Campesino communities in Honduras being devastated, one family at a time

[Judi Lynn]

Campesino communities in Honduras being devastated, one family at a time

The struggle to maintain fertile lands continues to decimate Campesino communities in Honduras.

Last Modified: 31 Mar 2013 11:43

Under the hot sun of a mid-March afternoon, I sat on a plastic chair outside the gracious home of Gregorio Chavez's family in the community of La Panama community, located in the Lower Aguan region of Northern Honduras. Trees bearing ripe oranges hung over the driveway swaying gently in the breeze, and children and animals gambolled about.

Gregorio's brother Jose offered us a brief, somber welcome before inviting us to accompany him and Gregorio's children on the path that Gregorio walked to tend to his land on July 2, 2012, the last day he was seen alive by his family.

We passed the lush gardens and paused a few hundred yards down the path, to where Jose, his face grim and eyes downcast, gestured to where Gregorio's machete was found in the grass by those who were alarmed when he did not return for dinner on July 2.

Jose could not bear to recount that along with the machete, the search party found blood and other evidence suggesting that Gregorio had been gravely injured, bound and dragged onto the neighbouring property by security forces in the hire of palm oil magnate Miguel Facusse.

Facusse, reportedly the largest landowner in Honduras, claims to own the Paso Aguan plantation that abuts the community of La Panama, though his right to that land is contested by the campesinos, who had legally received the land through agrarian reform initiatives in the previous decades.

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332992852902531.html

[center]



Miguel Facusse[/center]

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=440449

[ocpagu]

1. It's so disgusting to see the fascists taking over Honduras.

And, as we can see in your article, land reform is, once again, the main issue:

"Although conflict over the land has been percolating for decades, the post-coup era has been marked by a rapid and harrowing escalation in the violence and repression. Gregorio, a community leader, was presumably targeted for his resistance to the fraud and coercion exerted by Facusse and several other large landowners in amassing large swaths of fertile land that had been legally distributed to the campesinos through agrarian reform initiatives."

And it's equally sad that the US State Department insists in its far right policies for the continent, with the use of terrorism and the funding of death squads:

"Facusse's security forces do not operate in a vacuum, and have been seen working with Honduran troops from the Xatruch III military operation, who in turn have received training from the US Military. US links to the violence do not end with the military - a recent Associated Press expose reported that State Department officials have been dissembling to members of Congress in order to fund the Honduran police despite another Associated Press investigation that outlined current death squad activity conducted by the Honduran police."

[DollarBillHines]

2. And religious nutcases are swarming the country.

All these fucking crazy Pentecostals and Nazarenes are converting the countryside wholesale. Until recently, while flying to mainland Honduras, the plane would be filled with Medicins Sans Frontieres and whacked-out 'missionaries'. These days, it's just the whackjobs.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Oh, jeez. That is disgusting, and it sounds so likely, doesn't it?

I'm sure you remember Rios-Montt became an evangelical preacher at a place in California at some point and that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were his big, big evangelical hustler preacher pals who sent him bucket loads of money from their lower-class right-wing congregations to help him in his fight against the "heathen" commie Guatemalan indigenous, to try to save their souls, grab what money they have, before Rios-Montt had them slaughtered.

It made it so much easier for fundie Christian militaries to torture, disembowel, decapitate, bludgeon, rape, gun down people you hated for being not only "commies" but also "catholics!"

Planes full of "missionaries." What a night-mare. They're coming to help, aren't they? Just the way they always do. God's sunbeams.

[a la izquierda]

6. It was a death sentence to be Catholic in Guatemala. Nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. One reason to take out Zelaya was his administration arranged the land transactions

which returned their old family lands to the campesinos whose families had lived there forever. The land-grabbing, greedy oligarchs simply wanted to control everything within their reach, and needed to government to help them pull it off.

Had to get rid of the good man, just as the right always must. Geting in the way of "progress" ( oligarchs stuffing their pockets and bank accounts until nothing is left they don't own) the people have to be driven away again, far from their own property, to beg in the streets of the cities, or selling dope, or turning tricks, etc., etc, since there are only so many jobs at the multi-national sweat shops.

Facusse is a monstrous murdering mega-criminal, and the Honduran government backs him up. He's their beloved community hero. He's also probably the one who remembers to bribe them.

[idwiyo]

5. K&R