El 15 de noviembre 2015 se cumple el quinto aniversario de la masacre de El Tumbador en la que guardias privados, paramilitares y militares del estado emboscaron a los cinco, junto con varios campesinos de la comunidad, en las primeras horas de la mañana cuando intentaban entrar en su propiedad. Francisco fue uno de los heridos graves cuando las balas atravesaron su rostro y cuerpo. Él quedó con un dolor constante que hace casi imposible para él trabajar la tierra a la que tenía derecho a cultivar y que le fue robada. El 15 de noviembre también marca cinco años de impunidad de la Corporación Dinant, cuyo presidente, Miguel Facussé Barjum, ordenó esta masacre a sus guardias de seguridad privada y fuerzas de seguridad del Estado. Dinant es una empresa hondureña que cultiva la palma africana y procesa el aceite, además de la cosecha de otros cultivos. Distribuye el aceite de cocina, los churros, los jugos azucarados y una variedad de comida chatarra y productos del hogar a nivel nacional e internacional. También cuenta con un programa de procesamiento de biocombustibles que es una artimaña que se configura más como una estafa de relaciones públicas para recibir créditos de carbono como un productor viable de combustible alternativo.

Ciriaco de Jesús Muñoz, PRESENTE! Ignacio Reyes García, PRESENTE! ; Raúl Castillo, PRESENTE! ; Teodoro Acosta, PRESENTE! ; José Luis Sauceda Pastrana, PRESENTE!. These are the names of the five campesinos (peasant farmers) who were massacred in November of 2010 at El Tumbador. Francisco Ramirez calls out the names to begin a meeting with a human rights delegation.

Six years, nine months, seven days. This is the amount of time that Jose Isabel Morales, also known as “Chabelo,” had spent unjustly in prison without any concrete evidence that he had committed a crime. Omar Menjivar, Chabelo’s defense attorney, emphasized this period of time through out his opening arguments on July 24th 2015 in the initial hearing of the retrial.

Robando is Spanish for stealing. “Juan Robando” is the not-at-all-affectionate moniker given to the President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH). January 27th marks the end of the first year of his presidency. His theft of the elections of November 2013 ensured the continuance of Honduras’ neoliberal trajectory. A trajectory previously boosted by the Agricultural Modernization Law of 1992. This law jettisoned any agrarian reforms attempted beforehand. Neoliberalism took a further leap in 2009. That’s when the ruling elite instigated the coup d’état which ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Thirteen oligarchic families led the coup with the assistance of the US State Department, at the time headed by Hilary Clinton. The Honduran Military kidnapped Zelaya using the private plane of Miguel Facussé Barjum, President of the Dinant Corporation and the richest man in Honduras. They refueled at the US’s Palmerola Military Base before whisking the deposed President to Panama.

Six children from the community of Puerto Castilla, Trujillo, suffered severe respiratory damage resulting from an attack carried out on May 23, 2014 by the Honduran National Police, Military Police, and in conjunction with the Operation Xatruch III military unit. Hundreds of tear gas canisters were fired into the community in a haphazard manner as a means of dispersing a peaceful protest.

A caravan makes it's way up the dusty winding road into the mountains of the department of Yoro. It is heading toward San Francisco de Locomapa, one of the territories of the Tolupane people, an indigenous tribe that has been in existence for over 5,000 years. San Francisco is also the site of a massacre that occurred on August 25, 2013.

On November 24th, 2013 Hondurans went to the polls in record numbers to support new viable alternatives to the duopoly of the National Party and the Liberal Party. These two old political parties have enjoyed a century of rule and both are beholden to the US State Department, the ruling elite, and multinational companies all looking to buy up the natural resources and the sovereignty of this Central American country.

The judges in the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras rendered their decision on Novemeber 5 in the case of Jose Isabel “Chavelo” Morales, partially siding with his lawyers’ appeal. Chavelo is the political prisoner from the Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MCA in its Spanish acronym) in the peasant farming community of Guadalupe Carney in Trujillo, Colon.

It is an hour drive to get to Nueva Esperanza from the main road that cuts through the Northern Honduran department of Atlantída. This small village sits at the foot and climbs up the slopes of the mountains that separate Atlantída and the neighboring department of Yoro. It is a mountain rich in metal deposits such as gold, iron, and antimony.

In addition, these mining companies have historically exploited the labor of the local communities, paying little to nothing while poisoning the local populations with chemicals such as cyanide used for extraction. Abolish the new Model Cities legislation. This is new legislation passed by decree by the Congress after having been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in November of last year.

The 3 hour bus ride to El Porvenir is relatively cheap at 140 lempiras or $7.14, but the trip there and back is more time and expense than Ramona Morales can afford.

Election day here in Honduras started with an email message from MUCA (The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán). It stated that the day before, at about 4:30PM, hundreds of soldiers had entered La Confianza, the campesino community which belongs to MUCA. The soldiers had their guns at the ready as they went up and down the streets where children were playing.

The US is once again hell bent on establishing death squads in its militarization of Central America. This is a stark reminder of the 1980s when Ronald Reagan and Ollie North were funding the contras with drug money, but now it is reinforced with lessons learned in terrorizing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan through night raids and counterinsurgency tactics. Another tactic that the current US administration has reinvigorated comes from the “War on Drugs” playbook of past administrations: by using the DEA as a front for creating and sustaining havoc,