PBI-Honduras visits Museum Against Forgetting/Oblivion in Amarateca used as torture centre in the 1980s

Published by Brent Patterson on June 7, 2024June 7, 2024

PBI-Honduras has posted: “Yesterday [June 5] we visited the Museum Against Forgetting in Amarateca, located in a property used as a torture center during the National Security Doctrine in the 1980s, redefining it as a space for memory and reflection. From PBI, we highlight the work of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras [COFADEH] to reclaim the memory of the victims of human rights violations, especially the crimes of torture and forced disappearance.”

On December 9, 2023, Defensoresenlinea.com posted: “The opening of the first phase of the Museum Against Oblivion, in the Amarateca Valley, Francisco Morazán, by the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), constitutes a space for reflection, analysis and learning of the historical memory of the disappeared and murdered political detainees of the decade of the 80s.”

That article further notes: “One of the survivors of persecution and torture during the time of state terrorism in Honduras was the leader of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) of the municipal directorate and General Coordinator of the Honduran Communal Movement, Jesús Chávez. Chávez described the opening of the Museum Against Oblivion as an extraordinary action and of great recognition to the heroes and martyrs fallen, kidnapped and tortured by the Honduran Armed Forces (FFAA) and by the 3-16 battalion.”

At the opening of the Museum, COFADEH general coordinator Berta Oliva commented: “This is a place of memory, it is a meeting place, a place of life. Memory is not a word, memory is resistance, memory is teaching, memory is continuity.”

Canada and Honduras, 1980-92

Lawyers Without Borders Canada has noted: “Honduras is sometimes forgotten when it comes to enforced disappearances, since the country was not as badly affected as other Latin American countries, such as its neighbors Guatemala and El Salvador. However, at least 184 people were victims of enforced disappearance during the implementation of the national security doctrine in the 1980s.”

During the period that the house in Amarateca was being used to torture people, Joe Clark (June 1979 to March 1980) and then Pierre Trudeau (March 1980 to June 1984), John Turner (June to September 1984) and Brian Mulroney (September 1984 to June 1993) were the prime ministers of Canada.

Toronto-based academic Tyler Shipley has written: “Between 1980 and 1992, the US spent some $1.6 billon in military and economic aid to Honduras, intended to establish the apparatus of repression, buttress the institutions of political power, and infiltrate and co-opt the civil society organizations that were best positioned to harness social unrest.”

In 1983, UPI reported: “Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told a group of about 700 college students [in Toronto] he could not do anything about U.S. foreign policy towards Central America [including Honduras]… Trudeau said that as a major world power the United States was trying to protect its own interests.”

Global Affairs Canada has noted: “The El Mochito mine became Canada’s first formal mining interest in Honduras when purchased by a Canadian listed company, American Pacific Mining, in September 1987. Breakwater Resources, another Canadian company, acquired the company and the property in March 1990. In the early 1990s, a series of Canadian junior exploration companies, including Breakwater were able to acquire exploration licenses throughout the country.”

Amnesty International has also documented that journalist José Eduardo Lopez was forcibly disappeared in Honduras on December 24, 1984. They highlight: “In 1981 he was detained for five days and tortured. On his release he received death threats and in 1982 he fled to the United States where he applied for refugee status in Canada. In 1984 [just months before he was disappeared] the Canadian authorities rejected his application stating that José Eduardo López had not demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution.”

Photo: José Eduardo López.

In December 1987, Maclean’s magazine reported: “[Canadian Foreign Affairs minister Joe Clark] announced an additional $13 million in aid to Honduras, which has not yet dismantled its contra base camps or cut supply flights to the rebels [fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua].”

A fuller recounting of Canadian foreign policy towards Honduras during the 1980 to 1992 period is needed to preserve the political memory of that period in which the house visited by PBI-Honduras was used to torture people.

COFADEH

Lawyers Without Borders Canada has noted: “The Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH) was founded in 1982 by the relatives of victims of enforced disappearances in the 1980s and 1990s with the aim of tracing their family members and obtaining justice for these crimes.”

PBI-Honduras has a longstanding relationship with COFAEDH.