According to the campaign group Global Witness, 116 environmental activists were killed in 2014, a fifth more than the year before. Many of them were leaders of indigenous communities defending their land. The most dangerous place for environmental campaigners is Honduras, where 101 were reported killed between 2010 and 2014. The chief activist of the…
Imagine a place with the world’s highest homicide rate, where crimes are committed with impunity, a few powerful families call the shots, poor people get driven off land they have been awarded and prisons burn down. Sounds like the Wild West? Add in a couple more ingredients – a recent military coup and airstrips in…
The economist Paul Romer has been in Canada promoting his idea for a so-called ‘charter city’ in Honduras. Interviewed for TV Ontario, he said that a charter city would attract investment by offering a completely fresh administrative, legal and financial system, separate from the country in which the city is built. The proposal has started…
In Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast, the protagonist Allie Fox takes a boat from Baltimore to Central America. He lands in Honduras, where he buys a place called Jeronimo, at an indeterminate location in the rainforest. Expecting virgin territory, his plans go awry when it turns out there are people there already, and the obstacles…