (SITRAUNAH), and Joel Almendares of the main trade union federation in Honduras, Single Confederation of workers of Honduras (CUTH).

Workers in trade unions understand that their fight is not only against this or that law or for this or that reform; their fight is to overturn the coup regime and to undermine the classes that back it.

One long-standing fight has been led by the workers in the palm oil industry and large private corporations such as Dinant, which is supported by the coup government as well as the World Bank, from whom it has received funding. Dinant is owned by one of Central America’s most powerful families, the Facussés. In the Bajo Aguán valley where Dinant operates, at least 133 farm workers have been killed over the past decade. The intimacy between the Facussé family and the Hernández government illustrates the class nature of the 2009 coup and the rigidities enforced by the coup regime. In one of many examples of this, it was Facussé’s aircraft that was used to illegally extradite Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas from Honduras to Mexico during the 2009 coup.

The Facussé family has been involved in a long fight against the Garifuna community in Vallecito over land rights. In 2004, the vice president of an agricultural cooperative, Santos Euquerio Bernárdez Bonilla, was kidnapped and killed. Since the coup, the violence has intensified and so has the general destruction of the land to benefit these powerful families and their class interests. In 2014, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) reported on this situation:

The Commission was also told that processes to grant concessions to companies have been accompanied by considerable repression of indigenous peoples, who had been forcibly evicted. ‘People are distressed because of the dispossessions and evictions carried out against the Garifuna community’, a member of the Garifuna people told the IACHR. The Commission was also informed that the extensive production of African palm in the northern part of the country has had a disproportionate impact on the Garifuna people. The IACHR also received troubling information concerning the impact of human activity in exacerbating poverty in these communities. For example, the Garifuna community of Santa Rosa indicates that as a result of the work done by companies cultivating African palm in the department of Colón, the course of the Aguán River had been changed, with devastating consequences on the environment and on the community’s access to water, due to the water’s high salinity.

The companies in question include those of the Facussé family. The workers facing this pillage include members of the Garifuna community.

 

[Yehuda]

Sarina Martínez, Vivos los llevaron / They took them alive, Honduras, 2020

The Forced Disappearance of Garifuna Leaders

On 18 July 2020, ten heavily armed men arrived in the Triunfo de la Cruz community. They wore Military Police of Public Order (PMOP) uniforms, which carried the insignia of the Police Investigations Directorate (DPI). These men kidnapped five members of the Garifuna community, an Afro-Indigenous community on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. The men that went missing that day were Junior Juárez as well as four members of the Black Fraternal Organisation of Honduras (OFRANEH): Snider Centeno, Milthon Joel Martínez Suany, Suami Mejía, and Gerardo Róchez. They have not been seen since.

OFRANEH released a statement saying that they must be released immediately: ‘They were taken alive; we want them back alive’. Miriam Miranda, a leader of OFRANEH, tweeted that ‘In this mafia-like, corrupt, and murderous dictatorship, the machine of death is untouched and strengthened. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an armed group arrived in Triunfo de la Cruz and took, among others, the leader Sneider Centeno. We demand his immediate appearance, alive’.

Centeno is the president of the Triunfo de la Cruz Garifuna community and a member of OFRANEH. He was at the forefront of a case brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) by his community of Triunfo de la Cruz in 2015. The case accused the Honduran state of human rights violations and of failing to protect their territories and stop the displacement of communities by those with economic and political power. Though the IACHR ruled in favour of the community, the state has yet to fulfil its commitments. OFRANEH points to the Honduran state’s failure to comply with the IACHR’s ruling as evidence that the state is not invested in the well-being of the Garifuna people.

This kidnapping is part of a pattern; OFRANEH says that over the past few years, at least forty members of the Garifuna community have been assassinated and many have had to leave the community due to threats and persecution. These attacks come both from the state and transnational corporations and include assassinations and other forms of political persecution.

During the eight months since this kidnapping, the Garifuna communities in Triunfo de la Cruz and Sambo Creek have mobilised to demand that the authorities immediately provide information about those who have been disappeared and return them to their community alive. Rather than comply with these demands, the police have attacked protestors with tear gas on several occasions and community members have reported that heavily armed vehicles have entered the Triunfo de la Cruz community to engender fear and terror.

The police repression deepens the suspicion in the community of the state’s role in the kidnapping. The forced disappearance took place while there was a lockdown and curfew in the country. This means that anyone driving around in the area would need to have explicit permission to do so. ‘It is impossible for us to believe that the movement of the three vehicles that the heavily armed individuals drove could have happened completely without being detected by the state’, OFRANEH alleged.

On 31 July, thirteen days after the kidnapping, Hernández broke the government’s silence through a tweet in which he insisted that the government was working to ‘identify those responsible for the crime and bring them to justice’. No progress has been made on the case in the months since. OFRANEH notes that the agency in charge of the case is the Police Investigations Directorate (DPI). Given that the armed men who kidnapped the five people in Triunfo de la Cruz came dressed in Police Investigations Directorate (DPI) uniforms, it is impossible to have faith in the system that seemed to have conducted the crime.

On the day of the tweet from Hernández, Amnesty International released a strong statement calling on the government to investigate the kidnapping and locate the men. In this statement, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International commented:

We demand that the Juan Orlando Hernández administration take urgent measures to find the five missing people, including four Garifuna activists from the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, alive. The authorities must also carry out a swift, exhaustive, independent and impartial investigation to identify and punish all those responsible for planning and carrying out this crime. We cannot allow impunity to encourage endless cycles of violence and grave human rights violations.

By October 2020, three months after the men had been kidnapped, OFRANEH released a document that analysed the government’s inconsistent reports to the IACHR. The government’s reports and social media posts appeared more and more like a disinformation campaign, said OFRANEH. The posts aim to discredit the disappeared by linking them to drug trafficking and attempt to brush off the kidnappings by pointing to the high frequency of disappearances. The normalisation of this kind of violence shows that the government accepts that the country is ‘submerged in violence, a result of the current failed state and the gradual collapse of the justice system due to the lack of its independence’, as the OFRANEH report points out. This disinformation campaign came alongside the ‘criminal and complicit silence’ of the government about the actual evidence that was on public display.

Unable to advance an agenda in the country’s formal institutions, OFRANEH launched the Garifuna Committee for the Investigation and Search of the Disappeared from Triunfo de la Cruz (SUNLA) on 18 February 2021 (SUNLA means ‘enough’ in Garifuna). Miriam Miranda, who coordinates OFRANEH, said that SUNLA would be ‘a way to look for truth and justice in this country’. The committee is made up of various experts and leaders of the community and will have the support of sixteen social organisations from Latin America along with the UN and the IACHR.

‘We are tired of lies from the government of Honduras’ Miranda said. The reports by the Honduras government ‘have no substance. They don’t say anything. They make a joke of us, the Garifuna people. We do not want lies. We want the truth. We want life to be worth more in our country. We have to build new paths. We will continue fighting so that this becomes a reality’.

Colectivo Culturas Vivas, Me lo dijo el río / The river told me so, Honduras, 2021

Pity the Nation: Honduras Is Being Eaten from within and without