In support of the Garifuna communities
Considering that activists and communities that are part of environmental movements have suffered repression and murder throughout Latin America, we condemn the criminalization and judicialization, the murders of community defenders and, in particular, we condemn the dispossession, arbitrary detentions and violence perpetrated by transnational corporations and the security forces involved in such dispossession.
And, within that framework, and as participants in the Twenty-eighth CLACSO Assembly, we also express our solidarity and support for the struggles of the people against Trump's migration policies; and we support the specific demands, requests, and requirements of the communities that are part of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) in the face of the recent violent events they have suffered, which have occurred mainly with the presence of private security officers and security personnel protecting the interests of third parties accused of usurping ancestral Garifuna territories.
In particular, the communities of Trujillo Bay have recently denounced acts of intimidation by the Honduran National Police, behind the back of their government, against Garifuna defenders in the housing developments of the Campo del Mar Complex and Banana Coast Complex, usurped from the ancestral territory of the Cristales and Río Negro communities and seized from Canadian Mr. RJ, who is accused of money laundering and ongoing fraud against his fellow Canadians.
We support the demand of the affected communities to manage the Campo del Mar Complex while the State formally restores the occupied territory and violates collective rights and property, notwithstanding the three judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the State of Honduras.
It is important to mention that the rights of the Garifuna people are established in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and in other international treaties and conventions that the State of Honduras has signed and ratified. We demand respect for life and not for projects of death.
THE GARIFUNA COMMUNITIES AND THEIR LEADERS ARE NOT ALONE!
Planet Earth, June 8, 2025
(Statement approved by the XXVIII Ordinary Assembly of CLACSO, Bogotá, June 8, 2025)
