What Happened When An Extractive Model Came to Honduras?

In May 2011, former Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa welcomed around 1,300 local and foreign investors to the industrial hub of San Pedro Sula for an economic conference. The event was supposed to usher in a new era of prosperity in the Central American nation after almost two years of social and political unrest following the 2009 coup d’état that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya.

Billed as the “Honduras is Open for Business” conference, Lobo presented some 150 development projects to would-be investors over the course of two days. If everything went right, it would help the country climb out of a prolonged economic crisis: The government calculated at the time that it could secure more than $4 billion in investments and jobs for some 350,000 Hondurans over the next three years.

The event came just as the National Congress’ had passed a controversial pro-business law to attract new investment. In reality, it was an economic development model predicated on weak regulations and minimal oversight that put the environment at risk. Opening up the country and its natural resources in this way had several unintended consequences, including the expansion of drug trafficking groups, the proliferation of corrupt elite networks, the plundering of the environment, and extreme violence directed at those trying to protect the country’s ecosystems.

SEE ALSO: When Corruption Kills: Extractives and Environmental Destruction in Western Honduras

As a result of its geographic location between South America and Mexico, Honduras has long served as a so-called “cocaine bridge” for drug shipments in transit to the United States. From the days of its first major international drug trafficker, Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, criminal networks have relied on connections to the highest levels of political power to facilitate their illicit operations. One of the most recent examples of this came with former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in US prison after being convicted for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy — alongside his brother, Tony Hernández, a former congressman — that sent hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States while he was in office.

Before Hernández ever became president, the corrupt narco-political blocs operating in Honduras were well-positioned to benefit from the opening of the country to foreign business and new development. No criminal group seized on this opportunity better than the Cachiros. Led by brothers Javier Eriberto Rivera Maradiaga and Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, they went on to become one of Honduras’ largest drug transport groups. The Chachiros also maintained a range of legitimate businesses, such as African Palm plantations, one of the main extractive industries to take root in Honduras. And as Lobo tried to repair the Honduran economy, the government agency responsible for administering the building and maintenance of the country’s road infrastructure awarded several contracts to companies controlled by drug traffickers like the Rivera Maradiaga brothers. Appointed to run the government office responsible for those contracts was Hugo Ardón. At the time, Hugo’s brother, Alexander, was the mayor of El Paraíso, Copán, and a drug trafficking associate of both the Cachiros and Tony Hernández.

The arrangement between drug traffickers and the Honduran political elite was straightforward and mutually beneficial. On the one hand, political actors received kickbacks or other economic benefits from the projects they awarded. On the other, drug traffickers were afforded new ways to disguise their illicit proceeds, build up their social capital, and fortify their facade as seemingly legitimate business actors. But as Lobo opened a window for these corrupt networks to expand their wealth and consolidate power, the environment, and those working to protect it, suffered greatly.

In the nearly 15 years since Honduras was declared open for business, deforestation has increased at an alarming rate alongside the expansion of the extractives industry. Last year, the country lost more than 40,000 hectares of humid primary forest, one of the greatest losses seen over the last decade and more than double the amount lost in 2013. Forest fires have also skyrocketed. Data from Honduras’ Forest Conservation Institute (Instituto de Conservación Forestal – ICF) recorded more than 3,100 uncontrolled fires that impacted almost 223,500 hectares of forest in 2023. The vast majority of these events were man-made, driven by criminal interests and not natural forces like climate change or high temperatures.

An overhead view of deforestation on the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Copán, Copán, Honduras. Credit: Sam Woolston

Since the 2009 coup, at least 142 land defenders have been murdered in the country. This is in large part due to the extractive model that corrupt criminal blocs have imposed. The imposition of this model generates violent conflict because those that live in the communities where these projects are being developed have a fundamentally different relationship with the environment. While many Indigenous and local communities have a symbiotic relationship with nature, the forces behind the extractive industry see the environment and its natural resources as merchandise to be exploited for profit and personal gain.

The pattern of violence behind those converging worldviews follows a formula. First, an enemy is created. Indigenous communities protecting the environment are framed as being against development and inhibitors to progress. This framing then paves the way for direct threats and attacks. After land defenders are presented as the enemies of progress and development, corrupt networks often co-opt state institutions like the police and judiciary to safeguard their business interests and criminalize those who oppose them. If those efforts fail, they resort to targeted violence to silence dissenting voices.

This was the case for Juan López, an environmental and human rights defender in Tocoa, Colón, who was murdered in September 2024 for his sustained defense of two rivers threatened by an iron oxide mine. Before his death, López suffered from constant harassment that was well-publicized across Honduras and internationally.

In the end, no amount of local scrutiny has slowed the steady destruction of Honduras’ fragile ecosystem and systematic theft of its natural resources, and no amount of international recognition has protected environmental defenders from violent death.