HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE BRIEFING #5: THE HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS IN HONDURAS Society for Applied Anthropology – www.sfaa.net JAMES PHILLIPS January 8, 2013 THE SITUATION Saturday night, September 27, 2012, Teguci- galpa, the Honduran capital. It had been a tense week for Antonio Trejo, legal advocate for a peasant organization in the midst of a land struggle in Honduras’ northern Aguan Val- ley. Although they had won their case in court, Trejo and the peasant leaders had recently been arrested, harassed, and threatened. Trejo was getting death threats via text messages on his cell phone. But tonight he was in his other role, as evangelical pastor. He had just cele- Photo: Lucy Edwards, January 2011. Honduran Po- brated a wedding when he went out to his car lice face demonstrators on the steps of the Su- preme Court of Justice, Tegucigalpa. to retrieve the marriage certificate. He was cut down in a hail of bullets.1 ras. Among others, such reports have come from the Inter-American Human Rights Com- Honduras is in a human rights crisis. Some lik- mission of the Organization of American en it to Colombia at its most violent. Others States, the United Nations Human Rights Rap- are beginning to use the term “failed state.” porteur and the UN Rapporteur for Freedom of The country has the highest murder rate in the the Press and Expression, the independent In- world (now 91 per 100,000), and is considered ternational Truth Commission (Comision de one of the most dangerous places for journal- Verdad, often referred to in English as the ists.2 Since President Manuel Zelaya was forci- “True Commission” to distinguish it from the bly removed from office in June, 2009, by the government-sponsored Truth and Reconcilia- army on orders from the Honduran Congress tion Commission) and even the government’s and the Supreme Court, there have been mas- own Commission.3 sive popular protests and massive state re- pression against protestors and critics of the Human rights activists and leaders of popular government. Death squads and members of organizations say the current situation is as the state security forces have targeted peas- bad as, or worse than the national security ants, teachers, students, journalists, lawyers, state of the 1980s.4 At that time, the Honduran human rights and LGBT activists, priests, minis- elite and military reacted to the successful ters, and others. Sandinista revolution in neighboring Nicaragua and the guerrilla warfare in El Salvador by im- In the three years since the removal of Zelaya, posing some of the most repressive measures prominent individuals and organizations have of national security ideology used earlier in issued reports documenting hundreds of cases Argentina’s dirty war.5 Trained in the United of human rights abuse and violence in Hondu- States and in Honduras by Argentine military 1 advisors, the notorious 316 Battalion and other families that form an economic elite control- military units assassinated, tortured, and dis- ling both major political parties and routinely appeared victims in the name of protecting the enforcing its position through repression of country from communism. Today a former popular dissent using both state and private head of the 316 and other figures from the security forces.6 Human rights abuses commit- repression of the 1980s occupy roles in the ted by state and private security go unpun- current government, and Hondurans remem- ished, while peasants who take over unused ber that the current national police chief was land for farming are accused of terrorism. For involved in the death squads of that time. years, authorities and large landowners ig- nored the Agrarian Reform Law, and finally While Honduras was enduring the national swept it aside. They have increasingly criminal- security measures of the 1980s, the United ized most peasant activism.7 Today the situa- States developed a large military and intelli- tion is exacerbated by an invasion of drug traf- gence presence there in reaction to the imag- ficking in which the security forces are widely ined threat of communism in the region. In perceived to be involved, and by an infusion of Honduras, the U.S. military presence raised guns and military aid to the country. Drug vio- issues of national sovereignty, caused some to lence has increased, and it provides a cover for say Honduras was under foreign occupation, political violence. Official agencies and the and earned the country the title, “Battleship press routinely attribute almost all acts of vio- Honduras.” Since then, the U.S. military pres- lence to narcotics or common crime, as if the ence has remained in ways that circumvent country suffered not from a human rights crisis existing Honduran law but with the approval of but a crime wave. Drug violence also provides the Honduran government. In the past few an excuse to request more U.S. security aid, years that presence has been increasing again much of it going to the same security forces under the rubric of narcotics interdiction in the accused of human rights violations. east and north of the country. The crisis goes deeper than the current politi- THE UNITED STATES CONNECTION cal unrest. It is rooted in historic patterns of unresolved social, economic, and political Hondurans themselves say that it is difficult to problems, including in particular poverty and overestimate the importance of the United inequitable access to land and resources. Hon- States in shaping Honduran affairs. The United duras has long been ruled by a small group of States has a long history of economic, political, Photo: Noah Phillips-Edwards, August 2012. Private security guards detain two local men. 2 and military involvement in Honduras going tober, 2012, but other forms of anti-drug assis- back to the mid-1800s. U.S. influence has been tance continue. Anvil may be an apt name, exercised primarily through economic and mili- since local people seem caught between com- tary means. Economic investment—first fruit plying with the demands of drug lords and the companies, then more diversified investments raids of authorities who accuse the people of in mining, logging, and sweatshop assembly participating in drug smuggling. Eastern Hon- industries (maquiladoras)—has also meant duras has become a major transshipment hub political influence over Honduran govern- for drugs destined to the United States. Addi- ments. U.S. economic influence has continued tional security aid was suspended after several during the past decade through free trade incidents in which Honduran air force units agreements (CAFTA-DR) and programs of ex- reportedly shot down civilian airplanes. panded investment supported by the U.S. State Department and promoted under the Training Honduran security forces is another slogan, “Honduras is open for business.” Many avenue of U.S. influence. Since at least the of these investments have included practices 1980s, many Honduran military officers have that popular organizations condemn for caus- been trained at the U.S.-run School of the ing environmental harm, displacement of rural Americas (known to some Latin Americans as communities, and the taking of indigenous the “school of the assassins”). Some of these lands (www.caftadr.net/home.html).8 A com- officers, past and present, have been accused mon perception in Honduras is that the gov- of or implicated in human rights abuses. In ad- ernment and the elite are enthusiastically sell- dition, U.S. aid has financed equipment and ing the country’s resources for private profit. vehicles for Honduran security forces. When Ebed Yanez, an unarmed teenager was killed United States military influence in Honduras is by a Honduran security patrol near a check- exercised in three ways: direct U.S. military point in Tegucigalpa early in 2012, it was later presence in the country, training of Honduran (November 12, 2012) reported that officers military and security forces, and security aid who were involved in the killing and the sub- given directly and through regional security sequent attempted cover-up were alumni of arrangements. The U.S. military presence, in the School of the Americas, and that the pa- Honduras since the 1980s, has recently been trol’s vehicle and some of its equipment were augmented by anti-drug enforcement support part of a package of U.S. security aid for Honduran security forces under a program (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/ named Operation Anvil. This has resulted in at violence-in-honduras_n_2118971.html).10 least one internationally publicized incident. On May 11, 2012, near the community of In the past two years, members of the United Ahuas along the Patuca River in the eastern States Congress have sent at least two “Dear Mosquitia region, anti-drug units that included Colleague” letters (the second with ninety-four Honduran security forces, Guatemalan pilots, signatures) to Secretary of State Clinton con- and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency comman- demning rights abuses in Honduras. In Au- dos using State Department helicopters killed tumn, 2012, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), four local villagers in what Honduran authori- chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations ties said was probably a case of mistaken iden- Committee and nominee to become the next tity (www.cispes.org/documents/DR- Secretary of State, expressed the view that CAFTA.Effects_and_Alternatives.pdf), security aid to Honduras should be suspended, (www.cnn.com/2012/07/11/world/americas/h at least until a review of its use can be con- onduras-operation-anvil/index.html).9 Due to ducted. Such measures are enjoined under the the international notoriety of this case in par- so-called Leahy Amendment that may be ap- ticular, Operation Anvil was suspended in Oc- plied in the case of Honduras.