Morazanist Patriotic Front

A Honduran terrorist group, the Morazanist Patriotic Front (FPM), now largely inactive, attacked U.S. military targets in Honduras several times during the early 1990s.

During the early 1980s, the Reagan administration began to actively support a counterinsurgency against the Communist government of Nicaragua (the Sandinistas). Neighboring Honduras provided a natural base to provide training and deliver arms and funds to the insurgents, known as Contras; through the first half of the decade the United States vastly increased its military presence in Honduras. Some Hondurans resented the U.S. military presence, feeling that their country was becoming a client state of the United States. In this climate, the FPM emerged. A leftist and extremely nationalist organization, the group's goal was the removal of all U.S. military forces from Honduras as well as the expulsion of the remaining Contras. The U.S. State Department believes the FPM may have received support from the Nicaraguan and Cuban governments.

The FPM's first known attack was on a U.S. military convoy in April 1989; the convoy, while engaged in exercises with the Honduran military, was forced to turn back. In July of that year, the group bombed a disco frequented by soldiers in La Cieba, Honduras; seven soldiers were injured. In [Page 239]March 1990, four FPM guerrillas machine-gunned a bus carrying U.S. personnel, injuring eight soldiers. The group has also claimed involvement in an attack on a Peace Corps office in December 1988 and another military bus bombing in February 1989 that wounded three soldiers.

In February 1990, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was replaced with a U.S.-backed government, which demobilized the Contras in June. The FPM now had no possibility of support from the Nicaraguan government; in addition, the United States had begun a gradual withdrawal from the region, and by the following year the FPM appeared to have disbanded. However, two bombings in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa in 1992 and 1994 have been linked to the group. No one was hurt in either bombing. Both bombs were accompanied by propaganda critical of the U.S. and Honduran military presence. The recent stability in Honduras, coupled with U.S. disengagement, appears to have substantially lessened the threat of violence by the FPM.