What happened when an extractive model came to Honduras?

In May 2011, former Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa welcomed around 1,300 local and foreign investors at the San Pedro Sula industrial center for an economic conference. The event was supposed to inaugurate a new era of prosperity in the nation of Central America after almost two years of social and political disorders after the 2009 coup who spoke of the president of the time, Manuel Zelaya.

Ensured as the “Honduras is open for business”, Lobo presented some 150 development projects to potential investors over two days. If everything was fine, it would help the country to get out of an prolonged economic crisis: the government calculated at the time that it could obtain more than $ 4 billion in investments and jobs for some 350,000 Hondurans in the next three years.

The event came just when the national congress had adopted a controversial pro-business law to attract new investments. In reality, it was a model of economic development based on low regulations and minimum surveillance that endangered the environment. The opening of the country and its natural resources in this way have had several involuntary consequences, in particular the expansion of drug trafficking groups, the proliferation of corrupt elite networks, the looting of the environment and extreme violence loosened from those who try to protect the country's ecosystems.

See also: When corruption kills: extractive and environmental destruction in western Honduras

Following its geographical location between South America and Mexico, Honduras has long served as a “cocaine bridge” for transit drug expeditions to the United States. Since the time of his first major international drug trafficker, Juan Ramón Matta BallesterosCriminal networks relied on links with the highest levels of political power to facilitate their illegal operations. One of the most recent examples of this came with the former Hondurian president Juan Orlando Hernándezwho was sentenced to 45 years in American prison after being sentenced for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy – alongside his brother, Tony HernándezA former Congress member – who sent hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States when he was in office.

Before Hernández became president, the corrupt narco-political blocks operating in Honduras were well placed to benefit from the opening of the country to foreign affairs and new development. No criminal group took this better opportunity than the Cachiros. Led by the Javier Eriberto Rivera Maradiaga brothers and Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, they have become one of the largest Honduras medication transport groups. The chachonos too Maintained a range of legitimate companies, such as African palm plantations, one of the main extractive industries to take root in Honduras. And as Lobo was trying to repair the Honduanian economy, the government agency responsible for the administration of construction and maintenance of road infrastructure in the country awarded several contracts Companies controlled by drug traffickers like the Rivera Maradiaga brothers. Hugo Ardón appointed the government office responsible for these contracts. At the time, Hugo's brother Alexander was the mayor of El Paraíso, Copán, and a drug trafficking partner in Cachiros and Tony Hernández.

The arrangement between drug traffickers and the Hondurian political elite was simple and mutually beneficial. On the one hand, political actors have received bribes or other economic advantages of the projects they have assigned. On the other hand, drug traffickers have had new ways to disguise their unlawful product, develop their social capital and strengthen their facade as apparently legitimate sales players. But while Lobo opened a window for these corrupt networks to extend their wealth and consolidate power, the environment and those working to protect it, have suffered a lot.

During the almost 15 years which followed the declared open to business, deforestation increased at an alarming rate in parallel with the expansion of the extractive industry. Last year, the country lost more than 40,000 hectares of humid primary forest, one of the largest losses observed in the past decade and more than double the amount lost in 2013. Forest fires have also skyrocketed. Data from the Honduras Forest Conservation Institute (Instituto de Conservación Forestal – ICF) recorded more than 3,100 uncontrolled fires which had an impact on nearly 223,500 hectares of forest in 2023. The vast majority of these events were manufactured by humans, driven by criminal interests and not natural forces such as climate change or high temperatures.

An aerial view of deforestation on the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Copán, Copán, Honduras. Credit: Sam Woolston

Since the 2009 coup, at least 142 land defenders have been murdered in the country. This is largely due to the extractive model that corrupt criminal blocks have imposed. The imposition of this model generates violent conflicts because those who live in communities where these projects are developed have a fundamentally different relationship with the environment. While many indigenous and local communities have a symbiotic relationship with nature, the forces behind the extractive industry see the environment and its natural resources such as goods to be used for profit and personal gain.

The model of violence behind these converging visions of the world follows a formula. First of all, an enemy is created. Indigenous communities protecting the environment are developed as being against development and inhibitors to progress. This framing then opens the way to direct threats and attacks. After land defenders are presented as enemies of progress and development, corrupt networks often cooperate state institutions such as police and judiciary to protect their commercial interests and criminalize those who oppose it. If these efforts fail, they use targeted violence to silence the dissident voices.

This was the case for Juan López, a defender of environmental and human rights in Tocoa, Colón, who was assassinated in September 2024 for his sustained defense of two rivers threatened by an iron oxide mine. Before his death, López suffered from a constant harassment which was well published through Honduras and internationally.

In the end, no local examination has slowed the regular destruction of the fragile ecosystem and the systematic flight of Honduras, and no international recognition protected environmental defenders against violent death.