Guatemala’s vulnerability is natural disasters is compounded by climate change and historical inequities in land distribution—the poorest live in the most dangerous locations where many are threatened by mudslides.

Over the past two years, 31 people from the municipality of Tocoa, on the lush north shore of Honduras, have faced criminal prosecution as a result of their opposition to an iron ore mining project in the Botaderos Mount “Carlos Escaleras” National Park.

Garifuna villages along the north coast of Honduras have set up roadblocks to demand answers about the enforced disappearances. “You took them alive, we want them alive!” protesters shouted.

More than 2,000 Central Americans, part of the latest migrant caravan attempting to reach the United States, passed by this Casa del Migrante as they fled a worsening situation of violence, state corruption and systemic poverty in their home nations.

“Our own people don’t have dignity. There’s no security. There are thousands of malnourished kids. How can we offer to be a safe country if it isn’t even safe for our own citizens?”

“What they are doing not only puts Guatemala at risk but the entire region. Bit by bit, for more than a year, they have been trying to divide us. The elections are at risk. We are six months away.”

The court ruled that the murder was premeditated with the “consent of Desa executives.” Desa is the Honduran company holding the concession for a hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque River on disputed land.

“We are living in calamity, a humanitarian crisis in Honduras. Today they left. Tomorrow they will leave.... Three hundred people leave Honduras every day.”

Honduran authorities have put the trial for the murder of an environmental and indigenous rights activist at risk by refusing to analyze and share key evidence.

The Fuego volcano eruption destroyed properties recently sold to indigenous Guatemalans for subsistence farming.