“The self-determination of our people is important. If we want to achieve self-determination, we have to at least be able and capable of producing what we eat,” says Honduran human rights activist Alfredo Lopez. “That’s why we as the Garifuna people have been in resistance for over 1,000 years … because we’ve never been dependent on anyone. We’ve always been self-sufficient. We’ve always fished and cultivated our lands”

Lopez was in Madison yesterday afternoon making presentations at UW-Madison and Edgewood College on the topic of Afro-Indigenous Honduran resistance.

Lopez works with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), a human rights organization and Grassroots International partner which defends the culture, land, and territory of the Garifuna people on Honduras’ Atlantic coast. Honduras is one of the world’s poorer countries with the world’s highest murder rate, rampant legal impunity and poverty, and tens of thousands of people fleeing across its borders.

Lopez is a well-known and respected community leader with the Garifuna population (the descendants of Africans who evaded slavery and indigenous Arawaks). “We Garifuna people are settled along the coast because we are fisherman and that’s where they want to develop the mega-tourism projects,” Lopez tells Madison365 through a translator. “It’s a problem because we don’t know what will be the mechanism used for this development.

“That’s why we are here in the United States and talking to people and fishing for solidarity because the public policies of these developed countries are threatening our existence,” Lopez adds.

Lopez is the vice president of OFRANEH, which was was founded in 1979 to represent and advocate for the interests of the Afro-Carib Garífuna minority in Honduras. OFRANEH works to protect the Garífuna community’s capacity for self-determination through programs promoting their political, social, economic, and cultural advancement.

While leading efforts to stop a large tourist development from displacing Afro-descendant communities, Lopez was sent to prison for 6 years on trumped-up drug trafficking charges aimed at breaking his leadership, intimidating the entire community, and weakening the movement.

It was only through community pressure, international solidarity, and a ruling by the International Human Rights Commission Court in Costa Rica that the Honduran government eventually conceded it had no evidence to support the charges, and freed him.

“To date, there have been six cases where the courts have ruled against the Honduran government and one of those cases is my case Alfredo Lopez vs. Honduras,” Lopez says. “The prison conditions were horrible.”

Through his work with OFRANEH, Lopez has set up a network of community radio stations and fought the displacement of the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna people. The stations educate the communities about their rights, history, and culture and keep them up to date on current news and strategies for defending their territories.

“The radio is an important element for us. It’s something that is new and innovative,” Lopez says.

The first radio station – Radio Coco Dulce – was attacked and set on fire after the 2010 elections. “But after that happened, we set up five other radio station so now we have six community radio stations,” Lopez says. “It’s important for us to have radio networks that are for the people.”

“[The charter cities] will be a country within a country,” Lopez says. “We have four Supreme Court judges who voted against these charter cities and they were fired for that. They found four new judges who would pass the law.”

Honduras’ northern Caribbean coast, inhabited by the Garifunas for centuries, is a gorgeous land renowned for its coastal beauty, fabulous beaches, and fertile lands. Because of large tourist infrastructure projects, many Garifuna have been pushed out of their ancestral lands for which they had communal titles in the past. Fishermen and farmers there feel like “charter cities” only benefit the rich.

“We do not like these charter cities at all. The idea came from an economist in the United States named Paul Romer,” Lopez says. “He sold this terrible idea to our corrupt Honduran politicians to establish special development zones in Honduras. This is a direct threat to our indigenous groups because where we live there are vast natural resources. We don’t exterminate our natural resources. We live in harmony with our environment.

“What we need is support in terms of educating our people, having medicine of our hospitals, and strengthening the potential of our people,” Lopez adds. “And if development comes our way, we want to be active participants in that development.

Lopez says U.S. policy towards Honduras has hurt the people of that country. “There has been more crime and more money laundering that gets done by the drug traffickers,” he says. “That’s why we are demanding that these public policies are reviewed.”

Lopez feels that charter cities would be little more than predatory, privatized utopias that will have negative effects on the poor communities. These charter cities will have their own police, military, and judicial systems.

“All of this money is not going where it should be going,” Lopez says. “There are people dying in the hospitals. We don’t have quality education. People feel the need to migrate. Young Hondurans feel like their only option in life is to join the police or military where they learn how to shoot guns. Those shots are for us!”

Lopez has been attacked and had his life threatened many times but he knows that the defense of their rights to the land is important and could have significance for indigenous communities throughout the world.

“Many North American people fund all of these bad things that go on in Honduras with their taxes,” Lopez says. “This money gets spent supposedly to help us, but if that’s the help they are going to give us, we don’t want it. That’s the people’s perspective; but the government – who we think is corrupt – will say something different.

“It’s important for American people to demand of their politicians that they do the best things with their tax money,” he adds.