Five LGBTIQ+ people under threat after racist and hate speech by a mayor in Honduras
Threats, persecution and smear campaigns after the statements of the mayor of San Pedro Sula.
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SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras. Amidst police cordons, approximately fifty members of the LGBTQ+ and Afro-descendant communities held a protest on Friday, April 14, in front of the San Pedro Sula City Hall in northern Honduras. Their objective was to denounce the racist and discriminatory attitude of Roberto Contreras, mayor of this city considered the most industrialized and wealthiest in the country. The groups' outrage stems from Contreras's hateful speech against sexual diversity and the Afro-descendant population on April 12 in the city's central park.
“I would rather carry this Garifuna flag a hundred thousand times than a rainbow flag. I feel good among my beautiful Black people at Power Chicken,” Contreras said that day. The mayor came to power after running as a candidate for the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre). In addition to being a public official, Contreras owns the thriving Power Chicken , where he employs Afro-Colombian people.
Due to the seriousness of the situation, Javier Carrington, director of the Iguales Association , appeared on April 13 at the offices of the National Commissioner of Human Rights to file a complaint against Contreras for his “hate speech and discrimination”.
Between intimidation and police cordons
Under the sweltering heat typical of this time of year, the group of protesters waved LGBTQ+ and Garifuna pride flags at the bottom of the flagpoles in the middle of Central Park, across from City Hall. They did so because the police prevented them from placing them at the top.
The groups stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the municipal building, carrying the rainbow flag, the trans flag, the bisexual flag, the lesbian flag, and the inclusive flag. They had come to the location to protest what they consider an attack by the mayor against the most vulnerable populations in the country.
Although the protest was entirely peaceful, the police deployed a cordon of at least 20 officers. They spread out across the area and positioned themselves in front of the building's doors to block the entrance. Their actions were considered intimidating by the Sula Valley LGBTIQ+ Committee, headed by its president, Osman Lara.
“These are orders from Roberto Contreras, who does not allow peaceful demonstrations and will never allow the raising of an LGBTQ+ flag. We requested permission, and he denied it,” Lara . She also emphasized that there weren't so many officers guarding the area at other demonstrations.
This swift police action prompted criticism from the Committee. Its members described it as an intimidating measure intended to prevent them from carrying out their peaceful protest.
A permanent attack
This is not the first time Contreras has attacked sexual dissidents in Honduras. On May 17, 2022, he refused to raise the pride flag. He argued that he “did not want enemies like the Church or any other sector that might speak out against his government .
“We do not enjoy a secular state. We have been dealing with this for years. The Church has always been involved in the people's decisions,” said Osman Lara, president of the LGBTIQ+ Committee of the Sula Valley, at the time.
The negative experience between the mayor and the diverse communities was repeated on Friday the 14th. Police once again prevented the groups from raising the rainbow flag. Alexa Solórzano, governor of the department of Cortés, where San Pedro Sula is located, attended the protest.
“ We were not elected to generate hatred. Indigenous peoples and the Garifuna community are also diverse, and therefore their rights must be respected. Even if he (Roberto Contreras) doesn't agree, he has to respect them. His messages cannot incite hatred, and it is precisely this diversity that has placed him in a position of power. The mayor's thinking is not the same as the president's.”
Contreras belongs to Libre, the same party as the current president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. Meanwhile, Human Rights Secretary Nathalie Roque wrote on her social media accounts regarding the mayor's speech that freedom of opinion "has limits."
“Freedom of expression and opinion has limits, and discriminatory speech is punishable in Honduras. The offense is aggravated when the act is committed by a public official in the exercise of their duties. Advisory Opinion 24/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights states that the violation of the right to equality of LGBTI people occurs as a consequence of discriminatory speech, which causes homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia.”
Once again they are preventing the flag from being raised
After the sit-in in front of the municipal building, the groups headed to the area where the flagpoles are located in the central park of San Pedro Sula.
Their goal was to raise the rainbow, trans, bisexual, and inclusive flags. However, once again, the municipal police reacted with unprecedented speed and prevented the groups from raising their symbols to fly them in the city's sky.
This is the second time authorities have violently prevented diverse communities from using public spaces to display their flags. The police action on Friday, April 14, echoes what happened nearly a year ago, when Mayor Roberto Contreras also prevented these groups from waving their flags.
Next, LGBTQ+ MP Víctor Grajeda asked the police to let the groups raise the flags.
Following the deputy's request, a one-minute confrontation erupted between police and members of the groups. The officers remained determined to prevent the public from using the public space.
Finally, after further discussion, the police allowed the groups to raise the flags to the lowest part of the flagpoles located in the heart of the central park.
After raising the flags to a quarter of their height, LGBTQ+ people gave speeches condemning Mayor Contreras's actions. They also reported that several members of the LGBTQ+ community have received threats and suffered violence following the mayor's remarks.
Threats and bots
Victor Grajeda, the first openly gay member of the Honduran National Congress, wrote on Twitter that he had received a threat from an account on the same social network where a man appeared with an AK-47 saying: “We are ready to exterminate all these assholes.”
“We publicly declare that we will hold Roberto Contreras responsible for any death, crime, or violence against LGBTIQ+ people for issuing these hate speeches .” Furthermore, Vienna Ávila, director of the Trans Feminist Association (AFET) , indicated that several trans women had received threats because of these speeches.
Reportar sin Miedo documented at least 100 accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook created by bots or managed by fake profiles. All of them sought to influence public opinion in favor of Mayor Roberto Contreras. Many of these accounts have very few followers, use fake or AI-generated photos, and are recently created.
Javier Carrington asked Josué Cover, communications director for Mayor Roberto Contreras, to stop being “a participant in these humiliations and human rights violations because whenever we are in a public place he advises the mayor to make us invisible.”
Four cases of persecution
Reporting Without Fear documented at least four cases of people who, after participating in the sit-in, suffered physical persecution, harassment, intimidation, and direct threats against their lives by groups that call themselves "the largest organizations in Honduras."
At the same time, Reportar sin Miedo has suffered a digital campaign against members of its team. Additionally, several hackers have attempted to access our social media accounts through deceptive links and other tactics that threaten freedom of expression and of the press.
Roberto Contreras' supporters justify their mayor's hate speech and racism based on freedom of expression.
Diverse voices
For Jensy Ávila, a member of the Diversity in Resistance Movement (MDR) , Roberto Contreras's rhetoric is a tool used to undermine other minorities. Because of this, women continue to be exploited; "we will continue fighting for our rights."
Gabriela Rendondo, director of the Pink Unity Collective , took the opportunity to remind the Honduran state to comply with Vicky Hernández's sentence. "We will not allow hate speech against our communities; we will continue fighting for a gender identity law."
LGBTIQ+ groups from Ofraneh also condemned the speech by Roberto Contreras, mayor of San Pedro Sula.
“We request that all national and international human rights entities and President Xiomara Castro demand a public apology from Roberto Contreras and that the current regulatory framework for the protection of LGBTI people contained in the current penal code, Article 321, which defines the crime of discrimination, be applied to him.”
On the other hand, German Aguirre, a young Afro-descendant LGBTQ+ man, expressed that Contreras's speech offended and violated him. “Garifuna culture is not only needed for politics or to spread hate speech. Currently, the Garifuna LGBTQ+ community is made invisible by the country's political authorities.”
They demand that hate not be normalized.
Rony Castillo an academic, international advisor to OFRANEH, and advocate for the rights of Garifuna people, Roberto Contreras's words are "racist" and express hatred toward the LGBTIQ+ community. "It is dangerous to normalize racist hate speech because it perverts the very act of thinking," he wrote on Twitter.
Castillo has a doctorate in Administrative Sciences in Honduras and another from the University of Texas, United States, in education, sociolinguistics and indigeneity and blackness.
Meanwhile, O'Bryan Robinson, of the Trans Black People of Honduras , said that there are institutional racist practices in the Honduran state. Contreras's words, Obrayan pointed out, are a clear example of what officials do in public and in private.
For him, the San Pedro Sula mayor's rhetoric isn't just directed against LGBTQ+ people. It's also directed against Afro-Honduran communities. “His words, 'I feel good among my beautiful Black people at Power Chicken,' can be interpreted as meaning that the people who work for the organization he leads are 'his property.' It places them in a subordinate position,” O'Bryan explained.
According to the activist, Mayor Contreras's remarks are reminiscent of the slave-owning past of millions of Afro-descendants, whose ancestors came to the Americas as slaves from Africa. "His second word is 'beautiful,' which I would interpret as meaning that Blackness continues to be an object of exoticism," O'Bryan pointed out.
Furthermore, “it’s clear how racism manifests itself in the authorities of our country,” she stated. Contreras “expressed what happens daily to Black people in Honduras. I can’t say I’m surprised because we know that many of our authorities are racist and LGBTQ+ hateful.”
In an interview with Reportar sin Miedo, Josué Cover expressed his regret over Carrington's statements. He emphasized that Roberto Contreras is the only public relations officer for the Municipality of San Pedro Sula.
When asked if the mayor's budget is used to pay for digital campaigns against his adversaries, he flatly denied it. "We have a budget of nine million a year, and it's distributed among payroll, social campaigns, and publications such as tenders and the tax plan."
“Contreras used the flag of one population that had suffered violence to inflict violence on another.”
According to human rights defender Massay Crisanto, Mayor Contreras is engaging in hate speech because he is using the flag of the Garifuna people who face human rights violations.
Crisanto asserts that Garifuna people suffer violence from the moment they are Black in a state that is structurally and systemically racist. “Roberto Contreras used the flag of a historically oppressed population to perpetrate violence against another, knowing that there are LGBTQ+ people within the Garifuna community,” Crisanto said.
The activist emphasized that Contreras is exercising violence from his position as an official, from the fact that, being a white person, a professional and an official, he says "my blacks in my restaurants" because from there he is exercising a violent and racist discourse.
Another reason mentioned by the activist is that the mayor of San Pedro Sula's discourse reflects an adult-centric perspective, reflecting an outdated conservative approach. There is also a need to examine how the population is voting for this type of person and under what criteria.
“We must not forget that within the Garifuna community there are groups and organizations that work for LGBTQI+ rights,” Crisanto concluded.
*This article was published in Reportar sin miedo and is reproduced through an alliance with Agencia Presentes .
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