100+ organizations call for rigorous investigation into the masterminds behind the murder of Juan López

Published by Brent Patterson on October 3, 2024October 3, 2024

Photo of Juan Lopez from Criterio.hn.

Criterio.hn now reports: “More than 100 civil society organizations have raised their voices in an urgent appeal to the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, following the murder of environmental defender Juan López on September 14 in Tocoa.”

That letter (dated September 27 and posted September 30), signed by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), CoDevelopment Canada, University of Guelph, COPINH, Plataforma Agraria, the Latin American Working Group (LAWG), NISGUA, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas – Justice Team, and many others can be read in full here.

The Criterio.hn article adds: “Juan López, an environmental defender and municipal councilor of Tocoa, had constantly denounced death threats from political and economic actors, including Mayor Adán Fúnez and companies linked to extractive activities such as Inversiones los Pinares, Grupo EMCO and Inversiones Ecotek. His work in defense of the Guapinol River and his opposition to open-pit mining had made him a target of reprisals.”

The letter also calls on Honduran President Castro to seek international support to “launch a rigorous, impartial, and effective investigation to identify both the perpetrators and masterminds behind this crime.”

Speculation

A feature article by Ismael Moreno in RadioProgreso.hn speculates on three “lines of accusation” on who could have been behind the murder of Lopez.

The first line suggests “the mayor of Tocoa, Adán Fúnez, with whom Juan López had permanent altercations, confrontations and disagreements”, the second line speculates “Lenir Pérez and his closest and most public partners in Inversiones Los Pinares and Ecotek” while the third line conjectures it was the military and its links to organized crime given “the army’s role in the security and intelligence services of Inversiones Los Pinares and Ecotek, but also [as] an investment partner of the company.”

The corporate structure behind the megaproject

Researcher Elvin Fernaly Hernández Rivera at ERIC & Radio Progreso (ERIC-RP) has noted: “Both [mining] licenses were awarded to Inversiones Los Pinares, belonging to the EMCO Group, whose main partners are the married couple Lenir Pérez and Ana Facussé, who belong to one of the wealthiest families in the country. Among their holdings is the Corporación Dinant, with over 12 thousand hectares of oil palm in the Aguán valley.”

Their research adds: “The mining licenses were preceded by the installation of the iron oxide pelletizing plant. To carry out the iron processing, the EMCO Group created Inversiones ECOTEK S.A. because the licenses granted to Inversiones Los Pinares are for non-metallic mining, so they cannot be involved in the processing stage.”

A collaboration between Contracorriente, the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP) and the Univision Investigative Unit has also highlighted: “The plant, which will melt iron with carbon or coke to form compound pellets — part of the steelmaking process — is 99.6% owned by Inversiones Ecotek S.A. de C.V., a company created in 2017 in Honduras by Pérez and Facussé. The plant’s remaining .4% of shares belong to another mining firm owned by Pérez and engulfed in conflict, Empresa Minera La Victoria, S.A.”

That investigative report further notes that Nucor Corporation, the chief steel producer in the United States, partnered with Pérez and Facussé starting in March 2015 but then sold its shares in NE Holdings in October 2019, though there are reportedly still some outstanding questions about these transactions including the shares being sold to a company named Aluminios y Techos de Guatemala (Alutech).

The period in which Nucor owned shares in the megaproject (March 2015 to October 2019) saw the killing of three water defenders and the beginning of the arbitrary detention of eight other water defenders.

Investors in Nucor have included the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (an institutional investor that manages the Québec Pension Plan), the Royal Bank of Canada, the Bank of Montreal, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The Vanguard Group, that has been the largest shareholder in Nucor, has an office in Toronto, Canada.

The role of Canada and the U.S.

We further note that the letter states: “We also recognize and lament the role of the United States with its failed policies towards Honduras (the tacit support to the 2009 coup d’état and the following 12 years of narco-governments) that helped and embed the very structures of organized crime and corruption that resulted in the murder of Juan López.”

It has been highlighted that Canadian foreign policy mirrored US policies including the tacit support of the 2009 coup. In May 2010, NACLA published this article by Vancouver-based Canadian academics Maxwell A. Cameron and Jason Tockman that states: “Throughout the Honduran crisis, Canada moved in lockstep with the United States, even as U.S. policy diverged from the hemispheric consensus.”

We continue to follow this.

PBI-Honduras tweet: “Today we are accompanying the press conference of the Municipal Committee in Defense of Common and Public Goods. The Committee demands that justice be done and that those responsible for the vile murder of the defender Juan Lopez be punished. From PBI we make an urgent call for justice to be done.”