Interview
Honduran peasants are fighting to defend their land, and being killed for it
Cristina Porello, Country Representative for Honduras as part of ProgettoMondo: ‘Environmental and human rights defenders find themselves persecuted both by the law and by businessmen, often supported by political and economic powers and some media outlets.’
“We have suffered persecution, harassment, intimidation by landowners colluding with judges and even with the authorities. We need answers, change, a positive response for the indigenous peoples. We are human beings, we have the right to life. The heritage of the land, the forests, the commons is a legacy and we must take care of it for future generations.”
This was part of the speech delivered on March 20 by Marcelino Miranda, leader of the Montaña Verde indigenous community in the municipality of Gracias, at the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, on the eighth anniversary of the death of environmental activist Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated for her struggle against the construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have damaged the territory of the Lenca community.
In Honduras, a Central American nation bordering Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, there are frequent cases of violence and human rights violations against environmentalists, farmers and people from indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.
According to the 2023 data from Global Witness, it is the country with the highest number of murdered environmental defenders relative to its population, and the third in the world in absolute terms, after Colombia and Brazil.
Over the period 2012-2023, 149 environmental activists were murdered in Honduras.
“In Honduras, it is increasingly dangerous to be a defender of the environment and human rights. In 2015, Honduras was condemned by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for violating the ancestral and collective rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, and in 2023 alone there were 18 murders,” says Cristina Porello, the Country Representative for Honduras as part of ProgettoMondo, a Verona-based third-sector NGO founded in 1966 with a commitment to combat different forms of poverty and inequality worldwide.
Defending the environment and human rights is dangerous; in Honduras alone, there were 18 murders of activists in 2023. ProgettoMondo, together with Fundaciòn San Alonso Rodriguez (FSAR) has set in motion a series of initiatives, including juridical ones, to defend people deprived of their freedom
Why does this happen?
The causes of this problem are many, one of them being the concessions the state has awarded in territories belonging to indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant groups. This has given rise to a conflict between organizations fighting for protecting and respecting local territories and the environment and the powerful forces led by extractivist and economic logic, heedless of the serious repercussions on natural resources and the lives of the inhabitants of those lands.
Another cause is rooted in the years of land reform and the difficulties encountered by state institutions in ensuring a fair distribution of land to peasants. This is compounded by impunity and the lack of a fair justice system.
Environmental and human rights defenders find themselves persecuted both by the law and by businessmen, often supported by political and economic powers and some media outlets. This exponentially increases the vulnerability of environmental and human rights activists, resulting in persecution, threats, prosecution, arrests and killings.
In Bajo Aguán, Honduran peasants are fighting in defense of their land. Here, on September 14, Juan López was killed, an environmentalist and Tocoa municipal councilman. What are the peasants asking for?
Bajo Aguán is one of the symbolic sites of the struggle and resistance of environmental and human rights defenders in Honduras. The conflict arose from the granting of an iron oxide mining permit to a company in the protected area of the Montaña de Botaderos Carlos Escalera National Park, itself named after an environmental defender killed in the 1990s.
To allow the development of two mining projects, the territory of the park, an area rich in water sources that supply two regions of Honduras, Colón and Olancho, had to be reduced. The main consequences of the mining activity have been deforestation and exponentially increasing levels of water pollution in the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers.
For this reason, several environmentalist community groups have sprung up, among them the Tocoa Municipal Committee of Common and Public Goods, of which Juan López was a member, who was killed by gunmen on September 14 as he was leaving a religious service. López was an example of integrity and constant struggle for the environment and human rights, publicly denouncing the abuses, injustices and acts of corruption he witnessed, going so far as to pay for his activism with imprisonment and then with his life.
It was thanks to his civic engagement and work denouncing the abuses that, last year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had requested Honduras to activate protection programs for some environmentalists. Among them was Juan López himself; however, according to the Tocoa Municipal Committee of Common and Public Goods, he did not get the protection he was supposed to be granted.
In order to shed light on the tragic event, people are calling for an independent, transparent and international investigation to uncover not only the material perpetrators but also those who ordered the attack, the activation of protection programs for environmental defenders, and the dismissal of the court case attempting to criminalize Juan López and other Bajo Aguán defenders, a case that was reopened five days after the environmentalist's killing.
ProgettoMondo, in partnership with Fundación San Alonso Rodríguez (FSAR), has started a number of initiatives to protect the defenders of the land and the local territory. What are they?
This is a European Union-funded project on defending the human rights of people deprived of their liberty, named Con Buena Razón. On Sept. 1, 2019, eight defenders of the land and environment were arrested on charges of aggravated arson, felony kidnapping, criminal conspiracy and theft. This attempt to criminalize them stemmed from their persistent protest actions against the mining project being pursued by a private company, in defense of the Guapinol River and the surrounding protected natural area.
These events sparked a major international mobilization, as the eight defendants were detained and deprived of liberty for more than two years, in violation of their right to a fair trial. In addition, their lawyers denounced a number of irregularities and acts of torture suffered by their defendants. With the aim of obtaining the release of the defendants, ProgettoMondo and FSAR set up a process of legal assistance. Thanks in part to this pressure, in February 2021 the Guapinol defenders were released under an immediate release order from the Supreme Court of Justice.
One of your recent news releases came with the title “In Honduras to care for the blood of the earth.” What did you want to communicate with that?
This is a quote from Berta Cáceres, the Honduran environmentalist killed on March 3, 2016, and an symbol of the Lenca indigenous group's struggle against the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam.
“Let us unite and continue with hope in defending and caring for the blood of the earth and the spirits“ Berta Càceres, environmentalist killed on March 3, 2016
That phrase — "Juntémonos y sigamos con esperanza defendiendo y cuidando la sangre de la tierra y los espíritus" — encapsulates the philosophy and cosmic vision of the indigenous Lenca group and its spiritual relationship with the earth, which involves caring for it, protecting it and defending it.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/cristina-porello-progettomondo-lottiamo-in-difesa-della-terra-dei-nativi on 2024-10-31