NIGHTMARE RECOVERY: AN ORGANIZER'S TESTIMONY
THE FIRST LAND RECOVERY I PAR- ticipated in was a piece of land owned by a widow named Nicolasa. She was a large landowner, a big latifun- dista. She inherited everything she owned from her father,...
...While he was digging a furrow to irrigate, a shot rang out of the woods and went straight through his head...
...But we threw out her managers and servants and took over the house...
...Malanga is a kind of tuber, like a potato, and sometimes you can find it growing wl ild by the creeks...
...We collected money to help the family, and after the vigil we went right back to the land...
...Spring was coming and the campesinos still had no land, and no way to feed their families...
...We were still mad as hell...
...When we entered the field there were about 80 of us, all men except for me...
...I grabbed my machete and went to hunt them down...
...And as for the landowner's house, we use it for our meetings and for hulling rice...
...We had to use his death to give us more courage...
...He was mad as hell...
...Besides, there's an Agrarian Reform Law in this country that says this land should be ours...
...By the time we returned, the head of our union was already there...
...We can't let them get away with this...
...Good idea," said Mario, one of the campesino leaders...
...All the campesinos followed me...
...We had to go back to the land and refuse to leave it...
...Meanwhile, we'd sent word to our union leaders in the capital...
...Let's go after those murderers," I yelled...
...We charged into the landowner's house...
...The women made tortillas to eat and we all went to work-clearing the land with our machetes, turning it with our hoes and planting corn and beans...
...We knew that crying woldn't get us anywhere...
...The landowners just spread rumors like that to make the campesinos look bad...
...Anyway, we decided to leave so we wouldn't be ar- rested...
...I was furious...
...The campesinos grabbed whatever they could findmachetes, sticks, stones...
...He put fences, fences and more fences wherever he could...
...The next day the women and children came...
...But she wouldn't listen to us...
...Four times we planted the fields, and four times her cattle tore them up...
...They're not going to kill us...
...They said we were thieves for steal- ing land that wasn't ours, that we had to leave im- mediately...
...A nearby community of poor campesinos helped us out by sending food...
...Then we waited for the Army or the landowner to appear...
...The police said we better all leave immediately or we'd all be arrested...
...The landowner was with them, and we tried to have a civilized talk with her...
...When the Army arrived, we told them we weren't as well armed as they were, but that our bullets could still kill...
...When the police had gone, we returned...
...We learned a great lesson that day, that we should never let down our guard...
...They realized that they couldn't get us out without a big scandal, so they eventually left us alone., That's how we won the piece of land those campesinos are farming today-with the sacrifice of one of our best leaders...
...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...
...We walked throughout the woods all day long, but we never found the bastards...
...We didn't even stop to think that it was our machetes against their guns...
...the only way to get the land was to take it over them- selves...
...Instead she opened the fences and sent in cattle to trample the corn and beans we had planted...
...He didn't even bother to buy the land...
...Let's go out in the woods and see if we can find some animals to eat, or maybe some malanga," I suggested...
...We said we wouldn't open fire unless they did first...
...We snuck in very quietly at 2 a.m., taking our mats so we could sleep...
...We planted again, and she sent in the cattle again...
...The next day, three cars full of security police arrived to kick us out...
...Four days later, the Army came...
...And this time we did get some guns-old hunting rifles...
...They said they knew we were armed, which wasn't true-we had only the machetes we work with...
...Don't be afraid," I said to the campesinos...
...We told her families...
...She didn't live there, she lives in a big mansion in the city...
...As their union leader, I accepted their decision and agreed to join them...
...But we said no, we weren't going anywhere, because we had nowhere to go...
...We said we weren't asking for all the land, just the part that wasn't being used...
...But Mario never made it back...
...We'd been there a few days already without the landowner hassling us...
...The campesinos in the area met every month to try to figure out what to do...
...Available from Food First Books, 145 9th St., San Francisco, CA 94103...
...So we thought it was alright to split up like that...
...When the landowner found out we had recovered the land, she went running to the police and the Army...
...One day, after we'd been on the land for a few days, we started to run out of food...
...While the rest of you are away, I'll go water the corn we planted yesterday...
...When I get mad, there's no stopping me...
...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...
...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...
Vol. 22 • January 1988 • No. 1
