This is the transcript of episode 77 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
PAZ: Why not also declare as terrorist organizations all these criminal structures that are dedicated to instilling fear in this sector and throughout the country?
RAMAZZINI, HOST: That’s Honduran National Party Congressman Marcos Paz. On May 21, a massacre in the Bajo Aguán region left 20 campesinos dead. And a new law is threatening land rights for thousands. Under the past government, agrarian reform floundered without political support. And the new government is showing its cards.
Criminalization of protest in Honduras
In late February, the National Party, freshly returned to power, proposed a new agricultural law in line with the Tito Asfura government’s closeness to big business.
By June 5, less than four months after inauguration, the law was a reality. The process was swift. The debate stayed behind closed doors. Zero consultation was offered to hundreds of communities facing direct consequences. Civil society had issued dire warnings about a state-sponsored assault on land.
The prize is the Caribbean coast, where land rights are a matter of survival. According to the Center for the Study of Democracy, or CESPAD, the new law shields agroindustrial elites with automated permits. It also strips campesino cooperatives of their right to recover lost land.
The massacre of campesinos in May isn’t an isolated event; the government claimed the massacre was not related to the historic land conflict in the region, and blamed it on organized crime. But the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the victims were campesinos.
It’s part of a systemic conflict that has left hundreds dead over the last two decades. Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world toward land defenders.
Podcast: Honduran Campesinos Under Siege in Bajo Aguán
The government claims they’re “stopping land occupations.” Meanwhile, land disputes are being rebranded as national security threats.
In May, Congress reformed eight articles of the Criminal Code. They expanded the definition of a “terrorist association” to include legally registered organizations, placing community leaders in the crosshairs.
And a proposed Safe House Law seeks to grant the military and police full powers to carry out operations, based purely on the perception of a threat to property.
On June 16, community collectives filed a challenge with the Supreme Court. This is Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Garifuna organization OFRANEH.
MIRANDA: Through this law, a community can be attacked at any moment, removed from where it has lived for years, some for centuries. I believe we’re not even dimensioning what a law means that in practice is an attack against the life of the people.
Border restrictions in Nicaragua
RAMAZZINI: Last week, Costa Rican President Laura Fernández asked the head of customs to draft a reform to the Migration Law in response to an influx of migrants from Nicaragua and other countries at the border.
Since the countries share a border, Costa Rica is one of the places with the most Nicaraguan migrants.
The diaspora grew during the uprising against the Ortega-Murillo regime in 2018. And while some Nicaraguans have fled Costa Rica in recent years following the murder of prominent refugees on Costa Rican soil, it remains the first destination to escape the regime.
Fernández mentions that one problem in Crucitas —a main border crossing and a site of mining controversy— is the illegal migration of Nicaraguans and people from other countries.
The president called migration a matter of national security, claiming migrants are linked to “organized crime and other issues in Crucitas,” and they have identified cases of people who have been deported up to 70 times.
The icing on the cake is that, a few days after this request, Fernández stated that Nicaraguans have their own internal problems and thus “chose their government.”
The reality is that organizations such as the Inter-American Commission have documented an apparatus of state repression in Nicaragua. In 2021, during the last elections, the Ortega-Murillo regime detained seven presidential contenders.
Her comments sparked controversy among Costa Rican opposition figures and the Nicaraguan diaspora. Former Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís said he deplored Fernández’s remarks and that they demonstrated a lack of knowledge about human rights violations in Nicaragua.
Fernández said she wants a “fraternal trade relationship with Nicaragua, and an orderly border, where Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica are properly regulated.” She added, “I barely have enough time to solve Costa Rica’s problems before getting involved in other countries’ issues.”
Beacon, an El Faro English magazine
On Monday, in El Faro English we published our newly renamed digital magazine: Beacon. This first issue is varied in genre and geography.
You’ll find an investigation into the story of three prisoners who were never convicted by a court and died while in state custody in El Salvador. Their bodies were buried in mass graves without their families’ knowledge.
In Guatemala, I interviewed Defense Minister Henry Sáenz. In a surprisingly candid conversation, he told us that military agreements with Trump are limited to infrastructure and “training” in the fight against drug trafficking. He denied that U.S. forces are engaged in combat in Guatemala.
He also says Guatemala has proposed a dry canal to mitigate “a future crisis involving the Panama Canal” — referring to the possibility that it could run out of water.
Land of Bones — Issue No. 9 — June 15, 2025
El Faro English aims not only to translate what is happening in Central America, but to view the world from a Central American lens.
In this edition, we go to Louisiana, where Leticia —an immigrant aid activist— guides us through a world of terror unleashed by U.S. immigration agents. We also see the community response: solidarity networks, community patrols, and group chats monitoring ICE movements.
From our archives, we translated two long-form narrative features that have become a hallmark of El Faro’s award-winning reporting. The first one, published in 2001, chronicles the Bosnian city Sarajevo, after it was liberated from a siege imposed by Serbian troops. And then follows the trials of war criminals in The Hague.
The second one was published in December 2010. It won the Ortega y Gasset Award and shows us an El Salvador where finding a dead loved one comes as a profound relief.
For the first time in our magazine, we include a fictional tale of a detention center on Mars. And last but not least, we translate a poem from Nicaraguan exile Gioconda Belli. She asks: What’s the citizenship of pain? Does each human heart display a map that bears only its own geography?
This episode was written by Yuliana Ramazzini, Gabriel Labrador, and Leyrian Colón Santiago, with editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. ubscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.