Nucor Corporation hidden connections in Honduras

Published by MAC on 2020-11-19
Source: The Guardian, Euobserver, Univision

Discreetly and without public announcement, the largest steel producer in the United States, Nucor Corporation, spent at least four years associated with an iron mine in Honduras under fire for its persecution of social leaders fighting against the ecological damage the plan may cause in protected lands.

These connections where revealed by a superb investigation team that embraces so much of the philosophy underlying MAC, and evinces the courage of communities we are pledged to support, especially as the lives of "human rights defenders" (to use a somewhat ineffectual description for those such as Berta Cáceres) are in danger.

The Guapinol struggle originates from the mining concession of the company Inversiones Los Pinares in the Carlos Escaleras National Park, located in the Bajo Aguan region. Find out more here: https://www.guapinolresiste.org

Eight Guapinol activists remain detained for protecting their lands from mining: Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, José Avelino Cedillo, Orbin Naún Hernández, Kevin Alejandro Romero, Arnold Javier Aleman, Ever Alexander Cedillo, Daniel Marquez and Jeremías Martínez Díaz.

A ‘Guapinol camp in Defense of Water and Life’ was violently attacked by 1500 police and military personnel in October, 2018.

Nucor is a publicly traded company that benefited largely from President Trump’s steel tariffs.

The Legal Dealings

The Los Pinares mine sits in an area that, until December 2013, fell within the central nucleus of the Montaña de Botaderos Carlos Escaleras Mejía National Park. The park houses the mouths of 34 rivers, crucial for hydrating the region. It was named in honor of an environmentalist killed in 1997 when he opposed the African palm oil processing plant run by Dinant, a company owned by the late Miguel Facussé, father-in-law of Lenir Pérez and father of Ana Isabel Facussé.

Less than two decades later, how was it possible for these companies to undertake a mining project in a natural reserve that is protected by law?

The protected area had been designated on October 8, 2012, when the Honduran government ordered the conservation of an ecosystem that spanned 96,724.40 hectares, aiming to protect its present and future flora and fauna and historical, cultural, and anthropological resources. But in April 2013, Emco Mining (now Inversiones Los Pinares) requested two concessions for non-metallic mining exploration for iron oxide in an area that was, at that time, still part of the reserve's nucleus, according to the Honduran National Institute of Geology and Mines (INGEOMIN by its Spanish abbreviation).

Eight months later, in December 2013, the Honduran congress issued Legislative Decree 252-2013, modifying the park's boundaries to remove 217 hectares from the nucleus. Now the mine's location was no longer in the nucleus but instead in the “buffer” zone, in which Honduran law allows non-metallic mining. (Iron oxide extraction is classified as non-metallic in Honduras.) The modification was questioned by the Honduran government's Institute for Forest Conservation, Protected Areas, and Wildlife (ICF by its Spanish abbreviation), which designates and manages natural reserves.

In 2014, the ICF deemed the iron oxide mine “unviable”, finding it would cause severe damage to the park' s flora and fauna. The project is an open-pit mine and, even with the legislative reform, the concession is very close to the park's new nucleus. The report also determined the mine could harm 32 hectares of broadleaf forest and a river just 100 meters away that hydrates a community called Corozales. Yet, according to a source from the ICF, the congress never consulted the institute before reducing the park's nucleus.

And despite the ICF's report, another public agency, the Secretariat for Natural Resources, granted the mine an environmental license. That agency’s Minister at that time, José Galdámez, has faced questions for green-lighting another such project in a protected area of Tegucigalpa, the capital of the country. Galdámez eventually left his appointment.

Pérez told Univision that his company sponsored meetings around the region with public officials, in which they could hear concerns from local inhabitants to "reconsider" the park’s boundaries.

It “had been declared a national park 12 months earlier and we brought all the actors together and asked them to reconsider," said Pérez in an email. "We play fair," the businessman added.

With a signed environmental permit and a legal reform that was a match made in heaven for the mining companies, it was only a matter of months before Inversiones Los Pinares received the rights to concessions "ASP" and "ASP2", 100 hectares each, to dig for iron oxide. Additionally, Minera La Victoria, a company that is also a partner in the Panamanian holdings, received two concessions of 1,000 hectares each, in the neighboring department of Atlántida, to extract iron oxide.

According to article 56 of the 2013 Honduran mining law, for this type of mining concession companies must pay the equivalent of $0.50 U.S. per hectare per year for exploration rights, and $2.00 U.S. per hectare per year to exploit the minerals. This means that since exploration began in 2013, the concession has cost Inversiones Los Pinares 100 dollars per year, and it will pay 400 dollars per year once mining begins. The mining canon for La Victoria, around 500 dollars per year, is slightly higher due to the larger size of its concession, which is valid through 2023. Additionally, the companies will have to pay royalties on the production of iron oxide to the municipality and mining authorities, along with a security fee totaling 2.5% of the value of the materials that are either exported (FOB) or in the plant.

Iron and Resistance

In addition to the rapid reduction of the park's protected area, thereby allowing mining, behind the curtains of these concessions there are raging socio-environmental conflicts. In 2016, when Minera La Victoria began exploration for its project in Atlántida, surrounding communities protested the harm that they feared the mine would cause; the company has stopped project development at this time.

That same year, the conflict spread to Tocoa, in the department of Colon. When the inhabitants of the town of Guapinol discovered that a company planning to mine in their area had obtained one of the 39 mining licenses the government had granted between 2015 to 2020, according to the INGEOMIN database, they took to the streets in protest. (Only eight of these licenses are currently active, while the remaining 31 have expired.) The people of Guapinol feared the mine would harm the rivers that supply the town with water, and they cited serious irregularities in the concession authorization processes.

They created the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Public and Common Goods, and, starting in 2017, they submitted five requests for public consultations so that community members could decide whether or not they wanted a mine in their area. Local organizers gathered signatures, held demonstrations in front of the city hall, and blocked access roads. Nevertheless, the calls for a consultation fell on deaf ears.

In 2018, Inversiones Los Pinares began building an access road to its concession in the Montaña de Botaderos park site, and the community reported that the waters of the Guapinol River became muddied and unusable. In August of that year, the community established an encampment that blocked the construction of the access road for two months.

Juana Esquivel, the Director of the San Alonso Rodríguez Foundation in Tocoa, said they protest because “nature is life." She continued: "Here on this land is where our forebears lived. We are defending their legacy, and our right not to be displaced, not to be forced to migrate to other countries, our right to stay and live in harmony with Mother Earth," she said, "just as we had done until these companies came and generated widespread terror with their threats, abuse, and destruction of life itself.

The mining company's owner, Lenir Pérez, sees things differently. In an interview with Univision, Pérez said the construction of the access road brought progress to the area, where he said he had additionally built four schools and 147 latrines. His company, he added, was employing 1,000 people, and for these reasons, he claimed the majority of the inhabitants of La Ceibita, the town where he plans to build the pelletizing plant, widely support the project. He claimed the people of Guapinol also support the project, and he sent this journalistic alliance signatures and testimonies of people who attended "project socialization meetings" in November 2017. (Socialization is a process by which communities can express their opinions about the advantages or disadvantages of a mining project.)

According to data collected by Inversiones Ecotek, 79% of local communities are "in agreement and see it in a favorable light, while 7% are in disagreement and 14% are indifferent to the presence of the project in this area."

Pérez says he is persecuted by leftist organizations that bring outsiders to the area "and ask the women to cry" to create negative publicity. "We are victims of a storyline that's not real," he said.

Nucor, the U.S. company, added: “Despite exiting, Nucor believes the project will provide an opportunity for meaningful long-term and high-quality jobs for the local Honduran population on socially and environmentally responsible terms.”

Disturbances and Accusations

On September 7, 2018, attempts by mine personnel to clear the demonstrators from the road blockade led to a first clash. A number of local inhabitants suffered physical injuries, including one person by gunfire. The case's legal file describes protesters detaining Santos Corea, head of security for the mine, for three to five hours as they burned a dumpster and destroyed a vehicle. Later, on October 27, police officers and military personnel forcefully expelled the protest camp from the road worksite. The confrontation between the community and state forces continued in the following days, and two soldiers were killed by crossfire on October 29. There has been no formal investigation into those deaths, but the mining company did file a suit against the protesters, and 32 of them face diverse charges stemming from the September 7th conflict. The defendants include four delegates from the Catholic parish in Tocoa and an employee from the San Alonso Rodríguez Foundation.

In 2019, twelve of the accused environmentalists appeared voluntarily before authorities to confront the charges against them: usurpation, unlawful detention, illicit association, robbery, aggravated robbery and arson. The prosecution based its accusations on a police intelligence report that claimed 51 individuals participated in crimes against the company and were supported by at least another 300 people. The prosecutor said the police had designated the group a criminal organization, dubbing it “The Anti-Miners" and alleging it orchestrated the actions in question.

The leaders of the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods are the activists most exposed to risk in the struggle against the mine. They cite contradictions in the claims made by the company and the prosecutor. For example, one of the accused, Juan López, was not at the September 7 ^th clash; he was at the San Alonso Rodríguez Foundation headquarters where he worked, drafting a statement. Another defendant, Antonio Martínez Ramos, died in 2015 – three years before the events occurred.

"We can clearly see the charges against people who weren't at the scene, another person who had died before the conflict, others who never participated in this citizen protest," said Esquivel of the San Alonso Rodríguez Foundation, who is also a member of the Municipal Committee. Meanwhile, "there has not been any response whatsoever to the dozens of citizen allegations of possible corruption in the approval process for these concessions."

Lenir Pérez responded to these details by saying that the Honduran public prosecutor is the party responsible for correctly identifying the accused and their acts.

There are still eight people in prison awaiting trial, while another five have been released (including Juan López) although they still face charges. The prosecution dropped the charges against seven, and another nine are still at large. Two of the defendants have been killed: Roberto Argueta Tejada in August 2019, and Arnold Morazán Erazo in October 2020.

In an interview conducted for this story, Lenir Pérez offered assurances that his company had not taken any violent action, saying: “I’ll put my name on the line, I’m telling the truth.” Pérez argued that Morazán Erazo was killed after joining community support projects the company launched in Guapinol, and was organizing a plan to remove the current community leaders. Perez said nine of his own employees and collaborators had been killed.

Pérez said the worst security threats have been against those who defend the mining project, and that behind those threats are Jesuit priests, the San Alonso Foundation and all of their allies. "I'll close the mine and carry on with my businesses," said Pérez, "but they'll lose the opportunity to develop themselves -- and not just one of them, but all of them." This is why Nucor left and Honduras lost an opportunity for significant investment, he claimed.

After studying the legal aspects of the conflict, the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law published a report that argued for the liberation of the incarcerated environmentalists.

"This case [by the government against the protesters] falls in line with a pattern of violence, harassment, and intimidation directed towards human rights defenders in Honduras,” states the August 31, 2020 report. The text continues that this criminalization of social leaders “illustrates the government’s tendency to favor economic interests over human rights and its willingness to attack their citizens’ freedom of association, expression, and peaceful assembly.”

The academics concluded that the actions of the Honduran government were “potentially unlawful,” because they could violate international civil rights legislation guaranteeing the right to appeal detention. The Clinic also raised questions about the government's use of laws designed to dismantle organized crime as a tool to repress legitimate social protest.

Pérez -- who has recently attracted attention in Honduras for winning the contract to build the country's new international airport on the U.S. military base at Palmerola -- said he only wanted those responsible for breaking in and burning company property to be tried in court, just as anyone would reasonably want if their house was attacked.

"If I go burn down your house, kidnap your family, that is a crime," Pérez said.

Ana Isabel Facussé, Pérez’s wife and partner in all of his business ventures, is the daughter of the deceased Miguel Facussé, a prominent owner of African palm plantations who was described in a Los Angeles Times obituary as a “ruthless Honduran tycoon.”

The activists who oppose mining in the park also cite studies by Honduran authorities about the harm that mining could cause there. The ICF's Management Plan for the park underscores its biological wealth, and notes that its natural resources have already been damaged by mining exploration activities, widespread agriculture, and the presence of criminal groups that use the park to raise livestock and grow illegal crops.

“Mining activity is not bad per se, but it can be harmful especially in vulnerable areas such as a protected zone with a highly fragile nucleus, even at low intensity,” explained an expert from the ICF Wildlife Department, the same agency that in 2014 declared the mining project unviable. “What the congress took on -- [a decision] about shrinking the park or its nucleus area -- wasn't the most prudent, because we're diminishing conservation areas."

Defending the environment in Honduras is dangerous. The country has recorded at least 685 violent acts against environmental and land rights defenders since 2009, a mark only surpassed in the region by Brazil, and by far the highest rate adjusted for the number of inhabitants, as reported this year in the Tierra de Resistentes series, in which Contracorriente and CLIP participated.

In 2019, the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods was awarded the prestigious Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in Washington, DC. In 2020, the Committee was also a finalist for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, given by the European Parliament to past winners including Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai, among other notable pacifists.

In an open letter by 39 European Parliamentarians protesting the treatment of Guapinol social leaders, they wrote: “Now the human rights defenders have spent more than one year in pretrial detention with no sound legal justification and criminalization against them and against the community has further increased.” High-ranking officials from the OAS and the United Nations echoed this same concern.

“I believe it's essential that people question why there are eight people still in prison for defending a right so fundamental as water,” said Miguel Urbán Crespo, a Spanish delegate to the European Parliament and member of the Human Rights Subcommittee, to this journalistic alliance.

In response to the international voices of concern, Lenir Pérez alleges the existence of an elaborate structure with potent capacity to hoodwink international actors into believing a fabricated "movie."

"In this structure, everyone needs a story, and with that story they build up their profile as an NGO, they come to the United States to give conferences, they receive prizes in Europe, they're happy to be imprisoned because what's in their interest is drama," said Pérez, who furthermore said he had tried to establish communication with community leaders but has been rebuffed.

When consulted on this question, three community leaders said they have not received any formal negotiation offer from the company. One of the leaders, whose name we are not revealing for her safety, said she only received a visit from a man who doesn't work for the company but was sent by Lenir Pérez, and "basically showed up to intimidate me." Others said the environmental secretariat tried bringing them together to negotiate with the company, suggesting “they should take advantage [of the opportunity]." They didn't accept the offer "because the negotiation should belong to the victimized communities."

Nucor and Trump

In 2014, John Ferriola, then CEO of Nucor, told Time Magazine that Honduras could play a central role in Nucor’s strategy to revive the U.S. steel industry. Nucor would produce pellets that, when combined with recycled steel, that would improve product quality and reduce costs. The company could expand its pelletizing operations to places like Latin America. “When you look at that whole area, you say, ‘Boy, if somebody had a place here, there, there and there, we would capture the market,'” said Ferriola.

Despite such pronouncements, when Nucor invested in iron mining and steel production in Honduras, it did not do so by the light of day. Instead, its subsidiaries -- Nucor South America and Nucor Trading -- partnered with holding firms for Hondurans that were created in a tax haven, Panama.

Nucor emphasized that its investment in NE Holdings was consistent with its commitment to “conducting business in a manner consistent with high standards of environmental and social responsibility.” Additionally, the spokeswoman said they ask their suppliers and business partners to uphold these standards, as enshrined in various internal codes and policies.

Nucor was an important donor to Donald Trump’s last two presidential campaigns. For instance, for the 2020 election that the President just lost, a Political Action Committee associated with Nucor donated the maximum allowed limit of $10,000 to the Republican candidate, as Quartz revealed. Under the Trump administration, reforms aimed at benefiting the steel sector particularly favored Nucor, according to an investigation by the New York Times. One of the most significant involved tariff considerations that advantaged Nucor to the detriment of other U.S. companies, creating tensions within the industry.

Nucor also contributed one million dollars toward the production of a documentary called “Death by China", by Peter Navarro, an economist who served as Trump’s main trade advisor, according to the New York Times. The documentary argues that China, a large steel producer, poses a threat to U.S. economic power.

In August 2017, after Trump refused to condemn the white supremacists involved in a Charlottesville protest that left one woman dead and several people wounded, 11 of the 28 senior executives who sat on the American Manufacturing Council resigned in protest. Nucor is a council member, but its representative did not resign, nor speak out against the president's racism.

"Nucor has benefited from a cozy relationship with Trump's White House," said Leonardo Valenzuela Pérez, a researcher for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) in Boston. “This administration has favored protectionist measures that directly benefit Nucor and denounced trade competitors like China. Meanwhile it seems that Nucor is hypocritically hiding their businesses abroad, disrupting rural communities and their environment."

The situation is ironic, given the Trump administration's obsession with stopping immigration from Central America. "The brutal imposition of mining and energy infrastructure projects in Honduras during the last decade has followed a logic of silencing dissent, leading to murders and expulsion, forcing large numbers of people to migrate to the United States," Valenzuela said.

Hank Johnson, a Democratic congressman from Georgia who has closely followed Honduras, told this journalistic alliance that rural indigenous communities and the poor of Central America frequently suffer from business practices that cause environmental harm and repress social protest. “They're driven from their land by these companies and forced to make that pilgrimage to America," the Congressman said, "where they're fed into a private for-profit detention system.

Over the course of 2018, the pellitizing plant obtained only a provisional environmental license, because authorities found that the socialization of the project with the communities that will be directly impacted was incomplete and did not meet standards, according to Ecotek's environmental licensure file. Additionally, the population of the largest city near Guapinol, Tocoa, along with other groups of neighbors with a stake in the conflict, asked the mayor to declare the municipality a mining-free zone. His administration passed a resolution implementing this request. Nevertheless, construction has not stopped. Pérez said that in 12 months, they plan to begin mining.

In September 2020, aides representing the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee held an off-the-record meeting with three Honduran human rights defenders, including Juan López of the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods, in which the aides learned about the situation in Guapinol.

Congressman Johnson told this journalistic alliance that it’s important to understand the involvement of a U.S. corporation in such problematic business in Honduras within the context of the close relationship between President Trump and the polemical administration of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. The congressman explained that President Hernández is under investigation in the United States following the 2019 federal conviction of his brother for drug trafficking. “This points to the moral depravity of the Trump administration," the congressman said, which "has forged a close partnership with this corrupt narco-state,” he said. “The corruption is on both sides.”

Currently, Honduras has no U.S. Ambassador -- but Ambassador James Nealon, who was serving in that post when Nucor invested in the project, told Univision he had no knowledge of the deal, nor of any visits by the steel giant's executives to the country.

Juan López is one of the people charged with crimes after protesting the mine, and he is among the group that, in 2019, voluntarily presented themselves before authorities to face the charges. That same year, when he accepted the Letelier-Moffitt award in Washington on behalf of his colleagues, he repeated the words spoken by environmentalist Berta Cáceres in her own acceptance speech four years earlier for the Goldman Environmental Prize, months before she was gunned down: “Wake up, humanity, we are out of time!”

This investigation was carried out by a journalistic alliance between Contracorriente (Honduras), Univision (United States), and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodistica (CLIP). It was additionally supported by an Adelante grant from the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF). Gabriel Woltke in Guatemala, Finance Uncovered and the Investigative Dashboard at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) also carried out specific inquiries into the case.

Murder highlights plight of Sakharov prize nominees

Nikolaj Nielsen

https://euobserver.com/foreign/149771

Brussels, 16. Oct. 2020

The killing of a Honduran environmental rights defender has highlighted the plight of his imprisoned compatriots, recently shortlisted for the European Parliament's Sakharov prize for freedom of thought.

Arnold Joaquín Morazan was shot dead in his home in Guapinol, a small low-income community on Honduras's north coast, earlier this week in what is being reported as a murder by local media.

Along with eight other now jailed Guapinol activists, Morazan had been protesting against the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares, in a country whose US-backed military coup in 2009 gave rise to an authoritarian pro-business political party.

The company had filed criminal complaints against 32 people, including Morazan, following their peaceful protest against a large open-pit mine inside a protected national park.

"The murder of Morazan comes at a moment of increased violence and intimidation in the Guapinol community," said Luxembourg's Green MEP Tilly Metz, in an emailed statement on Thursday (15 October).

"I firmly condemn this murder and call for an independent and international investigation," she said, adding that the EU needs to pile pressure on the Honduran authorities to guarantee the safety of the Guapinol community.

She has since sent a letter, along with the Greens and far-left GUE leadership, demanding a public reaction from the European Parliament president David Sassoli.

The two political groups earlier this year jointly nominated the eight jailed activists for the EU's Sakharov prize, an annual award given to people who defend human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout the world.

The eight have been held in pre-trial detention for more than year for alleged crimes linked to their opposition to an iron oxide mine, which threatens to contaminate the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers.
Hit men and assassinations

But a steady offensive against the community appears to be part of a larger campaign to intimidate and silence land and water rights defenders in the region.

Metz said that as of last week numerous military and police patrols had besieged the community, in the absence of any due process or probable cause. She noted patrols of up to 50 security personnel were being dispatched.

Such intimidation and tactics have forced some to flee, seeking refuge in the US and elsewhere.

At least two dozen land and environmental defenders have been murdered in Honduras since early 2016 for defending land rights in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Among them is Berta Cáceres, an Honduran indigenous leader who was also shortlisted for the prize along with the jailed activists.

She too was killed in her home in March 2016, following a long fight against the construction of a large hydroelectric dam.

A court later ruled the murder had been ordered by executives of the Agua Zarca dam company Desa, which had hired hitman to assassinate the 44-year old Cáceres.

The European Parliament plenary is set to vote on who to award the Sakharov prize before the end of the month. Other shortlisted entries include the opposition in Belarus and the archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.

The eight detained Guapinol activists are Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, José Avelino Cedillo, Orbin Naún Hernández, Kevin Alejandro Romero, Arnold Javier Aleman, Ever Alexander Cedillo, Daniel Marquez and Jeremías Martínez Díaz.

How Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries to defend natural resources

The Guapinol community, on the country’s north coast, has become militarized in an effort to defend the river that supplies it.

Nina Lakhani

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/06/how-honduras-became-one-of-the-most-dangerous-countries-to-defend-natural-resources

Tue 6 Oct 2020

Gabriela Sorto has not seen or spoken to her father in six months, since the Honduran government’s draconian Covid-19 measures banned most travel and prison visits.

Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, a 48-year-old builder and farm worker, is one of eight protesters held in pre-trial detention since 2019 for alleged crimes linked to their opposition to an iron oxide mine which threatens to contaminate their water supply. Five more water defenders from Guapinol, a small low-income community on the country’s north coast, could also soon be sent to jail.

The massive open pit mine, owned by one of the country’s most powerful couples, was sanctioned without community consultation inside a protected national park in a process mired by irregularities, according to international experts.

In response to criminal complaints filed by the company Inversiones Los Pinares, 32 people, including one man who died three years before the alleged incidents, have been charged with multiple offences and the community’s grassroots group falsely accused of ties to organized crime.

The community has been militarized, and its leaders subjected to threats, harassment and smear campaigns. Several residents fled, seeking asylum in the US to escape criminal persecution, in a case widely condemned by lawyers, rights groups and US and European lawmakers.

“My dad has been jailed for defending a river which gives our community life, for trying to stop the exploitation of natural resources by rich companies who the government helps to terrorize us,” said Sorto, 28. “Every day that passes we know less about him. He’s weak, he’s had Covid symptoms, we worry about his health and safety in the prison.”

Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries in the world to defend natural resources and land rights after the 2009 coup ushered in an autocratic pro-business government – which remains in power despite multiple allegations of corruption, electoral fraud and links to international drug trafficking networks.

Since then, hundreds of defenders have been killed, and many others silenced as a result of trumped-up criminal charges.

According to a recent report by the UN Working Group on business and human rights, the “root cause of most social conflicts [in Honduras] is the systematic lack of transparency and meaningful participation” of communities affected by the exploitation of natural resources.

The highest-profile victim was the indigenous defender Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in March 2016 after suffering years of threats and harassment linked to her opposition to an internationally funded dam.

More recently, the Guapinol case and the forced disappearance of land defenders from the Black indigenous Garifuna community have triggered widespread criticism.

Guapinol is a semi-rural neighbourhood in the fertile, mineral-rich Bajo Agua region, where for years subsistence farmers and indigenous Hondurans have been forcibly displaced, criminalized and killed in conflicts with powerful conglomerates over land and water.

The current struggle dates back to 2011 when the Botaderos mountain was declared a National Park by Congress, mandating protection of water sources which serve more than 42,000 people, including the Guapinol river.

Yet the following year, Congress reduced the park’s no-development zone to accommodate the mine, owned by Lenir Pérez, a businessman previously accused of human rights violations, and Ana Facussé, daughter of the late palm oil magnate Miguel Facussé , a major political powerbroker who before his death in 2015 was accused of land grabs, violent repression and links with drug traffickers.

Over the next few years, mining permits were issued and road construction began even as communities filed legal complaints, held protests and pleaded with officials to protect the rivers, records show.

In March 2018, shortly after the company started widening a road within the national park, the tap water in Guapinol turned chocolate brown and thick with muddy sediment. Residents were forced to buy bottled water to drink, cook and even bathe after children began suffering from diarrhoea, while some adults reported skin complaints.

“They ruined our river … We couldn’t use water for anything, that’s why we organized, that’s our struggle,” said Juana Zúñiga, 36, whose husband José Abelino Cedillo, a 36-year-old barber, is also imprisoned awaiting trial.

A peaceful protest camp to oppose the project was met with violence. On 7 September 2018, one young protester was shot and seriously injured when scores of armed security guards working for the mine attempted to evict the camp. The incident was never investigated.

Meanwhile, judicial authorities issued arrest warrants for protesters linked to the disputed events of that day, and an earlier attempted eviction of the camp.

Honduras elites blamed for violence against environmental activists

A recent investigation by the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of Virginia concluded: “This case falls in line with a pattern of violence, harassment, and intimidation directed towards human rights defenders in Honduras … illustrating the government’s tendency to favor economic interests over human rights and its willingness to attack their citizens’ freedom of association, expression, and peaceful assembly.”

In addition to the eight men detained in 2019, a judge will soon decide whether five others, whose cases were originally dismissed, must also await trial in prison or at home. The accused men deny charges of arson and illegal detention of the mine’s security chief.

Leonel George, 41, a human rights defender supporting the Guapinol community facing pre-trial detention, said “They want to lock us up to scare the community and weaken the resistance.”

The mine company did not respond to specific allegations, but in an email said: “Inversiones Los Pinares is a serious, responsible company that respects human and environmental rights, and complies with all laws, regulations and operating standards … we have generated development, economic impulse, help with social works for communities and all our processes are environmentally responsible.”

MAC: Mines and Communities

Themes

Nucor Corporation hidden connections in Honduras

The Legal Dealings

Iron and Resistance

Disturbances and Accusations

Nucor and Trump