In Honduras, some count their dollars, the other their dead
On 15 November 2010, the Lower Aguán in Honduras has been the scene of a massacre of more farmers committed against five members of the Movimiento Campesino del peasant organization Aguán (MCA). The incident occurred at dawn on November 15, when two hundred armed guards on the payroll of Mr. Miguel Facussé Barjum ( 1) tycoon Honduran African palm, shot with large caliber weapons on a group of peasants who came to present papers sending legitimate owners of the finca (property) El Tumbador (municipality of Trujillo).
These murders are a new episode in the conflict between agrarian long MCA great entrepreneurs and landowners in the region: Mr. Facussé Barjum - company president Dining and uncle of the former Liberal president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002) - Mr. Rene Morales Carazo - Industrial and brother of Vice-President of the Republic of Nicaragua, Jaime Morales Carazo - Mr. Reynaldo Canales - too big boss - and Mr. Oscar Najera - Liberal Party MP (right).
Unlike other Latin American countries, where the cultivation of African palm is growing very new - linked to the development of agro-fuels - it is present in Honduras since the 1970s. At that time, land reforms have indeed been promoted - often by military governments, such as Peru and Honduras - to reduce the pressure on latifundia (large estates) and control the peasant movement. The palm cultivation is therefore an important economic issue, which explains the one hand the strength and capacity of farmer cooperatives, and secondly the greed of large landowners and industry entrepreneurs processing precious plant.
In the early 1990s, chaired by Mr. Leonardo Callejas (National Party [NP], right), is taking place the law of modernization and development of the agricultural sector (2 ), which amends the 1962 Reform land. Following the same trend as in the rest of Latin America, the new law favors "security of property" through individual land tenure and the increasing incursion of the private sector in financing agricultural production. The method - developed and promoted by the World Bank - is also known as misleading "land reform market-assisted" .
Most peasant organizations of Honduras agrees that this law marks the beginning of an acceleration of the recovery of private land formerly granted to cooperatives under the agrarian reform in the 1960s.
Considering this monopolization to be illegal, farmers leave the land reclamation. It is within this context that the MCA was created in early May 2000, occupying Land of the Regional Military Training (CREM), several thousands of hectares in the 1980s by the instructors of the United States Army to train the Nicaraguan Contra fighters.
For MCA, the goal is to push for the implementation of legal provisions establishing the social use of land and limiting the concentration of land.
At first, the tension between peasants and landowners is so strong that the President of the Republic (the businessman Ricardo Maduro, PN) has no choice but to intervene in person. On October 12, 2000, 1124 hectares are tenured on behalf of cooperatives of the MCA, however, that the National Agrarian Institute (INA) take steps to cancel the title wrongly attributed to large landowners.
However the victory was short-lived and, for years, the situation remains volatile and the constant harassment.
June 12, 2009, an agreement was signed, however, the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, and farmer organizations the Aguán. Determine that deportation can not be achieved until the legality of land titles and land sales has been established by competent authorities. But coup on June 28, 2009 concludes this brief respite. MCA, which, like many grassroots organizations, joined the National Front of Resistance against golpe (3 ) finds himself once again in the crosshairs.
resume attacks with greater force in early 2010, with the inauguration of the de facto government Mr. Porfirio Lobo, who came to power during elections in the shadow of military coup in November 2009. Given the paralysis of tenure process, movement (4 ), which now lists more than 3500 families organized into hundreds of cooperatives, has decided to resume, December 9, 2009, land occupations.
January 8, the first violent evictions of land newly Employed held 27 people, including ten women, were detained. On 13 January, three leaders of MCA are arrested, bringing to 18 the number of MCA members imprisoned since the inception of the movement. In a statement, the organization also condemned the threatening presence of armed men surrounding land cooperatives, accusing a colonel in the army "render services" entrepreneurs of African palms.
Mid-February 2010, paramilitary groups in the pay of large landowners, supported by the army and police attacked the encampments of the MCA and several are injured. Facts occur even though a delegation of MCA negotiates the ratification of agreements signed before the coup of 2009, with the current Minister of Agrarian Reform, Cesar Ham. The latter, a former member of the leftist Democratic Union (UD), has both opposed the coup ... and legitimized by agreeing to join the government of Mr. Lobo. Since this "position", he claims to play the role of 'transmission belt' popular demands to the government.
early March 2010, opening of new negotiations between the government and farmers of the MCA while the region is completely militarized and suffered intense repression. Forty people were detained during the dialogue process, including the regional head of the INA, Mr. Coronado Avila Mendoza. MCA leader, Rudy Hernandez, described the situation: "The region of low Aguán was flooded with soldiers, 28 cooperatives were being retrieved (Of land) and for this reason that on April 13, after a meeting of more than fifteen hours with the government, who did we concede that 6000 hectares, we got 11,000. We signed because we were under the threat of guns and we could not endanger the lives of our companions. Still, the fight was not only for this amount of land but for the land assigned to the agrarian reform (5 ) . "
April 13 2010 the two parties "Agree" then: 3000 hectares of land used for African palm will immediately tenured for 28 cooperatives and after voluntary evacuation of the occupied areas (for farmers), the same surfaces (in fallow) they will be assigned within three months and at another location. Finally, within a year, farmers will receive 1,000 hectares cultivated in 4000 hectares of palm and uncultivated. The de facto president itself goes on place and is the guarantor of the agreements.
But appeasement might have been expected from the signing did not occur. Instead, the area of Aguán experiencing a resurgence of tension. Indeed, the tycoon palm, Mr. Facussé, a measure of how little he makes of the law. He announces he will appeal the decisions to the courts.
Going to meet his wishes, April 20, the army tightened its noose around the community of Guadalupe Carney (based on land occupied CREM), who finds himself completely surrounded by more than one hundred staff commandos Cobras and military. The pretext: the arrest of members of the MCA. Moreover, the union workers of the INA (Sindicato de Trabajadores del INA [SITRAIN]) in the region condemned the threats and intimidation against its members.
April 23, while the MCA reported the imminent invasion of Guadalupe Carney community by the army, Mr. Facussé announces that he refuses to negotiate if only a hectare of earth. The ongoing wrangle with the MCA extends to the INA and its director whose owner claims openly head. This reflects the Government's duplicity on one side, pretending to play through the reconciliation of the INA, and the other takes the tense excuse to militarize the region.
few days later, on April 28, the community radio Zacate Grande (a community located in the Gulf of Fonseca, peaceful area, 150 km from the capital) is attacked and destroyed by armed men in the Mr. Facussé balance.
May 25, the daily La Prensa had published an interview with Mr. Facussé in which it stated that "the problem of Aguán destroy the economy" , suggesting that the "climate of insurgency " in the area was away foreign investors ( 6). In June 2010, announcing the layoff of 500 employees of companies in the region Facussé Miguel is a corrupt more to stir up dissension among the peasants.
June 21, a joint operation of the battalions Cobras and guards of the security company Orion (recruited by Mr. Facussé), conducted in order to arrest two members of the cooperative La Aurora , causes death a 17 year old. The autopsy reveals twelve bullet holes (7 ). The statement stresses that the MCA Finca La Aurora was assigned to the cooperative by the INA.
On 17 August, three members of the MCA (including a boy of 14 years) murdered. A few days later, a confrontation takes place between the occupants Zacate Great reclaimed land and the inhabitants of nearby villages, who gave Mr. Facussé of "title deeds" and dangled the construction of college for their children.
list of intimidation and arbitrary arrests is increasing every day, but the international financial institutions do not bat an eye. In a letter ( 8) 17 November 2010 addressed to the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, Canadian NGO Rights Action accuses it of being jointly responsible for the atrocities committed in the Aguán. Termination based on the fact that November 5, 2009, Dinant had received from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - responsible for attention to the private sector within the World Bank - Loan No. 27,250, totaling $ 30 million.
Rumors, regularly reported by the press, citing the existence of armed groups within the MCA have been strengthened in recent days. Some media even believing that the basis for training the guerrillas in Nicaragua (9 ) ... Ironically, the land originally occupied by the MCA, had they, indeed the basis for Contra troops, whose objective was precisely to attack neighboring Nicaragua
... The massacre of 15 November gave a new pretext for sending the army into the region. But against all odds, instead of attacking the militias armed contractors palm, are the offices of the INA - Even those which are stored records of land regularization of the MCA - which have been militarized.
December 6, the peasants took over the road blocks to demand that justice be done. On 7 December, a communiqué warned that the community MUCA Guadalupe Carney is again surrounded by the army.
On 15 December, 600 soldiers took up positions on nearby hills and helicopters flying over the area.
These murders are a new episode in the conflict between agrarian long MCA great entrepreneurs and landowners in the region: Mr. Facussé Barjum - company president Dining and uncle of the former Liberal president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002) - Mr. Rene Morales Carazo - Industrial and brother of Vice-President of the Republic of Nicaragua, Jaime Morales Carazo - Mr. Reynaldo Canales - too big boss - and Mr. Oscar Najera - Liberal Party MP (right).
Unlike other Latin American countries, where the cultivation of African palm is growing very new - linked to the development of agro-fuels - it is present in Honduras since the 1970s. At that time, land reforms have indeed been promoted - often by military governments, such as Peru and Honduras - to reduce the pressure on latifundia (large estates) and control the peasant movement. The palm cultivation is therefore an important economic issue, which explains the one hand the strength and capacity of farmer cooperatives, and secondly the greed of large landowners and industry entrepreneurs processing precious plant.
In the early 1990s, chaired by Mr. Leonardo Callejas (National Party [NP], right), is taking place the law of modernization and development of the agricultural sector (2 ), which amends the 1962 Reform land. Following the same trend as in the rest of Latin America, the new law favors "security of property" through individual land tenure and the increasing incursion of the private sector in financing agricultural production. The method - developed and promoted by the World Bank - is also known as misleading "land reform market-assisted" .
Most peasant organizations of Honduras agrees that this law marks the beginning of an acceleration of the recovery of private land formerly granted to cooperatives under the agrarian reform in the 1960s.
Considering this monopolization to be illegal, farmers leave the land reclamation. It is within this context that the MCA was created in early May 2000, occupying Land of the Regional Military Training (CREM), several thousands of hectares in the 1980s by the instructors of the United States Army to train the Nicaraguan Contra fighters.
For MCA, the goal is to push for the implementation of legal provisions establishing the social use of land and limiting the concentration of land.
At first, the tension between peasants and landowners is so strong that the President of the Republic (the businessman Ricardo Maduro, PN) has no choice but to intervene in person. On October 12, 2000, 1124 hectares are tenured on behalf of cooperatives of the MCA, however, that the National Agrarian Institute (INA) take steps to cancel the title wrongly attributed to large landowners.
However the victory was short-lived and, for years, the situation remains volatile and the constant harassment.
June 12, 2009, an agreement was signed, however, the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, and farmer organizations the Aguán. Determine that deportation can not be achieved until the legality of land titles and land sales has been established by competent authorities. But coup on June 28, 2009 concludes this brief respite. MCA, which, like many grassroots organizations, joined the National Front of Resistance against golpe (3 ) finds himself once again in the crosshairs.
resume attacks with greater force in early 2010, with the inauguration of the de facto government Mr. Porfirio Lobo, who came to power during elections in the shadow of military coup in November 2009. Given the paralysis of tenure process, movement (4 ), which now lists more than 3500 families organized into hundreds of cooperatives, has decided to resume, December 9, 2009, land occupations.
January 8, the first violent evictions of land newly Employed held 27 people, including ten women, were detained. On 13 January, three leaders of MCA are arrested, bringing to 18 the number of MCA members imprisoned since the inception of the movement. In a statement, the organization also condemned the threatening presence of armed men surrounding land cooperatives, accusing a colonel in the army "render services" entrepreneurs of African palms.
Mid-February 2010, paramilitary groups in the pay of large landowners, supported by the army and police attacked the encampments of the MCA and several are injured. Facts occur even though a delegation of MCA negotiates the ratification of agreements signed before the coup of 2009, with the current Minister of Agrarian Reform, Cesar Ham. The latter, a former member of the leftist Democratic Union (UD), has both opposed the coup ... and legitimized by agreeing to join the government of Mr. Lobo. Since this "position", he claims to play the role of 'transmission belt' popular demands to the government.
early March 2010, opening of new negotiations between the government and farmers of the MCA while the region is completely militarized and suffered intense repression. Forty people were detained during the dialogue process, including the regional head of the INA, Mr. Coronado Avila Mendoza. MCA leader, Rudy Hernandez, described the situation: "The region of low Aguán was flooded with soldiers, 28 cooperatives were being retrieved (Of land) and for this reason that on April 13, after a meeting of more than fifteen hours with the government, who did we concede that 6000 hectares, we got 11,000. We signed because we were under the threat of guns and we could not endanger the lives of our companions. Still, the fight was not only for this amount of land but for the land assigned to the agrarian reform (5 ) . "
April 13 2010 the two parties "Agree" then: 3000 hectares of land used for African palm will immediately tenured for 28 cooperatives and after voluntary evacuation of the occupied areas (for farmers), the same surfaces (in fallow) they will be assigned within three months and at another location. Finally, within a year, farmers will receive 1,000 hectares cultivated in 4000 hectares of palm and uncultivated. The de facto president itself goes on place and is the guarantor of the agreements.
But appeasement might have been expected from the signing did not occur. Instead, the area of Aguán experiencing a resurgence of tension. Indeed, the tycoon palm, Mr. Facussé, a measure of how little he makes of the law. He announces he will appeal the decisions to the courts.
Going to meet his wishes, April 20, the army tightened its noose around the community of Guadalupe Carney (based on land occupied CREM), who finds himself completely surrounded by more than one hundred staff commandos Cobras and military. The pretext: the arrest of members of the MCA. Moreover, the union workers of the INA (Sindicato de Trabajadores del INA [SITRAIN]) in the region condemned the threats and intimidation against its members.
April 23, while the MCA reported the imminent invasion of Guadalupe Carney community by the army, Mr. Facussé announces that he refuses to negotiate if only a hectare of earth. The ongoing wrangle with the MCA extends to the INA and its director whose owner claims openly head. This reflects the Government's duplicity on one side, pretending to play through the reconciliation of the INA, and the other takes the tense excuse to militarize the region.
few days later, on April 28, the community radio Zacate Grande (a community located in the Gulf of Fonseca, peaceful area, 150 km from the capital) is attacked and destroyed by armed men in the Mr. Facussé balance.
May 25, the daily La Prensa had published an interview with Mr. Facussé in which it stated that "the problem of Aguán destroy the economy" , suggesting that the "climate of insurgency " in the area was away foreign investors ( 6). In June 2010, announcing the layoff of 500 employees of companies in the region Facussé Miguel is a corrupt more to stir up dissension among the peasants.
June 21, a joint operation of the battalions Cobras and guards of the security company Orion (recruited by Mr. Facussé), conducted in order to arrest two members of the cooperative La Aurora , causes death a 17 year old. The autopsy reveals twelve bullet holes (7 ). The statement stresses that the MCA Finca La Aurora was assigned to the cooperative by the INA.
On 17 August, three members of the MCA (including a boy of 14 years) murdered. A few days later, a confrontation takes place between the occupants Zacate Great reclaimed land and the inhabitants of nearby villages, who gave Mr. Facussé of "title deeds" and dangled the construction of college for their children.
list of intimidation and arbitrary arrests is increasing every day, but the international financial institutions do not bat an eye. In a letter ( 8) 17 November 2010 addressed to the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, Canadian NGO Rights Action accuses it of being jointly responsible for the atrocities committed in the Aguán. Termination based on the fact that November 5, 2009, Dinant had received from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) - responsible for attention to the private sector within the World Bank - Loan No. 27,250, totaling $ 30 million.
Rumors, regularly reported by the press, citing the existence of armed groups within the MCA have been strengthened in recent days. Some media even believing that the basis for training the guerrillas in Nicaragua (9 ) ... Ironically, the land originally occupied by the MCA, had they, indeed the basis for Contra troops, whose objective was precisely to attack neighboring Nicaragua
... The massacre of 15 November gave a new pretext for sending the army into the region. But against all odds, instead of attacking the militias armed contractors palm, are the offices of the INA - Even those which are stored records of land regularization of the MCA - which have been militarized.
December 6, the peasants took over the road blocks to demand that justice be done. On 7 December, a communiqué warned that the community MUCA Guadalupe Carney is again surrounded by the army.
On 15 December, 600 soldiers took up positions on nearby hills and helicopters flying over the area.
Helene Roux
Journalist and sociologist.
( a ) Giorgio Trucchi, " Slaughter and barbarism in Lower Aguán " Secrétariat régional latino-américain (Rel-IUF), 16 novembre 2010.
( 2) " Modernization Act and the Agricultural Sector Development (LMDSA) " Institut national agraire (INA), 5 mars 1992.
( 3 ) Aujourd'hui Front national de Popular Resistance (FNRP).
( 5) German Reyes, "del gobierno Incumplimiento caldea animosity los en el Aguán " Revistazo , November 18, 2010.
( 6) " Problema del Aguán destruiría the economía," La Prensa , 25 mai 2010.
( 7) Giorgio Trucchi, "Murder young wild MUCA " Rel-IUF, 22 juin 2010.
( 8) " Letter to the World Bank 'Rights Action, 17 novembre 2010.
( 9) " Honduran training in Nicaragua would be to disrupt law and order and democracy "El Proceso , November 24, 2010.
Source: the diplomatic world 
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