The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has posted: “[On June 3] we met with Melany Chavarria, general secretary of the CNTC [National Union of Rural Workers] in La Paz. From the CNTC they shared their concerns with us about the little progress regarding land titling and obtaining legal status for peasant bases.”
Unequal land ownership
In their report Breaking Down in Order to Rebuild: The Human Rights Situation in Honduras(published in May 2022), PBI-Honduras noted: “As is common to almost all of Latin America, the question of unequal land ownership is an historic and persistent problem in the Republic of Honduras. Approximately 80% of land held in private hands does not have a corresponding or accurate land title.”
Additionally, fewer than 5% of landowners control 60% of the fertile terrain.
“Legal uncertainty in land tenure, property rights, and land use; private land titles granted over ancestral lands; and authorities’ limited capacity to prevent and resolve land conflicts and guarantee peasant and indigenous communities’ rights to land and territory are some of the most alarming aspects of this issue.”
Notably, the CNTC in Yoro department has reported that “90% of the small-scale farming companies that are members of the organization face criminal prosecutions.”
The report adds: “The agrarian reform approved under the administration of Manuel Zelaya is just one example [of a sign of hope] pointed to by peasant organisations. However, this wide-reaching decree was one of the victims of the 2009 coup d’état, when it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the National Congress.”
The promise of Castro
In December 2021, Reuters reported: “Last month, after more than a decade of conservative governments roiled by corruption and drug-trafficking scandals, Hondurans elected Xiomara Castro, a leftist, to assume the presidency next year.”
That article continues: “A former first lady of a president toppled in a 2009 coup, Castro has promised to revive land reform programs that fueled anger among property owners before her husband’s ouster. The coup was led by the military but supported at the time by many of the country’s moneyed class.”
More than two years after Castro was sworn into office on January 27, 2022, Melany Chavarria of the CNTC, as noted above, sees little progress.
Accompaniment
The CNTC, created in 1985, is a small-scale farming and trade union organization that fights for the distribution of land.
The CNTC is affiliated with the Unified Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH) which in turn is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), along with 150+ labour organizations including the Canadian Labour Congress.
PBI-Honduras has been accompanying the CNTC since May 2018.
Published by Brent Patterson on