by Todd Gordon
In a further illustration of the social conflict generated by Goldcorp’s activities, on July 5, 2011 an arrest warrant was executed on six Siria Valley activists who had participated in blockades against loggers seeking to enter land in the muncipality of El Porvenir that activists assert has been communally-owned since the early 1800s. The activists are alleged to have made death threats against one of the property owners. The arrests are connected to ongoing opposition to Goldcorp, which the activists argue is working with a wealthy family that has fraudulently obtained title to their land. The family, it is alleged, intends on clear cutting forest on the land, which it has received permission to do from the Honduran state. Clear cutting the land will then make it easier for Goldcorp to obtain environmental permits necessary to exploit gold resources on the land. The activists were subsequently granted conditional release, but will still face trial on the charges.260
What is more, Goldcorp is not the only Canadian mine facing criticism for its nefarious environmental and social practices. Another case is that of Aura Minerals’ San Andres Mine in the municipality of La Unión. Aura is the third Canadian company to own the mine since the mid-1990s, and receives financing from the Canada Pension Plan. Members of the local community allege that the mine has been involved in contamination stemming from two cyanide spills, which forced relocations of community members. The community also alleges that the company failed entirely to deliver compensation it has promised to cover the costs incurred by residents. People relocated from the community of San Andres by one of Aura’s predecessors, Greenstone Resources, claim they still have not received land settlements and financial compensation promised by Greenstone, and Aura continues to ignore their claims. Meanwhile, Aura is hoping to expand its operations onto land in the original San Andres that includes a cemetery.261 Aura has a poor record elsewhere in the country as well. In November 2011, three journalists from Multivisión in Santa Rosa de Copán in western Honduras reported receiving verbal threats from an Aura Minerals representative after raising questions about the company’s practices. The threats were in fact from another journalist who has worked in public relations for the company.262
Maquilas
Montreal-based maquila company Gildan Activewear, the world’s largest sock manufacturer and one its largest t-shirt producers, is now Honduras’ biggest private sector employer. Early in February 2011, after bilateral trade talks were well underway, it announced it was closing its last North American factory in Alabama and that it would be investing more than US$100 million in a new sock factory in Honduras. Gildan currently has six production facilities in the country (just under half of its global total). By 2011, the company went so far as to establish a corporate headquarters in Honduras.263 Although an FTA was not yet completed when it made its announcement, Gildan was likely confident it was coming soon, having had seven meetings between June 2010 and mid-January 2011 with Canadian politicians and FAIT representatives, which were officially registered with Ottawa’s Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying and labelled under “International Trade.” (The official registry, it must be noted, does not record informal meetings and electronic communications between companies and state representatives, which are not infrequent).
In mid-June 2011, we sat down in San Pedro Sula with María Luisa Regalado, a leading member of the Colectivo de Mujeres de Honduras (Women’s Collective of Honduras, CODEMUH). She has been working with the overwhelmingly female workforce of Gildan since 2006, gathering testimonies on working conditions and grievances, and helping to coordinate legal support for the workers. At the time of the interview, Regalado reported that there were over five hundred live files of workers with medical problems from over-exertion on the job. They suffered systematically from skeletal problems related to prolonged distortion of their bodies as they hunched over machines on the job. They also suffered from multiple injuries such as hernias, eye problems, and tendon and muscular damage. CODEMUH has conducted advocacy work with women injured at Gildan factories who could no longer work. According to Regalado, Gildan resisted finding new work for them or offering them any kind of support. After considerable public pressure, organized by CODEMUH and other organizations, as well as negotiations facilitated through the Ministry of Labour, Gildan said it would relocate the workers and undertake an ergonomics study, but it did not follow through on its commitments. In a country with no social safety net or public health insurance, the range of problems faced by injured former Gildan workers who now find themselves unemployed are difficult to quantify.
It is commonplace for women workers to be racked with simultaneous injuries in their backs and both arms. It is little wonder that such injuries are occurring when, according to Regalado, there are frequent testimonies of work days lasting in excess of 11.5 hours, and workers having to work for six, and even seven days per week in cases where their shifts are altered from day to night, or vice versa. “Gildan is one of the most exploitative companies in this country,” Regalado told us, “and one of the worst violators of the human rights of its workers, and we can say this with confidence because we have documented the cases; we also have the testimonies of the workers themselves.” What is more, “the practices of Gildan and other maquilas have become worse since the coup d’état of June 2009.”264 Gildan’s position vis-à-vis its workers has strengthened in a variety of ways since the coup. While cognizant of the international attention it has received from sweatshop monitoring agencies due in part to the work of groups like CODEMUH, according to Regalado it has become more emboldened.
Speaking on Gildan before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in Canada, Regalado reinforced what we learned from our interview. “The company is violating the labour code,” she noted. Workers are supposed to be facing a legal maximum of 44 hours per week, but they are “actually working up to 69 hours a week” without air conditioning, and with “15 minutes to eat, barely.” The Conservative member of the committee, Peter Goldring, dismissing her years of experience working firsthand with women in the maquila sector, described Regalado’s comments as “hyperbole,” with no evidence to back up his denunciation.265
CODEMUH wrote an open letter to Stephen Harper during his visit to Honduras in August 2011, part of which was devoted to a tour of one of Gildan plants. “Gildan Activewear is violating the Constitution of the Honduran Republic and other labour laws,” the letter notes, “by implementing long work days and a system of unachievable production quotas.” It continues by noting the company’s systematic “anti-organizing and anti-union policies,” and highlights the fact that its
production goals or quotas are the highest in the industry in Honduras. To earn [US]$89.99 per week, workers have to produce 550 dozen pieces every day, and are exposed to awkward postures, executing up to 40,000 repetitive movements in their joints, tendons, and muscles per day. These conditions produce Occupational Musculoskeletal Injuries.
The letter dismisses the public relations idea that Gildan is somehow contributing to human development in Honduras. “Gildan does not pay taxes because they are exempt,” the letter suggests, “so it is absurd when we see that a company with such a high level of exploitation of the work force has been applauded as one of the 50 best Canadian corporations and one of the 20 most responsible companies.” In conclusion: “Jobs yes, but with dignity.”266
Tourism
One of the largest Canadian projects under development in the country is owned by tourist magnate, Randy Jorgenson (founder of Canadian chain Adult Video). The project, which will include a new US$15 million cruise-ship dock to bring tourists from around the world, is being built through his company Life Vision near the north coast city of Trujillo on Garífuna land, with homes being built to be sold off to prospective tourists.267 A write up on the project in Canadian Business in June 2011 refers, without irony, to its “bargain prices” as an attraction for retirees that “colonize the shorelines of Central American and Caribbean
countries.”268
The environmental permits for the first two projects were actually granted under the dictatorship in late January 2010.269 But Jorgenson’s relations with the Lobo family—he is a close associate of Pepe Lobo’s brother and advisor Ramón—and Canada’s aggressive support for the post-coup Honduran regime have paid dividends for the tourist magnate. President Lobo invited Jorgenson to a meeting in Trujillo on November 27, 2010, which included Ramón, among other government representatives. The president instructed government officials and the mayor of Trujillo to initiate construction as soon as possible.270 During the Consejo de Ministerios (Council of Ministers) meeting in Trujillo seven months later, in early June 2011, President Lobo feted Jorgenson with special recognition for his “contributions” to Trujillo—with Jorgenson proudly proclaiming that he is now referred to as “the Adopted son of Trujillo”—and topped it off with a commitment to build a road through the Garífuna communities to connect the tourist development to Trujillo.271 The Council of Ministers gathering was followed, on June 8, by another meeting between Lobo and Jorgenson in Trujillo. They were also joined by representatives of Canadian Shield Asset Management. The Canadians discussed a potential investment of C$2 billion to build one of Honduras’ first “model cities” in Trujillo, of which the tourist project would be a key part.
Garífuna activists we spoke to in late June 2011 argued that the project is advancing through the illegal purchase of titled land belonging to their communities. In a public statement condemning Stephen Harper’s visit to the country, the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares y Indígenas de Honduras (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, COPINH), went so far as to argue that Life Vision and the Canadian Shield Fund “are promoting ethnicide against the Garífuna people.”272
Some community members have received death threats, which they suggest are a consequence of their vocal opposition to the development. We conducted an interview with Celso Alberto Guillén, a high-profile Garífuna activist, on June 22 in the small community of Guadalupe outside of Trujillo. Garífuna in Guadalupe have had ongoing conflicts with Jorgenson’s development project. Guillén explained that he lives in constant fear for his physical safety. He complained that he has been emotionally and psychologically traumatized by death threats launched against him by individuals he alleges are associated with Jorgenson. He has been personally threatened with a gun, and an individual approached his young daughter recently and told her that he was going to put two bullets into her father.273
Guillén argues that while Garífuna land rights have always been under threat in Honduras, in the 1990s “a process of land redistribution took place and the state made a commitment with these communities to provide them with land titles so they could have full ownership of their lands,” and in some cases, such as Guadalupe, land titles do exist. But under the Life Vision project land is being taken “without a prior consent of the community.” Garífuna activists such as Guillén see the fight against Life Vision as one more struggle to face in a long history of defiance: “the Garífuna have been resisting for more than 500 years against exclusion, xenophobia, marginalization, discrimination.”
Jorgenson’s tourist development plans extend further still. One controversial site is Capiro Calentura National Park, known for its biodiversity. Together with the adjacent Guiamoreto Lagoon Wildlife Reserve the area covers an expanse of over ten thousand hectares. Garífuna and indigenous communities have long resided in this region, but their tenuous hold on the land in the face of capitalist expansion has led the United Nations to signal the fragile state of their environs. As Canadian investigative journalist Dawn Paley notes, “the language, dance, and music of the Garífuna peoples were added to the United Nations’ list of rare cultural traditions in need of safeguarding.”274 The region encompassing the park and reserve was established as a protected area in 1992. At the time government agencies were mandated to establish and enforce borders for these areas, but this process was never carried out, creating legal ambiguity from which Jorgenson is benefiting today.
The first two development projects in the area, Alta Vista and Campo del Mar, are being built on a mountain and a beach section of the park and reserve territory. Jorgenson claims that the property in question was acquired legally from a family in the area.275 The Garífuna were in fact given collective titles to a small portion of their land near Trujillo, including where these Life Vision developments are taking place, in the early twentieth century. They argue that a former leader illegally and wrongfully sold the land—without the consent of the rest of the community—in 2007.276 Community activists have started a community radio station which we had the privilege of visiting in June 2011. The radio shows feature discussions that are critical of the tourist developments. The radio journalists and activists we met there are now among the many receiving regular death threats for their failure to bow down. Jorgenson, it appears, will soon be joined by other Canadian capitalists looking to make profits off beach properties of dispossessed Garífuna communities. Following the initial success of Life Vision and the signing of the trade agreement, representatives of Canadian company Transat Holiday recently visited Trujillo and announced a US$20 million investment in the construction of the tourist port.277
The Canadians had high stakes in helping to forge an agreeable outcome to the Honduran coup for capitalists in the mining, maquila, and tourist sectors, among others. Canadian investors had a straightforward interest in securing the stability of the post-coup regime which can be traced back directly to their material connections in mining, maquilas, and tourism.
THE ECONOMICS OF CANADA’S STRATEGIC ENGAGEMENT
From the vantage point of the Canadian state and capital, the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord weakened the threat that grassroots resistance might otherwise have posed. And economic strategizing for the future was able to proceed without interruption. With the distraction of the “political crisis” behind it, “reconciliation” a fait accompli, Lobo’s hyper-neoliberalism proceeding apace and the resistance contained, for the time being at least, prospects for Canadian capitalist expansion and intensification in Honduras improved considerably compared to Zelaya’s period in office. This was always a central goal of Canadian foreign policy towards Honduras, and certainly animated its intervention into the political opening provided by the coup.
While diplomatic energies following the coup were focused on the political resolution, more explicit economic diplomacy shifted to the forefront of the Honduras file when Lobo came to power. Time would not be wasted, and Canada’s defense of the assault on Honduran constitutional democracy would be made to bear fruit. Canadian politicians, with business leaders in tow, would come calling. Indeed, the day after Lobo’s inauguration Reeder and the head of CIDA in Honduras, Daniel Arsenault, made a “courtesy” call to Mario Canahuati, Lobo’s new Foreign Affairs Minister, businessman, and member of one of the country’s wealthiest families. It was the first such call by an ambassador to Canahuati, and portended of efforts to come, exploiting Canada’s position as a strong ally in the face of international hostility.278
The most public expressions of the re-energized economic diplomacy following Lobo’s inauguration were Kent’s excursions in February and August of 2010. Aimed on the one hand at challenging Honduras’ political isolation, they were also very much intended to support Canadian capital’s push for greater access to the Honduran market. Expressing political solidarity was not the sole agenda item of Kent’s “high level meetings” with Lobo and his key cabinet ministers, and nor did Kent limit his time to the latter. The Minister of State and embassy officials also met with Canadian business leaders and toured their operations. These trips were used to facilitate a process of dialogue between Canadian capital and Honduran political leaders, garnering commitments from Honduran interlocutors to “facilitate investment, particularly foreign investment,” as one embassy Situational Report notes.279 Advocacy and en
gagement with Honduran leaders regarding the interests of Canadian capital pre-dates the coup. Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s annual Country Strategy Process for Honduras has regularly identified “positioning Canadian business strategically” and increasing the “number of business opportunities and intelligence generated in support of Canadian companies” as key goals for its work in the country (as it does for many other countries).280 During the coup, embassy officials and the head of CIDA (whose office is located in the office of the embassy in Tegucigalpa) were in fact in regular contact with leading Canadian companies to share opinions on the political situation and discuss the latter’s investments.281
FAIT obviously saw an opportunity to be seized following its demonstration of support for a negotiated resolution after June 29, 2009 and for the Lobo government, establishing after the coup a Canadian business advocacy council in Honduras composed of Canadian investors in order, one FAIT report notes, to “facilitate dialogue with the host government.”282 That “host government” would be the Micheletti dictatorship. The same report stresses that embassy officials “remain in close contact with all Canadian investors in Honduras, and regularly visit their investments including in the extractive and textile sector.”283 A little over a month after Lobo’s inauguration and Reeder’s and Arsenault’s congratulatory correspondence to the government, the embassy’s Trade Commissioner met with the new Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Rigoberto Cuéllar, a meeting that was, the Ambassador reports to the Vice President of Breakwater Resources, “very positive.”284 The Trade Commissioner’s meeting was part of a serious push by the embassy and CIDA at promoting “closer engagement” between the mining industry and the Lobo government, with the ultimate aim being a new mining law amenable to Canadian investors (discussed further below).285 Canadian officials also arranged meetings in early 2010 between Gildan and representatives of the new Lobo government.286 At the same time, as Sandra Cuffe reports, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (which was the result of the FAIT and CIDA merger in 2013) has been providing funding via its aid envelope for technical assistance of Honduras’ nascent hydrocarbons sector.287