Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) is free. The pardon granted by Donald Trump late last December erased with a stroke of a pen the 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and weapons possession that the former Honduran president was serving in the United States. For indigenous communities and land defenders in Honduras, however, it is a death knell. The message coming out of Washington is that political power can protect anyone, even those who have turned a state into a hub for 400 tons of cocaine and, as the U.S. Justice Department has reported, sold out natural assets to extractive industries.
During his tenure, Hernández promoted an economic model based on extreme resource exploitation. His government invested some $72 million to expand palm oil plantations, an operation that has left behind razed forests and peasant communities crushed by violence.
The numbers of the massacre
Honduras holds the world record for murders of environmental activists per inhabitant. According to the organization Global Witness, at least 155 murders of land defenders have been documented between 2012 and 2024. More than 90 percent of these crimes do not make it to trial. “The enormous scale of impunity underlies this grim reality,” Toby Hill, an investigator with Global Witness, explained to the Guardian. Systemic corruption has hollowed out judicial institutions, rendering them unable to protect those who oppose large mining or hydropower projects.
Trump’s pardon exacerbates this crisis. According to a researcher and activist, who spoke to the British newspaper but wishes to remain anonymous, the decision is an official green light: if political allegiance can erase a narcotics conviction, there is no longer any protection for whistleblowers who expose the abuses of multinational lumber or agribusiness corporations.
Firm justice at the feet of the powerful
The murder of Honduran environmentalist and activist Berta Cáceres in 2016 remains symbolic of a one-party justice system. Despite some convictions, the principals remain unreachable. Evidence of this is Daniel Atala Midence, suspected of being among the financiers of the Cáceres murder and a member of one of the country’s most influential families: he has been a fugitive for years, having been informed of the arrest order before police could intervene.
The January 27 electoral victory of Nasry Asfura, from the same party as Hernández, closes the circle of restoration. The link between right-wing politics and extractive industries, already evident under JOH, once again becomes the backbone of the state, marginalizing the promises of justice of the previous Castro presidency.
Defenders in the crosshairs and regional isolation
The consequences are measured in murders. Last February, environmentalist Juan Bautista and his son were shot and dismembered in a canyon for opposing illegal logging in the department of Comayagua. No arrests have been made. The victims’ families know that criminal groups linked to resource exploitation act with the certainty of not being prosecuted.
Trump’s decision legitimizes authoritarian governments across Latin America in targeting those who defend the commons. In Honduras, where defending a river or forest has become an act of extreme resistance, justice is no longer a right. “Here it has always been fragile,” activists explained, “now it has become optional.”
