Honduras: Immoral land holdings and national impoverishment
[Tanslation of an article from Revistazo.com for December 30. See original article here and related article here.]
The latest massacre of five campesinos in the north of the country has once again attracted national and international attention. The bodies of campesinos scattered about and the rifles they embraced awkwardly traveled around the world, revealing the lie and the barbarity in which Honduras survives.
The most grotesque part was that Miguel Faccusé, the landowner implicated in the murders, came out declaring, “Why did they approach my properties knowing that my men were armed?” The central government, in an irresponsible way, immediately alerted the population to the presence of campesino guerrillas trained outside the country. At almost the same time, the National Congress approved the Anti-Terrorist Law to criminalize social movements. In this way, the country’s core problem, which is the immoral monopoly of land by the landowners, is moved to second place.
How is land distributed in Honduras?
Close to 80 percent of the territory is forest. That is, useful for the production of wood. Of all the arable land, one percent of the producers hoard a third of the fertile land of the country. While 375,000 small farmers lack land to cultivate. Furthermore, close to 75 percent of the domestic agricultural products the country consumes is produced by small farmers. The large agricultural businesses produce for export, with no major benefits for the country.
The main agricultural problem of the country is that a few hoard large tracts of arable land, often unproductive (latifundios), and the great majority of campesinos scrape by on a few meters of land (minifundios) to supply the domestic market.
This immoral distribution and possession of land is the expression of the political will of the élites who have misgoverned and are misgoverning the country. All the attempts at agrarian reform that have prioritized the redistribution of land have been systematically left unfinished.
In the 16th century, when the Spanish crown recognized the indigenous people’s rights to the lands in the “new world” through the Law of the Indies, the usurpers of these lands ignored the law. Then with the coming of independence in the 19th century, slavery was abolished and pleas were made for the campesinos’ and the indigenous people’s rights to the land. But these initiatives were also cut short by the new creole and mestizo masters.
In the 19th and 20th centuries there were several attempts to redistribute the land. A sign of this was the inconclusive agrarian reform of 1962, which defined the collective character of the lands as belonging to the campesinos. But this reform delayed advances in technology, markets, financing, highway systems, etc., for agriculture. So agriculture was left behind and the campesinos were left poor.
The conditions of impoverishment of the campesinos were taken advantage of by the new and old landowners, who, shielded by the Law on Agrarian Modernization of 1992, seized ownership of the lands. Turning the former owners into landless peons, or, in many cases, evicting them toward the cities to beg.
Does the land problem in Honduras have a solution?
Honduras will continue drowning in chronic poverty as long as the land remains in the hands of the few. The country is rural. Fifty-four percent of the population lives in the country but the state invests only two percent of the general budget in farming. That is why it is urgent to take on a real complete transformation of this sector.
The landowners have to understand that, sooner than later, poverty and the minifundio will in the end force the campesinos onto large agricultural properties. When hunger compels, there is no morality, no Anti-Terrorist Law that can hold back the instinct for survival. This is a socio-anthropological truth. Social peace in Honduras depends on the redistribution of the land.
Agrarian transformation and the constituent process
The process of complete agrarian transformation has to be undertaken within the framework of the constituent process, with the participation and determination of everyone.
Honduras should accept its primordially rural socio-cultural nature, and wager on farming as a national priority. The scarcity of food supplies on a national level, worsened by the effects of climate change, is another reason why the country should choose campesino agricultural production.
Complete agrarian transformation should take into account:
Correction of agricultural land titles and return of unproductive latifundios.
Equitable redistribution of land to the communities that have none or do not have enough. The titles must be collective and non-transferable. A maximum area for farming property should be established.
This redistribution has to be accompanied by a national thorough-going policy of development and training of the campesinos. Taking into account as well traditional agricultural technologies and knowledge.
This agrarian priority should have a sufficient budget, not only for technical development and loans, but also for the highway system and the opening of markets. The state, and all of us, should begin to consume our own products. In this way we, all of us, will confront the agrarian problem that we have lived with for centuries.
Tags: agrarian reform, Anti-Terrorist Law, campesinos, Honduras, land ownership, Miguel Facusse