Honduran Agrarian Reform Talks Continue with Elections in Full Swing

El Faro English translates Central America. Subscribe to our newsletter.

On May 7, a specialized unit of the Honduran Public Prosecutor's Office filed charges against 15 alleged members of the criminal group Los Cachos, accusing them of attacking campesino organizations in the Bajo Aguán region of the department of Colón. It was a frontal response to an entrenched land conflict that, earlier this year, drew calls from the U.N. for a swift investigation into a renewed wave of violence.

In late January, two members of the Gregorio Chávez Cooperative were murdered there. The Agrarian Platform, a campesino coalition, has accused Los Cachos of working private security for the Dinant Corporation, an agro-industrial conglomerate founded by late businessman Miguel Facussé. Expediente Público describes Los Cachos as a “death squad” whom the Laureles Cooperative criminally accused of being bankrolled by Dinant.

Violence in Bajo Aguán tied to palm oil monocrop has simmered for years, escalating with impunity after the 2009 coup d’état, as a 2012 chronicle translated this week by El Faro English illustrates. In the last decade, there have been almost 200 victims — most of them campesinos, but also some private security guards killed during armed occupations of private plantations. Virtually nobody has been held accountable.

In an interview with El Faro for the 2012 report, as the company has for years, Dinant denied that its employees were involved in the killings, accusing campesinos of initiating run-ins or claiming evidence implicating the company is inconclusive.

Honduras will hold presidential elections on November 30. In her 2021 campaign, President Xiomara Castro pitched broad agrarian reform: She promised to sort out rights and access to land through legislative and executive action, including property deeds for campesinos and the eviction of unlawful occupants; increased punishment for both forced displacement and land usurpation; and protection from eviction for 13 campesino-held plantations.

As part of this work, she said her government would install a Bajo Aguán Truth Commission, also known as the “Tripartite Commission”, to investigate the causes of —and those responsible for— the unpunished violence. The commission would include the Executive Branch, U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and international human rights attorneys proposed by the Agrarian Platform.

“The [core] problem is the land, so we need to set an agenda with the Agrarian Platform, the private sector, and the government,” Rafael Alegría, deputy director of the National Agrarian Institute (INA) and representative of the administration, told television reporters in March, promising “concrete proposals” within days.

From June 2023 to June 2024, the Observatory of Socioterritorial Conflict registered 27 violent evictions of campesinos and three suspended operations, affecting campesino and Lenca communities and including the destruction of homes and crops. The Honduran think tank CESPAD, the Center of Study for Democracy, wrote in a 2024 report that employees of agroindustrial companies participated in the evictions.

The Honduran Congress has not budged on this package of proposals. On May 20, Alegría acknowledged the generally sluggish advances of the Executive. “Although we have not been able to do what we would like, we are studying agrarian reform,” he said.

While other land conflicts are notable —like the ZEDEs, Zacate Grande island, or Garifuna territory— Bajo Aguán has gained the most notoriety. “Honduras is an eminently rural country subsisting on agriculture,” says Jennifer Ávila, director of digital outlet Contracorriente. “There is an agrarian conflict throughout the country, but Bajo Aguán was the only one named [in the agrarian reform] when homicide rates rose sharply.”

[newsletter]

El Faro English contacted Fernando García, president of the National Association of Industry (ANDI), of which the Dinant Corporation is a member, for the perspective of the private sector. He agreed to an interview, but postponed it multiple times beyond publication time.

Under Castro, according to Ávila, Dinant agreed to provide documents to the proposed Truth Commission but declined to participate further.

A real commitment?

In an ironic twist of history, Xiomara Castro’s own father, Irene Castro, for decades was the legal representative of Miguel Facussé’s businesses; Contracorriente called him “the silent architect of the Facussé empire.” Her father-in-law, José Manuel Zelaya Ordóñez, was imprisoned for his involvement in the 1975 Los Horcones campesino massacre.

This made it all the more significant when her husband, President Manuel Zelaya, promised agrarian reform prior to the 2009 coup, animating Xiomara Castro’s pledge in 2021 to continue. It also made Zelaya a folk hero among the campesinos in Bajo Aguán, as an El Faro English photo essay accompanying the 2012 chronicle documents.

But with one year left in Castro’s presidency and lagging Truth Commission talks, questions have emerged over Castro and Zelaya’s real commitment to bring about the reforms in Bajo Aguán — and not merely because of family ties.

“What is a more serious analysis,” says Miguel Alonzo Macías, a UNAH sociologist familiar with the campesino movements, “is that the wife of the minister of governance [Tomás Vaquero, in charge of the Police] is the representative of the company of Lenir Pérez.”

The U.S. State Department sanctioned the minister’s wife, Pamela Blanco, in December 2024 for “influence-peddling” and “pressuring public officials’ exercise of their government functions.” Lenir Pérez is a businessman tied to mining interests and accused of environmental crimes.

Walking a delicate balancing act to avoid tensions with the criticism-sensitive Castro administration, the United Nations has appeared eager to inject new life into agrarian reform, signing an agreement on April 23 with the government providing $2 million dollars toward “preventing and managing social conflict in Bajo Aguán through the protection of human rights and access to justice.”

The negotiations toward the Truth Commission have sought involvement from distinguished jurists and human rights attorneys from around the hemisphere. But it is not lost on foreign observers in Tegucigalpa that the administration’s biggest international pledge, the installation of a U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission, has similarly stalled for almost four years under a lack of guarantees of independence.

On the issue of the Bajo Aguán, says Ávila, “there is simply no political will. They have not demonstrated the contrary and, despite having a budget for it, they have not achieved it.”

Others say the administration has its hands tied by circumstance and the surrounding judicial and political actors. “The government did not anticipate factors that would be out of their control,” counters Macías. “There is political will, but they are up against another real problem: who administers and controls the justice system apparatus,” he says, referring to business elites and their political allies.

Because of this, “any demand made by campesinos is rejected or denied,” he asserts.

In Honduras, what should be technical is often political. Ruling party Libre imposed the current AG, Johel Zelaya, despite prohibitions on party affiliation; his predecessor was illegally appointed to two terms by Juan Orlando Hernández. The 2023 Supreme Court selection was scrutinized for accusations that the three main parties divided up the court, while the ongoing electoral process has seen a partisan dispute between its guarantors: the Army and National Electoral Council.

In Bajo Aguán, Ávila and Macías agree that, until the original sin of ambiguous land rights is resolved and the area is demilitarized, there can be no progress. CESPAD noted that INA has granted thousands of deeds since 2022 to campesinos across Honduras.

“Facussé does in fact accept that those lands were not legally given to him, but it was never clarified whether Facussé and the state [later] reached a formal agreement [to cede him the land],” says Ávila. Today, “as long as it remains unclear whether the lands are now legitimately held by the corporation, campesino groups will keep taking over the land.”

This article first appeared in the June 2 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.