Christopher Castillo, the coordinator of the Honduran Alternative for Community and Environmental Vindication (ARCAH) has posted on social media:
“We are calling on the people of Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela to attend an urgent meeting on the issue of water this Saturday at 5.00 pm.
Emergency meeting on water privatization in Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela, Saturday 5 September · 5–6.30 pm. Check the details and confirm your attendance at https://calendar.app.google/qg17RMvs2FRJvYUm6
Please confirm your attendance in the comments or by calling +504 8923-5604.
#humanrights #water #honduras #tegus #environment”
In the video with the social media post, Castillo says:
“Hello, I am Christopher Castillo from ARCAH. On this occasion, we want to put an alert and at the same time a complaint for the attempt to prioritize the water that is being given in Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela from the income and installation of an Israeli company called Mekorot. In that sense, we are calling on the Patronato Juntas de Agua, the general population of Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela, to a first informational virtual meeting for this Saturday, September 5 at 5 pm. Water is a human right that we have to defend. This is not about a political party or a party force. It is about the interests of the population, our rights as a people and the situation that we have to move forward autonomously as a people. Water is a human right.”
On July 20, 2026, Criterio.hn reported: “The Honduran government is exploring an agreement with Israel’s state-owned water company. Mekorot’s expansion in Latin America has been accompanied by questions about its role in the occupied Palestinian territories and its link to Israeli water diplomacy.”
That article continues: “With an official presence in Argentina, Mexico and the Dominican Republic through projects or consultancies for water management, Mekorot has managed to position itself in the region despite its questionable role in the extreme rationing of water in occupied Palestinian territories.”
“Mekorot’s arrival in Latin America has already generated controversy. In Chile, an agreement between the Israeli state company and the Corporación Desarrolla Biobío was questioned by former regional councilor Javier Sandoval, who denounced a lack of transparency about the use of public resources and asked to suspend the project because he considered financing Mekorot incompatible with the complaints about its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Criterio.hn also reports: “The Palestinian Water Justice Alliance singled out Mekorot for using water as a weapon against the Palestinian people, by operating wells in the West Bank to provide water to illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. In addition, it denounced the confiscation of water from Palestinian aquifers, contributing to the destruction of Palestinian farmers’ livelihoods and the increase in diseases. With this track record, would Honduras be willing to hand over a fundamental national security resource to another nation’s state-owned enterprise? Even a country that until June 2026, an independent UN commission determined that it continues to commit genocide and heinous crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children?”
On August 31, 2026, Reporteros de Investigación further reported: “According to the TRT Español report, Mekorot’s expansion in Latin America would follow a pattern that begins with governments that, under the argument of modernizing water management, establish cooperation agreements without citizen consultations; subsequently, these processes would move forward without competitive tenders or sufficient transparency about their conditions and, finally, the projects would be implemented with incomplete socio-environmental studies, which could leave their possible impacts on communities and ecosystems out of the public debate. Countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile and the Dominican Republic have established new agreements with Mekorot to manage water resources in most of these countries.”
Accompaniment
The Honduran Alternative for Community and Environmental Vindication (Alternativa de Reivindicación Comunitaria y Ambientalista de Honduras, ARCAH) is a space for community articulation and an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonialist and anti-classist social movement that seeks to defend territories and common goods from any project that threatens the peace and cosmovision of communities.
Peace Brigades International has accompanied ARCAH since September 2022.
PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson met with Christopher in Tegucigalpa on October 28, 2024, then again on March 3, 2026.
More about that most recent visit at PBI-Canada and PBI-Honduras visit with ARCAH and learn about the struggle to save the Choluteca River.
