voselsoberano.com | Saturday June 5, 2010 18:45
Communiqué
The Unified Movement of Peasants Aguán (MUCA) composed of 28 groups began land recovery of the same number of farms in December and only after suffering several violent attacks resulting in deaths, an Act of Commitment between the regime of Porfirio Lobo and 24 farmer groups of the organization was ratified on April 17, four did not accept for reasons explained below.
The farmers who signed the Deed of Commitment agreed to leave the farms taken and to settle in the ones chosen and which include 3,000 hectares, as a first step in the process of implementing the agreement which states that then 3,000 uncultivated hectares will be given to them in the next 90 days ;1,000 hectares planted with oil palm in the maximum term of 1 year and, lastly, 4,000 acres uncultivated also within 1 year.
The regime committed with the settlers - who now live among the palm trees in makeshift nylon huts- to build 100 homes (although the number of families is 2,500), to cover their needs of health care and education, however, up to this date, June 5, the presence of state institutions that meet that commitment is not known.
The delivery of the first 3,000 hectares planted with oil palm never took place. The technical agronomic evaluation results to the first assignment indicate that already over 50% of this area is covered with this oleaginous plants, hence it is clear that the agreement has not been fulfilled by the regime.
At the same time, Miguel Facussé resumes negotiations with the farmers of MUCA taking two positions: sometimes demanding 250.000 Lempiras per hectare, despite the opinion of experts on the field and people knowledgeable of the land market in the area, who argue that at most one hectare well cultivated costs around 150,000 lempiras. Others are offered by him to give them for free, but only if farmers agree to sell the fruit only to him!
Fearing these failures in commitment and damaging ties with big agricultural businessmen, cooperatives that have not signed the agreement, the San Isidro, El Despertar, San Esteban and La Trinidad, thought fit to keep fighting the right to these properties through the courts, being sure that they will win, in view they have the appropriate documentation that assures them, according to them, a ruling in their favor.
But the provisions of these farmers were not fulfilled. Before the court decision, they were evicted by the police and the army even though the agreement with the regime says that "We are committed to make the necessary arrangements for the legal proceedings instituted for the crime of usurpation will be reviewed in the context of this agreement. "
Moreover, relying on the good faith of the regime because the agreement states that "the civil lawsuits brought by rural cooperatives in the courts of the republic, in order to reverse through legal means buying and selling taking place outside the law , its processing is not excluded unless legal means are exhausted, with the signing of this agreement "peaceful ways out were expected attached to the law and supported by the promoted slogan of national reconciliation.
This morning, peasant groups of cooperatives El Despertar, San Esteban and La Trinidad who had taken the El Despertar were evicted by force of military and police, a scenario in which the detonation of the bullets caused the terror of people settled on this farm and of the ones who were in the surrounding communities.
And the violent conflict promise to increase. Two days ago around 150 families members of four peasant groups took approximately 697 hectares occupied by the Standard Fruit Company, in Lis Lis, community in the department of Atlantida, as in other cases, it threatens to become another scene of violence.
As we noted in another statement of FIAN Honduras last month, failure to address the land problem through the serious implementation of public policies that would invalidate the purposes and provisions of the Law of Modernization and Development of Agricultural Sector, ie allowing farmers access to land and other assets to become self-producers, the agrarian conflict will multiply and will take place in different parts of the country as happened in the decades of the sixties and seventies, with hunger as the only instigator.
Tegucigalpa MDC June 5, 2010
Gilberto Rios
Executive Secretary
FIAN International
Section Honduras
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