Honduras

Palms. Sea. Palms. Guns. Palms. Heat. More palms…and then a tense calm. This is how it feels from Ceiba to Tocoa and its surroundings, on the only paved road and in the many small shops, a place where people may see something, but say nothing. This is where the dead lived and suffered from the conflict that has gone on for more than 15 years in the Lower Aguán region of Honduras.

[…]

María Santos was walking home on March 5th, 2014, when seven people suddenly jumped out of hiding, surrounded her, and then attacked her with machetes, striking her head and chest. María has been a vocal leader in the struggle against the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Dam, defending the Lenca territory of Rio Blanco and the Gualcarque River for her children and grandchildren to come. She is a tireless fighter in the struggle of the Lenca people of Rio Blanco to prevent DESA, a private dam company, from privatizing and building a dam on their river.

[…]

San Francisco de Locomapa is the site of a massacre that occurred on August 25, 2013. Armando Fúnez Medina (46), Ricardo Soto Fúnez (40), and Maria Enriqueta Matute (71) were murdered by Selvin Matute and Carlos Matute (no relation to Enriqueta). The latter two are hired guns for the Bella Vista Mining Company, which has been extracting antimony from the surrounding mountains without the consent of the community and with a mining concession that is in dispute.

[…]

A new President has taken the helm in Honduras, but the more significant developments took place in Congress, where outgoing representatives spent their last few days passing a barrage of laws in a frantic final dash. Dubbed a “legislative hemorrhage,” more than 100 laws and almost as many contracts were passed between January 17 and January 20 following two weeks of already unprecedented activity that included Constitutional reforms.

[…]

In an election widely observed by the international community, in a nation with a clear deficit of democracy, how was the National Party able to manufacture the results? Here’s an attempt, in five parts, to address that question.

[…]

If there was a proven track record in which election monitoring carried sanctions against electoral fraud and guaranteed that the will of the people is expressed through elections, then who could argue that monitoring isn’t a good thing? But there is no such record. In all too many cases “political, economic, commercial, and even partisan interests” prevail.

[…]

“I think it’s necessary for the social movement to be clear that our role shouldn’t be an extension of a political party,” said Berta Cáceres. She hopes the Platform will make progress on and raise awareness about pressing issues that fell by the wayside – or were never on the agenda – for others who focused their energies on working towards the elections. “It doesn’t mean we can’t work with Libre on strategic issues.”

[…]