Elda Gomez long ago came to accept the risks her husband Israel Ortiz faced when he sailed off daily in his small boat to harvest fish from the rich waters of the Gulf of Fonseca. Yet when she was summoned to the beach in Guapinol on October 4 to collect her husband's body, she quickly saw he hadn't died from the perils of the sea. Seven gun shots had been fired at point blank range into the front of his body, and his hands were tied behind his back.
     The death of Ortiz--and the way he died--are signs of the growing battle between small fishing communities and giant shrimp companies over the declining bounty of the 47-mile wide bay.
     The grandparents of Gomez and Ortiz--and of many others who today earn their living from the gulf--once lived in the forested mountains of southern Honduras. When foreign lumber barons cleared the forests away early in this century, the rural families moved into the rich valleys below. When cotton boomed through the area in the 1950s, they were pushed off the land toward the sea, where they had the Gulf of Fonseca--one of the world's richest ecosystems--all to themselves.
     That lasted until the 1980s, when big shrimp companies installed huge ponds for producing shrimp for export to the U.S. and Europe. Salt flats were converted and mangrove forests bulldozed. Government officials did nothing to control the lucrative industry's rapid expansion, and several reportedly profited handsomely from granting 20-year leases--at a few dollars a hectare--to the shrimp factories. 
     By 1993 the industry in Honduras produced 20 million pounds of shrimp a year and trailed only bananas and coffee in foreign earnings. Then "Taura" struck, a shrimp disease that sent production plummeting. Taura had earlier ravaged production in Ecuador and several other shrimp producing countries.
     Ecologists claimed Taura was a result of environmental abuse. Hector Corrales, manager of Granjas Marinas San Bernardo, one of the biggest shrimp companies, admits that Taura "came as a slap in the face to the industry." Corrales says it was "a reaction of mother nature" to environmentally irresponsible production practices such as overfeeding.
     Corrales insists the industry has cleaned up its act, yet environmentalists and residents of small coastal fishing communities argue the giant shrimpers are still damaging the fragile gulf. They complain that mangroves continue to be cut down and that larvae collection practices kill other marine species. They've blocked highways and bulldozers and marched to the capital to make their point.
     Activists have long argued for a moratorium on new pond construction, a breathing space to allow studies of the gulf's capacity for further shrimp cultivation. A six-month ban on new construction finally began in October, but there's no consensus on who should do the needed studies.
     Environmentalists also argue that several areas of the gulf be declared nature reserves, permanently off-limits to new pond construction.
     Enforcement of existing laws would have avoided many of the environmental problems in the gulf, but violence and widespread corruption have deterred law enforcement officials from proper vigilance of the shrimp industry.
     To resolve that problem, the Comite para la Defensa y Desarrollo de la Flora y Fauna del Golfo de Fonseca (CODDEFFAGOLF), convinced the police, army, several government agencies and local municipalities to form a joint commission to monitor environmental abuses. When there's a complaint, representatives of the participating agencies travel together to investigate, discouraging bribes and boosting arrest records. Yet CODDEFFAGOLF President Saul Montufar says his organization has had to provide a vehicle, fuel, and food for operations since none of the government agencies seem to have resources available when an operation needs to be mounted.
     In addition to the environmental issues that haunt the shrimp industry, local residents complain they're not allowed free access to traditional fishing areas of the gulf.
     Nicaraguan naval patrols, taking advantage of a poorly marked international boundary, capture boats on the high seas and demand stiff fines to release the seized equipment. "They especially like to grab us right before Christmas or Holy Week when they're worried how they're going to pay for their vacations," says Guapinol fisherman Melquiades Hernandez.
     In Honduran estuaries, residents say their small fishing boats regularly come under fire from industry guards toting AK-47 assault weapons. Shrimp executives claim they're only protecting the ponds from thieves. "Not everyone who is out on the sea is a poor fisherman," says Corrales. Yet he admits that two shrimp packing operations and at least one farm manager have been involved in processing stolen shrimp.
     Douglas Osorio, the owner of the shrimp farm where Ortiz was killed, claims that Ortiz was caught stealing along with Marvin Zeledonio, who was also killed. The security guards who killed them reportedly fled.
     Yet Guapinol residents deny the two were thieves. "It's too dangerous to steal," says Hernandez. "And there's enough fish in the gulf that we don't need to steal."
     Gomez went to the police in Choluteca to protest her husband's killing and demand an investigation. "But they didn't do anything," she reports. "Since Osorio has money and we're poor, they're not going to do anything."
     Ortiz's sister Maria claims coastal residents are feeling squeezed. "We don't have anywhere left to go," she says. "The shrimpers shoot at us on one side. If we get into Nicaragua, we have problems. But the Nicaraguans just seize our boats. They don't take our life away."
     The deaths of Ortiz and Zeledonio bring to at least eight the number of people killed by shrimp farm guards in the gulf. No one has been arrested in any of the killings. "The shrimpers have formed a state within a state with their own army," declares Jorge Varela, executive director of CODDEFFAGOLF. "They've imposed a state of terror."
     "They killed the trees, the fish, the birds, and now they're trying to kill us off as well," says Guapinol resident Toribio Cruz.
     "Before the shrimp companies came, everything was fine," declares Sabas Mondragon as he mends his net in Guapinol. "Once they arrived, people started dying."