‘We Are Going to Be Left With Nothing’: Indigenous Communities Battle Deforestation in Honduras

Avilés Morphy, an Indigenous Miskito village in north-eastern Honduras, is part of a growing number of Indigenous people across the remote department of Gracias a Dios who are rising up against the criminal forces behind an unprecedented wave of deforestation and colonisation in their territory. The video was taken during a vigilante patrol conducted by Morphy and others from Mocorón, an Indigenous Miskito village in north-eastern Honduras. The committee members are part of a growing number of Indigenous people across the remote department of Gracias a Dios who are rising up against the criminal forces behind an unprecedented wave of deforestation and colonisation in their territory. Whether that means continuing with the patrols or something much more dramatic hangs on the action – or inaction – of the government. “We want the justice system, the government and the military to do their job and evict these people,” says Morphy.

The forest of Mocorón is part of a vast biological corridor called the Moskitia forest, which spreads across a transnational Indigenous territory of the same name. If the frontline of deforestation were to reach the village, it would mean in effect that the corridor has been severed and much of the forest lost. “It isn’t just the Moskitia that benefits from the forest, rather all of Central America and practically the world,” says Morphy. “We can’t sit with our arms crossed.”

In 2013, the Honduran government initiated the transfer of the land titles of Gracias a Dios to the Indigenous Miskito, Pech, Tawahka and Garifuna people, who, over the next few years, divided the land among 15 territorial councils and federations. The government had given the land to the people but neither the authority nor the resources to manage it. In 2019, the government created a commission for the reclamation of the land of the Moskitia. But the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic the following year grounded it right as deforestation really took off.

Now, after a change of government and more than a year and a half into the tenure of centre-left president Xiomara Castro, a glimmer of hope that her administration might yet act on land reclamation is all that is keeping some communities from taking matters into their own hands. “If the government doesn’t do its part, we are going to fight,” says Bruno Banegas, a grizzled 72-year-old with a beard and a camouflage cap who stood before the others in Mocorón. “We have plenty of courage.”

Deforestation in Honduras and Nicaragua is fueled by drug traffickers and their associates, who are often Indigenous people or leaders. The situation is particularly concerning in Nicaragua, where colonists have massacred Indigenous people, indicating that any action may elicit a stronger reaction. Honduras and Nicaragua are two of the world’s most dangerous countries for land defenders. Members of the territorial watch committee in Mocorón weigh the risks against what they stand to lose, fearing that if nothing is done, they will be left with nothing, not even water to drink.

During a patrol, members were accompanied by soldiers from a nearby base for security. They followed a trail through replanted forests that had been cut during the contra war to provide for the roughly 20,000 refugees. The trail was lined with clearings in different stages of cutting or regeneration, where people rotated crops. The forest was thinned to a clearing, with giant hardwoods angled across a floor of sawdust and withered branches. However, most wood is burned or left to rot, and land speculation drives more deforestation than the march of cattle.

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