Few Hondurans could believe the morning headlines on May 12, heralding the arrest of Adán Fúnez, the former Libre Party mayor of Tocoa. He had finally been arrested for the murder of Juan López. Then another arrest. And another. In total, three men were taken into custody, joining three other men already arrested for their alleged role in the crime.
A devout Catholic, human rights activist and Tocoa city councillor, López had been assassinated by a lone gunman the evening of Sept. 14, 2024, outside Saint Anthony of Padua Church where López had just led the liturgy.
Bishop Jenry Ruiz of the Diocese of Trujillo applauded the arrest of Mr. Fúnez as “an important step in the process of justice for our brother, Delegate of the Word of God, Juan Antonio López.”
But he cautioned that Honduran prosecutors faced a major responsibility “to identify the intermediaries and masterminds behind a larger network of corruption and organized crime that involves the mining and political sectors.”
Ismael Moreno, S.J., was one of only three observers in the courtroom when the judge arraigned the new defendants. He spoke to reporters at the courthouse.
“The murder of our beloved Juan López is part of an extremely serious conspiracy with far-reaching ramifications,” he said. “It involves a group that acted as masterminds and paid the hitmen.”
Padre Melo, as he is known in Honduras, is a long-time social justice advocate in Honduras. Like Bishop Ruiz and Carlos Orellana, S.J., pastor of the San Isidro Labrador Church, Padre Melo has been threatened and harassed because of his demand for justice in López’s assassination.
“Without a doubt, it’s good news that Adán Fúnez has been arrested. He is a key figure in uncovering the truth about Juan’s murder,” Joaquin Mejia, a member of the Reflection, Communication and Research Team, known as ERIC-SJ, in Honduras, told America. “But we can’t be naive and think this is solely about [seeking] justice.”
In what some politicians described as meddling in Honduran affairs, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed National Party candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura in the presidential election in November, threatening to cut off foreign aid to Honduras if Mr. Asfura’s rival, Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, was elected. He also pardoned former National Party leader and former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been serving a 45-year federal prison sentence in the United States on drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy convictions.
Mr. Trump’s support led to a sudden reversal in Mr. Asfura’s standing. He was elected on Dec. 24. A shake-up in the Honduran justice system has followed his inauguration in January. Mr. Mejia says that before then, Mr. Fúnez may have been protected by high-ranking officials from the Liberal Party in government who turned a blind eye to the former mayor’s role in the socio-environmental conflict in Tocoa.
Mr. Mejia wonders if the arrest of Mr. Fúnez could be more about recrimination against an opposing political party than justice for Juan López. He warns that “political manipulation” in the case by the country’s elite remains a strong possibility.
But that’s only part of the problem.
“The major risk is that [a prosecution of] Adán Fúnez will be used to protect another person allegedly linked to Juan’s murder, namely the powerful business executive Lenir Perez,” he says.
Mr. Perez and his wife Ana Facusse are behind a highly contested open-pit iron-oxide mine and petcoke-powered thermoelectric project in and around the Carlos Escaleras National Park. Before his murder, López—both in his role as a Tocoa city councillor and as the coordinator of the Municipal Committee for the Defence of the Common and Public Good of Tocoa—took the lead in opposing the development.
His defiance had consequences. In 2018, one of Mr. Perez and Ms. Facusse’s companies, Los Pinares, filed criminal charges against López and 31 community members in an attempt to squash their opposition. Eight of the people arrested spent almost three years in pre-trial detention before finally being released.
Since then, three other water defenders from the Municipal Committee have been killed, and the tension between the company and community has heightened. But the local people have also won some hard-fought battles, including the passage of a historic law to protect the Honduran environment from mining.
The tension between López and Mr. Fúnez leading up to his assassination had been no secret. López devoted years to the committee. He eventually opted to become involved directly in municipal politics and in 2022 campaigned against Mr. Fúnez for mayor. Though he did not win in the primaries, his vote tally was high enough to earn him a place on the Tocoa council.
In this new civic role, López worked tirelessly to end corruption in city hall, investigating misappropriation of funds and administrative irregularities that allowed Mr. Perez and his wife to proceed with mining projects in Tocoa.
During his funeral service, Father Orellana called López a rock in Mr. Fúnez’s shoe. “This is premeditated murder…. We know that hired hitmen killed him. But in this case, the church blames Mr. Adán Fúnez and his henchmen who have cowardly taken [López’s] life.”
Father Orellana’s words catalyzed a call for justice for López across the country, and Bishop Ruiz brought the news of López’s murder directly to Pope Francis. After Francis publicly mourned his death, Catholics around the world began to mobilize.
Church leaders in Rome and Latin America launched a campaign, “Life Hangs by a Thread,” demanding justice for López and drawing attention to the risk faced by human rights activists and defenders of the earth and Indigenous people in the Americas.
That call for justice seemed more like a noble hope than a real possibility in a country plagued by impunity and named one of the deadliest in the world for environmental activists. But the local church has pressed on. To mark the one-year anniversary of Mr. López’s death, the Honduran bishops’ conference inaugurated the Juan López Award last September.
The day following that announcement, hundreds of Catholics from across Honduras and Central America marched in the streets of Tegucigalpa to the Basilica of Our Lady of Suyapa. Mr. López’s family carried the blood-stained shirt he was wearing at the time of his slaying and a cross made from the windshield shattered by the bullets that took his life. The Mass at the basilica was both an expression of faith and a resounding call for action.
Eight months later, Mr. Fúnez, along with Hector Mendez and Juan Angel Ramos, were taken by helicopter accompanied by heavily armed police from Tocoa to La Ceiba, where they heard the charges against them.
Though Mr. Perez has not been charged in relation to the López murder, in October 2024, he was charged, along with 12 others, with illegal resource extraction and aggravated damages that resulted from mining in the national park. For more than 14 months, Mr. Perez avoided prosecution by remaining at his family residence in Palm Beach. But after the change in government, his lawyers negotiated the executive’s voluntary return.
He made his first court appearance in March. Mr. Perez pleaded not guilty and was released on a $300,000 bond. His indictment hearing has been postponed three times, and at this time there is no date scheduled for a new hearing.
“This powerful businessman has enormous influence and can benefit from preferential treatment from any type of government, regardless of its political affiliation,” Mr. Mejia says.
With Mr. Fúnez in detention and Mr. Perez facing a possible indictment, there is a heightened interest in the case and the trial of the gunmen, now postponed by prosecutors until January 2027. Concerns have been raised about the safety of the members of the Indigenous and ecological committee López had served with and the members of his family and their attorneys, especially after escalating violence and threats against rural communities since the National Party took office.
On May 22, two massacres in the Bajo Aguán region of northern Honduras claimed the lives of 20 people; on June 3, the Honduran Congress approved a pro-corporate agriculture law that, according to the United Nations, could “deepen the criminalization of social conflicts,” so that more activists and eco-defenders could be targeted by government.
There is also uncertainty about how a Honduran Supreme Court ruling on June 4 could reduce the new regulatory reach of a mining and environmental protection law that López and others fought so hard to win.
Whether the investigations will ultimately lead to the criminal prosecution of all the powerful figures behind the murder of López and the ecological damage to the Carlos Escaleras National Park remains unclear. For now, the church and activists like Padre Melo remain committed to seeking truth and justice for Juan López.
“This is a starting point that gives hope to those of us following this closely,” Padre Melo said. “I feel satisfied. But the call to action is crystal clear—to keep standing [for Juan] and demanding justice.”
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