Some Latin American countries are making marked advances in LGBT rights, but others continue to struggle, including Honduras. In 2009, Honduras was taken over by a political coup d'Žtat, which ousted the democratically elected president, Jose Manuel Zelaya.

In spite of political leaders signing onto the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, compliance with which is monitored by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, 84 recorded murders of LGBT individuals have occurred since 2009. Erick Vidal Martinez, Honduras' second-ever openly gay man to run for national political office, listed off the numbers of LGBT individuals found dead to the Bay Area Reporter on October 26.

Martinez, 33, is a trainer at the Center for Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights (CIPRODEH), where he's recorded human rights violations against the LGBT community for the past three years. Prior to running for office, Martinez was a volunteer and worked doing HIV/AIDS prevention and LGBT rights for six years.

Martinez was in San Francisco last week as a part of a California tour that took him to Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. The Honduras Solidarity Network sponsored the October 17-27 trip. He was hosted by the Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition and Gays without Boarders, according to Charlie Hinton, a gay activist with BALASC.

During Martinez's trip he has met with California political leaders, such as Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) along with local human rights and LGBT activist groups who held public discussions and a rally on October 27. He was also honored with the Legacy Award from the Federation of Gay Games at the organization's 30th annual celebration in West Hollywood on October 21.

Martinez is one of 92 congressional candidates running for the Liberty and Refoundation Party, known as the Libre Party. The Libre Party is the electoral arm of the National Front of Popular Resistance, a popular resistance movement organized by the people of Honduras that rose out of the brutal coup three years ago. Candidates representing four tenancies from the Libre party are vying for 23 open seats in the House of Deputies, Honduras' version of the House of Representatives.

Martinez was originally on the Libre ticket with another gay man, Erick Martinez Avila, with Martinez as Avila's substitute. After Avila was murdered in May, Martinez stepped up. Victoria Gomez, a transsexual woman, became his substitute should anything happen to him.

Martinez is hopeful, but realistic, in that he might not make it past the November 18 primary election, he told a small crowd of about 30 people who came to hear him speak on October 26.

A delegation of BALASC members, including Hinton, will travel to Honduras to witness the elections, he said.

Martinez has two goals with his congressional campaign: one is so that his fellow LGBT citizens can participate fully in Honduran society as "true citizens," and two is to find solutions to "larger problems" such as workers' rights, safety and decreasing violence, food security, and many other issues that continue to affect Hondurans.

He has witnessed a lot of fear within the LGBT community due to the backlash leaders have experienced and some survivors of those murdered without justice.

Death threats against Avila and Martinez had been rumored within the LGBT community, but Martinez said neither he nor Avila received any directly.

"When we began this process there was a lot of fear in the community because people have seen when the community comes out politically there are murders," said Martinez.

But as the months have passed the campaign has grown stronger, Martinez said, giving the LGBT community and its allies "more confidence and more faith."

"The young people are supporting us. I have nothing to believe in, but the leadership of the young people," Martinez said. "People all over the country are writing, 'We want to support you,' and these people were invisible before."

Body count

Prior to the coup, Honduras' human rights record was dismal, in spite of signing onto treaties to protect human rights, in particular those of vulnerable groups, such as the LGBT community. For more than a decade human rights organizations and LGBT global rights groups have condemned Honduras' ongoing brutality and uninvestigated murders of LGBT individuals.

Soon after the coup, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, along with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, blasted Honduran leaders about the killing of LGBT individuals following the mutiny.

During the first six months of the coup, nine gay men and 12 transsexual women were murdered. Since then five lesbians, 42 gay men, 28 transsexual women, and an unknown number of bisexuals have been murdered. Martinez's friend Walter Trochez, who was killed in 2009, and Avila, are among those counted.

An estimated 20 gay men and transsexual women have been murdered so far in 2012, according to Martinez.

The murders are often blamed on "people who are taking vengeance or hit men, just common criminals doing it," but members of the LGBT community know the deaths aren't accidental, said Martinez.

"It's the leaders of the community who are being picked off. We know that it's political," he said.

Abuse by authorities and police isn't uncommon in Honduras.

In 2006, a gay man named Donny Reyes was abused by police and gang raped by other detainees in his cell, according to multiple reports.

In 2009, before the coup, a transsexual woman, known only as Nohelia, was stabbed 28 times by a police agent and survived the attack, said Martinez, who couldn't recall her last name. She took her case to court, but the process was delayed repeatedly without a sentence. Nohelia finally fled Honduras for fear of her life, he said.

Avila was killed two weeks after he accepted the nomination to represent the Libre Party and only days after he made his nomination public in Los Necios (The Troublemakers), in an article for International Workers' Day.

Trochez was an HIV-positive gay man who was a defender of human rights alongside Martinez at CIPRODEH in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

Adding to the problems is the fact that Honduran officials aren't actively investigating the murders, said Martinez.

Hope and justice

To bring justice – at least for Trochez's murder – Martinez and other human rights defenders recently began working with an investigative branch in Honduras, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. State Department, he said.

Since this investigation began, authorities have arrested and detained 18 people allegedly responsible for some of the murders of LGBT individuals in Honduras, he said.

"Even though this has happened the state of Honduras still keeps acting with impunity because there aren't any judgments or trials," said Martinez.

Compounding that is that IACHR and the U.N. only provide recommendations for Honduras' Congress to follow to create legislation, not orders, he said.

In 2010, the U.N. Human Rights Commission issued 128 recommendations, eight of which related to LGBT human rights, to Honduran legislators. But the Congress has yet to revise laws to comply with the recommendations, said Martinez.

Additional pressure was placed on the Honduran government in June when openly gay Representative Jared Polis (D-Colorado), along with 84 fellow members of Congress, inquired about 70 murdered LGBT Hondurans, including Avila and Trochez, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This week, the Inter-Americas Commission on Human Rights court will meet to review cases. Trochez's murder is one of the cases the court will consider taking, said Martinez.

"They left a very important legacy defending human rights in this community and my work also has been oriented along the same line as their vision," said Martinez.

"It's a social responsibility to raise the dignity of the value of our community," said Martinez about his decision to run for office in spite of the danger and mixed public opinion. "I can't be indifferent and hide that something has happened."

He also knows that if anything happens to him others will follow his footsteps.

"Other people will take on the leadership," he said.

Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-221-3541, Skype: heather.cassell, or .