War on Drugs? War on Campesinos

The country is buzzing about the arrest of Yankel Rosenthal in Miami for money laundering and the indictment  of Jaime and Yani Rosenthal from one of the most powerful families in Honduras. Karen Spring, the Honduras Coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network has a very thoughtful piece in her Aquí Abajo blog that that lays out both background and things to think about in this "war on drugs" run by Washington DC.  Talking about wars, I am publishing below an article from my visit on Wednesday with the campesino leaders in Progreso from the CNTC.


Conversation with Magdalena Morales & CNTC regional leaders - Progreso
Campesino Movement Still Fighting for Justice and Survival

Wednesday October 7th .
V. Cervantes

Magdalena 

The National Center for Rural Workers (CNTC) in the province of Yoro has 42 organized communities, each with several cooperative projects (campesino empresas).  Magdalena Morales is the general secretary and we were joined by Francisco, Julian and Bernabe, the other members of the regional secretariat. I was eager to get an update on one of their communities in Sulaco that, on August 18th,  was violently evicted from its land after 15 years. The community is named Hernando Figueroa and has been home to two former national General Secretaries of the CNTC.

Sulaco eviction

At least 200 police and military, accompanied by the government Human Rights Commission, arrived at the community with 12 patrol cars, an ambulance, firemen and armored vehicle. No eviction order was shown, but the troops destroyed 20 homes, an evangelical church and about 350 acres of beans, corn and other food crops which represented all the community's cultivation.  Only the intervention by phone of a regional official from the government's Agrarian Institute stopped the violence before the Catholic church and preschool and water purification system were destroyed.

Magdalena said that the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez seems to have new protocols for violence in evictions: using quantities of tear gas, sending in ambulances, firemen and armored vehicles with larger numbers of both military and police troops---as if they were going to war. The group talked about the recent attacks on settlements in Choluteca and Villanueva as examples of how far the government is willing to go in making poor people homeless. Those attacks were documented by social and traditional media so that the whole country could see them, most evictions are not shown on television.

The group also talked about the ongoing intimidations against campesino leaders. In Progreso there was an intense campaign against the CNTC, especially Magdalena during the recuperation of land claimed by the ASUNOSA corporation (part of SAB Miller's operations). Magdalena was criminally charged and all the leadership was threatened. The case against Magdalena was finally negotiated but there remain threats and intimidations, such as surveillance of the leaders' movements. The group felt, in general, that the Hernandez government has unleashed a new campaign against campesino organizations and communities with threats, evictions and the criminalization of the campesino social movement. They said that one of the key fights for the agrarian movement is to fight this criminalization and intimidation.

Julian, Francisco, Bernabe

Francisco explained that his community, 6 de April,  is also under threat of eviction after more than 11 years on their land. They were being titled under President Zelaya's decree (18-2008), which was aimed at resolving hundreds of long-standing agrarian conflicts in favor of the campesinos living and working on recuperated land. After the coup, the decree was annulled and, in the case of 6 de April, a big landowner claimed the land, first demanding payment from the Agrarian Institute and when that was denied moving to the courts to claim title to the land. The campesinos have now been told by the Agrarian Institute that they need to get a lawyer to defend their title, but they do not have the resources to hire private representation. Juan Orlando Hernandez has slashed the budget and and functions of the Agrarian Institute in the past few years so that it no longer provides the same legal and advisory services to the campesinos that it once did.

Magdalena with poster
for Credi-Mujer Law

In the middle of this discussion a reporter and cameraman from the television station, TV Progreso arrived to interview Magdalena about a recent success for the campesino movement, the passage of the Credi-Mujer law in Congress. This law is aimed at increasing gender equity so that poor women and campesinas in the rural areas can get access to credit and other economic assistance. Magdalena talked about the importance of this access in a country with a high percentage of women headed households and single mothers who are struggling to survive. After the reporter left she told me that there are some people who don't feel this small victory is important but that she and other women leaders believe that it will not only help women directly but indirectly will increase access to other services and assistance for poor women in the countryside.

Magdalena began talking about the determination of the organized campesino movement to begin the fight again for Congress to pass their project, the Law for Integral Agrarian Reform with Gender Equity.  She said that they had not been able to win in Congress over the past two years but are gearing up to fight again because only with a just agrarian reform will it be possible to begin to address the extreme poverty and the agrarian conflicts and violence against communities  in the countryside.

Margarita Murillo

Another important campaign that Magdalena said they want to take up is an independent investigation of the assassination of Margarita Murillo, a campesina leader and member of the resistance, killed on August 26, 2014, in nearby Villanueva while working on her parcel of land.

Margarita was a founding member of an early campesino organization, the FENACAMH (National Unity Campesino Front) and of the CNTC. She was kidnaped and tortured during the repressive period of the 1980's and had to go into hiding. She returned and after the coup became active in the resistance. At the time of her murder she had protective measures ordered by the Interamerican Human Rights Commission but, as is usual,  the Honduran government had not complied with requirements to provide protection. Magdalena said that there is a real need for an independent investigation to find out the facts because otherwise there will not be a serious attempt to know what happened.

Student Protests Continue - Campesinos Planning Mobilizations

Campesino Press Conference: Protests Planned For Agrarian Reform and Decriminalization of the Campesino Movement

Conferencia de Prensa Campesina de Defensores En Linea y Honduras Tierra Libre: el original en español: 

Campesino press conference April 9th Tegucigalpa
foto: defensores en linea

The campesino movement today demands approval of the Law for Integral Agrarian reform with Gender Equity, a proposal that was introduced in the National Congress by the campesinos a year ago. 

The demand of the campesinos was made publicly at a press conference held in the offices of Vía Campesina in Tegucigalpa, where they announced that they would be holding big mobilizations nationally for the approval of the law. 

The campesinos noted that with the approval of the Law for Integral Agrarian Reform with Gender Equity the agrarian problem in Honduras would be resolved. 

On April 9, 2014 the campesino movement introduced a proposal for a law called “Agrarian Reform with Gender Equity, for Food Sovereignty and Rural Development” in the National Congress. The law had been previously circulated publicly to all the congressional political parties which promised to back it and to support the campesino movement related to this discussion and approval of the proposed law. 

The campesino movement lamented that the proposal was tabled with no measures taken for its discussion among all the political sectors represented in the National Congress. 

“It’s a disgrace that this proposed Law was tabled simply because there is no priority given to resolved the agrarian problem that the Honduran campesinos have at the national level,” stated campesino leader Agustín Ramos.

The criminalization of the campesino struggle grows greater every day. Around 5 thousand campesinos are in legal processes, of those 815 are women and 11 are in prison because of their struggle for the land. 

The problem for the campesino sector has increased so that the campesinos and campesinas announced that in upcoming days they would organize protests as a way of applying pressure so that the Law for an Integral Agrarian Reform with Gender Equity would be approved. 

“There will be mobilizations at the national level and we are conscious that we will be repressed but that won’t stop our demands that the Agrarian Reform Law be passed”, declared Magdalena Morales, representative of the National Center of Rural Workers (CNTC). 

She also called on President Juan Orlando Hernández to put his influence to work so that the Law would be approved in the National Congress in that with it the agrarian problem in Honduras would be resolved, in that the campesinos in Honduras don’t have land to work. 

Morales reminded President Hernández that in the rural areas there are more that 2 million women campesinas living in extreme poverty.

The campesino movement also denounced the fact that violent evictions continue in which their crops and homes have been destroyed with impunity causing thousands of lempira’s worth of losses for poor families of the Honduran campesino sector. 

Finally the campesinos called for the President of the Republic, Juan Orlando Hernández, the President of the National Congress, Mauricio Oliva and the President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Jorge Rivera Avilez to meet with them to open a broad and inclusive dialogue regarding the agrarian problem in the country and the crises in basic grains that will occur  this season if urgent measures are not taken to resolve it.

Student Protests: Support for the Students Grows while Violence Against Students Increases

Tegucigalpa March 26 protest
foto from desdeaquiabajo

Student protests begun by high school/middle school students and joined by university students against the budget cuts and privatization of public education have been marked by repression including the death squad style murders of student activists - one a 14 year old girl. The violence has been widely denounced including by the Honduras Solidarity Network (See statement here). The students now have been joined by broader sectors of the resistance movement and outraged Hondurans. For an update and more photos go to the Desde Aquí Abajo blog .

Reports from Honduras - February 3-4

Link to TeleSur News Report on Chabelo's Trial (spanish) 

Report from Honduras - Chabelo’s Trial  Day 5-6

February 3-4   Many thanks to Dunia Aracely Pèrez for use of her notes

text and photos by V. Cervantes

Both the defense and prosecution are continuing to present evidence (supposed evidence in the case of the prosecution); more prosecution witnesses have also appeared, mainly policemen and forensic experts. As has been the case from the beginning the prosecution has continued to present evidence that proves  that there was a confrontation with many weapons resulting in the deaths of 11 people - unrelated to the specific charges against Chabelo. 

The courthouse in La Ceiba

However it was notable that on February 3rd, a policeman from the investigatory unit of the National Police out of Tegucigalpa (DGIC) gave testimony that was different from his testimony at the earlier trial and hearing in 2010 and different from the written affidavit that he signed. In 2010 he stated that the witness he interviewed (the protected witness A2 that I mentioned in an earlier blog) told him that Chabelo was the one who opened the gas cans to start the fire and said nothing about Chabelo being related to the death for which he is charged (Carlos Manrique Sorto Castillo). But this time, he testified that the witness told him that Chabelo also killed Pedro -- which is the same change in testimony made by the protected witness A2 at this trial - also different from his testimony at the 2010 trial. When the defense asked the police officer why the information sworn to now is not in the affidavits and testimony of 2010, he said he didn’t know. As I reported in earlier blogs, other witnesses have testified that Chabelo went to the scene after 4pm, was not close to the house, and only went to find the body of his friend Arnulfo Guevara who was killed in the confrontation. I can only speculate that someone decided that the original dubious testimony didn’t implicate Chabelo enough so they changed it. The defense lawyers were finally able to state for the record that there were serious inconsistencies and contradictions in the testimonies.  

Today (February 4th) the defense presented a video that was taken the day after the confrontation when police were supposed to be investigating the crime scene and removing bodies. The video shows all kinds of policemen, press, and other individuals coming and going all over the property and surrounding area, walking around even where crime technicians were working etc. The defense introduced the video to show the massive contamination of a crime scene, noting that there were also objects seen in the video that were not on the inventory list of items found (a big blue container for example) and that there was a pile of burnt weapons (they looked like  AK47s) just laying out in the open and that the bodies were not being examined and removed by forensic or other medical personnel as required. The response from the prosecution was that “all crime scenes are contaminated” and that “humans aren’t perfect”.

The landowner and police official who began the war with the campesinos, Henry Vicente Osorto was supposed to testify since last week but has not shown up despite being ordered to do so by the court and despite many messages being sent to the National Police in Juticalpa, Olancho where he is the departmental chief. He is again expected tomorrow along with some additional forensic doctors. 

Once the witness and evidence presentations are through the procedure will be for Chabelo to speak on his own behalf and then the concluding arguments of the defense and prosecution. The 3 judge panel supposedly has to decide the case in 2 days but the  defense expects that the decision will come down on Friday. 

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Interview with Magdalena Morales, Regional Secretary of the CNTC in Yoro 

February 4, 2014

“In this country only the powerful have justice, not the poor” 

I spoke with Magdalena via telephone to get an update on her case.  She is charged with usurption of land, inciting protest and inciting the land occupation, and with "destruction of property" - all of this based on the fact that the CNTC is supporting the struggle of its members and members of the Association Pro-Development for the Campesinos of Progreso (ADCP) in Progreso, Yoro against the multinational sugar company, AZUNOSA, which occupies land that was declared to be eligible for land reform. She is one of more than 3,000 members of the CNTC facing criminal charges related to the land struggles. 

Magdalena in November 2013 

Magdalena told me that despite the fact that  the sugar company AZUNOSA has agreed to negotiate with the campesino organizations, she is still facing charges. Her next scheduled  court date in February 11th and she has been told that she may have to pay 12, 000 lempira (about 600 US Dollars) even if a solution is reached and she is no longer charged. She also told me that during the negotiations AZUNOSA keeps saying that a solution  is near but they have not made any concrete proposals. Meanwhile the campesinos continue living under tarps and in shacks on government land next to the land that should be theirs but remains heavily guarded by private guards, police and military. Just yesterday there was another attempt against one of the campesinos - he was walking to the highway to catch a bus near the land recuperation when a car tried to run over him. Luckily he escaped; another member of the campesino group was killed in a similar incident in 2013. 

Magdalena expressed her thanks for the international support and the publicity given to her case and the  CNTC and ADCP campesinos. She denounced the fact that the politicians pay no attention to the social problems of poverty and land reform and that in the justice system only the powerful and rich find justice.