Honduran government announces further militarization of Bajo Aguán
[Translation of an article from Revistazo of Tegucigalpa for August 16. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]
By Germán Reyes
Honduras is experiencing its worst crime wave in history and although crime is spread through every region of the country, Security Minister Óscar Álvarez has announced the launch of a new joint operation by the military and the police in the Aguán region, an area characterized by struggle between campesinos and landowners.
More than 150 campesinos and security guards have died in armed confrontations in the Aguán area. The government, incapable of complying with signed commitments, has announced a militarization through Operation Xatruch II.
The security minister reports the deployment of 600 additional men, to be added to the contingent that has been stationed in the region for several months.
“More than 1,000 troops will be added to those we have in the area to carry out disarming operations, evictions from occupied farms; we are going to establish order. We are already looking for places in the area to set up military installations and to construct police facilities,” the official said.
Álvarez said they will carry out a general disarmament during the operation. Members of the campesino movement, however, charge the army and the police with plotting with René Morales, Reynaldo Canales and Miguel Facussé, businessmen they assert are in possession of a large-calibre arsenal they use to intimidate and assassinate campesinos.
Last year, arguing that he had in his hands a military intelligence report, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa accused the campesinos of Aguán of having a considerable number of large-calibre weapons which, he said, would be used to destabilize the country.
He stated at the time that the groups had at least 1,000 unauthorized AK-47 and M-16 rifles and warned that he would crush any attempt at destabilization.
To combat the supposed threat, the government militarized the area and initiated Operación Tumbador, an action that lasted more than six months but the only result of which was the expulsion of campesinos who were occupying African palm farms. So far, no official report of the disarming of campesinos has been seen.
The Lobo Sosa government issued within the council of ministers decree number 003-2010 ordering an inspection of the offices of the National Agrarian Institute in the town of Sinaloa. They charged that arms were being stored in the building. There was a military and police raid that ejected the workers but in the end they found nothing.
Lands in the region had been designated for agrarian reform but the Ley de Modernización Agrícola, approved during the administration of Rafael Leonardo Callejas, gave a green light for agro-industrial businessmen to hold on to them at low prices. The cooperatives established in the area, unable to pay off their agricultural debts, sold off their properties one by one.
Faced with eviction from the land, beginning in 2001 thousands of campesino families began a process of recovering lands that had been planted in African palm, which they claimed as their own. In 2009, members of the Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguán (MUCA) offered a proposal for an accord to resolve the conflict and two weeks before the coup d’état a settlement was signed and ratified between the National Agrarian Institute, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Ranching, the vice minister of the presidency, the mayor of Tocoa and MUCA.
The settlement called for the creation of a tripartite commission to revise the legal procedure used by the businessmen to acquire the land. Nevertheless, the coup d’état put a stop to any advance or hope of resolving the conflict by peaceful means.
On December 9, 2009, 2,500 campesino families affiliated with 26 cooperatives belonging to MUCA initiated a process of recuperating the 20,000 hectares they claimed as their own. A wave of violence and repression was unleashed throughout Bajo Aguán.
Expulsions and attacks by the army, the police, the companies’ security guards and, supposedly, paramilitary groups began. Illegal detentions, arrest orders and assassinations went hand in hand with a media campaign orchestrated by the principal national media to discredit MUCA’s struggle. Nevertheless, in the midst of unprecedented militarization, the government and MUCA began negotiations that resulted in the agreement of April 13, 2010.
The Movimiento Auténtico Renovador de Campesinos del Aguán (MARCA), made up initially of four cooperatives and now with 14 campesino associative enterprises, chose not to sign the agreement between MUCA and the government on the basis that they should not trust a political accord but should attempt to recover their lands through the courts, based on the legal validity of their titles to the lands in question.
According to testimony from national human rights organizations, the assassinations were carried out within the framework of the agrarian conflict and with the direct involvement of the private security guards of some of the businessmen of the area, in complicity with the police and the military, who have held the streets and highways of the Aguán valley under their total control since March, 2010.
In early 2010, the deaths were typically simulated accidents by means of running down pedestrians or causing fatal automobile accidents. In all cases, according to statements by witnesses and members of the campesino movement, the principal perpetrators were security guards of the businessmen Miguel Facussé and René Morales.
Beginning with the negotiating process between the Porfirio Lobo Sosa administration and MUCA campesinos, there was an increase in the deaths by large-calibre firearms after the victims had been pursued, and in two cases ambushed. After the signing of the agreement, all the assassinations took on different characteristics, including kidnapping and torture followed by killing.
On Sunday, August 14, blood flowed again in Aguán. There was a report of the assassinations of six people on the Paso del Aguán farm, of whom two were campesinos and the rest private security guards. There were also reports of 11 people seriously injured.
The bloodshed continued on Monday, August 15 at 3:00 in the afternoon when five people were assassinated, supposedly by security guards driving a green pickup truck. The dead, Elvin Givanni (32 years old), Karla Cacho (25), Bonifacio Dubón (32), Eleuterio Lara (27) and Migdalia Sarmiento, were employees of a soft-drink bottling plant in San Pedro Sula.
The victims had arrived in the town of Sinaloa to repair a stand used for the sale of food and refreshments in the facilities of the regional offices of the National Agrarian Institute. The dead were traveling in a blue truck belonging to the bottling company. According to a report by the Colón police, the event has nothing to do with the deaths of the six people on the Paso del Aguán farm on Sunday, the 14th.
Unfulfilled commitments
In late 2009 and early 2010, several African palm plantations under the control of businessman Miguel Facussé were occupied by groups affiliated with MUCA. With the supposed objective of resolving the conflict, on April 16, 2010, the 28 groups of campesinos affiliated with MUCA ratified unanimously, in the presence of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa and his cabinet, a settlement that would grant them 11,000 hectares of land.
The government’s promise to turn over 3,000 hectares of cultivated land immediately and the rest, as uncultivated land, in the following months of that year, was mostly unfulfilled, according to statements by the campesinos.
The agreement calls for the carrying out of a technical legal study covering productive feasibility, profitability, the manner in which the lands were acquired and verification of the limit on the lands in the hands of landowners Miguel Facussé and Reynaldo Canales to be transferred to MUCA.
The government also agreed to construct 100 dwellings for the campesino movement and to withdraw troops from the area in conflict.
Tags: Aguan, campesinos, Honduras, Miguel Facusse, militarization, Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan, Natinal Agrarian Institute, Oscar Alvarez, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Rene Morales, Reynaldo Canales