memories of aguán

The Story of the River and its Peoples

Through the northeastern coast of Honduras runs the Aguán River, a 240 kilometers long freshwater river coming from the central mountains of the country and descending into the Atlantic ocean. The Aguán River, one could say, is the beating heart of Honduras. From its ventricle-like streams runs water that pumps life into the rainfall forests, humid wetlands, and mountain ranges across the nation’s subtropical central and northeast regions, creating a network of vast and diverse ecosystems sustained and connected by the Aguán’s tributary veins. 

But the heart analogy is perhaps more fitting to understand the importance of the Aguán River, known in Spanish as Rio Aguán, for another, rather grim reason. Like a heart, the Rio Aguán is also where one can find the spilled blood of Honduras flowing: it is a river that has witnessed death after death of campesino leaders who have for decades been engaged in land struggles with agricultural multinationals for the lands that the Rio Aguán nurtures. The Aguán Valley, the fertile lands named after the river and the region where most of the river lies, is specifically where most of this blood is found. It is a valley surrounded and covered by african palm, a tropical perennial that is not endemic to Central America and whose monoculture is funded by U.S.-based institutions such as the World Bank. It is the fruits of these palms, a reddish oval-shaped and plum-sized coconut, that produce one of the most lucrative businesses worldwide, the business of the palm oil industry.For decades now, low-income farmworker families from the Aguán have lived under perpetual threat of displacement led by multinational palm oil companies such as Dinant Corporation, which has been denounced internationally for engaging in illegal land grabs. Campesino leaders specifically believe that Dinant has sponsored the assassinations of farmworker leaders through paid third-party actors such as the mafia cartel “Los Cachos,” one of the largest cartels in Honduras. Los Cachos, through radio calls in local stations, have claimed direct responsibility for the killings of campesino leaders.

  • 3 million years ago

    Geographical formation of what we today call the Isthmus of Panama; “Central America” as we understad today, with its ecologies, is created.

  • 10,000-3,500 BCE

    Mesoamerica migration across the isthmus. In what we call Honduras, Lenca, Maya Ch’ortí, Tolupanes, Tawhka peoples thrive.

  • 1592 – Spanish Colonization

    Rein of mass genocide and environmental exploitation begins.

  • 1821 – The Road to Independence

    Across Central America, independence movements against Spanish colonization give rise to modern nation states. At first in the shape of the Mexican empire; then the Central American Empire, and lastly to the seven isthmian nation states of Guatemala, Panama, Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.

  • 1823 – Monroe Doctrine

  • 1899 – United Fruit Company established

  • 1927 – “Patria y Libertad”

    Indigenous Revolutionary Augusto Cesar Sandino, based in the nation-state of Nicaragua, writes a letter to all Central Americans to resist U.S. imperialism inspired by the Monroe Doctrine.

  • 1962 – Agrarian Reform

    Agrian reformed signed in Honduras. The Aguán is recognized as campesino territory.

  • 1970s-1980s – Counterrevolutions

    Central America becomes part of the play stage for world superpowers in the Cold War. Honduras and its ecologies become training grounds for U.S.-deployed militias and U.S.-funded guerrillas.

  • 1990 – Neoliberalism

  • 2004 – Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

    CAFTA is signed. The Dominican Republic later joins the agreement to form CAFTA-DR.

  • 2014 – Juan Orlando’s Narco-Dictatorship Begins

Bibliography 

Aguán River. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Aguan-River

Arifin, Izwanizam, Mohamed Musa Hanafi, Ismail Roslan, Mohd. Umar Ubaydah, Yahya Abd Karim, Lee Chin Tui, and Suhaidi Hamzah. “Responses of Irrigated Oil Palm to Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium Fertilizers on Clayey Soil.” Agricultural Water Management 274 (December 2022): 107922. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2022.107922

“IACHR files Honduras case with IA court over violations of the rights of members of the Aguán Campesino Movement.” Organization of American States. October 26, 2023. https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2023/251.asp.

“Honduras.” World Land Trust, June 11, 2024., https://www.worldlandtrust.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/honduras/

 “Honduras: the deadliest country in the world for environmental activism.” Global Witness. January 31, 2017. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/honduras-deadliest-country-world-environmental-activism/

Rauda, Nelson; Sanchez, Raúl; Villagrán, Ximena. “Honduras no quiere bosque, quiere aceite de palma.” El Diario. https://latierraesclava.eldiario.es/palma-africana/

Stewart, Iris T., Edwin P. Maurer, Kerstin Stahl, and Kenneth Joseph. “Recent Evidence for Warmer and Drier Growing Seasons in Climate Sensitive Regions of Central America from Multiple Global Datasets.” International Journal of Climatology 42, no. 3 (August 9, 2021): 1399–1417. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7310