August 24, 2005.

HONDURAS: Tourist 'Development,' Repression, and Garifuna Resistance

Concerned about the recent incidents of persecution against leaders of
the Honduran Fraternal Black Organization (OFRANEH), at a time when the
organization has been actively denouncing a number of internationally
financed 'development' projects affecting Garifuna communities in
Honduras, Rights Action organized a fact-finding delegation to the region earlier
this month. On August 12-13, community development, environment and human
rights activists from Italy, Canada and the United States traveled to Triunfo
de la Cruz and La Ceiba to meet with community and organization leaders.
Below you will find:

· An article collectively written by the delegation participants
· A recent declaration by the National Territorial Council of the
Garifuna People

Rights Action has supported OFRANEH's important community development
and enviro-protection work and asks for your tax-deductible donations
(information below) to continue to be able to do so. For more
information or to support the work of OFRANEH and other grassroots organizations in
Honduras, contact Rights Action: info@rightsaction.org, 416-654-2074,
www.rightsaction.org.

***

THE TOURIST INDUSTRY AND REPRESSION ON HONDURAS' CARIBBEAN COAST
... AND THE GARIFUNA COMMUNITIES' STRUGGLE IN DEFENSE OF THEIR
TERRITORY

Alfredo López remained a political prisoner for seven years, jailed on
fabricated charges because of his tireless struggle in defense of the
communal lands of his Garifuna community, Triunfo de la Cruz. The
struggle of Triunfo de la Cruz, located in the municipality of Tela, Atlántida,
on Honduras' spectacular Caribbean coast, is in defense of their ancestral
traditions, including communal land tenure and management.

As is the case in all 46 Garifuna communities, Triunfo de la Cruz is
threatened by various actors interested in the 'development' of tourism
along the coastline, where the Garifuna people have lived for over 200
years. The Garifuna are an afro-descendent indigenous people whose
origins lie on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, where shipwrecked slaves
and maroons from neighbouring islands joined with the indigenous Arawak
population. As a result of their constant struggles against the British
colonizers, the Garifuna were evicted from the island in 1797 and
abandoned on Honduras' north coast. They have subsequently populated almost the
entire coastline, maintaining their autonomy and living in harmony with the
land, managing the natural resources according to their cosmovision.

With the example and presence of their ancestors, the community of
Triunfo de la Cruz continues to manage the resources communally and after
decades of struggle achieved a communal land title in 1992 and an extension in
1996. These communal land titles are inalienable, thus preventing their sale
to outside investors.

However, in recent years the Honduran government has become interested
in the lands and beaches where the Garifuna communities are located,
aiming to develop the tourist industry, considered to be the upcoming principal
motor of the national economy. Various national government administrations
have adopted a series of policies and projects to this end, without paying
the least attention to the rights of the Garifuna people. This process of
reforms and privatizations has been expressly driven and supported by
international financial institutions, facilitating the interests of outside
investors who have coveted the Garifuna coast for decades.

In 1994, investors with considerable leverage in the government began
constructing a luxury housing complex within the ancestral lands of
Triunfo de la Cruz. To facilitate the Mar Bella (Beautiful Sea) project, the
Municipal government of Tela granted the investors land titles located
inside Triunfo de la Cruz's communal land title, a very common - though
completely illegal - practice in Garifuna communities.

The Lands Defense Committee of Triunfo de la Cruz (CODETT), led by
Jesús Alvarez and Alfredo López, officially accused the Municipal government
of Tela of Abuse of Authority and Embezzlement of Public Funds for its
participation in and support of the project. For his actions in defense of
his community's lands, Jesús Alvarez was the target of two murder attempts
and died a few days after the second. During the same period, Alfredo
López was detained on false charges of drug trafficking and remained in jail
for seven years, despite the complete lack of evidence in the case.

In spite of the repression, the community struggle continued and
managed to detain the Mar Bella project. Today, the half-constructed villas stand
as monuments to the victorious community struggle. In the shadow of the
abandoned structures, we see the welcoming cabins being constructed by
a group of women from the community as an alternative - community-based
tourism. At the same time, the women's community project is a political
strategy to recuperate their lands and a physical barrier to ensure that the
Mar Bella project does not advance in the future.

The cases of Jesús Alvarez and Alfredo López in Triunfo de la Cruz are
far from unique; in fact, they characterize the repression carried out
against leaders both of Garifuna communities and of the Honduran Fraternal
Black Organization (OFRANEH). OFRANEH is a community-based organization
that, since the 1970s, has accompanied the struggles of Garifuna communities
and their survival as a people.

The organization's main focus is the defense of ancestral territory.
In this regard, OFRANEH has been the only organization that has
consistently and publicly denounced the policies and projects that aim to break up
community titles and has, at the same time, struggled for the legal titling
of ancestral territory still not recognized by the State. Because of the
organization's firm position, many of its leaders have been the targets
for persecution, from threats and intimidation to politically motivated
murders and jailings.

Earlier the year, on March 25, Miriam Miranda, one of OFRANEH's
principal leaders, was the victim of an abusive property search in her house in
the Buenos Aires neighbourhood in the city of La Ceiba. Criminal
investigation (DGIC) agents entered the house, accusing Miranda of possessing stolen
weapons and jewelry supposedly stolen from a La Ceiba jewelry shop, the
same kind of false accusations that cost Alfredo López seven years of his
life. Clearly, no contraband was found and authorities, prompted by the
international denunciation of the incident, later proclaimed it was the
result of an error of the State intelligence.

Not long after, on May 30, OFRANEH General Coordinator Gregoria Flores
was shot in the arm with an exploding bullet in broad daylight along
downtown La Ceiba's main avenue. The aggressor, a private security agent, had
supposedly been in pursuit of a thief, although there has not been an
adequate investigation into the incident. The three cases briefly illustrated
above demonstrate the pattern of systematic repression against
Garifuna land defense activists. It is important to recognize that these
human rights violations against leaders are also elements of the
collective repression against the way of life of a people for whom survival is
impossible without their ancestral lands.

Today, the inhabitants and community authorities of Triunfo de la Cruz
gather in a communal hall for an assembly to discuss new threats to
community lands, among other issues on the agenda. The latest news in
the ongoing series of policies and projects that pose threats is a recent
executive decree establishing the Tela Bay, where Triunfo and other
Garifuna communities are located, as an Area Under Special Management (ABRE).

The decree's objective is to zone and manage the entire area according
to its orientation to the development of tourism, based on prior
legislation that define tourist zones as public property, giving the State the
right to expropriate. Concerning Garifuna communal lands, ABRE will apply
Chapter III of the Property Law brought into effect in 2004, a chapter that
facilitates the fragmentation of communal titles, in clear violation of
International Labor Organization Covenant 169 on Indigenous and Tribal
Peoples.

Organized in a Permanent Assembly to strengthen themselves against the
constant violations of their rights as peoples, OFRANEH and organizations
representing the other indigenous and black peoples of Honduras
continue to strongly denounce these elements of the Property Law. Accompanying the
law - or, more precisely, in order to implement it - is the Honduran Land
Administration Program (PATH), financed by the World Bank. Also a
target of community resistance, PATH aims to "legalize" ancestral Garifuna lands
to the invaders who have taken them over and, based on the Property Law,
seeks to individualize existing communal land titles.

ABRE, the Property Law and PATH, along with other projects, form a
regulatory framework whose main goal along the Caribbean Coast is the
legal security of land tenure - in the hands of individuals, so that land may
be bought or lost through mortgage - not in favour of communities but for
investors, both national and international. Given their aggressive
institutionalization of the neoliberal model in CAFTA, Plan Puebla
Panama and other national-level projects, it comes as no surprise that
international financial institutions such as the World Bank and
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), in the name of 'development',
have had active roles in supporting the interests of private investors to
the detriment of communities.

One example of the outcome of these legislation changes and
international support is the tourist mega-project 'Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort,'
more commonly known as the Tela Bay Project. Without taking into account
the serious concerns of the communities that will be directly affected -
San Juan, Tornabé and Miami - the Honduran Institute of Tourism and
powerful private investors are moving ahead with the 'enclave tourism' project
within the buffer zone of the Jeanette Kawas National Park, despite the fact
that the luxury hotels, golf course and other aspects are not sustainable
and threaten the communities' resources, especially water. Los Micos has
had active multi-million dollar support from the Italian Cooperation, the
IADB and the participation of investors who have a long history of usurping
ancestral Garifuna lands and of threatening the communities and their
resources, such as Miguel Facussé.

Faced with this situation, OFRANEH has brought several petitions to the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission for abuses and violations
committed by the Municipality of Tela against Triunfo de la Cruz, by the State
and international 'conservationist' institutions in the Cayos Cochinos and,
in the case of Punta Piedra, for human rights violations linked to
territorial rights violations. In the case of Alfredo López, the sentence of the
Inter-American Court will soon be made known.

Far from leaving their problems in the hands of international entities,
Garifuna communities continue their ongoing struggle in defense of
their territory, their natural resources and their cultural survival as a
people. Nor has the intense systematic repression been able to silence OFRANEH
or its leaders. Here in Triunfo de la Cruz and all along the coast, the
Garifuna people, accompanied by their ancestors, is struggling for
territory, justice and to continue existing as a People.

***

NATIONAL TERRITORIAL COUNCIL OF THE GARIFUNA PEOPLE
yaguma_garifuna@yahoo.com

II DECLARATION OF SAMBO CREEK

We, representatives of the Land Defense Committees of the Garifuna
communities Plaplaya, Pueblo Nuevo, Tocamacho, Sangrelaya, San José de
la Punta, Iriona Viejo, Cusuna, Punta Piedra, Limón, Sambo Creek, Punta
Gorda, San Juan, La Rosita, Travesia and Masca, gathered in the community of
Sambo Creek on August 20-21 to analyze and discuss the problems surrounding
land tenure and territory in our communities, MANIFEST THE FOLLOWING:

1.Today, more than ever, the life of the Garifuna people is endangered
by the voracity of the economic power groups of the country, which are
being supported and protected by the government currently in power. This is
demonstrated by President of the Republic Ricardo Maduro's recent
passing of an executive decree, creating the Tela Bay 'Area Under Special
Management' (ABRE), which is nothing more than a mechanism to expropriate our areas
of tourist interest to hand them over to investors, both national and
foreign, in the name of the so-called 'development' of the tourist industry.

2.The Garifuna communities have been emphatic in their opposition to the
implementation of the Honduran Land Administration Program (PATH), a
project financed by the World Bank of which the fundamental objective is the
privatization and individualization of land, contravening the collective
property system of the Garifuna people's lands. Despite this clear
opposition, the Property Institute is implementing a process of measurement
in the communities belonging to the districts of Iriona and Gracias a Dios
without the consent of the communities, supported only by a few Garifuna
pseudo-leaders who do not care about the future of the generations to
come.

3.The municipalization of our communities has played a fundamental
role in the accelerated loss of our territories, as the municipal governments
have dedicated themselves to measuring, registering and legitimizing the
invasions that have taken place in our communities. Ever since he took
power, the mayor of Juan Francisco Bulnes, Antonio Vialta, took over
the lands of the community of Batalla as though they were his personal
property. Without respecting the ancestral possession of the community, in an
arrogant manner he has clearly abused his position of power by expropriating
lands to develop his municipal projects. The municipal mayor of Puerto Cortés,
Marlon Lara, recently inaugurated a sewage treatment plant - financed by the
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) - in lands belonging to the
Garifuna community of Travesia. When members of the community denounced the
situation, Lara simply responded that Travesia is a neighbourhood of Puerto
Cortés and therefore that the Municipality of Cortés is authorized to
develop whatever project they wish in the community.

4.An accelerated process of the loss of our communities' water resources is
taking place, as many of the water sources have been invaded. Such is the
case in San José de la Punta, where the water source has been invaded for
more than 10 years, with grave consequences on community health as
contaminated water is being consumed. In the same manner, the construction
of an illegal road leading to the Sico Valley affected the water sources of
more than 8 Garifuna communities. Worsening the problem, the municipalities
intend to privatize our communities' water.

For all of the above, the members of the Garifuna People's Land and
Territory Defense Committees participating in this II Gathering DECLARE:

1.Land and natural resources are the fundamental base of our people's
cultural and socioeconomic survival. In this sense, the Land and
Territory Defense Committees of the Garifuna people declare ourselves in
permanent struggle and resistance against the intensions of the government,
International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and IADB,
landowners and servile politicians, who are planning and implementing
projects and programs to expropriate our lands and territories.

2.We assume and support the reforms to chapter III of the Property Law
- concerning the property regime of indigenous and black peoples' lands -
contained in the Reform Proposal presented by OFRANEH to the National
Congress. At the same time, we call on the Congress to adopt this proposal
.
3.We reiterate the right of our communities to control and
administrate their water and reject all attempts to privatize this resource.

4.We condemn and repudiate the action taken by President Ricardo
Maduro in emitting the executive decree that creates ABRE and from this moment we
express to him that we will not allow this regime to be implemented in our
communities. They would have to disappear us completely in order for their
objective to be carried out.

5.The municipalities must not continue to take decisions about our
territory. We are ready to continue our struggle against abuses of
power that reduce our territories.

¡¡With the Force of Barauda and Satuye, Our Resistance Continues!!

In the Community of Sambo Creek, on August 21, 2005.
Sambo Creek: Luís Fernández, Elena Guity, Nahun Lalin
Tocamacho: Maria Celina Centeno,Emiliano Arriola
Pueblo Nuevo: Jorge Ortiz Travesía: Cesar Mariano,
Margarita Videa Martinez, Denia Cacho Ávila,
Milton Javier Solís Ávila, Selvin López, Gilmer Núñez
Plaplaya: Porfirio Casildo, Eulogio Montero
Iriona Viejo: Pastor Suazo Mejia, Victoria Suazo
Limón: Lilian Rivas Cusuna: Raquel Castillo,
Altagracia Álvarez, Zacarías Bernardez
Punta Piedra: Benito Bernardez, Roberto Mejia
San José de la Punta: Damián Suaso, Rosario Bernardez
Punta Gorda: Bernabé García, Kendra Leiva
San Juan: Wilfredo Guerrero, Marín Ellis, Jessica García
Masca: Amada López Sangrelaya: Magda Batiz, Edna
Ismena Martinez La Rosita: Justina Flores

***

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