The Municipal Committee in Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa file complaint against Mayor and councillors

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

Image from Guapinol Resiste website.

On July 1, Criterio.hn reported: “Due to indications of crimes linked to corruption in the public administration of Tocoa [a city of 63,320 people in the department of Colón] during the convocation and development of the town hall on June 13, members of the Municipal Committee in Defense of Common and Public Goods of that municipality filed a complaint against Mayor Adán Fúnez and three councillors. The indications of crimes involve acts of discrimination, administrative prevarication, and abuse of authority.”

“In the written complaint, filed with the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Transparency and the Fight against Public Corruption (FETCOOP), on Friday, June 28, the complainants asked to open ‘lines of investigation oriented by legal logic to clarify the concurrence of alleged crimes of bribery and influence peddling.’”

The article highlights: “Juana Esquivel, a member of the Municipal Committee in Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa, told Criterio.hn that the context in which the town hall was held, in addition to being discriminatory, was one of violence and limitations on the right to participation of the communities. …Other irregularities that he pointed out is that the council was not agreed or convened as established by the Law of Municipalities, nor was there a mechanism that defined an effective participation of the communities both in favor or against the Ecotek thermoelectric project.”

The Law of Municipalities

“Open town hall meetings” are noted in several articles of the Law of Municipalities:

Article 24. The residents of a Municipality have rights and obligations. Their rights are the following: 7) To ask the Municipal Corporation for an account of municipal management, both in open town hall meetings through their representatives, and directly.

Article 25. The Municipal Corporation is the deliberative body of the Municipality, elected by the people and the highest authority within the municipal term; consequently, it is responsible for exercising the following powers: 9) To hold consultative assemblies in open town hall meetings with representatives of legally constituted local organizations, such as: Communal, social, union, trade union, ecological and others that by their nature merit it, in the opinion of the Corporation, to resolve all types of situations that affect the community.

Article 32. Municipal Corporations shall meet ordinarily at least twice a month and extraordinarily when called by the Secretary of the Municipal Corporation by order of the Mayor or at the request of at least two Councilmen. Open council sessions shall be called by the Mayor following a resolution by the majority of the members of the Municipal Corporation and no less than five open council sessions may be held per year.

Article 114. Municipal Corporations shall be obliged to respond immediately in open council to petitions regarding their management raised by those who attend it; and in the case of different particular management, they must resolve within fifteen days.

Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SERNA) decision

The Criterio.hn article also notes: “[The Municipal Committee in Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa] pointed out that since [the Ecotek and Pinares mining megaproject and its thermoelectric component] is a category 4 project that compromises life, it was not up to the socialization and approval in the open council, but to the Secretariat of Natural Resources and Environment (Serna) to develop the process, in compliance with the technical and legal standards for the protection of natural resources.”

What is the megaproject?

Image from Guapinol Resiste website.

Among the seven components of the megaproject:

ASP and ASP2: “Inversiones Los Pinares received the rights to concessions “ASP” and “ASP2”, 100 hectares each, to dig for iron oxide.”

Iron oxide pelletizing plant: “A mining project by the Honduran company Los Inversiones Pinares will produce 800,000 tons of iron oxide pellets in its first year of operation, generating US$190 million in foreign exchange.”

Guapinol River and Ceibita stream concessions: “[The pelletizing plant needs] one hundred gallons of water per minute, consuming 52 million five hundred and sixty thousand gallons of water in a year.”

Accompaniment

On August 1, 2018, the community established a Camp in Defence of Water and Life when the tap water in Guapinol turned chocolate brown and thick with muddy sediment after the company started widening a road for the mine.

Arrests, criminalization and judicialization followed.

On February 24, 2022, the Guapinol and San Pedro water defenders were released from prison after 914 days of illegal detention.

On January 7, 2023, Aly Magdaleno Domínguez Ramos and Jairo Bonilla Ayala were shot dead. Five months later, on June 15, 2023, Oquelí Dominguez was also shot dead. All three had been some of the most prominent members of the community working to protect the local rivers.

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has accompanied the struggle of the Guapinol River defenders since January 2019.