‘Danger no longer only comes from the hitmen, but from the state’: the Honduran farmers labelled terrorists for protecting their land
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- Gunmen killed 20 people on a palm oil farm in Rigores, Honduras on 21 May in what residents called the worst massacre ever seen in the Bajo Aguán valley; 15-year-old Orlean was one of only three survivors after his uncle and two cousins were shot dead
- Honduras's new rightwing government of President Nasry "Tito" Asfura, backed by Donald Trump, passed a penal code reform allowing criminal groups to be designated as terrorist organizations, which the Centre for the Study of Democracy warns lets "any group exercising their democratic right to peaceful protest" be labeled terrorist
- A second law approved two weeks later prioritizes agribusinesses in land rights cases over claims by campesino, Indigenous or activist groups, justifying immediate police or legal intervention against protests, according to lawyer Lucas Mantelli at the pan-American Centre for Justice and International Law
- The Bajo Aguán conflict has killed more than 200 people according to the Honduran Commission for Human Rights (Conadeh), with May 2025 the deadliest month since conflict monitor Acled began collecting data in 2018
- Honduras's previous National party president Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted drug trafficker pardoned by Trump in December, oversaw nearly $72m (£57m) in state investment in the palm oil industry despite allegations it was responsible for human rights abuses
- The World Bank's International Finance Corporation funded Dinant, the palm oil company at the center of the conflict; Dinant has repeatedly denied involvement in civilian killings and human rights abuses
- Conadeh estimates that nine out of 10 killings and abuses in the Bajo Aguán valley are never investigated, a lack of accountability that has eroded community trust in authorities
- U.S. drug-trafficking designations of Honduras as a major trafficking hotspot followed the 201s emergence of the Bajo Aguán valley as a cocaine corridor, drawing armed groups into the existing land conflict
Why it matters: Two interlocking laws—one branding peaceful protest as terrorism, the other tilting land disputes toward agribusiness—have arrived just as the deadliest violence in seven years hits a region where 90% of killings go uninvestigated, leaving campesino leaders who already travel in armoured cars now facing criminal prosecution rather than just hired guns.
