Does Indigenous Resource Management Exist Among the Lenca of Honduras?
Indigenous Governance, Hydroelectric, and State Exclusion.
“This river has ancestral and spiritual importance to the Lenca people.” — Berta Cáceres
Does Indigenous Resource Management Exist Among the Lenca of Honduras?
Indigenous Governance, Hydroelectric, and State Exclusion.
“This river has ancestral and spiritual importance to the Lenca people.” — Berta Cáceres
Abstract
This paper analyzes the absence of a formal Indigenous Resource Management system among the Lenca people in Honduras, particularly in the departments of Lempira, Intibucá, and La Paz. Based on ethnographic literature, historical sources, human rights reports, and case studies of Hydroelectric projects, it argues that this condition is not the result of cultural loss, or a lack of environmental knowledge or organizational capacity. Rather, it is the outcome of structural exclusion produced by the Honduran state, which has limited the recognition and exercise of Indigenous forms of territorial governance.
The study argues that the Lenca people possess an own cultural framework of environmental care rooted in reciprocity with Santa Tierra, expressed through practices such as composturas, the Guancasco, the figure of the nagual, romerías, and the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés. These practices portray an ontology in which land and water are conceived as living beings, aligning with the principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous Resource Management.
However, this framework conflicts with the state-promoted extractivist models, as evidenced by the approval of Hydroelectric projects without free, prior, and informed consultation. This paper argues that the lack of a recognized Indigenous Resource Management system among the Lenca is not a cultural deficit but the result of state-produced structural exclusion and extractivist governance that obstruct Indigenous territorial sovereignty.
Keywords: Indigenous Resource Management (IRM); Lenca people; Environmental governance; Hydroelectric; Extractivism; Structural violence; Environmental justice.
1. Introduction
The Lenca people of Honduras, currently residing in the departments of Lempira, Intibucá, and La Paz, are an ancestral community with a deep knowledge system of the land, water, and forests. This knowledge is expressed through rituals of reciprocity, such as composturas, communal ceremonies like the Guancasco, the Vara Alta of Moses, and a worldview in which the earth is referred to as “Santa Tierra,” and the mountains, the rain, and water itself are animated beings that require care and respect. However, despite this strong cultural foundation, the Lenca lack a functional Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) system in contemporary Honduras.
This research shows that the absence of an Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) system among the Lenca is not due to cultural deficiency nor to the loss of ancestral knowledge. Instead, it reflects a failure of the Honduran state institutions to recognize, respect, and integrate mechanisms through which the Lenca could govern their territories, exercise their spirituality, and uphold their territorial rights. The state give permission the concession of hydroelectric projects without consultation, the manipulation of property registries, the criminalization of Indigenous leaders, and the disregard for international frameworks such as ILO Convention 169. The state has failed to provide the necessary conditions for a functional Lenca IRM system to exist.
The central-western departments of Lempira, Intibucá, and La Paz are home to more than 1,000 Lenca communities in Honduras. In the department of La Paz, dam concessions granted form a key case study for this analysis. The authorization and execution of these Hydroelectric dams have promoted territorial conflicts among the Lenca people, disrupted their sacred water systems, and revealed the profound gap between Lenca conceptions of resource stewardship and the state–corporate models of dam management that treat rivers as commodities rather than living entities and exclude Lenca communities from meaningful participation in decision-making.
Based on ethnographic literature, document analysis, human rights reports, and case studies of dam-related conflicts, this study examines how the state has structurally fail and culturally disrespect the Lenca Indigenous Resource Management, and what this reveals about environmental justice, Indigenous governance, and dam expansion in Honduras.
This paper is structured as follows. First, it provides a historical and ethnographic background of the Lenca people, it examines the ritual and communal institutions of Lenca, it introduces the theoretical framework used to analyze Indigenous Resource Management, analyzes hydroelectric projects in Lenca territory as case studies, then the Lenca Community Governance and Organizational Landscape, the discussion, and finally the conclusion.
2. Historical and Ethnographic Background of the Lenca People.
The Lenca people are found in El Salvador and Honduras, but this research paper addresses the Lenca community located in the central-western region of Honduras, in the departments of Lempira, Intibucá, and La Paz; they contain more than 1,000 communities composed of villages, hamlets, and municipalities. The Lenca population is estimated at approximately 400,000 people. Most Lenca communities are situated in the highest areas of Honduras, at around 1,650 meters above sea level, in relatively unproductive lands where the climate remains mild year-round, with temperatures ranging from 17°C to 20°C. The weather becomes cold during November, December, January, and part of February (Ochoa Moreno 2003). This territorial continuity, despite centuries of pressure and displacement, remains central to understanding the cultural and political dimensions of Lenca land stewardship today.
To understand why the Lenca people lack a recognized Indigenous Resource Management system in Honduras, it is first necessary to explore their historical and ethnographic background, which contextualizes the origins of their present-day conflicts and their deep-rooted relationship with the land.
The Lenca are one of the oldest Indigenous peoples of Honduras and El Salvador, with cultural roots that trace back to at least 1,000 years before Christ. One of the territories governed by the Lenca is located in Quelepa, El Salvador, which was occupied from the Preclassic period (500 B.C.–A.D. 300) through the beginning of the Postclassic period. There is no consensus on the origin of the Lenca, which has led to multiple theories. Some anthropologists consider the Lenca to be descended from an Aztec-related group; others believe they descended from the Toltecs; other researchers dispute their classification as a Mesoamerican group. Edward Sapir considered Lenca as part of the Penutian language family, native to Oregon and California. In 1959, Morris Swadesh linked the Xinca of Guatemala with the Lenca and proposed the “Xilenca” family, separate from other linguistic groups. Still, in 1967, he modified his theory and suggested that the Lenca should be considered part of the Macro-Maya grouping. Walter Lehmann associated Lenca with Chibchan, Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, or Arawakan families. Costa Rican linguist Adolfo Constenla Umaña argues that Lenca is of Chibchan origin, with the separation possibly occurring more than 3,000 years ago during the hunter-gatherer period and later developing in Honduras as an independent language with strong Nahuatl and Mayan influences, such as Yucatec and Chol, the last being the most accepted among historians (Alvarado 2026, 15–22).
The first documented reference to the term Lenca appears in the work published between 1714 and 1716 by Fray Francisco Vásquez, the official chronicler of the convents under the Custody of Honduras, who had visited the region in 1683. This mention occurs nearly two centuries after the Spanish conquest of Honduras. Vásquez’s book offers a view into the colonial past of the Lenca people, incorporating information from unpublished documents in the Archivo General de Indias (Seville) written by the friars Ovalle and Guevara in 1681 during their missionary work in Honduras from 1668 to 1681. The material documented in this work corresponds primarily to the periods 1608–1612 and 1668–1690. Missionary activity in the Taguzgalpa region (a Colonial-Era historical region that corresponds today to the Honduran Mosquitia and the eastern parts of Olancho) began in 1608. According to the records, the missionaries Esteban Verdalete and Juan de Monteagudo were killed by Lenca and Taguaca groups during a period marked by Indigenous resistance (Chapman 1978, 45–46). Also, in 1853, the researcher E. G. Squier documented that the Indigenous people of Guajiquiro, La Paz, referred to their language as lenca. Squier later compared it with the languages of other groups in western Honduras and realized that they all used the same term (Centeno 2004, 23).
The Lenca people have been historically shaped by struggle since colonial times. Their first major uprising occurred in 1537 during the so-called Great Rebellion, or the Last War of the Lencas, in which the Spanish defeated them. During this conflict, the Lenca leader Lempira was killed along with twenty-five Lenca warriors on Cerro Broquel, and he was buried at Piedra Parada near the Congolón and Cerquín mountains (Chapman 1978, 72).
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Lenca were organized into four subgroups and inhabited the Care and Cerquín regions of western and central Honduras. They also lived in the department of Valle and in eastern Choluteca, where they bordered the Potón groups of El Salvador. By the seventeenth century, according to Vásquez and Ovalle Guevara, small Lenca settlements also existed in Olancho and El Paraíso, due to the displacement from Comayagua and Francisco Morazán during the sixteenth century as they sought to escape Spanish encroachment (Chapman 1978, 65–66).
Pre-Hispanic elements that persist in Lenca culture include women's participation in agriculture; the militaristic character historically attributed to Lenca men (especially in Guajiquiro, la Paz); the manufacture of baskets and handicrafts; and distinctive ways of speaking Spanish. Until recently, Lenca women wore brightly colored dresses, mainly blue, red, yellow, and purple, with long skirts and wide sleeves, along with a black shawl (younger women today often use lighter shawls instead of the traditional black covering (Núñez 2014, 13).
Agricultural practices such as the cultivation of maize, beans, and ayote (squash) are longstanding traditions. The traditional digging stick, called macana or barreta, is a wooden tool with an iron point used for planting cornfields. Other enduring cultural items include the comal, used for making tortillas and cooking food, and chicha, a beverage made from fermented maize (Núñez 2014, 13).
This historical and ethnographic context provides insight into the Lenca past and the situations they have struggled with since colonial times. It is important to understand that these foundations are crucial before analyzing their contemporary forms of environmental governance. The next section explores the cultural framework through which the Lenca conceptualizes land, water, and nonhuman beings, about their rituals and communal institutions that inform their environmental stewardship.
3. Ritual and Communal Institutions of Lenca.
The Lenca, like many other cultures worldwide, is deeply tied to nature and spirituality (Núñez 2014, 14). To understand why they care for the earth as they do, we must understand their worldview and the religious rituals they practice. This section offers an overview of the rituals, ceremonies, and symbols that guide Lenca life, such as the Guancasco, Composturas, the Nagual, Romerías, and the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés.
.
3.1 The Guancasco.
The Guancasco is a ceremony for forgiveness and reconciliation that celebrates peace and friendship. In Lenca, guanco means "brother" and guanca means "sister." The ceremony uses symbolic items such as a wooden mask, a drum, a baton, flags, and a whistle (FSC-IF 2024).
During her 1965 ethnographic fieldwork, Ana Chapman interviewed the mayor of Yamaranguila, in the department of Intibucá, Honduras. He explained that, due to past conflicts among Lenca groups, the Guancasco served as a peace pact (Chapman 1985, 75).
Today, it is celebrated as a festive encounter between two towns or communities that agree to establish a peace pact after experiencing disputes, especially over land. At present, these types of conflicts no longer occur because their lands are no longer communal but individually owned, and each person demarcates their property with barbed wire. For this reason, the Guancasco is now a religious event between two communities that bring their patron saints. For example, during the festival of Santiago Apóstol in Santa Elena, the community may be visited by the patron saint of Yarula, San Juan, and vice versa (Núñez 2014, 27).
Guancasco involves an elaborate ritual. First, the town's visit begins its procession. On the appointed day, the religious authorities of the visiting community set out on foot as an act of respect and humility, carrying the image of their patron saint on their shoulders. They are accompanied by musicians playing the drum and the flute, prehispanic instruments that symbolize the continuity of Lenca cultural heritage. A significant figure is the gracejo, a person disguised in a wooden mask who moves somewhat in the shadows among the musicians.
The role of the gracejo is significant because this comic or festive character dances and entertains but also fulfils ritual functions: driving away negative energies, protecting the procession, and symbolizing the duality between the sacred and the human.
The procession then enters the host community. Upon arrival, everyone proceeds to the church where the saint's image is kept. The visitors “greet” the honoured image. This greeting is a ritual act of respect, gratitude, and a request for harmony between the two communities. After the visiting image is placed inside the host church, it remains throughout the festivities. This represents the spiritual coexistence of both communities. It is an act of brotherhood, reciprocity, and mutual recognition (Chapman 1985, 75).
3.2 The Compostura.
La compostura consists of a symbolic ritual in which the Lenca make payments to the spirits for what they have received. It is an act of reciprocity, an expression of gratitude to the holy earth for what it provides: water, rain, harvests, and so forth. It is a form of worship of the divine framed within a Christian ritual structure. Socially, it brings together people connected by kinship ties and neighbors who belong to the Lenca ethnic tradition. It is rare for outsiders to participate in these rituals. La compostura is partially analogous to the Catholic Mass. The similarities are the most evident: the rezador functions as the priest, the owner who offers the compostura acts as the donor, and the guests form the congregation (Chapman 1985, 89).
There are different types of composturas: of the earth, the harvest, knowledge, tamo (to prevent illnesses), losses, coffee harvests, fruit trees, tools, new houses, burned houses, pottery, laundry, rain, birth, and birthdays.
The compostura of the earth is performed by Lenca farmers, who conceive of the earth as a mother and call it Santa Tierra (Holy Earth). For Lenca, the earth is the mother who sustains them, and they cannot live without her (Chapman 1985, 98).
After storing the maize, the Lenca community performs the compostura of the harvest. This takes place during afternoons, either in the household or next to the troje where the maize is stored. The men who helped the milpa owner with the harvest participated. This is connected to another ritual, the compostura of knowledge, carried out with the intention of hastening the growth of the maize (Chapman 1985, 123–124).
The compostura of the tamo is performed as payment to the angels to prevent illness. All maize residue (tamo) is collected, including silk threads, dry leaves, and rotten kernels. These remnants are accumulated throughout the year and stored in baskets. During the ritual, the baskets are placed before the altar and, after four days, the waste is returned to the milpa (Chapman 1985, 128).
The compostura of losses is performed when the Lenca have suffered losses in their harvests due to not having carried out the compostura properly. Losses may result from animals, insects, wind, weather, or maize diseases (Chapman 1985, 128).
The compostura of coffee is a homage to the holy earth and is performed to obtain good coffee harvests. It takes place at the center of the coffee grove at any time of year when deemed necessary. Coffee is not used in any form during the ritual, nor are cacao beans, and the presence of a professional rezador is not required. Distinctions between community leaders and common people are not relevant in this ritual (Chapman 1985, 130).
The compostura of fruit trees is performed to ensure the growth of useful trees—fruit trees, pines, oaks, and others used for firewood or construction materials. It is carried out on June 24, the feast day of San Juan (Chapman 1985, 130).
The compostura of tools is one of the most popular rituals. Nearly all Lenca farmers who own even two or three heads of cattle carry it out each year. Among farmers in central Honduras, devotion to San Antonio (June 13) and Santiago (July 25), patrons of domestic animals, is deeply rooted. The day before the ritual, the household heads go to the nearest church, if they live in Intibucá (La Esperanza) to offer nine candles to the town’s patron saint and to San Antonio, and to pray for compassion for their livestock (Chapman 1985, 134).
When a house burns down, the Lenca carry out the compostura of the burned house. This is done to determine the cause of the event. A zahorín, a wise man of the traditions who possesses certain supernatural powers is called. He is offered cups of chicha or guaro (aguardiente) and gifted birds. In this way, he reveals the cause of the fire, determining whether the disaster came from a rebellious angel or directly from the Holy Father (God). If the latter, prayers are recited to lift the calamity; if rebellious angels are responsible, the compostura of the burned house is performed (Chapman 1985, 150).
A very important practice among the Lenca is alfarería, or pottery-making. The first anthropologist to document the compostura of pottery was Ana Chapman in 1965 in the village of Santa Cruz and in La Campa, both located in the department of Lempira. These places are famous for their pottery artisans and for the high-quality clay deposits found there. The compostura is carried out within the potter’s family. Its characteristics are: it is performed every three years; it is not a public event; and it takes place at the site where clay is extracted. During this ritual, clay waste called tiestos, the broken pieces of pottery, is collected and placed in a basket before the altar (Chapman 1985, 155).
The Lenca also has a ritual for paying for water, known as the compostura of the laundry. Nearly all the women who wash clothes carry it out at the site where they normally wash, by a stream, spring, or lagoon. They take a bottle of the same water to the nearest church and offer it to the patron saint. The risk of not performing this ritual is falling ill, for, according to the Lenca, water is a living being and acts upon humans (Chapman 1985, 155).
The compostura of rain is performed in some Lenca villages when the rains of May fail to arrive. Rituals are directed toward the tacayos (the owners of the hills), because the Lenca believe water comes from the hills, and also to the Virgin, San Isidro Labrador, San Marcos, and perhaps other saints, depending on local devotion. Through this ritual, reverence is shown to the Tacayo in times of water scarcity, and honor is rendered to the Virgin of Las Mercedes and to San Isidro Labrador, who is said to “take away the water and bring out the sun” (Chapman 1985, 170–171).
By 1982, the compostura of the lagoon was rarely practiced, though still remembered. It was performed at the edge of a lagoon or spring. When the ritual was not done, people thought they might be swallowed by the water or lose their way. This anthropophagous activity manifested especially when payment was not fulfilled. The appearance of a bull in a lagoon was considered a sign that the owner or spirit of the place was demanding its payment (Chapman 1985, 156).
The compostura of birth occurs four or nine days after childbirth. Those who follow the tradition do not fail to perform it, especially if the baby is born weak or ill. It is a simpler ritual, carried out with the family, the midwife, and the rezador. A cross is placed on the door of the house and a jar of chicha on each side (Chapman 1985, 174).
The compostura of birthdays is carried out by some families to celebrate their children’s lives each year until the age of nine, when economic means permit; other families observe this compostura only until the children turn four (Chapman 1985, 179).
The compostura of a new house is seldom performed today. It was once carried out to pay for the spirit of the place when a family moved to an untouched area to live or build a dwelling, that is, to pay for the land. Currently, most people build houses in already populated or cleared areas, so this compostura is not often done, even among the most faithful followers of the tradition (Chapman 1985, 149).
3.3 The Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés: Ritual Governance and Communal Authority
In Yamaranguila and in the departmental capital of Intibucá, one of the oldest Lenca traditions is still preserved: the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés. According to Dr. Lucio Núñez, the origin of The Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés may date back to the period of evangelization, when priests recounted the biblical episode in which, during the Israelites’ journey through the desert, God commanded Moses to strike a rock with his staff, causing water to spring forth miraculously. This narrative appears to have left a deep impression on the newly evangelized Lenca, who came to regard Moses as the greatest leader in sacred history.
The Alcaldía is composed of two officials who hold the highest prestige among the faithful and are appointed for life. They must be men of extensive knowledge and exceptional memory, capable of recalling every step of the ceremonial procedures. They act as auxiliary mayors to the municipal mayor and are supported by a fiscal officer and a treasurer. The first mayor holds the “first staff,” and the second mayor holds the “second staff,” rotating monthly in the exercise of their duties. A third mayor receives a staff without a cross, decorated with flowers.
During the month each mayor serves, he and his family must move to the house of the Auxiliaria de la Vara Alta and remain there full-time in service to the community. The community provides for their needs, and serving in this role is considered a great honor. The primary responsibilities of the mayor include safeguarding the building, caring for sacred objects such as the chalice, ciboria, and priestly vestments, and protecting a chest that holds property titles and documents related to communal territories.
Other members of the institution include two elders who serve six months each year. Their role is to organize the communal milpa, supported by volunteers, commissioners, and a group known as the mayores. The mayores del arca are responsible for guarding the chest containing the property titles, regarded as the most important possession of the community. The alguaciles play an important role during patron saint festivities, protecting the religious image and ensuring that ceremonies proceed in an orderly manner. The comisionados are tasked with delivering messages or performing any manual work required by the house of the Auxiliaria de la Vara Alta. The tenancinas are female commissioners and hold a lower rank. Their name derives from the Nahuatl tenache, from Tenatzin, meaning “Mother Saint Mary.” The tenancinas are in charge of cleaning the church and volunteer for a one-year term. They are especially common in Santa María de La Paz, an Indigenous sanctuary where the Feast of the Assumption is celebrated, also known as the “Feast of the Transit” or the “Feast of the Six Angels.” At the end of their service, the tenancinas decorate their brooms with flowers and perform the traditional “broom dance,” part of the national folklore (Núñez 2014, 15–17).
3.4 Angels in the Lenca Tradition
The angels in the Lenca tradition are not identical to those of the Catholic Church; they possess their own characteristics. They are spirits or sacred beings with multiple functions, more similar to local deities than to Christian figures. They are assigned different roles, such as bringing rain, producing winds, ensuring the fertility of the earth, and dispelling misfortunes. They manifest their presence to humans through lightning strikes, and when lightning hits a tree, nearby residents must perform a compostura ceremony to reconcile their relationship with these supernatural beings (Núñez 2014, 30).
3.5 The Nagual
Another cultural aspect that allows us to understand the Lenca worldview and its connection not only to nature but also to their own spiritual world is the figure of the nagual. Naguales, or protective spirits, are guardian animals that each person has. Every individual is born with a predestined nagual, and their life is intimately linked to that of the animal that is their guardian spirit. Their life and death cycles are synchronized; thus, if something happens to the animal, if the nagual falls ill, is injured, or is struck, the effects are also felt by the person whose nagual has been affected. For example, when a person is sick, it is said that their nagual is weak (Núñez 2014, 31).
3.6 The Romerias
Romerías are pilgrimages or visits to places where evidence or symbols of the supernatural are manifested. Pilgrimage traditions have existed across time and space throughout the world. The Lenca undertake them with the purpose of fulfilling a promise made when a person is facing difficulties; one asks the saint of one’s devotion for help in that moment of need and, in return, promises to make a pilgrimage to that saint’s temple. The Lenca make pilgrimages to Santa Elena, Marcala, and Santa María (La Paz). They also show devotion to San Gaspar, celebrated in Taulabé, Comayagua; to the Virgin of Suyapa, Patroness of Honduras; and to Esquipulas in Guatemala (Núñez 2014, 47).
The rituals, ceremonies, and cosmological principles described above demonstrate that a Lenca framework of respect and environmental care does indeed exist. However, this does not translate into a recognized system of Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) within the Honduran state. The Lenca community has a traditional culture that is part of their daily life; this connects to the way they conceive their relationship with nature. However, these practices operate at the household or community level and remain unsupported by municipal or institutional bodies of the Honduran state. This reveals a critical situation: the state has not created the conditions for these systems to function as legitimate modes of resource governance. The following section presents the theoretical framework that supports this analysis and enables us to discuss and analyze the lack of Indigenous Resource Management (IRM), using the example of Hydroelectric projects approved in the Lenca region of Honduras.
4. Theorethical Framework.
Understanding the conflict between the Hydroelectric projects approved in the Lenca region of Honduras and the rights that the Lenca people are entitled to requires a conceptual framework that explains not only how the Lenca conceive of land, water, and their own forms of governance, but also how the Honduran state undermines Indigenous modes of environmental management. This section introduces the key concepts that guide the analysis: Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as models of environmental governance; the Lenca worldview, in which rivers are not resources but beings with their own existence, the persistence of colonialism and extractivist development models in contemporary relations between the state and the Lenca; and the forms of structural and state violence that emerge when Indigenous governance systems lack legal recognition. Together, these concepts provide the analytical foundation for examining why a functional Lenca IRM system does not exist in Honduras and how Hydroelectric expansion generates environmental injustices in Lenca territories.
4.1. Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) y Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) refers to the way Indigenous communities regulate, protect, and relate to land, water, forests, and nonhuman beings. Indigenous Resource Management refers to “a system of methods that combines traditional knowledge and practices to manage natural resources” (Directory, n.d.). In many Indigenous societies, this management system operates through community leadership, in coordination with the state, and is grounded in a shared responsibility to protect the environment.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) complements Indigenous Resource Management (IRM), as TEK emphasizes the idea that individual plants and animals exist on their own terms. Its two main principles are that all things are connected, and all things are related. (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000). As a result of these connections with the nonhuman world, native people do not think of nature as "wilderness," but as home" (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000, 1336).
For example, among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, local governance institutions have historically required the deliberate protection of rivers, salmon, and forest ecosystems as part of a broader ethic of responsibility toward the nonhuman world (Atlas et al. 2021, 190). Pierotti and Wildcat argue that Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) does not view human beings as separate from or superior to nature. On the contrary, it understands humans as integral participants within the ecosystem.
Together, IRM and TEK provide the conceptual basis for analyzing why Indigenous governance does not exist as a recognized system in Lenca communities, and how it directly clashes with the extractivist model authorized by the Honduran state itself.
4.2 Lenca Worldviews
Relational or more-than-human ontologies offer a conceptual framework for understanding how many Indigenous communities, including the Lenca, conceive of their relationship with the nonhuman world. These ontologies reject the Western notion of viewing nature as a resource. For the Lenca and other Indigenous communities, rivers, mountains, animals, and other entities possess agency and carry moral significance.
Eduardo Kohn (2013) argues that, to take Indigenous worlds seriously, anthropology must move “beyond the human, “to recognize that nonhuman beings think, communicate, and form part of social worlds. This offers a different perspective of why many Indigenous societies see rivers or forests not as commodities but as living relatives with whom they maintain relationships. For the Lenca people rivers are beings with life, which is why they must be respected through ritual and communal practices, as reflected in composturas and other offerings that reaffirm reciprocal bonds.
More than human ontologies, explain why Lenca communities oppose Hydroelectric projects not only for material reasons—loss of water access, ecosystem alteration, or threats to agriculture—but also because such projects violate the moral relations that structure their world. When the Honduran state authorizes Hydroelectric projects, it is because it sees communities' resources as commodities rather than living beings; it imposes an ontological model that contradicts Lenca cosmology. This ontological clash is important for understanding the depth of conflict among the Lenca people.
4.3. Colonialism and Extractivist Development Models
The term colonialism can be defined as “a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another (Kohn and Reddy 2024). The practice of colonialism typically encompasses the development of political policies used to dominate or control a subjugated people and geographic area, the occupation of the territory with settlers, and the economic exploitation of that territory (EBSCO, n.d.). Extractivism “is a political and economic model of accumulation, or appropriation, founded on the intensive and extensive exploitation of natural resources (Riofrancos 2020).
This concept provides a framework for understanding why the State marginalizes the Lenca community in Honduras in Hydroelectric projects and land management. These structures exemplify how the Honduran state administers land, water, and the rights of Indigenous peoples today.
The historical context of what the Lenca experienced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allows us to argue that a colonial system persists in the sense the Honduran state replicates extractivist development models. Honduras has supported development strategies that exploit natural resources, they generate short-term economic gains but leave Indigenous communities with environmental devastation, marginalization, and few if any benefits (Meza Palma and Díaz-Puente, 2024). Extractivism is not only an economic policy that views rivers, forests, and mountains as commodities to be granted concessions, reinforcing a worldview based on domination and extraction. In this sense, the conflict between the Lenca and Hydroelectric companies is not only political or economic; it is fundamentally colonial.
4.4 Structural Violence and State Violence
The scholar Johan Galtung, in his work, Violence, Peace and Research, states that violence is divided into direct (physical violence) and indirect violence (structural violence). This idea is important because, behind what happens in the lack of indigenous resource management by the Lenca people, it is because the state perpetuates structural violence. Structural violence is defined as “the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual” (Galtung 1969: 168). Violence emerges when the state uses its name and structures to prevent people or communities from achieving the level of well-being they would be capable of under just conditions. In the Lenca context, this concept reveals how the Honduran state can produce profound harm by restricting the political, economic, and ecological potential of Indigenous peoples. For the Lenca people, structural violence is portrayed in the absence of legal mechanisms to protect their ancestral lands and the systematic exclusion of Lenca communities from decision-making processes related to Hydroelectric projects.
In the Lenca region in Honduras, state violence could manifest by repressing people in protests, threats against community leaders, military presence to protect private companies, the criminalization of environmental defenders, and, in some cases, forced displacement. Together, structural and state violence dismantle Indigenous governance systems and explain why a functional model of Indigenous Resource Management cannot operate in contemporary Honduras.
These theoretical frameworks resemble why the Lenca people do not have a mode of environmental governance. The following section examines the absence of a Lenca Indigenous Resource Management system and the state's approval of Hydroelectric projects projects under unfair conditions.
5. Hydroelectric Projects and Territorial Conflict in Lenca Territory
Almost 30 percent of Honduran territory has approved mining concessions, which generates a high demand for cheap electricity to support future mining operations. In response, the government approved hundreds of dam projects across the country, privatizing rivers and lands and uprooting communities (Goldman Environmental Prize 2022).
Hydroelectric projects in the Lenca region of Honduras have been concessioned to private companies under extractivist development models. As Meza Palma and Díaz-Puente (2024) note, these models aim at “rapid but fleeting growth of national economies, based on extractive investments of natural resources, leaving more desolation than benefits for native peoples” (1). This section presents specific cases from the Department of La Paz regarding Hydroelectric projects that clash with Lenca culture.
5.1 Land Tenure, Agrarian Conflict, and Criminalization
Land governance in the department of La Paz is marked by structural weaknesses and territorial claims that affect Lenca communities in Honduras. A qualitative study by CEHPRODEC, identified the main causes of agrarian conflict, such as irregularities in land registration, expansion of private estates over communal lands, and systematic failures by the National Agrarian Institute to implement meaningful agrarian reform.
According to the study, six municipalities have active agrarian conflicts, particularly Santiago de Puringla, San Pedro de Tutule, and La Paz. It also shows a pattern of criminalization by judicial authorities, who often treat Indigenous and campesino claims as unlawful occupation. Between 1993 and 2016, a total of 301 land titles were granted to Lenca communities in the departments of La Paz, Lempira, and Intibuca (156,059.13 hectares). These titles have not prevented ongoing disputes or the advance of extractive and hydroelectric projects (Padilla 2017, 25).
5.2 Hydroelectric Concessions in Department of La Paz
By June 2017, CEHPRODEC identified four hydroelectric companies operating in four municipalities, with direct and indirect impacts on Lenca households, particularly related to river degradation, water scarcity, and ecosystem disruption.
5.2.1 Los Encinos Hydroelectric Project (Santa Elena, la Paz)
This concession was awarded to the company Los Encinos, owned by Arnold Castro (husband of former National Party leader Gladys Aurora López). The dam was planned on the El Protero del Volcán area in Azacualpa. Despite an irregular cabildo Abierto, attended by outsiders, the municipality authorized the project.
The local people intervened to stop the project, conducted a proper consultation under Convention 169, and then six Indigenous leaders were criminalized. Community members were later relocated due to threats and violence.
5.2.2 La Aurora Hydroelectric Project (San José and Guajiquiro, la Paz)
In 2010, ENEE granted permits to Inversiones La Aurora S.A. de C.V. for the La Aurora I project (30-year concession). The municipality unilaterally conducted land measurements to impose a new catastral map and concessioned forest exploitation rights within Indigenous territories.
Table 1. Hydroelectric companies in the Department of La Paz
Municipality
Zone
Project
Company
Timeframe
Observation
San Marcos de la Sierra, Concepcion, Colomoncagua & Santa Elena
Rio Chinacla
Hidroelectrica Rio Negro y su afluente Rio Chinacla
Hidroelectrica la Sierra S.A de C.V
15 years
San Jose
El Zapotal, Agacatal
La Aurora I
La Aurora S.A de C.V
30 years
Guajiquiro
La Aurora I fase II
La Aurora S.A de C.C
20 years
In 2019 the company changed name and manager
Santiago de Puringla
Puringla
Puringla & San Antonio
Compañia Electrica C.A, CECA
30 years
The study conduced by CEHPRODEC concludes that the primary causes of hydroelectric conflict include violation of ILO Convention 169 (50%), lack of prior consultation (25%), persistence of large estates (12%), and the absence of sufficient land for Indigenous families (13%).
These findings demonstrate a profound disregard for Indigenous rights by state authorities and highlight how economic development in La Paz has become exclusionary, dispossessing Indigenous communities of their natural resources through illegal or irregular procedures (Padilla 2017, 25).
5.3 Human Rights Risks and Criminalization of Lenca Defenders
A study by COFADEH, Defensores y defensoras indígenas del departamento de La Paz, documents the risks faced by Lenca human rights defenders who oppose hydroelectric, mining, and territorial dispossession. Reported abuses include persecution, intimidation, stigmatization, criminalization, arbitrary detention, threats and assassination attempts, arson of homes, forced displacement, violence against women, including miscarriages caused by physical aggression, violent evictions carried out by state agents, child mistreatment, and psychological harm.
These conditions led the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to issue precautionary measures (MC-589-15), requiring the Honduran state to protect the lives of fourteen Lenca leaders from MILPAH.
5.4 Forced Project Installation and Territorial Violations
Hydroelectric projects have been installed without consultation of the Lenca people and in violation of ancestral land rights, for example: Simpinula, Santa María departament of la Paz, imposition of municipal catastral maps over ancestral titles; attempts by third parties to claim Lenca communal lands; also Llanos de la Candelaria, Aguanqueterique, department of la Paz: state-led territorial violations, threats of dispossession, and denial of consultation rights.
In Santa Elena, members of the San Isidro Labrador and Santiago Apóstol Indigenous Councils denounced the use of fabricated “shock groups” posing as COPINH members to legitimize unwanted hydroelectric installations.
Lenca leaders report that the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the courts often lose case files or fail to process complaints. Despite Honduras ratifying key human rights instruments—including ILO 169, their implementation remains merely formal, lacking publicity and enforcement (Trócaire et al. 2018, 24-32).
5.5 Assassination of Environmental leaders
The 2016 assassination of Lenca environmental leader Berta Cáceres brought global attention to the violence surrounding Hydroelectric projects in Honduras. The Agua Zarca project exemplifies corruption, collusion between state institutions and private companies, and the failure to obtain Indigenous consent.
In 2019, UFECIC charged sixteen individuals with corruption for irregularities in the concession and licensing process, following denouncements by COPINH. The concession was granted without free, prior, and informed consent, in violation of ILO 169.
Executives of Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) were found responsible for ordering Cáceres’s murder. David Castillo, who simultaneously held public office and controlled the company, was sentenced to over 22 years in prison as a co-author of the assassination (Project, n.d.).
The CONADEH, Honduran ombudsman, reported the two environmental defenders were killed in 2021: journalist Luis Alonso Teruel Vega and renowned activist Juan López. Investigations remain ongoing (“Honduras,” n.d.).
These cases illustrate that Hydroelectric expansion in Lenca territory is not only an environmental issue but a violation of human rights, a pattern of dispossession, criminalization, and rights violations that undermines the community’s ability to protect its land, water, and cultural survival, eroding Lenca territorial rights to prevent the conditions necessary for any meaningful Indigenous Resource Management system to exist.
6. Lenca Community Governance and Organizational Landscape
The Lenca possess their own community-based organizational structures and institutional capacity. The organizations created by Lenca communities support agriculture, human rights, sustainable development, education, spirituality, and territorial defense. If the State were to recognize a Lenca IRM system, it would set an important precedent, as the social and organizational foundation for such a system already exists. The absence of IRM is therefore not the result of cultural or organizational deficiencies, but of the State’s structural and political exclusion.
6.1 Regional Lenca Organizations for Territorial and Cultural Defense
6.1.1 ADROH: Association for the Western Development of Honduras (Asociación para el Desarrollo Occidental de Honduras).
ADROH has a presence throughout the entire Lenca region and was organized in the three departments of Lenca descent: Lempira, Intibucá, and La Paz. Religion forms the center of its social and cultural life. The organization began at the Basilica of Suyapa, with an inaugural Eucharistic celebration led by the bishop in 1989. ADROH is a civil organization grounded in the principles of the Church’s social doctrine.
It is composed of men and women who are rural producers. Its areas of work include advocacy and citizen participation, institutional strengthening, gender and youth, natural resources and the environment, social and economic development, and sustainability.
6.1.2 ONILH: National Indigenous Lenca Organization of Honduras (Organización Nacional Indígena Lenca de Honduras).
ONILH’s objective is to ensure strict compliance with the rights and cultural and spiritual heritage of the Lenca Indigenous population. It is present in 68 municipalities across Honduras and supports Lenca communities in environmental projects, while highlighting the central role of women.
6.1.3 CNTC: National Center of Rural Workers (La Central Nacional de Trabajadores del Campo).
CNTC is a grassroots, representative organization. Its goals are to organize landless peasants and smallholders, defend human rights, especially of the most dispossessed—promote the incorporation of women, and recognize their rights as fundamental to national development.
6.2 Women's Leadership and Economic Autonomy
6.2.1 COMUCAP: Lenca Peasant Women of La Paz (Mujeres Campesinas Lencas de La Paz).
COMUCAP was founded in 1993 with the aim of strengthening the capacities of Lenca women, reinforcing their identity, their rights, and the development of economic independence. It includes 256 Lenca families organized into 16 groups across the municipalities of Marcala, Chinacla, Santa Elena, and Yarula.
They carry out literacy programs for group members who do not know how to read, conduct training workshops, and promote women’s rights. COMUCAP participated in the Biofach Fair in Nuremberg, Germany, where they exhibited ecological products. They sell their products in Honduran cities such as Tegucigalpa, Comayagua, Marcala, and San Pedro Sula, and internationally in Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, El Salvador, and Taiwan.
6.3 SEFCA: Faith-Based and Ecumenical Support Networks (Organización de Servicios Ecuménicos de Formación Cristiana).
SEFCA provides biblical-theological formation to Lenca communities. Its work includes youth training, sustainable agriculture, and community motivation to establish home gardens—especially the cultivation of plants used for natural medicine and fruit-bearing species.
6.4 Political and Territorial Defense Movements
6.4.1 COPINH: Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras).
COPINH is a nonprofit social and political organization that is Indigenous, pluralistic, supportive, and unified. It serves as a platform that facilitates the reivindication and recognition of political, social, cultural, and economic rights, promoting improvements in the living conditions of Indigenous peoples and communities. It is also a space that generates ongoing debate and analysis of regional and national contexts and promotes collective actions and proposals.
Its relationship with the State and the power elite is tense and confrontational, rooted in consistent denunciation. COPINH has challenged policies such as the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), Plan Colombia, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), asserting that transnational corporations have engaged in harmful and unjust practices.
For COPINH, Indigenous peoples must participate in national decision-making processes, must be consulted, and must be taken into account, as established by international agreements. The Inter-American Democratic Charter, Article 9, affirms “the elimination of all forms of discrimination, especially gender, ethnic, and racial discrimination, and diverse forms of intolerance, as well as the promotion of Indigenous peoples and migrants and the respect for ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in the Americas.”
For COPINH, culture is the valuing of ancestral practices; culture is communal and popular, expressed in rituals such as composturas to the earth, the rain, and the milpa, in the celebration of the Guancasco, and in the practice of natural medicine. COPINH seeks to recover Lenca culture, protect nature, and defend natural resources. For this reason, they reject genetically modified foods, which they view as a threat to autonomy, and they advocate for the preservation of native seeds and sustainable agriculture as part of their ancestral heritage (Núñez 2014: 82–96).
This research examines how the state institutions justify Hydroelectric expansion under the discourse of national development. Yet, the cases presented from La Paz, Intibucá, and Lempira demonstrate that these projects are extractive, exclusionary, and a form of colonial territorial control. Lenca people are organized in community organizations; however, there is a lack of indigenous resource management, and people are undermined and criminalized.
7. Discussion
This analysis has allowed us to examine the historical and cultural background of the Lenca People; it offers a window into the colonial past and provides context for the situations they faced. Since colonial times, they have been resisting and fighting to be in their land. The Lenca community has a discriminatory and violent past: “they share a common history of discrimination, live in social, ecological, and geographic conditions of marginalization, and frequently carry the frustrations generated by development projects” (Flores Mejía et al. 2009, 99). It is important to know the past to understand the present. If people are unaware of the historical experiences the Lenca have endured, it is hard to understand why they continue to defend their territory and natural resources.
Also, this research has illustrated the absence of Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) among the Lenca people in Honduras, in the departments of La Paz, Intibuca, and Lempira. There needs to be legal recognition and respect from the Honduran state institutions. In regions such as the Pacific Northwest of the United States, Makah and Nisqually are examples of Indigenous peoples who have developed governance institutions that intentionally protect the nonhuman world and, despite all the challenges that they also endured, although not without limitations, are increasingly integrated into co-management arrangements with the state (Atlas et al. 2021, 190). The information presented supports the argument that the Lenca people from Honduras lack a formal Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) system, not because they lack community organizations or a lack of cultural identity, but because there is an ontological clash, the state exercises structural violence and violates their right to manage their own territories and development projects.
The Lenca people of Honduras have a system rooted in reciprocity with Santa Tierra. They view rivers as living beings. The conceptual frameworks of Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) align with practices such as the composturas, the Guancasco, the figure of the nagual, the romerías, and the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés, these practices express a relational ontology in which the earth, water, mountains, and spiritual beings form part of a shared world. For Lenca, Santa Tierra is the source of water, rain, harvests, and life itself. In return, humans are expected to use the land without disrupting it, since the territory is understood as home rather than as a resource to be exploited. Causing harm to the land is believed to result in spiritual or material consequences.
This idea resonates with the scholars Pierotti and Wildcat argue: that “all things are connected, and all things are related,” and that Indigenous peoples do not conceive of nature as wilderness but as home (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000, 1336). This system is ignored by the Honduran state, which views rivers as commodities that can be concessioned and extracted, and approves hydroelectric projects. The issue is not only legal or administrative issues, but also ontological; this reflects two incompatible ways to understand what a river is and what it means to care for it. This ontological clash undermines the recognition and development of Indigenous Resource Management, as the Lenca understand rivers as living beings, while the state treats them as commodities.
The Honduran State creates structural violence because it promotes the conditions for concessions to be granted without consulting Lencas communities, despite international obligations such as ILO Convention 169. The State reduces what Lenca communities could achieve under fair conditions.
Second, the findings confirm that the absence of a recognized Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) system is directly linked to forms of structural and state violence. Structural violence is defined as “the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual” (Galtung 1969, 168). In this research, this violence is documented through the study conducted by CEHPRODEC, which shows how state institutions fail to recognize Lenca communal land titles, how complaint mechanisms are ineffective, and how laws are manipulated or selectively applied. At the same time, the state ignores communal consultations at the municipal level, while Congress approves hydroelectric concessions without hearing the communities that are directly affected.
The hydroelectric projects in La Paz illustrate how the lack of free, prior, and informed consultation, together with land title irregularities, reduces the “potential” of Lenca communities to self-govern their territories and protect their rivers. When communities are not consulted, they are placed at risk, because the opportunity to participate in decision-making is denied. If communities were genuinely taken into consideration, even sustainable projects could be developed in ways that allow local communities to benefit and strengthen their own forms of governance.
In addition, the Honduran state exercises state violence through the criminalization of Indigenous leaders, violent evictions, and the assassination of environmental defenders such as Berta Cáceres, Luis Alonso Teruel Vega, Juan López, and countless other victims. These practices create conditions under which Indigenous governance cannot be fully exercised, reinforcing the systematic exclusion of the Lenca from managing their own territories.
This work demonstrates that the Lenca people have the institutional capacity to sustain their own environmental management system, as evidenced by the organizations operating across their territories. Organizations such as ADROH, ONILH, CNTC, COMUCAP, SEFCA, MILPAH, and COPINH, together with community organizations like the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta, provide evidence of community organization and decision-making. They are willing to protect their territory, support women’s leadership, ecumenical support, and regional political efforts. In other words, the elements that in other contexts are recognized as the pillars of an Indigenous Resource Management (IRM) system, strong local institutions, traditional ecological knowledge, and mechanisms for community participation are present among the Lenca, even when they have not been supported in the way they should be.
There is no lack of Indigenous capacity, but the legal and political system in the hands of the Honduran state should recognize and respect the Lenca people; their rights continue to be ignored and violated. This situation reflects a pattern of colonialism: the Lenca people are not able to achieve a dignified quality of life, they have to be fighting with the state to develop their own projects and have an indigenous resource management. These rights are recognize in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Honduras adopted; therefore, the state is obligated to guarantee free, prior, and informed consultation in projects that affect Lenca people or other Indigenous peoples in Honduras (United Nations 2007, art. 32). However, it is not enough to recognize these rights on paper or within the Constitution, they must also be implemented in practice. Many state institutions remain unaware of Indigenous rights, and it is unacceptable that in the twenty-first century, after more than two hundred years of independence, the Lenca people continue to struggle with the rights they have.
This analysis is important for environmental justice in Honduras. The hydroelectric projects in Lenca territories reproduce patterns of dispossession and inequality that are characteristic of extractivism: benefits are concentrated among private companies and political elites, while the environmental, social, and spiritual costs are carried by Indigenous communities. How can we expect ordinary Honduran citizens to respect the rights of Indigenous groups when the Honduran state itself is the perpetrator, using its own institutions to inflict harm upon them? If the Honduran state recognizes that the Lenca IRM system would represent a step to fulfill instruments such as ILO Convention 169, but it would also offer an opportunity to strengthen environmental governance.
To conclude, this study presents limitations. The research relies primarily on ethnographic literature, human rights reports, and prior studies on agrarian conflict, which highlights the need for updated fieldwork in specific communities, especially after Berta Cáceres’s and other local leaders' assassination, and the recent political changes in Honduras. Future research could deepen the analysis of Lenca women’s experiences in territorial defense or local efforts toward cultural revitalization, and the real possibilities for establishing co-management agreements between state institutions and Indigenous organizations that arise from the Lenca worldview, from their rights as an Indigenous people, and from their own proposals for how their territory should be cared for.
8. Conclusion
This research examined the reasons for the absence of a recognized Indigenous Resource Management in the Lenca people in Honduras. This lack cannot be attributed to a lack of knowledge, organization, or cultural identity. Rather, it results from historical processes of dispossession, institutional exclusion, and the persistence of colonial relations that limit the full exercise of Indigenous governance.
The Lenca people possess a system of values and practices rooted in reciprocity with Santa Tierra. Rituals such as composturas, the Guancasco, the figure of the nagual, romerías, and the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta de Moisés reflect a worldview rooted in relationships among land, water, mountains, and spiritual beings. These practices are social and moral mechanisms that exemplify how they care about their territory and the relationship between human beings and their environment. From this perspective, territory is not conceived as an exploitable resource but as the home that sustains life.
However, this ontological framework comes into direct conflict with the extractivist development model promoted by the Honduran state, which conceives rivers and land as commodities that can be granted in concession. This research illustrates the clash that exists between two incompatible ways of understanding nature and development. The hydroelectric projects approved without free, prior, and informed consultation reveal this clash that erodes the spiritual and social foundations of Lenca community life.
The analysis also shows how the state produces structural and state violence by restricting the real possibilities of Lenca communities to manage their territories. The indigenous resource management is blocked when there is no legal recognition of community lands, the criminalization of Indigenous leaders, the militarization of territories when people try to protect their lands, and the worst, the assassination of environmental defenders constitute constitute not only structural violence but also state violence.
Despite these limitations, the Lenca people demonstrate strong organizational and institutional capacity. Community, regional, and national organizations such as ADROH, ONILH, CNTC, COMUCAP, SEFCA, COPINH, and the Alcaldía de la Vara Alta itself are examples of leadership, decision-making, and territorial defense. The fundamental elements of an Indigenous Resource Management system, traditional ecological knowledge, local institutions, and community participation, are present. What is lacking is not Indigenous capacity, but the political will of the state to recognize and strengthen these systems.
In this sense, the situation of the Lenca people reflects a continuity of colonialism in Honduras. Although the state has ratified international instruments such as ILO Convention 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there is no implementation. Indigenous people have the right to free, prior, and informed consultation is not only a legal obligation, but also a necessary step toward environmental justice and historical reparation for the Lenca people in Honduras, as well as for other Indigenous groups settled in Honduran territory.
This study has limitations, as it relies primarily on ethnographic literature and human rights reports. Future research could analyze these issues through updated fieldwork, examine the experiences of Lenca women in defending their territory, explore processes of cultural revitalization, and develop concrete possibilities for establishing management or co-management by the state, third parties, and Indigenous organizations. Such approaches would strengthen debates on environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and alternative models of development in Honduras and Central America.
References
Annett, Cynthia. 2001. “Another View of the River.” Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley 2: 7–19.
Chapman, Anne. 1985. Los hijos del copal y la candela. Serie Antropológica 64. México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas.
Chris. 2025. “State Violence.” Collective Threads. August 27.
https://collectivethreads.org/glossary/glossary/definition/state-violence/.
Everly, Jillian. 2024. “Why Indigenous-Led Management Is Integral to Reconciliation and Restoration Efforts.” The Revelator, October 15.
https://therevelator.org/transformative-conservation/.
Flores Mejía, Lázaro Heliodoro, Andoni Castillo, Jorge Alberto Amaya Banegas, and Sandra Zerón. 2009. Sistemas matemáticos, ciencias, tecnologías y el entorno ambiental y cultural del Pueblo Lenca de Honduras: un estudio desde el enfoque émico y cultural de los pueblos. Primera edición. Secretaría de Educación, Programa de Educación Intercultural Multilingüe de Centroamérica (PROEIMCA).
Front Line Defenders. n.d. “Case History: Tomas García.” Accessed September 23, 2025.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-tomas-garcia.
FSC-IF (FSC Indigenous Foundation). 2024. “We Are Lenca Women.” November 22.
https://www.fscindigenousfoundation.org/we-are-lenca-women/.
Galtung, Johan. 1969. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6 (3): 167–91.
Goldman Environmental Prize. 2022. “Berta Cáceres.” March 18.
https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/.
Heffernan, Trova, University of Washington Press, Washington State Heritage Center, and Legacy Project. 2012. Where the Salmon Run: The Life and Legacy of Billy Frank Jr. Olympia, WA: Washington State Heritage Center Legacy Project; Seattle: University of Washington Press.
“Honduras.” n.d. United States Department of State. Accessed November 11, 2025.
https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/honduras/.
“Honduras | Culture, Facts & Travel.” n.d. CountryReports. Accessed September 22, 2025.
https://www.countryreports.org/country/Honduras.htm.
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Meza Palma, Oscar, and José M. Díaz-Puente. 2024. “Integration of Indigenous People into Sustainable Development through the Territorial Analysis of Their Potential: The Case of the Lenca People in Honduras.” Land Use Policy 137 (February): 106993.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106993.
New York Times (en español). 2016. “Berta Cáceres, líder indígena y ambientalista, asesinada en Honduras.” March 3.
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2016/03/03/espanol/america-latina/berta-caceres-lider-indigena-y-ambientalista-asesinada-en-honduras.html.
New York Times (en español). 2017. “Los herederos de Berta Cáceres.” July 2.
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/07/02/espanol/america-latina/los-herederos-de-berta-caceres.html.
Núñez Carranza, Lucio. 2014. Los Lencas y el cambio social en Honduras. Primera edición. Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria.
Ochoa Moreno, Donaldo, et al. 2003. Estudio diagnóstico sobre la situación de la tenencia de la tierra de los pueblos indígenas y garífuna. Honduras: Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos; Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).
Pierotti, Raymond, and Daniel Wildcat. 2000. “Traditional Ecological Knowledge: The Third Alternative (Commentary).” Ecological Applications 10 (5): 1333–40.
https://doi.org/10.1890/1051-0761(2000)010[1333:TEKTTA]2.0.CO;2.
Project, Joshua. n.d. “Lenca in Honduras.” Accessed September 22, 2025.
https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/13034/HO.
Riofrancos, Thea. 2020. “Extractivism and Extractivismo.” Global South Studies. November 11.
Trócaire, Centro Hondureño de Promoción para el Desarrollo Comunitario (CEHPRODEC), Comité de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH), and Centro de Estudios de la Mujer–Honduras (CEM-H). 2018. Sistematización de la experiencia y buenas prácticas del proyecto mejorando el acceso a la justicia de la población lenca del departamento de La Paz. Honduras.
United Nations. 2007. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New York: United Nations.