Campesinos: Between Carrot and Stick
Benjamin, Medea
"YOU KNOW WHAT HAVE BEEN THE RE- sults of these past 25 years of agrarian reform?" asked Fernando Lardizabal, a landowner and former head of the conservative National Federation of Honduran...
...Members of FECORAH, for example, ran in the 1985 congressional elections on the ticket of the National and Liberal parties, the traditional champions of the status quo...
...La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa), December 16, 1986...
...258-259...
...The result is that land tenure in Honduras remains highly skewed, with 20% of the productive land in the hands of 279 individuals or firms, and 126,000 small subsistence farms left with less than ten acres each.'" About 150,000 families (or one-third of the rural population) remain landless, and the number is growing at a rate of at least 8,000 a year...
...In 1986 the government orchestrated a brilliant maneuver to break the trade union of the National Agrarian Institute (SITRAINA) by blaming lower-level employees for the stagnation of the reform process...
...Not only does it take up precious flatland, but irrigated acreage as well...
...Jeckel and Mr...
...others received a farm from grateful landowners...
...INA's task has been hampered by budgetary constraints, massive paperwork and complicated legal procedures...
...Ley de Reforma Agraria: Reglamentos y Otras Disposiciones (Tegucigalpa: Instituto Nacional Agrario, 1978), p. 22...
...Antonio Dubon, who has worked at INA for the past 20 years, admits that the only reason for the long delays is lack of will...
...I hate to say it because I was very Pat Robertson's 700 Club: U.S...
...There are some exceptions, such as the model Guanchias cooperative which received decent land and generous government assistance...
...2. J. Mark Ruhl, "The Honduran Agrarian Reform Under Suazo Cord6va, 1982-85...
...Some were rejected outright and the rest were sent back to INA for "further study...
...Until some major house-cleaning is done," claimed CNTC adviser Miguel Murillo, "infighting and intrigue will continue to dilute the strength of the peasant movement...
...In These Times, March 18-24, 1987, p. 9. 29...
...Organizations only gain government recognition, however, once they have moved toward a more conciliatory position, as was the case with the UNC...
...The sprawling Palmerola base, where 1,200 U.S...
...PERHAPS THE GREATEST EFFECT OF THE U.S...
...The offices of the Agrarian Reform Institute are strewn with reams upon reams of peasant claims for land, claims that have been shuffled from desk to desk for as long as twelve years...
...In the words of Col...
...I would sooner resign from the presidency than call for the resignation of Mario Espinal," Azcona declared...
...and the UNC $90,000...
...Among the founders of FENACH were members of the Honduran Communist Party, which has played a minor role in Honduran politics but was influential in organizing the banana workers...
...The most militant of the larger organizations is now the CNTC...
...Teofilo Trejos, the CNTC representative on the commission, said the government insisted that because of Gastel's close ties to key politicians and the military, touching Gastel would "bring the whole of Honduran private enterprise down on us and could lead to a rightwing coup...
...Andlisis y propuestas...
...Estimates of the number of Honduran campesinos displaced by the contras run as high as 40,000.28 The contras and the thousands of Nicaraguan refugees have caused severe ecological damage as well...
...At the national level, the united front the organizations tried to present vis-A-vis the government was shattered when the UNC began separate negotiations with the government and the military...
...Just for fun," he said, "I personally pushed one of the petitions through all the stages to see how long it would take...
...Peasant, worker and student organizations were all brutally repressed...
...Peasants participating in land recoveries have been jailed, tortured and killed by either the military, or more likely, the landowners' private guards...
...We are systematically destroying our most precious natural resource-the forests-and the land is quickly being eroded...
...The government has also tried to foment dissent within the groups themselves...
...Our schools and universities are appalling, so we're not turning out qualified technicians...
...4 Unlike most land reforms, Honduras' provided landowners with an ample appeal process-including a National Agrarian Council made up of representatives of the government, landowners and peasants...
...While only a minority of campesinos are organized (about 20%), this still represents a formidable force in a predominantly agricultural society...
...In the May recoveries, for example, 450 campesinos were arrested and three were killed by the landowners' goons...
...The campesinos in the area met every month to try to figure out what to do...
...Because of the legacy of L6pez Arellano, they are rooting for a reformist military coup to save the day...
...While it placed a ceiling on landholdings (which depended on soil quality and whether the land was irrigated), the ceilings were generous and did not affect land planted in export crops-bananas, sugar cane, African palm, coffee, pineapple, citrus and tobacco...
...In the last few decades this changed dramatically...
...7. Marcial Euceda has since formed a new group called Peasant Organization for Honduran National Agriculture (OCANH), which operates in the department of Santa Barbara...
...FY 1988 Congressional Presentation, Annex 111, Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: Agency for International Development, 1987), p. 134...
...He put fences, fences and more fences wherever he could...
...HE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO THESE periodic rural crises has traditionally been an effective mixture of carrot and stick...
...3 0 HE PARADOX IS THAT HONDURAN "democracy," bogged down in legalese that inevitably favors the rich, is incapable of implementing genuine reforms...
...On the base level, the plethora of competing groups has a debilitating effect on organizing work...
...But at the same time, peasants out in the field are jailed, tortured and murdered by the military or landowners' private thugs...
...And 43% of the people do not know how to read and write...
...The U.S military and contra presence has added to social tensions in the countryside...
...On the one hand campesino leaders are treated as brokers of power and invited to the negotiating table...
...Instituto Hondurefio de Desarrollo Rural, 84 meses de reforma agraria del gobierno de lasfuerzas armadas de Honduras (Tegucigalpa: IHDER, 1980), pp...
...2 2 An INA study of the beneficiaries of the reform (known as the "reformed sector") came to this depressing conclusion: "With few exceptions . . the level of poverty and the quality of life in the rest of the reformed sector is little or no better than that of the campesinos without land...
...policy, as when its new president complained about the gringos and the contras being the two new landowners in Honduras, occupying large tracks of land in detriment to Honduran peasantry: A high level of organization...
...When foreign banana barons got wind of it, they tactfully reminded the Hondurans that when the Guatemalans tried the same shenanigans in 1954, the fruit companies-with CIA help-not only got rid of the law but the whole government to boot...
...Most growers are forced to sell to "coyotes" or middlemen, who buy cheap and sell dear...
...Miguel Angel Garcia, epitomizes this process...
...It was done in one month...
...They also demanded an emergency land distribution plan, greater access to credit and the release of all campesinos jailed in land disputes...
...2 7 UT THE COSTS OF DRAINING FLOODED areas, rehabilitating badly eroded land or colonizing new frontier land go far beyond the ability of a financially strapped government...
...This legal status, or personeria juridica, is something of a Catch-22...
...With birth rates the highest in the region (3.5%), they argue, what little land is left could never keep up with the growing population...
...A fourth group, the National Congress of Rural Workers (CNTC), was formed in 1985 out of a number of groups which had broken off from these larger organizations...
...Pressure for reform was coming from two distinct sectors: peasants demanding land to grow food, and President Ken22REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22nedy's Alliance for Progress, which saw reform in Latin America as a bitter but necessary pill to ward off the cancer of another Cuban-style revolution...
...Andlisis y propuestas...
...Honduras was further distinguished from the rest of Central America in that land was plentiful...
...But once groups achieve this status they are beholden to the state, as the government begins to pay staff salaries, provide cars, lawyers, etc...
...L6pez Arellano dove into his new role as reformer with the same zeal he displayed as arch-conservative nine years earlier...
...ANACH has traditionally boasted close ties to government and the AFL-CIO," Posas explained...
...Infant mortality rates are the highest in the region at 76 per 1000 live births, per capita GNP is the lowest ($720...
...The militant National Federation of Honduran Peasants (FENACH), was so severely crushed that many of its members, including its charismatic founder Lorenzo Zelaya, fled to the mountains to wage a short-lived guerrilla revolt...
...Fierce competition over peasant loyalty has too easily degenerated into paternalism, which naturally favors the organizations with larger funds and better political connections...
...But more typical are the campesinos who receive eroded patches of rocky hillsides or land that gets flooded at least once a year...
...I have no doubt that the future of Honduras will be the same as that of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua-that of great social upheaval and civil war...
...FECORAH President Nelly Ramirez recently accused INA director Mario Espinal of bribing peasant leaders with $3,500 in an attempt to divide the organization.'o HE 1980S ALSO MARKED A NEW SOURCE of division, as various political parties and factions of parties vied for peasant support, convincing some campesino leaders to run for national office on their tickets...
...Interview with CNTC general secretary Luciano Barrera, Tegucigalpa, May 25, 1987...
...Given the extreme poverty in the countryside, peasants are naturally prone to go with the organization which can "deliver the most goods...
...So INA is full of bureaucrats who have no skill, no experience and no interest in the campesinos...
...the peasants.' Some of the infighting among the peasant groups can be traced to conscious attempts by the government or the landowners to split the movement...
...The postWorld War II period marked a new phase in Honduran society...
...Some illicitly cut off a slice of state land...
...It is extremely unlikely that a latifundista like Callejas would go against the interests of his own family and friends to satisfy poor peasants...
...Many colonels and lieutenant colonels are now part of the landed class, having acquired property while in office...
...Alvarez commanding the miliJANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988 25Repo4t on0 4h Ameras Honduras uccupying lana nas oeen aelinea as terronsm...
...Despite the lack of an official appraisal, some general conclusions are evident: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988 27Repo4r on t4h AmAerica Honduras The reform has not managed to "put a chicken in every Honduran pot...
...The worst affected area is the Miskito Coast...
...Former Labor Minister Gautama Fonseca, like most critical thinkers in Honduras, is apprehensive about the future...
...tary in 1982, the stick took precedence over the carrot...
...It took two and a half days to make the 120-mile journey between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula...
...Available from Food First Books, 145 9th St., San Francisco, CA 94103...
...The majority of rural dwellers (54%) live on an annual per capita income of $70 a year, a sum which covers merely 28% of their basic consumer needs.' 4 Not much land has been distributed, and what has been distributed is often worthless...
...The organization which emerged from these leagues in 1969, the National Peasant Union (UNC), spearheaded large-scale "invasions" of idle lands-a tactic that has since become the hallmark of the Honduran movement...
...Today he is a full-fledged member of the club, heading up the conservative landowners' association, FENAGH...
...Others insist that the land reform has not run its course, since there are still vast areas of both state and private land that are inadequately exploited...
...But he is not alone in condemning Honduras' 25-year experiment in agrarian reform...
...Andlisis y propuestas...
...The government marketing board, IMA, is totally broke and only buys about 15% of the nation's crops...
...The decree also forced private owners to rent idle lands to peasants on demand...
...The agrarian reform is meant to be an integrated program...
...Ironically, the origins of the peasant movement can be traced to the U.S...
...The bureaucrats at the National Ag- rarian Institute kept saying to come back next month, or that the request was being processed, that it was in the hands of the regional office, in the hands of the Agrarian Council-they kept us chasing our tails and getting nowhere...
...W HILE THE AGRARIAN REFORM LAW DElineates a step-by-step procedure for peasants to obtain land, this process has become mired in a mucky, bureaucratic swamp...
...See box...
...30 (September 1987...
...As one AID officer quipped, "While Honduran soil may not be the best for most crops, it sure is fertile ground when it comes to peasant organizations...
...In October 1987, for example, 14 peasants belonging to the CNTC were arrested and brutally beaten...
...Rafael Callejas, the frontrunner in the 1989 presidential race, belongs to one of Honduras' biggest landowning families...
...The recoveries take place at planting season, usually in May and then again in September...
...The front was crushed by the Army in 1965...
...AT BOTTOM, THE HISTORY OF AGRARIAN reform in Honduras is not one of altruism, but one of the combativeness of its protagonists, the campesino organizations...
...Oseguera himself was released last September from jail, where he had been held since the spring recoveries...
...These three peasant groups, ANACH, UNC and FECORAH, are the major groups today...
...An estimated 89% of the rural population is underemployed...
...She inherited everything she owned from her father, who was one of those men who got rich by just buying wire and then fencing in the land...
...World Bank, World Development Report 1987 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987...
...But the greatest constraint of all has been the lack of political will...
...With strongman Gen...
...9. El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula), June 29, 1987...
...The Honduran military chief in the region, Lt...
...As long as this remains the process of recruiting personnel, there will never be a serious attempt to implement the law...
...A T ABOUT 4 A.M...
...Villeda's original bill called for the expropriation-with full compensation-of idle farmland...
...2 (Autumn 1985), p.65, quoting statistics from CEPAL (Comisi6n Econ6mica Para America Latina...
...The landowners' group FENAGH has been calling for such an evaluation to prove the reform's abysmal record...
...While the Honduran scene is not yet comparable to Guatemala, where a nice chunk of land has become part of the military "pension fund," the trend is certainly toward greater links between the military and the landed class...
...Only about 18% of Honduran land is arable...
...But curiously enough, one group considers the reform a tremendous success: the armed forces...
...This lack of communication translated into a weaker sense of national identity than in neighboring countries...
...On the other hand, a "non-democratic" form of government-which many see as the only alternative to an all-out war-would be unacceptable to U.S...
...The Hondurans got the message and sheepishly restricted the law to state lands.' But it was already too late...
...The CNTC and ANACH fought over land in Santa Barbara...
...While the reform law states that land given out must be suitable for agriculture or cattle-raising, INA itself admits that only 83% of the land distributed to peasants is workable...
...After years of waiting for INA to respond, frustrated campesinos have resorted to "land recoveries" as a tactic to speed the process...
...6. Everyone I interviewed at AID insisted on anonymity...
...Women's groups have also suffered this fate...
...The lack of will at the national level translates into a lack of will within INA itself, for institute officials are public appointees...
...A more comprehensive reform law was passed in 1975, calling for the distribution of 1.5 million acres (600,000 hectares) to 120,000 peasant families in five years...
...The military of today, however, is not the same as it was 15 years ago...
...UNC to five...
...ONDURAN LAND REFORM BEGAN IN 1962, when Liberal Party reformer Ram6n Villeda Morales managed to squeeze an agrarian reform law through a stodgy, landowning Congress...
...Of the 285 claims, the commission gave immediate guarantees to only 36...
...The lion's share of agricultural credit-both public and commercial-goes to the large private farms...
...In Cortes, the UNC tried to get land that INA had given to FECORAH...
...So achieving legal status has often tempered militancy...
...Ponce, "Honduras: Agricultural Policy," p. 146...
...Also the poorest, it has not been awarded personeria juridica...
...N OT ONCE IN THE 25 YEARS OF REFORM has there been a serious government assessment of the results...
...5. In 1963, when FENACH leaders were imprisoned and their offices destroyed, founder Lorenzo Zelaya and a group of followers fled to the mountains to form a guerrilla front...
...As Mr...
...And naturally, the best land-which includes virtually all the irrigated land in the country-is reserved for export agriculture, while the peasants who grow the nation's food are given the scraps...
...Most of the campesinos are poor and illiterate...
...But the postwar rise in coffee, sugar, cotton and beef exports left the same legacy as in the rest of the region-poor campesinos were routed from lands they had farmed for generations and forced to rely on precarious wage labor for their daily bread...
...To this day, the period 1972-1975 remains the golden age of Honduran reform...
...There is a debate raging in Honduras today over how much land is actually left to distribute...
...Some trace the UNC's change of heart to 1984, when it finally received the legal status it had been fighting for since its inception in 1969...
...As bad as our production levels are now, they will undoubtedly decline even further...
...Thousands of coffee growers along the Honduran-Nicaraguan border were displaced by the contras, forcing them to flee their homes and lose $12 million in unharvested coffee...
...Boletin Informativo, No...
...This total represents roughly 16% of the rural population (although the subsequent abandonment of the land by many families probably reduces it to about 10%), and some 11% of the land...
...Since its inception, ANACH has given birth to six new organizations...
...In addition, the independent Honduran Federation of Campesina Women (FEHMUC) divided in 1985 into FEHMUC and CODIMCA, and is now in the process of splitting again...
...2 5 Campesinos are not the only ones to suffer from this bias...
...and Honduras can't even feed itself anymore...
...The list of ex-generals-turned-landowners includes such Honduran luminaries as Melgar Castro, Policarpo Paz Garcia, and even the great reformer L6pez Arellano...
...ANACH $105,000...
...T HE GROWTH OF EXPORT AGRICULTURE came later to Honduras than to the rest of Central America-before World War II bananas were really the only significant export crop...
...The women were raped, and the 14 arrested were all tortured so badly that some even confessed to trumped-up charges...
...8. INA claims it pays almost $250,000 a year for the salaries of peasant activists...
...Favored with institutional and material support, ANACH (National Association of Honduran Peasants) was naturally able to win over many of FENACH's poor constituents...
...World Bank, 1987...
...The campesinos did not win most of their demands...
...El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa), August 24, 1987...
...4. One hectare equals 2.47 acres...
...Although Honduras' poor soil and rocky terrain were not the most hospitable, until the 1950s there was still a relatively small population and vast expanses of frontier land...
...Honduras is not like the rest of Central America, which has rich, volcanic soils," Ponce told us...
...Minister of Natural Resources Rodrigo Castillo maintains that of the nation's 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of agricultural land, one million (43.5%) is underutilized or idle...
...When the commission was formed to examine the validity of each recovery, it refused to touch the Gastel case...
...They were demanding the removal of INA director Mario Espinal, whom they accused of sabotaging the reform process...
...Andlisis y propuestas sobre las seis recomendaciones en materia agraria formuladas por la misidn presidencial agricola de los Estados Unidos de America a Honduras, (Tegucigalpa: Instituto Nacional Agrario, no date...
...This meant that at least 90% of each farm had to be utilized, and if used for grazing, had to have at least two head of cattle per hectare (one in certain parts of the country where land was poor...
...Prospects for a future government more sympathetic to the campesinos are even dimmer...
...2 0 Other experts, such as former INA director Mario Ponce, claim the figure is much lower...
...But an INA study of 1,700 campesino groups that received land through the reform process found that 70% had obtained little or no technical or financial assistance...
...In 1987, Honduras, an overwhelmingly agrarian country with 61% of its labor force employed in agriculture (as compared to 43% in El Salvador and 31% in Costa Rica), had to import its two most basic staples-corn and beans...
...During the massive land recoveries in May, campesino groups asked the military to act as mediator with the government...
...With the export boom, the relative share of land allocated to export crops soared by 50% between 1950 and 1980, while the per capita production of basic foods fell by 19%.24 Agricultural credit also illustrates this tendency, with 77% of credit going to export crops and livestock and only 13% to basic grains...
...Hondurans are malnourished primarily because they no longer have land on which to grow food or money with which to buy it...
...Since then, when the military evicts campesinos during land recoveries, they are not only subject to charges of destruction of private property but terrorism as well, a charge which is not subject to bail...
...geopolitical designs for Honduras...
...2 This mounting landlessness led to massive protests in the countryside...
...Over $500 million dollars down the drain...
...Finally, discord among and within groups in part can also be blamed on campesino leaders, some of whom are either corrupt or so estranged from their base that they have lost all sense of who and what they are fighting for...
...With poor land, limited credit, virtually no technical assistance and few marketing options, it is little wonder that only about half the land distributed by INA is being used, and one-fourth of the peasants who received land have since abandoned it...
...asked Fernando Lardizabal, a landowner and former head of the conservative National Federation of Honduran Farmers and Ranchers (FENAGH...
...The L6pez Arellano government was sincere in its effort to implement the law, giving out over 300,000 acres in less than four years...
...President Azcona refused to even discuss the removal of his close personal friend, Mario Espinal...
...Rumor has it that the base will be expanded even further, and peasant groups are gearing up for a fight...
...La Prensa (Tegucigalpa), May 6, 1987...
...The 1960s also marked the beginnings of peasant organizing in the southern part of the country...
...Andlisis y propuestas...
...WITH MORE AND MORE POOR CAMPEsinos forced off the land by the encroachment of large export-orientated plantations, the peasant leagues began to organize to recover the land...
...But the truth is that we are not guerrillas or terrorists, just poor campesinos fighting for a piece of land...
...Some divisions in the movement can be attributed to ideological differences, although these have begun to blur...
...Hyde...
...In 25 years only about 768,000 acres have been distributed to some 70,000 families...
...Add to all that a dominant class which has no interest in solving the problems of the poor, and you've got a time bomb...
...The peasant groups retort that any evaluation should look at the whole agricultural sector, including latifundistas, or large landowners, to prove their inefficiency...
...Oswaldo L6pez Arellano is the Honduran Dr...
...5 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988 23AHonduras seA Honduras Report or, the Americas Honduras NIGHTIME RECOVERY: AN ORGANIZER'S TESTIMONY * T HE FIRST LAND RECOVERY I PAR- ticipated in was a piece of land owned by a widow named Nicolasa...
...With INA's support, a number of cooperatives coalesced in 1970 under the umbrella of the Federation of Honduran Agrarian Reform Cooperatives, or FECORAH...
...She was a large landowner, a big latifun- dista...
...In the 1950s, Honduras was still a country with a capital of merely 60,000 inhabit28REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28ants and no paved roads between its two largest cities...
...He immediately issued Decree No.8 in 1972, an emergency measure designed to give peasants immediate use of arable national and ejido or communal lands...
...The scale of repression, however, is nowhere comparable to that of El Salvador, Guatemala or Somoza's Nicaragua...
...In fact, this bias has grown worse in the past 25 years...
...The peasants are poorer than they were before it started...
...prodding and millions of dollars in foreign assistance, the Honduran government began to substitute a land titling program for genuine land reform...
...In contrast, in six years following the downfall of Somoza, the Sandinistas distributed over 4,362,000 acres to 83,322 families.' 6 INA's own employees calculated in 1980 that at the prevailing rate of distribution, it would take Honduras 103 years to achieve the 1975-1979 goal of distributing 600,000 hectares to 120,000 families...
...And with a strengthening of the repressive apparatus, it is naturally the peasants who suffer...
...But what choice do we have...
...Strange as it may seem in the Central American context, many campesinos still pin their hopes on the ascension of the reformist wing of the military...
...Rather than concentrating on the long-term goals of raising political awareness and a sense of solidarity among campesinos, organizations all too often get sidetracked into charity-scrambling to provide much-needed donations of used clothing, food or medicine...
...Those who label the reform a failure range from the landowners to campesino leaders, from progressive to right-wing politicians, from foreign development workers to Honduran agrarian reform officials...
...troops are stationed, lies in one of the nation's most fertile valleys...
...The Ministry of Health estimates that 70% of the population is malnourished, 75% in the countryside.12 Less than half the population has reasonable access to safe water...
...Brockett, "Public Policy," p. 76...
...Honduras has one of the most organized labor forces--both workers and peasants-in all of Latin America...
...INFLUENCE IN THE 1980s has also tipped the balance against reform...
...The government was thrown into a panic, and the military, forming a pact with peasant and worker organizations, stepped in to save social peace...
...3. The ceilings ranged from 100 to 2000 hectares, with most of the country falling in the 250-500 hectare category...
...Some contend that the state has already given out the bulk of its agricultural land and that the good, private land has either been distributed or is being used according to the specifications of the agrarian law...
...The entire nation's food supply has been affected, since small farmers-working either individually or cooperatively-grow the bulk of the food...
...T HE HEAVY U.S...
...Because of the reform, we've learned to make changes through dialogue, rather than through guns, and the armed forces have been the mediator in this process...
...Peter Peek, Agrarian Structure and Rural Poverty: The Case of Honduras (Geneva: International Labour Organisation, 1984), p. 17...
...In December 1972, thousands of peasants descended on Tegucigalpa in a "hunger march," demanding the implementation of the agrarian reform law...
...They decided that * Excerpted from Don't be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks From the Heart, based on the life of peas- ant organizer Elvia Alvarado and edited by Medea Benja- min...
...presence is what CNTC adviser Miguel Murillo calls the "intimidation effect...
...This program, which emphasizes individual plots and property rights, is seen by most peasant organizations as a way of dividing the peasantry and fostering an individualistic mentality instead of a cooperative spirit...
...Allied with the Christian Democratic Party (the Hondurans are among the most progressive Christian Democrats in Latin America), the UNC was known as a staunch defender of peasant rights and a vocal opponent of the traditional Liberal and National parties...
...Mario Ponce, "Honduras: Agricultural Policy and Perspectives," Honduras Confronts its Future (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1986), p. 133...
...In fact, there are now more landless families in Honduras than before the implementation of the 1972 reform...
...Always a reliable buddy of local cattlemen, when he retired they set him up with his own ranch...
...Influenced by the emerging principles of liberation theology, the peasant leagues organized by the Church gradually moved from community projects like women's clubs and consumer cooperatives to questioning basic issues of land tenure...
...ON MAY 20, THOUSANDS of peasants throughout the country took over some 200 plots of land, tearing down the landowners' fences and settling in for a pitched battle...
...Brockett, "Public Policy," p. 82...
...In the early 1980s, however, the UNC began to veer to the right...
...We'd be fooling ourselves if we said the future looked bright...
...A reformist military coup is also unlikely because it would fly in the face of the democratic facade the United States has constructed for Honduras...
...You just plant one, and a half-dozen new ones crop up...
...2 The reform has done nothing to alter the bias toward export-oriented agriculture...
...Designed with the help of land reform experts from the University of Wisconsin, the 1975 law was by no means radical...
...INA, which first based its policy on individual peasant plots, began encouraging the formation of peasant cooperatives by providing co-op leaders with training and technical assistance...
...And squeezing more land out of the private sector would require a political will that the present government lacks, since the large landholdings still in private hands belong to those with the most solid political and military ties...
...The fact that the Army often backs off and lets the campesinos win makes land recoveries a viable tactic in Honduras...
...evangelicals have sent over $10 million to Honduras since 1985...
...A study of Honduran credit in the mid-1970s found that large farms received 12 times more credit per hectare than small farms...
...Organizers were murdered or disappeared...
...We cam- pesinos don't want to carry out these recoveries," explained CNTC regional coordinator Julian Oseguera...
...Jeckel...
...agricultural productivity has plummeted...
...Honduras is still the poorest country in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole trails only behind Haiti and Bolivia...
...But he did agree to create a commission to investigate each case...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988 29Honduras instrumental in the creation of INA in 1961," lamented former Labor Minister Gautama Fonseca, "but INA is today the greatest obstacle to agrarian reform...
...Coup leader Col...
...They claimed she owned more land than the law permitted, and on top of that, was using good agricultural land to graze a small herd of cattle...
...Hyde in 1963, he tore the country asunder with a wave of unprecedented repression...
...An Assessment," Inter-American Economic Affairs, Vol...
...Take the case of Nicolasa Gastel, who owns 4,300 hectares of land throughout the country...
...Melgar Castro in a bloodless coup in 1975, the will dissipated...
...military aid," Murillo adds, "also strengthens the 'hardliners' within the military...
...3 But the law did stipulate that land, regardless of size, had to fulfill its "social function...
...Humberto Regalado HernAndez, head of the armed forces, is rumored to have met with the peasant leaders and told them that the present civilian government was not interested in land reform...
...Frightened by this Communist influence within the peasantry, the government-with the help of the AFL-CIO's AIFLD-created a parallel group to take the wind out of FENACH's sails...
...Campesinos: Between Carrot and Stick 1. Honduras is unique in Central America in that, as late as 1974, up to one-third of its land was still public-either national or ejidal (community owned...
...The minister also insists that Honduras has another 500,000 hectares of frontier land which, with investments in roads and basic infrastructure, could provide land for thousands more...
...But the problem with laws is that they are, in the end, only as good as the political will to carry them out...
...Estimates of the number of peasants taking part in the actions range widely from 15,000-100,000...
...The more progressive faction of the UNC, headed by former UNC leader Marcial Euceda, was expelled at REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26the UNC's 7th Congress in November 1986.' But a core of UNC cadre within the organization remain intent on reviving its combative spirit...
...While the UNC, ANACH and FECORAH all receive government assistance, CNTC operates on a shoestring, relying on membership dues and donations from the more progressive Western private voluntary organizations ACCORDING TO HONDURAN LABOR HIStorian Mario Posas, one of the most interesting changes in the ideological configuration of peasant organizations is the recent leftward shift in ANACH...
...But while L6pez Arellano was accusing peasant leaders of subversion, the ones who were truly subverting the public order were the landgrabbers...
...Simultaneously, hundreds of other peasants descended on INA's national headquarters and nine regional offices...
...The 1960s reform had included the creation of a National Agrarian Institute (INA) to oversee the process...
...The third large peasant organization, FECORAH, emerged out of the reform process itself...
...Even during the recent coordinated land recoveries, infighting soon broke out as different groups tried to recover the same piece of land...
...And these divisions have engendered subdivisions, and so on down the line...
...There are now some 15 peasant groups operating in the country...
...Land recipients are supposedly eligible to receive public credit and technical assistance...
...Before the creation of the CNTC, for example, the UNC was considered the most militant peasant group...
...26 OME EXPERTS ARGUE THAT THE LACK OF civil war in Honduras is not due to the cooling effects of the agrarian reform but to the slow pace of Honduran development...
...In the May recoveries, a group of 400 hungry campesinos took over one of her properties in Comayagua...
...In 1987 FECORAH reportedly received $50,000...
...Each peasant organization has its own women's branch...
...And in 1982 the Honduran Congress passed an anti-terrorist law labeling peaceful protests like land occupations as terrorist acts...
...A T THE HELM OF THE MILITARY GOVERNment was none other than L6pez Arellano, this time in the form of Dr...
...Assuming five hectares per family, that would be enough for 200,000 families...
...The only way for the reform to move forward would be for the military to take over," he reportedly said, "but they [understood to mean the gringos] wouldn't stand for that...
...But when L6pez Arellano was removed by conservative Col...
...But now ANACH has even begun to criticize U.S...
...banana companies...
...While this cooperative policy was not specified in the agrarian law, it nonetheless became the cornerstone of the agrarian reform program...
...Ilja Luciak, "National Unity and Popular Hegemony: the Dialectics of Sandinista Agrarian Reform Policies, 1979-1986," Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol.19, p. 113...
...Danilo Velisquez, the landowner whose land we were fighting for, sent the military in," charged Teofilo Trejos of the CNTC...
...The major peasant organizations-often at each other's throats-managed to pool their resources in an extraordinary show of force...
...El Tiempo, July 9, 1987...
...land was suddenly a scarce commodity...
...He didn't even bother to buy the land...
...torture and arbitrary arrests became commonplace...
...By 1965, an estimated 63,000 peasant families-over one-quarter of the rural population-had no land to cultivate...
...Repression abated somewhat after the ouster of Alvarez in 1984, but the anti-terrorist law is still on the books and campesinos are still jailed and tortured for their efforts to implement the government's own reform law...
...YOU KNOW WHAT HAVE BEEN THE REsults of these past 25 years of agrarian reform...
...W HILE THE HONDURAN PEASANTRY IS characterized by a high level of organization, it is also characterized by deep divisions...
...24 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS"We know the landowners are well armed, and that their bullets aren't made of cotton...
...2 ' Adding to campesinos' woes is the lack of marketing outlets...
...But here it was neither the banana workers nor the Communist Party that provided the impetus, but the Catholic Church...
...Charles D. Brockett, "Public Policy, Peasants, and Rural Development in Honduras," Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol.19, p. 79...
...In 1962 laidoff banana workers in the north formed the first militant peasant organization, the National Federation of Honduran Peasants (FENACH...
...The former head of the military in San Pedro Sula, Col...
...The main problem is that the personnel are not hired because of their professional capabilities but because of their political affiliation...
...Obtaining land does not guarantee improvement in living standards...
...Erick Sinchez, accused the contras and refugees of destroying a phenomenal 264,000 acres of rainforest through a combination of military maneuvers and slash-and-burn agriculture.29 Hundreds of peasants have been evicted to make way for new or upgraded U.S.-Honduran military bases...
...The peasants are also shafted when it comes to public services...
...Lardizabal is bitter because he belongs to the class whose toes have been stepped on by the reforms...
...Just the presence of gringo soldiers, says Murillo, scares and subdues the peasants...
...Peasant organizations struggle to win government recognition, which entitles them to a series of benefits (such as funds to pay organizers and the right to sit on the National Agrarian Council, a government-landowner-peasant body which settles land disputes...
...39, no...
...It managed to pit peasants against workers, and peasants against peasants, as one of the campesino groups, the CNTC, sided with the workers...
...Peasants have little incentive to increase production, as higher yields only mean lower prices...
...Su.rez Benavides, who heads Public Relations for the armed forces and is military liaison with the campesinos, "The Agrarian Reform has played a key role in keeping Honduras from the civil strife that has racked its neighbors...
...Unlike other years, last May the recoveries were not carried out haphazardly but in a coordinated fashion...
...Spring was coming and the campesinos still had no land, and no way to feed their families...
...Villeda's reforms, weak as they were, unleashed a backlash that resulted the following year in a military coup determined to weed out "communist infiltrators" subverting the public order...
...U.S...
...With U.S...
Vol. 22 • January 1988 • No. 1
