Three LGBTQ2S+ Hondurans were murdered on the same day. Advocates want justice

A spate of anti-LGBTQ2S+ killings in Honduras this month has resulted in the murder of two gay men and one trans youth on the same day. 

Jonathan Gabriel Martínez and his partner, César Gustavo Zúñiga, were killed on Feb. 2 in San Pedro Sula, a city in the north of Honduras, according to the local news publication Reportar Sin Miedo. The two were reportedly shot to death in Martínez’s liquor store by several men dressed as police officers. Another customer was also killed in the incident, according to reports. 

On the same night in the city of Comayagua, 18-year-old Daniel Fernando Martínez was shot to death outside his home. Martinez sustained more than 10 gun wounds in the fatal incident and a rock was thrown at his head, according to reporting from La Prensa and Facebook posts by his mother. 

While news reports referred to Martínez with a different name and pronouns, local advocates confirmed in an email to Xtra that he was trans.

A service was held on Feb. 4 in Martínez’s honour, and friends and family took to Facebook to mourn him. “It hurts so much,” his mother wrote. “I’m glad to know that you were loved by so many people. You will always live in my heart and in my soul. I loved you just the way you were.”

His mother noted that Martínez had tried to immigrate to the U.S. years before but that he had been deported once he reached Mexico because he was a minor at the time. According to her posts, he was set to celebrate his 19th birthday next month.

In response to the attacks, the Honduras branch of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern about the prevalent “attacks, threats and hostility that LGBTI people face” in Honduras. “The Honduran state should guarantee truth, justice and reparacion for these crimes, and make sure they don’t happen again,” the organization wrote in a Feb. 3 Twitter thread.

Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ2S+ people in Latin America, as reported by Reportar Sin Miedo. According to Cattrachas, an human rights organization based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa that monitors violence against LGBTQ2S+ people, five queer Hondurans have been murdered in February alone. Since 2009, 405 LGBTQ2S+ people have been killed in the country, according to the organization’s data.

“Discrimination kills,” Cattrachas posted on Twitter. “We need protection. Our lives are at risk.”

Among this year’s victims was 45-year-old trans activist Thalía Rodríguez, who was killed in Tegucigalpa earlier this year. She was shot in the head at her home, according to Reportar sin Miedo. Her death marked the first violent killing of an LGBTQ2S+ person in Honduras in 2022. 

As an activist, Rodríguez was well known in the local LGBTQ2S+ community, with which she had been working for years.

Activists have been demanding action and accountability from the Honduras government since the 2009 murder of Vicky Hernández, another well-known trans activist who was shot to death by law enforcement. Last year, an international human rights court ordered the country to reopen its investigation into the killing and pay reparations to her family, as well as begin tracking data on violence against LGBTQ2S+ people. 

In addition to street violence, LGBTQ2S+ Hondurans face a hostile political and legal climate. While the country includes sexual orientation and gender identity in its discrimination protections, same-sex marriage is banned, and last year lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment that would make it nearly impossible to overturn the country’s bans on marriage equality and abortion.