The Hidden Connection between a US Steel Company and the Controversial Los Pinares Mine in Honduras
Publisher: Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism
Author(s): Jennifer Ávila and Danielle Mackey
Date: 2021
Topics: Extractive Resources, Governance
Countries: Honduras, United States
Discreetly and without public announcement, the largest steel producer in the United States, the Nucor Corporation, spent at least four years associated with an iron mine in Honduras under fire for its presumed persecution of social leaders who are protesting the ecological damage the mine may cause in protected land, according to documents obtained through a cross-border journalism collaboration between Contracorriente, the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) and Univision Investiga.
Nucor, a publicly traded company coddled by President Donald Trump, partnered in 2015 with the prominent Honduran businessman Lenir Pérez and his wife Ana Isabel Facussé, owners of Inversiones Los Pinares — a company that is waging battle against the residents of a town called Guapinol, who oppose the company’s planned mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park, in the northern part of this Central American nation. The conflict has left a wake of people dead, injured and imprisoned.