Threats

A few days ago Father Efraín told me that Francisco Machado had fled Honduras.

Francsico Machado was the director of ASONOG here in Santa Rosa de Copán. ASONOG is an association of non-governmental agencies which includes an organization helping coffee cooperatives become fair trade partners, to a group that invesigates the mining issue and has been outspoken in its opposition to the open pit gold mining in nearby San Andrés.

Machacho has also been at the front of Acción Cívica por la Democrácia (Civic Action for Democrary) as well as the recently formed Movimiento Amplio para la Dignidad y la Justicia (the Broad-Based Movement for Dignity and Justice.)

As such he has joined others, such as the local bishop, Monseñor Luís Alfonso Santos, in speaking out not only against environmental threats such as open-pit mining but against the corruption which is rampant in Honduras.

Machado left on November 28, 2008, because of the threats he had been receiving since September 22.

There were two people who were watching his home and his workplace. “They were following us around and they intended to harm us,” he told the press, “but God’s hand guarded us”

Machado is a Mennonite, active in his church here in Santa Rosa. He and the local bishop have often cooperated in their concerns for the poor, for justice, and the environment. He is a forceful speaker and peppers his talks with scriptural references.

Last September 10, his name, together with that of the bishop, was found on a list of 135 popular leaders which was taken from two plain-clothed members of the Honduran National Police who had infiltrated a meeting of the National University’s union on the Tegucigalpa campus and were following the union leader.

The Washington Office on Latin America wrote that this “suggested that key defenders of human and labor rights may be targeted for persecution.”

In September, a lawyer who was on the list and who was involved with a lawyer’s fast against corruption in May, was the victim of an assassination attempt. He fled in October.

It is disheartening to hear of these attempts to squelch efforts for justice here in Honduras, but it is heartening to know that I am working in a diocese and with a bishop who truly believe in justice for the poor and is willing to take risks.