PBI-Honduras visits the “Museum against Forgetting” with the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras

Published by Brent Patterson on March 22, 2025March 22, 2025

The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) has posted on Facebook:

“#Memory #truth #justice #COFADEH

During the internal tour, PBI visitors saw the building that was used as a detention space for large groups, according to survivors’ testimonies.

They also visited a small building where in March 1999, during an inspection and application of luminol ordered by the First Court of Francisco Morazán, at least 24 fragments of a projectile embedded in one of the walls were extracted and blood was found on the floor and ceiling.

Likewise, in the main house they saw the space that was used to keep the victims in captivity and the room that was used for interrogation under torture, with the objective of extracting information about the political activities of the victims.”

COFADEH then shared an article titled Peace Brigades International tour the Museum Against Oblivion by Online Defenders and noted:

“At least seven Peace Brigades International (PBI) volunteers toured the Museum Against Forgetting, located in Amarateca, Francisco Morazán [35 kilometres north of Tegucigalpa], a space for reflection on the violations of human dignity during the application of the national security doctrine in the 1980s.

PBI has been present in the country for 10 years, accompanying human rights defenders who are at risk due to their work in defense of human rights in the country.”

That article further notes:

“Seven volunteers arrived this day at the Museum Against Oblivion to learn about the crimes against humanity that were known here during the installation of the national security doctrine, orchestrated by the United States and executed by the Honduran Armed Forces.

The voluntary hospitalizations were attended by the general coordinator of COFADEH, Berta Oliva, and by the human rights ombudsman and lawyer in the area of Access to Justice of the Committee, Dora Oliva.

The place, which was baptized by the victims and relatives as the ‘house of terror’ was used by the Honduran Armed Forces as a clandestine prison, torture center and clandestine cemetery, during the application of the national security doctrine in the 80s.”

Remembering Canada in Honduras, 1980-92

Amnesty International has documented: “José Eduardo López was detained on Monday 10 August 1981 in San Pedro Sula [200 kilometres north of Amarateca] after being stopped by the police.  He was taken to the DNI [National Directorate of Investigations] station [where he was severely tortured]. [His wife Nora] was allowed to see him (for a few minutes) on Thursday 13 August.  The following day he was released after she announced she would go on hunger strike outside the DNI headquarters if he was not.”

Amnesty International has further noted that Lopez was subsequently forcibly disappeared 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 [in Atlanta, Georgia] 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.

During the period that the house in Amarateca was being used to torture people, the prime ministers of Canada were 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).

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.”

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

The Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) was founded in 1982 by twelve families of disappeared Hondurans, including Bertha Oliva de Nativí, whose husband Professor Tomás Nativí was disappeared in 1981.