OFRANEH Continues to Denounce Garifuna Land problems and Model Cities Advance

OFRANEH Continues to Denounce Garifuna Land Problems on the Honduran North Coast

By Wendy Griffin, December 2014

For example, in its proclamation for the Celebration of the Arrival of the Garifuna People in April, 2012 OFRANEH denounced the selling of the Garifuna lands in Trujillo, Santa Fe, and Guadelupe, Honduras to a Canadian businessman ( www.ofraneh.wordpress.com). The Garifunas of Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro say there is an order of capture (the Honduran equivalent of an arrest warrant) issued by the Attorney General of Tegugicalpa and delivered to the Attorney General (Fiscal) of Trujillo in February 2012 for processing, against this Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson, for usurping GArifuna lands in the Trujillo area, as he has a land title to 76 manzanas of land, but according to official INA (Honduran Agrarian Land Reform Insistute) land measurements he is occupying 88 manzanas of land formerly owned by the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro. (Victor García, fiscal, Junta Directiva, Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro, and representative of the INA in Tegucigalpa, personal communication).

 

As Randy Jorgensen was selling lots of less than one manzana (a manzana is about 1.6 acres) to Canadians for $20,000 each before the Trujillo cruise boat dock opened and $40,000 each after the Trujillo cruise boat dock opened (Mapa de Trujillo, 2013), this represents a signifant theft of land.  The Attorney General of Trujillo has not done anything with the order of capture against Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson since receiving the order in February, reported Victor García in an interview in April 2013, officially and personally authorized by the President of the Comunidad of Cristales and Rio Negro, after a formal signed request by Wendy Griffin as reporter for Honduras Weekly.com to the Board or Junta Directiva of the Comunidad which legally owns the completely legally registered land title to this 12 manzanas of  usurped land, as part of their Manuel Bonilla land title, according the Commission formed by Honduran President Pepe Lobo in December 2012 to study the Trujillo land problems.

 

This Commission included the INA, Secretaría de Pueblos Indígenas y Afro-Hondureños (SEDINAFROH), the Honduran Institute for Forestry Conservation (ICF), the Honduran equivalent of the Forestry Service and which replaced the old COHDEFOR, the Ministry of Cultura (SCAD), and the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) in Tegucigalpa, confirmed representatives of INA, the Human Rights office of SEDINAFROH, Tocoa representatives of ICF, president and Fiscal of the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro and a representative of ODECO who is accompanying the process and who all met in Trujillo in April 2013. Given that the Model City legistlation was already in the works and Trujillo and Puerto Castilla were consistently named as probable sites of the Model City, I wondered if this process was just to keep the Garifunas entertained with visits to Tegucigalpa and meetings, while the real process of taking all their lands was happening around them. The reason the orden de captura was issued was because he was sent three citations to appear to answer questions about the issue of the theft of land, and he did not respond to the three citations, which in Honduras requires the Fiscal or Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant to the non-responsive party. The then Honduran President Pepe Lobo could not say that he did not know where Randy Jurgenson was to be able to have the arrest warrant carried out, because a few days after we went to the Trujillo's Fiscal's office to ask about the warrant President Pepe Lobo was on  national television shaking hands with Randy Jurgenson in Trujillo on the occasion of the inauguration of the cruise boat dock  which in the end was built in waters too shallow for most cruise boats, and will have to be built after all in Puerto Castilla.

 

 

 Some of the Trujillo land is being sold to Canadians for retirement homes, but the almost complete removal and destruction of the Garifuna neighborhood of Rio Negro, Trujillo where they have lived since 1797 was for the purpose of putting in a cruise ship dock, another  project being developed by Canadian businessman Randy Jorgenson.  The Garifunas of Rio Negro resisted selling for over a year, but finally the Ladino Mayor of Trujillo who supported the plan as part of the development of Trujillo, sent a note saying that if they did not sell, he would take their houses under the Honduran law similar to the US law of Eminant Domain which allows taking of personal property  for public works, reporter a Trujillo Garifuna (Griffin,  2013).  OFRANEH describes the prices they received for their lands which were right on the beach on a port next to the heart of the city where the developers wanted to build, as “laughable” (www.ofraneh.wordpress.com).  In Model Cities the Honduran government will also be able to force sales through Eminant Domain.  While not marked on the Zede map of the Honduran government the referendum approving that Suyapa in Tegucigalpa be made a ZEDE or Model City passed in the election which was charactized by multiple complaints of fraud.  

 

 OFRANEH  also denounced Honduran plans to put in a Model City, also called Charter City or REDD, like a mini-state with its own laws and courts, between Puerto Castilla and Sico, Honduras, an area that includes the most traditional Garifuna communities with tens of thousands of Garifunas and most of those who still speak Garifuna fluently at home.  (www.ofraneh.org, www.ofraneh.wordpress.com).  The original plan to have the whole area between Trujillo and Sico included has been changed to two Model Cities or ZEDE—Trujillo-Puerto Castilla and Sico-Paulaya.  See www.zede.gob.hn. This is still going to affect lands where thousands of Garifunas live.

There is a link to the OFRANEH website from BeingGarifuna.com to help Garifunas in the US keep up with news of the struggles back at home(www.beinggarifuna.com).

 

As I suggested in an article on the results of the 2013 General Election, published in HondurasWeekly.com, the land situation of Afro-Hondurans has gotten worse since the new President Juan Orlando Hernandez took office in January 2014.  In the Inter-American Human Rights Court in Costa Rica of Garifunas of Triunfo de la Cruz vs. Honduras in June 2014 the Honduran government alledged that the Garifunas were Afro-Hondurans, and thus not Indians and not eligible for the protections of ILO Convention 169.  Although there are a number of flaws with that argument, the Honduran government has continued with moving Garifunas off of land in Barra Vieja, next to the Indura Beach Resort in the Tela Bay area west of Tela, off of land in Puerto Castilla near Trujillo, and similar incidents elsewhere in Honduras. There is a striking video of the combined forces of the Honduran Army and Honduran Police backed up by Ladino peasants to take apart the Garifuna’s houses in the area of Barra Vieja on the OFRANEH blog www.ofraneh.wordpress.com .   

 

Garifunas of the Comunidad de Cristales y Rio Negro, who are  the named owners of the Trujillo Garifuna land have had problems getting their  Junta Directiva or Executive Board recognized by the Honduran government. I was very concerned by the precedent of cancelling the corporate charter or personaría juridica of 5,000 Honduran NGO’s, because all the lands of the Honduran Indians and Garifunas are held by organizations legally recognized as NGO’s under Honduran law. However, none of the 5,000 NGO’s whose personaría juridica was cancelled were ethnic federations or patronatos that held land titles. The list published in La Gazeta was made available on Sergio Bahr’s blog. Some Honduran NGO’s eventually had their personaría juridica restored.  

 

The plan to set up Model Cities in Honduras continues a pace with the first one proposed in the South where the Koreans were doing a factibility study.  The original plan of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s government seems to have been  to work for two years in the South working out the bugs in the Model Cities, and then expanding the implementation to the other áreas designated as Model Cities, according to a document on the Ministry of Planning website that is no longer on the Internet. It was a bad sign that the oficial announcement of where the Model City in the South would be was made in Korea, not in Honduras.

 

Like most Honduran governments, since taking office Juan Orlando Hernandez’s government has been trying to work out a plan with the IMF, which has taken over six months to work out.  Most IMF plans and World Bank conditionality agreements are not made public in Honduras, as is true almost everywhere where they exist. Several books recently published in Honduras say that Honduras does not have an independent economic (or social) development plan, but rather these are worked out in the US, between the International Bankers and Companies listed on Wall Street.  OFRANEH argues that the plans like Model Cities and mines that will cover 30% of Honduran territory or petroleum exploration off the North Coast including the Mesoamerican Reef área are examples of “false development”.  Model Cities in particular they call “Liberatarian Delusions” where you can have good schools, safe streets, good medical care, enough to eat, and low taxes all at the same time.

 

I agree with them and think that the Model Cities proposers who have tried hawking the idea for example at Bitcoin conferences (a currency favored by drug smugglers)  and conferences promoting medical tourism (anyone who is thinking Honduras is a good place to have medical procedures has not been inside a Honduran hospital, some of which I visited this summer and would not recommend a dog go for treatment) are going to do a “Bait and Switch”.  They tell the Honduran government if you do this policy, for example Model Cities, then you will have happy people, a prosperous state, Jobs for the unemployed,  better infrastructure like an airport in your hometown of Gracias. 

 

But after they have moved heaven and earth to change the laws and even the constitution to make it possible, and the foreign investors do not come and the foreign tourists do not come to the most violent country on Earth currently, these advisors will not accept any responsibility if the main result is the Guatemalan Real Estate Company behind Model Cities sell land that Hondurans been displaced off of at the Price of a dead rooster and increased drug trafficking and theft of archaeological pieces in those areas. Why else would the oficial government map of Model Cities have drug related airports and archaeological sites, roads, and river routes on their map on the Internet?

 

The Honduran president might be suspicious that maybe he is not being given sincere advice, because he said in his interview in El Heraldo at the end of the 100 days in office, “I took advantage of these trips out of the country to  ask Foreign investors to come and Foreign Tourists to come, and they all said, “Well, not now.”   But the harrassment of Garifunas, and Lencas using the Honduran Police and the Army, the policy of Model Cities, and the threat of displacement of Miskitos and land confiscation of lands owned by drug traffickers in  proposed  Olancho Model Cities have continued in spite of these presidential misgivings.