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: The Guapinol River flows into the Carlos Ecereras National Park. About ten years ago, Inversiones Los Pinares obtained permission to build an iron oxide mine in the park. (SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
The Guapinol River that flows through the Bajo Aguán Valley in northern Honduras has long been a source of drinking water, bathing, cleaning, irrigation and cooking for Tocoa’s surrounding network.
In recent years, the river has also provided education: how to resist a foreign mining operation they say is polluting the river in the call for development; how to confront a probably compromised judicial formula when that resistance goes wrong; and – for women specifically – as leaders of a movement after the indefinite imprisonment of their husbands and children.
Vilma Cruz raised her five children on the river, adding a son who spent nearly two-and-a-half years in jail for protesting mining as part of Guapinol 8, an organization whose 2019 arrests and lengthy detentions sparked foreign outrage.
“We don’t feel calm because our water has been put at risk,” he said. “Now when I pass the river, I feel my chest swell, as if I am not free. “
A mine emerges, a responds
About a decade ago, Inversiones Los Pinares, formerly the Honduran mining corporation EMCO and founded in Tocoa, implemented a concession to build an iron oxide mine in Carlos Escalera National Park. Then-President Juan Orlando Hernández legalized the request in 2013, a resolution that citizens say was made without following the consultation protocol with citizens in the area.
The allocation of open-pit mining upstream of the Guapinol River, a channel that flows from the larger Aguan River, a river that runs through the tropical Atlantic mountains on the north side of the Central American country.
When the Guapinol River in 2018 began to be dyed chocolate colored, locals took it as a signal to act against Inversiones Los Pinares.
Juana Zúniga, leader of the network and life wife of José Abelino Cedillo, one of the Guapinol 8, talks to a SHARE delegation, friends and a circle of family about mining on the river and the difficulties in supporting his wife. (SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
Guapinol Resiste, the movement network in reaction to mining, said in a 2020 report that even before mining began, the structure of services and roads had polluted the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, affecting 14,000 citizens who have water for drinking and domestic use. uses.
“To lose the river would be to buy water, and you can’t buy water for everything,” said Leonel George, who sits on the municipal committee for the defense of common and public goods, founded in 2018 in reaction to the mining project.
The river, he added, is “closely connected to the life and lifestyles of everything around us,” noting that the committee’s fear goes beyond the effects the infected water would have on humans for the forests and biodiversity surrounding the river.
“We can’t exist if we lose the water, the river [because] the charge of living would be too expensive for family chores,” he said.
: One of Guapinol’s 8 welcomes his daughters for the first time in a year. (SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
The committee, which serves both Guapinol and those of the giant arm (or state) of Colón, encouraged the mobilization of the network. They have organized public denunciations, resistance camps along the banks to block the company’s access to the river, and foreign solidarity campaigns. , adding the help of Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council. The committee also coordinated legal demand situations for both the mining concession and human and environmental rights.
The Honduran Public Ministry, in turn, issued precautionary measures to 32 members of the commission.
“These are serious crimes that were imposed on us and were false, calling us a scoundrel organization, illegal arrangement of usurpation, harm, unjust deprivation of liberty,” George said. (Human rights defenders in Guapinol are part of CIVICUS #StandAsMyWitness’s campaign, which advocates for the rights of human rights defenders. )
The local Catholic Church, he added, has been a source of support, with priests, bishops and parishes from neighboring dioceses appearing supportive by participating in the committee’s demonstrations and activities. And there are few sisters nearby, he said many have traveled. of neighboring towns and departments to accompany them in their struggle.
For conservationists, a fatal landscape
According to environmental and human rights watchdog Global Witness, Honduras has one of the deadliest countries for environmental defenders, with the killing of activist Berta Cáceras in 2016 attracting foreign attention. on threats and intimidation against Honduran environmentalists. In 2019, Honduras claimed the highest number of defenders killed according to the capita.
“We are the ones who fight for our lives. . . Unfortunately, the State is the one that fights for our livelihood, our life, however, in Honduras we are criminalized and condemned for protecting the destruction of everything that belongs to us,” said Juana Zúniga. . , network leader and life spouse of José Abelino Cedillo, one of the Guapinol 8.
“Not to do so is to be complicit in corruption,” he said.
Inversiones Los Pinares responded to Global Sisters Report’s request for comment. However, its Facebook page highlights a number of positive social effects resulting from its development: creation of thousands of jobs, fitness programs and social action, structure of schools.
Mary Anne Perrone, left, and José Artiga, right, the Guapinol River with a member of the network. Perrone and Artiga led the SHARE delegation to draw foreign attention to the unrest in Honduras. (SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
In November 2021, Democratic-Socialist President Xiomara Castro, wife of former President Manuel Zelaya, who was fired from office by the military in 2009, elected Honduras’ first female president after 12 years of conservative rule through the National Party.
In the months following his election, his government announced a ban on open-pit mining, joining Costa Rica and El Salvador in the move. The proposed restrictions would only apply to new projects and retroactively revoke mining licenses already obtained, adding to Inversiones Los Castro’s proposal has faced opposition from the Honduran congress, with critics calling the measure unconstitutional. Still, activists welcomed the president’s decision, which delayed programs for new mining permits.
The role of the City’s Committee for the Defense of the Common and Public Goods, George said, is to make sure the voice of the community is heard. He added that the mining company has not only reached an agreement with the government and the army, but has also bought aid from the community.
“We have been criminalized, we have been threatened and we have been discredited through social media campaigns,” he said.
Most of the Guapinol 8 were detained in the Olanchito Penitentiary. They were held there for nearly two and a half years, charged with arson and trespassing after a three-month protest to save a mining company from their roads. ( SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
Guapinol 8
Among the 32 precautionary measures issued to committee members, the extralegal imprisonment of 8 men diverted the community’s attention from the struggle for the river to the fight for the lives of their husbands, sons and friends.
In August 2019, the committee organized a camp to prevent the mining corporation from accessing its roads for 3 months. What began as a nonviolent protest turned into a violent confrontation: army police eventually deployed tear gas and live ammunition, killing one civilian and injuring 8 others.
After this conflict, the Guapinol 8 were arrested and accused of arson and home invasion: José Daniel Márquez, José Abelino Cedillo, Ewer Alexander Cedillo, Kelvin Alejandro Romero, Orbin Nahún Hernández, Profirio Sorto Cedillo, Arnol Javier Alemán and Jeremías Martínez Díaz.
The organization was eventually jailed for 914 days. After a trial that supporters described as a hoax, six of the men were convicted and two acquitted on February 9. The next day, Honduras’ Supreme Court dismissed the case and ruled that the ruling on who ordered the men’s detention had no jurisdiction to do so.
Catholic progress agencies, such as Ireland-based Trócaire, were among those that did not do easy justice for the 8 men. The Sisters of Mercy, who toast in Honduras for 60 years and defended Guapinol’s network before the arrests, were among those celebrating Guapinol 8’s release.
“People around the world have supported them because protecting water is a crime. They deserve reparation,” they tweeted on Feb. 11.
Now, the Guapinol 8 and activists close to them “have to be careful, because the corporate is not satisfied with them,” said Jose Artiga, executive director of the SHARE Foundation, which organizes normal trips to El Salvador and Honduras for Americans who need to see the realities of life there, similar to migration and the environment. Global Sisters Report participated in the December 2021 delegation to San Pedro Sula and Guapinol.
“All this time they were in prison, [Inversiones Los Pinares] continues to exploit . . . The risk of poisoning the river has not disappeared,” Artiga said.
Juan López, representative of the Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods, told Radio Progreso that the next step of the activists is for the revocation of the mining contracts of Inversiones Los Pinares, the environmental license and the exploitation and exploration permit. .
Artiga said the net was “physically exhausted, they didn’t have an iota of strength to keep fighting, so when they released [Guapinol’s 8], it was a break to rest. “
Reynaldo Domínguez, leader of Guapinol, walks with Leonel George, a member of the Tocoa City Council. (SHARE Foundation/Mark Coplan)
He added that some of the men were breadwinners, many of whom fell into poverty once the men went to prison.
“The company fulfilled a large part of its objectives by putting [the Guapinol 8] in jail, which scared the network to mobilize against them. ‘We have the strength to put them in jail,’ that’s the message,” Artiga said, stating that popular confidence that businesses and the government worked together to discourage protesters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them leave the country for security reasons or move to some other component of the country. “
If he leaves the country, “they are no longer a threat. It does not organize or plan the next steps to get Los Pinares out of its sacred mountain, to save the Guapinol River, the rivers of Honduras and the rivers of the world. “
A resistance
Resistance to mining did not stop completely with the arrest of Guapinol 8.
The detainees and mothers supported the movement, assuming leadership in organizing and speaking out against mining operations as they are executed through judicial processes.
“I feel like we started in the preschool stage, and maybe we’re entering the elementary stage” when it comes to protecting the Guapinol River, municipal committee member Adilia Castro told an assembly of the women’s organization. “It’s up to us in this space, with our experiences, to be informed and to notice tactics to fight. “
Castro said he believes this fight continues, as they challenge “an economic and extractive model” that destroys communities and territories.
“We come from a territory that does not delight in this type of shock in the mining sector; This is a new challenge for us, and we face it without knowing how it was done, without knowing who the others were or how. It was mounted. . . This school has no end, no grade or grade.