Morazanist Patriotic Front

A Honduran terrorist group, the Morazanist Patriotic Front (Frente Patriótico Morazanista, or 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 socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. 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 Morazanist Patriotic Front 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 FPM may have received support from the Nicaraguan and Cuban governments.

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 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 in 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, but both bombs were accompanied by propaganda critical [Page 394]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.