Fundación San Alonso Rodríguez

LOCATION: Tocoa, Honduras

The Fundación San Alonso Rodriguez (FSAR) is one of the most impactful grassroots organizations in Central America. Their work has been focused on development and capacity building initiatives in the face of the growing threat of extractivism and mining in particular, which has led them to shift into environmental human rights work in the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras. FSAR was one of the founding partners of the Comité Municipal de Defensa de los Bienes Públicos y Comunes de Tocoa, an institution which received the Letelier Moffit Award for Human Rights in 2019. 

UUSC supports FSAR’s work and accompaniment of the Guapinol water defenders—environmental activists who have been harassed, intimidated, and targeted with false criminal charges for their work to protect the water source of their community from an environmentally harmful extractive project. FSAR advises, accompanies, and shares information on the criminalization cases against 32 members of the Guapinol camp and the fraudulent and corrupt practices by which extractive industries illegally impose themselves in the Honduran Aguán region. 

UUSC contributed funds for the legal fees of the defenders of the Guapinol River wrongfully placed on pre-trial imprisonment in September 2019. It also provides support for the families of the imprisoned defenders to be able to visit their relatives in jail and also purchase basic household items during these months that they have been left without any source of income. UUSC also helps support the implementation of security measures to protect defenders who have received threats to their lives or the lives of their relatives in Tocoa.

Image Credit: Fundación San Alonso Rodríguez