Rising Violence in Rural Honduras

Months into the right-wing presidency of Trump ally, Nasry Asfura, Honduran social movements are sounding the alarm: peace in the countryside can only be built with agrarian justice, not with forced evictions.

Regrettably, the context in the region has emboldened the country’s landed elite and their transnational accomplices. Trump’s December 2025 pardoning of convicted drug trafficker and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is just one example of US-backed impunity that is giving a green light to others’ crimes. Second, a corporate media landscape helps perpetuate the global division of humanity between lives that matter and lives that don’t.

In May of this year, a group of 19 peasants were massacred by unidentified gunmen in an attempt to restore private ownership over highly-coveted lands. Last week, another eight peasants’ lives were stolen – this time by the police themselves. According to La Via Campesina Honduras, some 1,000 eviction orders are being carried out as of writing.

Also last week, the National Police of Honduras flooded the Garifuna community of San Juan with over 200 officers, using live ammunition, beating and detaining multiple members of the community including longtime organizers of our sister organization, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). This occurred despite a 2023 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights making the Honduran State responsible for protecting the ancestral rights of the Garifuna People. An urgent alert has been released; please stay tuned for actions to take in solidarity.