He fought to save jungles in Honduras. Now his killing haunts environmental defenders

TOCOA, Honduras (AP) — Seven bullets pounded into Juan López outside a small white church on a sunny September afternoon.

Six shots in the chest. One in the head. And a masked gunman standing in front of López’s blood-spattered truck.

In seconds, another environmental champion in Honduras was dead after leading the fight to protect dense jungle and crystalline waters in a region rife with corruption and drug trafficking.

López’s killing led to calls for justice from the Biden administration, the United Nations and Pope Francis, and brought back stark memories of the global outcry over the 2016 murder of Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

As environmental groups struggle to carry on, López’s death has become emblematic of the failures of a government that once offered hope for change.

“By killing Juan, they wanted to shut us up, but the very opposite has happened,” said Dalila Santiago, a close friend and leader in López’s movement. “We’ve raised our voices, demanded justice.”

Environmentalists under threat

Protecting the environment is a high-risk profession in Honduras. People like López often act as unwanted eyes and ears in lawless swathes of Latin America, the most deadly region in the world for environmentalists, according to nongovernmental organization Global Witness. At least 18 environmentalists across Honduras were killed last year.

Activists and religious leaders assert that at the heart of Lopez’s killing was his fight against an iron oxide mining project with close government ties and a tangle of corruption around members of the Honduran president’s political party.

López’s collective of local communities has fought the mine, which they say has carved into a nature reserve and polluted rivers, turning them a thick brown. Photos provided by residents show forest in the reserve eaten away by heavy machinery, and armed masked men guarding the mine.

The Honduran companies behind the mine — Inversiones Los Pinares, Inversiones Ecotek and their parent company — are being prosecuted for the mine’s environmental destruction. They did not respond to requests for comment, but in prior public statements have defended the hundreds of jobs the mine created and their contributions to the region.

López, 46, also fought corruption, railing against scandals plaguing Tocoa Mayor Adán Fúnez, an ally of Honduras’ president who has defended the mine.

“Juan’s vision was for the future, and what we’re leaving behind for generations to come,” said Carlos Orellana, a local priest who worked closely with him. “Those who defend the environment know that at any moment they can be killed, because there is no state protection.”

Since the mine’s opening in 2013, environmentalists in the rural Colón region have received anonymous death threats, been tailed by men in unmarked cars and been jailed for years without trial.

In 2023, two members of López’s organization, the Municipal Committee for the Defense of the Common and Public Goods, were shot dead. More than 40 others have fled, seeking asylum in the United States.

The emptiness left behind

Two months after López’s killing, a pall hangs over the home where he and his wife, Thelma Peña, raised their daughters. It was there that López wrote love poems even as the family feared for their lives.

“We were always being followed,” Peña said. “He received messages threatening that they would kidnap him, torture him.”

Now state-assigned bodyguards, masked and armed, live with the family around the clock. When younger daughter Julia turned 9 this month, she posed with them for a photo along with a cake before a sequined backdrop.

Posters of López’s face with “Justice for Juan” now line Tocoa’s streets. Bullet holes dot the church where he was shot after delivering a Sunday sermon.

His family has state protection and a small allowance for six months. After that, Peña doesn’t know what they’ll do.

“There’s an emptiness,” she said. “When I’m with the girls, I feel like crying, but I hold it back so they see their strong mother. But there are moments at night when you’re all alone where you can’t contain your tears.”

A ‘vile murder’

Honduran President Xiomara Castro has called López’s killing a “vile murder” and promised to solve it.

In October, the government said it detained three people who carried out the killing, but Héctor Longino Becerra, the government’s sub-secretary for human rights, said they believe the person who ordered the killing is at large. It isn’t easy to enforce laws in rural Honduras, he added.

Castro had inspired hope for many when she won the presidency in 2021, promising to reduce violence, root out corruption and end open pit-mining projects.

In 2023, López’s coalition celebrated when Castro’s administration ordered mining suspended in the nature reserve. And shortly after López’s death, Honduran prosecutors formally accused company leaders and local government officials connected to the mine of illegally exploiting resources, abusing authority and “environmental crimes” for mining in the reserve.

But locals say they continue to hear dynamite explosions in the reserve and have witnessed mining continue.

“We don’t understand why these projects continue in our territory,” said Santiago, López’s friend. But “the government continues to be dominated by powerful businessmen and organized crime.”

A tangle of corruption

Among the mine’s defenders is the mayor, Fúnez, the leader of the president’s political party in Colon and one of the most powerful people in the region.

In a drug-trafficking trial in the U.S., an ex-leader of the drug gang Los Cachiros accused the mayor of aiding the gang. Prosecutors are also investigating Fúnez’s administration over allegations that it helped the mine obtain falsified environmental permits in 2016.

In September, a widely published video showed Fúnez alongside the president’s brother-in-law Carlos Zelaya meeting with leaders of Los Cachiros, which has a firm grip on the city. The video shows the men being offered $500,000 to support Castro’s failed campaign in 2013. Amid ongoing investigations by authorities, Fúnez acknowledged he was in the meeting and that he’d known the narcos as “businessmen,” but said there was no evidence any payment was made.

López was among the first to call for Fúnez to step down after the video surfaced. Days later, he was dead.

That timing prompted Orellana, the priest, to publicly accuse Fúnez during a sermon of ordering López’s murder. Shortly after, prosecutors ordered Fúnez to turn over security camera footage of his house the day of López’s slaying. Prosecutors told the Associated Press that Fúnez was a “person of interest” in the murder investigation.

Fúnez did not respond to interview requests and maintains he is innocent, telling local media the priest was “not credible.” He later said he wouldn’t seek another term.

The president’s political party has largely been silent about the accusations against Fúnez, but Longino Becerra called the corruption allegations “structural problems” plaguing Honduras that cannot be fixed quickly.

“You can’t judge a government … for the errors committed by some of its members,” he said.

‘I’ll always come back’

Other leaders in Tocoa have promised to continue López’s work, but many say it has lost strength.

“We’re scared to continue fighting,” Santiago said. But “we have to keep Juan López’s legacy alive.”

Five years ago, Santiago and López made a promise: If she died first, he would plant a guava tree on her grave. If he died first, she would plant yuca to match his stubbornness.

“They can tear me up, they can cut me down. But I’ll always come back,” she recalled him saying.

With that memory running through her mind, she leaned over his grave, wiping tears from her eyes. She planted three yucas, and murmured: “I never thought I would be here.”

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Associated Press journalists Fernanda Pesce and Moises Castillo in Tocoa, Honduras and Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this report.

Megan Janetsky, The Associated Press