In 1998, ASJ-Honduras (formerly known as AJS-Honduras) was founded by a group of Honduran and North American friends dedicated to doing justice in Honduras. Since the beginning, we have focused our justice work on Honduran communities that are often overlooked.

In the 1990s, one of those communities was Vallecito (also known as Ruguma). Ruguma is a historic Garifuna community, home to some 169 families of the Afro-indigenous group that has dwelt, fished, and planted on Honduras’ northern coast for over two centuries. Thanks to an international agreement regarding indigenous people’s rights, the Ruguma community owned a full title for 150 acres of land, on which they planted rice, plantains, and yams.

Their land title seemed meaningless when, in 1995, armed men from a business invaded a quarter of Ruguma’s land, burning homes and bulldozing $13,000 worth of crops. The business belonged to one of the richest men in Honduras, who also happened to be the uncle of the president at the time. The people of Ruguma immediately protested this injustice but were met with violence and criminal charges, putting the community’s future in danger.