滨迟鈥檚 to be an environmental activist. Since 2022, about 1,700 of them have been killed, according to the non-profit Global Witness.
This month in northern Honduras, two activists were shot and killed in the village of Guapinol.
Aly Dom铆nguez and Jairo Bonilla were that they blamed for polluting the rivers this community of farmers and fishermen rely on to survive.
, a freelance journalist based in Honduras, has been covering the community鈥檚 fight to defend its water since 2019. There鈥檚 pressure on officials to investigate the crimes, he says, though 98% of murders in the country go uninvestigated.
鈥淚n this particular case, many people are feeling a little bit cynical because the same prosecutor who oversaw what many called the arbitrary imprisonment of the 33 and then the eight water defenders after 2018 has now been charged with investigating this case,鈥� Olson says. 鈥淎nd already, the police are saying that it was a robbery gone wrong, even though the families recall that they were being explicitly threatened and that nothing was stolen off of them.鈥�
Interview highlights
On what we know about Aly Dom铆nguez, Jairo Bonilla and their deaths
鈥淭hese were beloved men in this very small, tight-knit community. Guapinol is a small village, kind of in the middle of nowhere, in northern Honduras. And hundreds of people, maybe 1,000, came to their funeral.
鈥淣either of them was particularly politically pre-disposed until around 2018, when they started seeing, along with their friends, construction equipment going up into a mining concession in the national park above their village. And that mining concession was created under dubious circumstances in a late-night congressional session that many people said was illegal. And when they started finally seeing the construction equipment going up, when they and everyone else started seeing the river turn to chocolateada (become chocolatized), they were like, 鈥榳e have to protest.鈥� And they were the co-founders of the Water Defenders movement in Guapinol to try to organize to defend their water.鈥�
On how Dom铆nguez and Bonilla engaged in activism to protest the mine
鈥淎s members of this movement, they took steady, escalating protests to try to stop this mine, which by and large, the communities in this region were not consulted for. As many others might know, this is a very normal process with a lot of these kinds of mining projects in Latin America.
鈥淪o at first, they occupied the local mayor鈥檚 office for 11 days in 2018. But when that didn鈥檛 work, they blocked off the dirt road going into the national park where the construction equipment is going up. In October 2018, over 1000 Honduran military and police units descended on them with tear gas and live ammunition, killing one person and injuring numerous others. And then soon thereafter, 33 of those men were imprisoned, including Aly Dom铆nguez. Most of them were released, but then eight remained in jail on what many considered arbitrary imprisonment for over two years and were finally released.鈥�
On why Honduran activists tie their fight to migration, particularly to the United States
鈥淧eople in Guapinol live off of this water, right? These are farmers, right? These are fishermen. They鈥檙e living very down-to-Earth. And when their river starts coming down full of sediment, that makes their lives extremely difficult.
鈥淲hen I first started covering this story in late 2019, I was kind of surprised, but people make the explicit connection: We want to fight for this because we don鈥檛 want to go to the U.S. No one really wants to [migrate to the U.S.] Maybe if you鈥檙e young and you just want to see the world.
鈥淏ut no one really wants to go through the deserts in Mexico, have to go through organized crime to go live in the underworld in the U.S. They like their lives. They like their communities. 滨迟鈥檚 a very beautiful community. And it鈥檚 an explicit part of their discourse to defend their waterways, to say: 鈥榃e want to defend this river so that we don鈥檛 have to leave.鈥� Ever since this project has started, some sources have indicated that up to a third of the entire community has left in all, either because of violence or threats.鈥�
On the response to Dom铆nguez and Bonilla鈥檚 deaths from the U.S. government 鈥� and how U.S. policy could better support protesters
鈥淭he U.S. ambassador, in this case, has condemned this, which does not always happen because there are hundreds of murders of environmental land and water defenders in Honduras that go unnoticed largely by the international community.
鈥淢any would say that one of the things that needs to be done that the U.S. could do is to help push for accountability for the corrupt state security forces, the military and police units, that are implicated in repressing these communities on behalf of corrupt and business interests. These are the people who repressed their protest camp. And unfortunately, the U.S. continues to support these units, even though there is clear evidence that they are tied up with murder, assassination, torture, repression.鈥�
produced and edited this interview for broadcast with . Healy also adapted it for the web.
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