Honduras government caves in to land campaign
Thursday 15 April 2010
The Honduran government has caved in to the demands of thousands of poor farm workers by granting them 11,000 acres of state-owned land that they have occupied since last year.
After 14 hours of intense negotiations coup president Porfirio Lobo's government agreed on Tuesday to grant the land to 3,000 farm workers, or campesinos, who are using it to grow African oil palms in the Aguan valley.
Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán leader Ruddy Hernandez praised the deal as a sign of "the government's serious commitment to resolving our problems."
"It creates an opening to establish calm in our region," he said.
Honduran Agrarian Reform Minister Cesar Ham said that Tuesday's deal constitutes the largest land grant to the poor in the history of the nation, where class tensions were a key factor in the June coup that ousted progressive then-president Manuel Zelaya.
The state-owned land, located in the same region as the protest, is to be granted within a year. The government also pledged to provide the farm workers with financial assistance and technical support.
But the farm workers did not immediately abandon the land that they seized last year just before the coup.
The government has deployed more than 2,000 soldiers and police in the area, ostensibly to seize drugs and illegal weapons, and the campesinos are demanding that the troops withdraw.
Mr Lobo's administration has yet to make a decision on that.
The deployment has drawn protests from opponents of last year's coup.
The National Popular Resistance Front has warned that the troops may be ordered to clear the squatters.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/89218