TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS — They were preparing to begin their workday when the gunmen arrived. Some were praying. On May 21, at least 20 people were massacred in the community of Rigores, in the Colón department of Honduras, killed on the African palm plantation where they worked — with several heavily armed men wearing Honduran police uniforms opening fire on the workers.
In a second attack the same day, six police officers were killed in the municipality of Omoa, near the Guatemalan border, after being ambushed during an operation to quash gang activity. In total, at least 25 people died on May 21 — one of the most violent single days Honduras has seen in recent years.
Photos showed bodies, some wearing thick rubber boots for work, strewn on the ground outside. Three sisters were among the dead at the farm massacre. The oldest victim was 61. Before authorities could secure the scene, distraught family members had already arrived to collect their loved ones’ bodies — complicating the investigation before it had begun.
The Arrest
Authorities arrested the man they believe masterminded the killings less than two weeks later. Carlos Molina — known as “El Gato Negro,” or the Black Cat — is suspected of planning and providing material support for the massacre.
He is 27 years old.
Security Minister Gerzon Velásquez told reporters that at least six people carried out the plot, but none of the actual gunmen had been apprehended.
The Territory Behind the Violence
The Rigores community sits in the Bajo Aguán region of Colón — one of the most contested and chronically violent territories in Central America. The resource-rich region has been the site of a decades-long agrarian conflict. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has previously issued precautionary measures to activists in the region who have been threatened, surveilled, and intimidated for their work defending the environment and land rights.
According to Reuters, more than 150 people in the area have been killed or disappeared. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental activists.
Trujillo’s police chief told local media that criminal groups occupy and illegally exploit several large African palm plantations, using money from the crops to obtain weapons. Local farmer groups, however, accuse transnational agribusiness corporations of sponsoring criminal groups to carry out land occupations and prevent residents from reclaiming disputed lands.
Among the victims were eight members of three peasant enterprises affiliated with the National Union of Rural Workers. The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations condemned the massacre, stating that “violence against rural communities is deeply linked to the model of land concentration, the advance of agribusiness, and the criminalization of those who defend the land.”
The Military Response — and Its Limits
The massacres arrived at a moment when Honduras had just expanded its militarized security apparatus. Congress approved a set of reforms to the penal code in May that harshen sentences related to extortion and gang membership, allow the government to define certain groups as terrorist organizations, and expand the participation of military personnel and police in public security tasks.
The government also used a botched police operation in Corinto — in which five Anti-Gang Directorate officers were killed in an ambush — to dismantle the DIPAMPCO and create a new military-led agency.
Honduras had previously operated under a three-year state of exception that suspended some constitutional rights and granted more power to security forces — ending in January 2026. The back-to-back massacres in May suggest that the end of the state of exception, combined with ongoing gang competition for control of palm farms and drug trafficking routes in Colón, has created a security vacuum that neither the old framework nor the new one has been able to fill.
An increasingly militarized response to crime is unlikely to rein in the escalation of violence the country is experiencing, particularly in the Cortés and Francisco Morazán departments. The Bajo Aguán region’s violence has roots not only in gang competition but in unresolved agrarian conflict, disputed land titles, and the intersection of criminal networks with agribusiness interests — dynamics that military deployment and stiffer sentencing cannot resolve.
Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries in the hemisphere for land rights defenders. Five environmental activists were killed in 2024 and 18 the year before, according to Global Witness. The killing of 19 palm plantation workers on May 21 — allegedly by men wearing police uniforms — is the latest chapter in a conflict that has been producing bodies in the Bajo Aguán for decades.
Sociedad Media covers security and organized crime across Latin America as part of its core editorial mission. Our reporting on criminal organizations, state responses, and the human cost of violence follows strict journalistic standards and does not reflect the editorial positions of any government or security agency.
