Militarization

and the failed state

Honduras: Juan Robando, Dinant, and the Failings of Neoliberalism

Robando is Spanish for stealing. Juan Robando is the not-at-all-affectionate moniker given to the
President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH). January 27th marks the end of the first year of
his presidency. His theft of the elections of November 2013 ensured the continuance of Honduras
neoliberal trajectory. A trajectory previously boosted by the Agricultural Modernization Law of 1992.
This law jettisoned any agrarian reforms attempted beforehand. Neoliberalism took a further leap in
2009. Thats when the ruling elite instigated the coup dtat which ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
Thirteen oligarchic families led the coup with the assistance of the US State Department, at the time
headed by Hilary Clinton. The Honduran Military kidnapped Zelaya using the private plane of Miguel
Facuss Barjum, President of the Dinant Corporation and the richest man in Honduras. They refueled at
the USs Palmerola Military Base before whisking the deposed President to Panama.
Even though Zelayas administration ratified and supported CAFTA-DR in 2006 (free trade
agreements being the neo-liberals favorite bludgeoning tool for maintaining the wealth of the ruling
elite) he was seen as an impediment to the neoliberal agenda. This was due in part to his making several
pragmatic economic decisions. For example, he raised the minimum wage and entered into agreements
with peasant farmers to help them obtain land titles (which enraged Facuss). Mostly, though, it was
because he was friendly to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and worked for Honduras entry into
ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).
The sham election of 2013 was simply an extension of the coup. Overwhelming evidence showed that
JOH and his National Party (NP) stole the elections. His party engaged in various means of vote
tampering, outright threats, and murders of opposition candidates and supporters. Nevertheless, his
presidency was legitimized.
JOHs campaign promised a mano duro, or iron fist approach, to ending the crime that ranks
Honduras as the murder capital of the world. His plan to put Military Police (MP) on every street corner
across the country has thus far been implemented in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula and incrementally
elsewhere. But, homicides continue unabated along with the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators.
Despite JOHs and the US State Dept.s attempts to fudge the numbers, the World Health Organization
reports that homicides have increased in the past year to 103.9/100,000 people. In addition, the MP have
been involved in numerous cases of intimidation, brutality, kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder.
Regardless, JOH continues his crusade to amend the Constitution so that it institutionalizes the Military
Police as a security force bound by his dictates. This has been met with opposition in Congress and thus
far has failed to receive the necessary votes. Even the easily bribed diputados (members of Congress) of
the Liberal Party must have had flashbacks to the days when too much power given to the Military
resulted in dictators ordering death squads and the disappearances of those who opposed the
government. Of course, both of those occur today, but under the guise of it being street gangs or narcotraffickers and thus justifying a need for giving the Military Police more power and increased aid from
the US. The NP is now proposing a secret ballot so it can manipulate the outcome of a congressional
vote.
JOH has further promised greater collaboration with the US military in ending the narcotrafficking that
has spread to every department in the country. A number of narco rings have seen their leaders arrested
and extradited to the US, some purported to have contributed to JOH and other National Party

candidates in the election. Nevertheless, others have expanded their markets once JOH and the US DEA
have removed their competition. The lack of transparency in the extradition process underscores the ties
between organized crime and the government. Indeed, The National Congress moved to have new
extradition legislation voted on in a secret committee session that excluded opposition parties from
taking part in the strategizing of the new law.
Since the beginning of his presidency there has been increasing talk of amending the constitution so that
JOH can be reelected. This was the very issue that the coup instigators used to justify their kidnapping
of Zelaya, accusing him of conspiring to install himself as President for life. The difference being that
JOH wants his NP controlled Congress to amend the Constitution without public input. Zelaya wanted a
National Referendum so that the voice of the people could be heard on this and other constitutional
matters. It is actually unconstitutional for the Congress to even discuss a change to the reelection law.
The JOH controlled judiciary branch is maneuvering to get that changed. Advisors inside JOHs
administration are saying that reelection of the President is already a done deal. Justice in Honduras is
not blind since it is able to look the other way when palms are being greased.
The Honduran justice system is maintained with funding from USAID as an inefficient, opaque, and
dysfunctional system to protect the ruling elite from being prosecuted. It is also kept as is to criminalize
those who seek justice such as the peasant farmers who struggle for legal access to land. 4000
campesinos have judicial proceedings against them, an increase of almost 1000 just in 2014. They must
sign in at a courthouse every 15 days or risk arrest and this could go on indefinitely. Judges at the
municipal level and in the Supreme Court, as well as Public Defenders and Prosecutors in the Public
Ministry are at the service of the ruling elite either through influence peddling or threats made against
their lives. Miguel Facuss Barjum has succeeded in using the justice system to his own benefit, both in
his literally getting away with murder and in his swindles of national and international banks as well as
other corporations.
Facuss has avoided prosecution for the numerous assassinations against environmentalists and
campesino human rights advocates that he has ordered stemming as far back as the 1980s when he
helped finance the death squads responsible for the disappearances of students and human rights
activists. These political hits continued into this decade with the murder of Antonio Trejo the lawyer for
the MARCA campesino movement who was assassinated in November of 2012. Trejo succeeded in
challenging land grabs by Facuss and others. After Trejos murder, Facuss used his influence peddling
to get a judgment in favor of the campesinos overturned in the Supreme Court.
Facuss and Dinant, in collaboration with the Honduran military, have carried out a campaign of
criminalization of campesinos who have succeeded in challenging the legal ownership of land. Dinant
has hired Tricuro, a neoliberal Washington, D.C. public relations firm. Tricuro makes its money
cleaning up the reputations of corporate and government human rights violators and environmental
polluters. Its propaganda in regards to Dinant states,
At no point in our history have we engaged in forced evictions of farmers from our land.
The removal of trespassers has always been undertaken exclusively by Government security
forces, acting within the law and under direct instruction from the Honduran courts, whose
rulings are based on evidence that proves beyond doubt that Dinant are (sic) the rightful
owners of the lands in question.
Tricuros assertion that the Honduran courts base their rulings on evidence is farcical. The UN, The

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and many national and
international human rights organizations have reported that it operates on influence peddling, threats of
death, and impunity for those such as Facuss and the other ruling elite.
It is true, currently, that Dinant doesnt directly evict peasant farmers from disputed land. In the past
they contracted Orion Security to do this, and in turn they committed numerous murders on and off
Dinant property. They grew increasingly out of control aligning themselves with criminal infiltrators of
the campesino movements and turned on each other resulting in 17 deaths of guards and numerous
disappearances. This in contrast to the 150 plus campesinos murdered. It got to the point were the
guards paramilitary actions and Dinants unwillingness to rein them in began to hurt the corporations
international reputation and investments. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World
Bank, well aware of Facuss and Dinants criminal behavior in the past, withheld the remaining half of a
$30 million loan. They only did this after national and international human rights organizations made it
uncomfortable for business to continue as usual. The IFCs ombudsman did an internal audit of the loan
and discovered that Dinant was not living up to The World Banks human rights compliances.
The IFC is currently assessing the situation, visiting the Agun and working out negotiations with
campesino groups organized under the Agrarian Platform. They are doing so with the assistance of a
Washington, D.C. based mediator. Under the spotlight of international scrutiny, Dinant has removed
firearms from immediate use by its guards (but giving Honduran military the discretion to rearm them).
Interestingly, the number of murders has sharply declined once the paramilitary Orion Security was
disarmed. There are still murders of campesinos within the movement, some caused by criminal
infiltrators financed by the military, but with $15 million and untold millions more in international
investment hanging in the balance, Facuss ordered the killing suspended until the IFC renders a
decision in whether to restore the loan or not.
Now, Dinant exclusively uses the Honduran Military, the Military Police and National Police as its
defacto private security (although, it has been witnessed that Orion guards are often mixed in with
military and police during evictions). By Dinants own admission, it has built barracks on its plantations
for soldiers. The security forces are allowed to harvest African Palm fruit on its plantations and sell it as
payment for its services. Often the Honduran government doesnt pay its low ranking soldiers for three
to four months on end and then they receive less than $200/month in salary. Also, Facuss has
personally paid for hotel accommodations for military officers at hotels in Tocoa for extended periods of
time. He has been witnessed walking up to the reception desk, asking how much is owed, and throwing
down a wad of cash.
Colonel Jovel Martinez, the current commander of Operation Xatruch, told one community, La Panama,
which is essentially surrounded by Dinants Paso Agun plantation, that he would kill on sight anyone
who trespassed on Dinant property and that it didnt matter if they were children. He said this in front of
the community with numerous children present. He also told the community while a Dinant
representative was present that he could have them all relocated to the Moskitia so that Dinant could
take their land. This being said shortly after soldiers held rifles to the heads of community leaders. This
was also stated in light of the exhumation of two bodies of campesinos from clandestine graves in the
Paso Agun plantation. It is suspected that other bodies of disappeared campesinos are still buried there.
It is this type of terror and intimidation that Facuss has instigated and financed in the Agun.
In a further attempt to spin responsibility for the conflict away from its client, Tricuro states,
Externally funded armed groups, with no interest in farming, are using the conflicts in Honduras for
wider political ends by encouraging the illegal seizure of private lands. Of course it doesnt reveal that

these armed groups are actually being funded by Facuss through Col. German Alfaro, a graduate of
the USs School of the Americas (SOA), and one time chief of Xatruch III. These two have paid
infiltrators in various campesino movements creating internal conflict within the movements. These
infiltrators have even included individuals at leadership positions within the movement. Alfaro has on
several occasions intervened when transit police had arrested them. In one instance, several men driving
in a Dinant vehicle were stopped at a police traffic checkpoint near the town of Rigores. The transit
police arrested them because they had a cache of military grade rifles. Alfaro showed up at the Tocoa
police station, ordered them to be released, and gave them back the high caliber arms.
Further, Alfaro, while he was commander of Xatruch, appeared on local TV broadcasts in Tocoa on at
least a weekly basis speaking incessantly about terrorists and leftists trained in Nicaragua and by
Colombian FARC rebels destabilizing the region. He smeared the campesino movements as outsiders
coming here to destroy the country. Several TV and print journalists in Tocoa and Trujillo have stated,
insisting on anonymity, that Alfaro has approached them and offered bribes to report negative stories
about the campesino movements. Some of them even boast about accepting the money. Of course I
took the money! One TV reporter stated. Look, Dinant owns the Agun Vally, Facuss owns
Honduras. Los tacamiches son jodidos, The tacamiches are fucked! Tacamiches is a derogatory term
equivalent to the n word in English, used in Honduras by the middle and upper classes, the police, and
the military to denigrate and dehumanize the lower classes. This exemplifies how the culture of
corruption sown by Facuss, Dinant, and JOH takes root and propagates through out Honduran society.
Several journalists were fired from their jobs or received death threats. They had refused the bribes and
reported honestly regarding Dinants abuses to the environment or complicity with the military in
creating conflict. Additionally their families were terrorized, and some had to go into hiding. In late
2013, Alfaro targeted the US human rights defender Annie Bird with a smear campaign when she
exposed these and other rights violations by Dinant and the Military. The Honduran press published her
photo and parroted Alfaros claims that she was destabilizing the region.
This is classic SOA and US Southern Command (USSC) counter insurgency propaganda to destroy
legitimate movements in Latin America that oppose the pillaging and plundering by the ruling elite and
to deny freedom of the press and to criminalize human rights defenders. It also has the elements of a US
military psychological operation to criminalize popular movements and create terror in the minds of the
local population.
Facuss, Alfaro, JOH and the USSC have implemented the shock doctrine in the Agun and other
regions by instigating and financing violence to justify the militarization of the region and the continued
takeover of the natural resources of Honduras. Dinant gobbles up more land and tightens its stranglehold
on every aspect of the market from seed sales to pricing of the fruit to processing and export with its
monoculture of African Palm. JOH gets his continued military aid from the US, and the USSC maintains
Honduras as a strategic point for militarizing Latin America and controlling US corporate interests in the
region.
Small farmers are forced to become indentured servants to the African Palm industry to eek out a living.
The seeds that Dinant claims that it sells to farmers at below market value are genetically modified so
that the new plants dont propagate viable seeds thus keeping the farmers dependent on Dinant if they
want to expand their harvests. They sell their harvests of palm fruit at extremely low prices, which are
dictated by Dinant and the global export market. Prices for basic grains increase on a monthly basis and
there are no domestic market structures that would enable peasant farmers to grow sustainable food
supplies. JOHs solution for the lack of domestic bean harvests is to import beans from Ethiopia thus
keeping the wheels of the global trade markets greased. The riches of the country are syphoned off into

the ruling elites US and off shore bank accounts while the poverty rates increase. According to the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, since the coup in 2009, virtually 100% of all income gains
have gone to the wealthiest 10%.
Forbes Magazine places Facuss in the top 12 richest millionaires in Central America. The United
Nations Development Program puts the poverty level in Honduras at 64.5% of the population (about five
million people) with 42.6%, close to 3.2 million people, at extreme levels of poverty. The UN defines
extreme poverty as, severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water,
sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. Honduras meets all the criteria for being
categorized as a failed state, which the Global Policy Forum defines as, No longer (able to) perform
basic functions such as education, security, or governance, usually due to fractious violence or extreme
poverty. Within this power vacuum, people fall victim to competing factions and crime... or they
migrate to where they might be able to find a better life which often leads to further hardship. A recent
AFL-CIO delegation to Honduras concluded that, The U.S. government criminalizes migrant children
and their families, while pursuing trade deals that simultaneously displace subsistence farmers and lower
wages and standards across other sectors, and eliminate good jobs, intensifying the economic conditions
that drive migration.
Dinants PR spin calls the right of peasant farmers to have access to sustainable agriculture, and control
over what and to whom they sell, extreme and outdated political views. Col Alfaro, Col Martinez, and
Dinant officials have all attempted to paint the campesino movements as holding extreme political views
influenced by outside forces. In reality, it is their along with JOH and the US governments neo-liberal
vision of the world that has proven to need extreme uses of force and militarization to maintain the
status quo of the global corporate export-market-driven economy. They have been the ones to bring in
outside forces. Colombian, Israeli, and US military forces train the Honduran military and police in
crushing popular dissent and repressing campesino, indigenous and afro-indigenous Garfuna
communities. USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) spread pro-neoliberal
propaganda by infiltrating civil society organizations, looking for and rewarding those who comply and
sabotaging those who dissent.
Dinant has proudly boasted of having retired Colonel Charles McFetridge as a consultant to guide them
in how we vet, recruit and train our security staff, and how they engage with members of the
community. McFetridge was a US Defense Department consultant to the US Embassy in Jakarta in the
1990s. He worked closely with then President Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia who committed
numerous genocidal atrocities. A US Embassy staffer stated that McFetridge essentially dismiss(ed)
human rights claims to serve what he would consider the more important agenda. That agenda being
increased military aid to Suhartos dictatorship and increased US militarization of Southeast Asia.
McFetridge was recommended to Dinant by the IFC.
Is it any wonder as to why international business organizations heap praise on Facuss? It was, in part,
through his influence peddling that the 1992 Modernization Act was enacted, and he has personally
reaped the benefits of having collective land titles held by campesinos divvied up into individual titles;
the easier it being to intimidate, swindle and assassinate individuals rather than a collective. This 1992
domestic law was a precursor to the international free trade deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA-DR, and
the soon to be shoved down our throats Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP. All of these deals have been
spun as being a great utopian vision to restore trade balances and generate jobs and prosperity for all.
Neo-liberalism is a failure if the rhetoric supporting it is to be believed. Its realization has been
devastating. It has given corporations rights to plunder resources and the ruling-class more power and
impunity while taking basic human rights away from citizens, sovereignty away from countries, and a

clean sustainable environment away from the planet. The campesino movements in Honduras, with their
demonstrations of localized power of self-determination and demands for economic justice and food
security, threaten the divide-and-rule politics of the ruling-class.
The general consensus amongst the campesinos of the Agun is that once the IFC makes its decision of
whether or not Dinant gets its remaining loan funds, and as international scrutiny of Dinant fades, it will
be business as usual with perhaps a greater use of force and greater numbers of assassinations by Dinant
and the State security forces. They know this to be true because the IFCs negotiating process has
nothing in it to end the impunity of Facuss and the other ruling elite nor to secure food sovereignty to
the campesinos nor to rein in the security forces from treating Honduran citizens as enemy combatants.
As JOHs first year in office comes to an end, he may very well have succeeded in laying down the
foundation for a dictatorship. Facuss and the other ruling elite as well as the US State Department will
continue to pull his strings. And the US and Honduran militaries are poised to crush any popular
resistance to the ruling elites continued plundering. Daniel Facuss, President of the Honduras
Maquiladora Association, and a family member of Miguels, tellingly stated when appealing to the
Congress, "It is in your hands to raise the Military Police to constitutional status so that no person, no
one from the Executive class, has to withdraw from the streets, and that in the end, if we can bring
investments we will bring jobs."
Greg McCain has been monitoring and reporting human rights violations in Honduras since 2012
spending the majority of his time in the Agun region. To follow his work please visit: Human Rights
Observation Honduras.