On May 21, at least 20 workers from an African palm plantation were shot dead in the rural community of Los Rigores, in northern Honduras's Colón department. Armed men arrived dressed in police uniforms. They opened fire on workers who had just finished a dawn prayer and were getting ready for the day. Seventeen of the dead were men and three were women. Eight belonged to a peasant enterprise affiliated with the National Rural Workers Union (CNTC).
What happened on the ground
The attack took place near Trujillo, in Colón. According to local peasant groups, two armed organizations have been fighting over control of drug-smuggling routes in the area, and violence has also been used to seize farmland. The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC), the Central America and Mexico arm of La Via Campesina, issued a statement carrying the peasants' claim that multinational agribusiness uses armed groups to tilt land disputes in its favor.
The investigation is being carried out jointly by the interior ministry, the national police, the army, the judicial police (DPI) and prosecutors. In June a gang leader known as "Black Cat" was arrested and charged with ordering the killing of 19 farm workers. But who supplied the weapons and the men, and to what end, is still not known.
The bloodiest month in Colón
According to ACLED, organized-crime deaths in Colón in May were the highest since 2018. Across the wider region, such deaths rose more than 60 percent in May compared with April. In the countryside, men in police uniforms shot peasants. That this happened at all breaks trust in law enforcement at its root.
In Honduras's farming regions, the expansion of the palm oil industry has long mixed with unclear land rights. The accusation that violence is used to crush peasant efforts to reclaim land is not new. The workers were killed in the middle of prayer. The target was not what they were doing but where they were.
Twenty people were shot by uniformed gunmen on a plantation, just after dawn prayer. In Honduras, being a peasant who organizes still puts a life at risk.
References
- Peoples Dispatch — peoplesdispatch.org
- The Washington Post — washingtonpost.com
- CBS News — cbsnews.com
- La Via Campesina — viacampesina.org
- ACLED — acleddata.com
※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.