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Angela Murillo and José María Pineda need a full day to get from San Francisco Locomapa in the department of Yoro, to the city of San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras.
By bus, on foot or by mule, they have to cross non-existent roads where the State does not arrive with minimal basic services.
They belong to one of the oldest native peoples in Latin America, Tolupán, and the territory where they live is characterized by having one of the best pine forests in the country and being a region rich in gold, iron oxide and silver.
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"We are not poor, the system has impoverished us," says Pineda in a video call.
The Tolupán leader is 61 years old and has worked for the defense of the territory for more than 30 years, when the logging and mining companies began to leave the bare hills, extracting the resources illegally in a territory whose title belongs to the Tolupán people.
A document that dates from 1874 and that current Honduran law does not recognize.
The Tolupans denounce that the deforestation of their forests begins through annual forest management plans, approved by the Institute of Forest Conservation (ICF), and granted to powerful loggers such as Velomato or Inmare, owned by local landowners.
Pineda has already been accused on three occasions of the crime of obstructing the execution of a forest management plan.
Some criminalization processes where he was defended by the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), an organization that accompanies the Tolupans in defending their rights.
"If it weren't for this support, I would have been in prison for eight years," emphasizes the leader.
One third of the world's remaining virgin forests are on lands owned or managed by indigenous peoples
Grouped in 31 tribes, spread over the departments of Yoro and San Francisco Morazán, the Tolupanes have a population of about 20,000 people.
Each tribe has a board of directors that decides on the management of natural resources.
However, the 996 families of the 19 communities that make up the municipality of San Francisco de Locomapa are partially divided.
Its Board of Directors has been accused of negotiating the forests behind the backs of the assemblies.
And when they realized it, says Pineda, they already had the machines in the territory, without informing them of the rights they have as a people and violating the right to prior, free and informed consultation.
Thus, Pineda and Murillo, along with a good part of the community, formed a Tribe Preventive Council, as a way to continue fighting and protecting the territory without attending to business interests, both national and international.
"A job that is worthwhile," says Murillo, who at 42 has also undergone one of these processes of criminalization by companies.
"They send us continuous threats, gas the communities and murder our companions," and he recalls through the video call the murder in 2013 of the leader María Enriqueta Matute, along with two other companions, at the hands of hitmen.
It is the alarming reality that the Tolupan people live, repeatedly denounced by the United Nations as part of the violence that environmental defenders in Latin America face every day for fighting an extractivist model, promoted by States that do not take into account the rights of the peoples.
Particularly in Honduras where, just as activist Berta Cáceres was murdered five years ago for defending a river from a hydroelectric company, more than 100 indigenous Tolupan people have paid with their lives to fight against forest dispossession in recent decades, according to MADJ.
They do not respect the limits with the water sources.
Also, if they mark a tree, they take three.
These companies are uncontrollable "
José María Pineda, indigenous leader
“We receive discrimination, banishment and death when we seek to defend ourselves.
We want a decent life, not like now.
They would be surprised if they saw how we live here, despite being surrounded by so much wealth ”.
And they fight, not only for the departure of companies from the territories, but also against the pollution of rivers, for the state neglect in education, health and other basic services, and for the racism they suffer when demanding their rights. .
“It is an odyssey to get to the nearest hospital, eight hours away.
And when you arrive, you see how they first serve the Andean person before the indigenous person ”, assures Murillo.
"I remember Matute's words when I asked her if she was afraid," says Pineda, "she told me no, because she wanted her children to live freely on this earth."
And it also evokes the words of another murdered comrade when he was in front of the hit man: "Don't kill me, because I also defend your rights."
And the hit man shot him in the head.
“These words and the struggle of the fallen give us more strength.
If we don't defend ourselves, nobody else is going to do it ”.
When talking about whether justice exists in Honduras, they both laugh.
“The cow of a rich man is worth more than an indigenous man.
We have the wood behind the house, but we don't have money to save it, ”says Pineda.
"The Government is responsible for the lives that colleagues have given, because it has not protected us and has killed us," says Murillo.
The territory where the Tolupans live is characterized by having one of the best pine forests in Honduras
Honduras is a country singled out by human rights organizations for denying the existence of indigenous peoples and facilitating the conditions of extractivism.
"The system is not interested in us living, rather that we disappear to make use of these territories," says Pineda.
It is of little or no use to be under the protection of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), also signed by the country itself, which requires not to carry out projects in its territories without tacit consent.
However, a report by Intermón indicates that about 20% of the mining and energy production and hydrocarbon concessions are located on indigenous lands.
The importance of forests
The United Nations recalled on March 3,
World Wildlife Day, that the annual loss of forest is equivalent to an area greater than that of Denmark and that this destruction implies, not only a huge loss of biodiversity, but also one less brake on the advance of climate change and destruction of the sustenance of millions of families in the world.
Today, World Forest Day, he repeats it again, putting in value the knowledge of the ancestral communities that have managed them over time.
An aspect reinforced by a new study published
in
Frontiers in Ecololgy and the Environment
magazine
that states that more than a third of the world's remaining virgin forests are on lands owned or managed by indigenous peoples.
The research calls for the universal recognition of their rights to land ownership, to develop policies that take into account their role in conservation and to urgently reduce deforestation to curb climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
Quite the opposite of what happens in Tolupán territory.
“When the company enters the forest, we are left with indiscriminate deforestation.
This means that the river and the creek are going to disappear.
If we let this continue like this, we will also disappear ”, Pineda emphasizes.
“They do not respect the limits with the water sources.
Also, if they mark a tree, they take three.
These companies are uncontrollable ”.
Indeed, the business of logging in Tolupán territory is not transparent at all.
This is indicated by an investigation by the Center for Democracy Studies (CESPAD) that ensures that from January to May 2019, 13,499 trees would have been cut, 4,500 more than expected in the Management Plan.
The United Nations recalls that the annual loss of forests is equivalent to an area greater than that of Denmark
The recent hurricanes Iota and Eota exacerbated the situation.
They caused the loss of houses and schools, the destruction of roads and coffee, corn and cassava crops.
And they added to the effects of a pandemic that cannot be assured that it has reached the territory, because there is no access to evidence.
“All of this has left us in utter misery.
We heal ourselves with nature, because it is impossible to access health services.
So, if our environment disappears, we too with it ”, says the Tolupan leader.
A host of factors have meant that, due to the lack of opportunities, many young people have been forced to migrate in search of better living conditions.
Education in times of pandemic
The difficulty in accessing basic services extends to education.
They do not have the resources to buy a phone and the few people who have one can rarely connect to the network.
"As Tolupán people we are outside the system because we do not have that capacity and we are concerned about having a group of illiterate people in the future," says Pineda.
A few months ago, due to the lack of access to education in this town, a project for a literacy school was started from the MADJ training area, which had good results.
“The indigenous Tolupan people have not had the opportunity to train.
The first course went very well, with more than 50 people, including an 85-year-old man who did not fail any class, despite being more than two and a half hours away from the mountain ”, Darwin Alachán explains by video call, coordinator of the MADJ operational team.
Despite the fact that the pandemic hinders the start of the second module, Alachán emphasizes the importance of these processes being sustained over time, despite the fact that the communities have to go to other territories due to the lack of electricity in the town areas. Tolupán.
In this way, projects such as community radio can be consolidated, stalled due to the murder of Juan Samael Matute, who had been trained in new technologies.
An educational training that also involves respect for the Tolupan language and culture.
In their language, tol, tolupán means "to be full of color, a product of the earth."
This language is in a critical situation of extinction, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
“It is kept alive among the elderly, but the youth hardly speak single words.
We do not want to lose our own culture, that is our wealth ”, says Pineda.
In the midst of the best pine forests in Honduras, the Tolupans dream of finally having community radio, decent housing, quality education and health, and that their sons and daughters can enjoy a free life.
Those dreams that María Enriqueta Matute and Berta Cáceres herself already had, who was also at the side of the Tolupán people, as Murillo recalls.
“They are examples of brave indigenous women who have given their lives for a right that belongs to all of us.
Future generations follow in their footsteps, with the awareness of continuing to protect forests and life. "
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