“Honduras’s Deadly Water Wars”, 24^th March 2020

…The government granted permission to construct the infrastructure for the open-pit mine to Inversiones Los Pinares…

Like much in post-coup Honduras, the mining concession was granted under questionable circumstances…

In the years since 2014, the project has faced resistance from larger cities like Tocoa and from smaller villages like El Guapinol, which is sustained by the flow of the Guapinol River where it leaves Carlos Escaleras. But Pinares has continued exploration through a legal loophole under which iron oxide, its stated target mineral, was categorized as a non-metal at the time the company received its concession.

Eight people, including community leaders, mine workers, and military policemen, have been killed in relation to the proposed Guapinol mine since 2013, the two most recent in November 2019. And though the reasons behind some of the killings have remained murky, with some investigators attesting that some deaths are the result of the overlapping of drug cartel territory with that of the mining company, the deaths have fueled a sustained media campaign by both Pinares and the Honduran government to criminalize the anti-mine movement. Pinares maintains that the source of the violence has been an anti-mine armed gang, an accusation for which there is little to no evidence…