0 - Report Summary:
Under the employ of large
landholders, armed paramilitary groups operate in the area of Morales, Izabal,
Guatemala. These armed groups use
threats, violence and extrajudicial assassinations against local small farmers
(or campesinos) who contest the right
of land ownership with the large landholders.
The National Civilian Police (PNC) and the District Attorney’s office
are complicit in both the commission of violations and maintaining the impunity
enjoyed by the paramilitary groups and their employers. Since April 2001, at least seven land rights
activists have been assassinated in the region. However, given the level of terror, it is highly possible other
killings in the region, in less organized communities, have gone unreported.
The US-based corporation Del
Monte Fresh Produce and a private investor from the United States are key
actors in this most recent chapter in the history of ongoing U.S. investment
associated with violence in Guatemala, particularly in the Atlantic coastal
region of Izabal. Given the level of violence enacted against campesino land activists, readers of
this report might question why they persist in reclaiming land rights. Simply, they have no other option. Land is
their only available source of food security, the only manner that they ensure
that their families will not starve.
Different Guatemalan state
and non-governmental sources have registered several thousands of land
conflicts in Guatemala. The Guatemalan
Government has not complied with measures of the 1996 Peace Accords which were
intended to address this chronic problem. Instead international funding
institutions (IFIs) have promoted “free” market land programs aggravating the
historical problem of unequal land concentration, often achieved through
illegitimate and illegal mechanisms to the benefit of international investors. In the highly conflictive context described
above, the development strategy that IFIs currently promote, which is almost
entirely limited to attracting international investment and creating an
unregulated land market, is extremely worrisome for the security of campesino communities in Guatemala.
Recommendations:
Rights Action strongly
recommends:
Ø
The Guatemalan
government, IFIs, transnational corporations and private investors commit to
negotiating fair solutions to land conflicts in Guatemala which respect the
1996 Peace Accords and the historic claims of campesino and indigenous communities.
Ø
The Guatemalan
Government and IFIs should foment rural development based on a comprehensive
agrarian reform that addresses the needs of small farmers as proposed in civil
society initiatives like the Agrarian Platform and the National Coordinator of
Peasant Organizations (CNOC) Rural Development Proposal. Current development initiatives such as the
Plan Puebla Panama and the Free Trade Areas of the Americas, designed to
support investment by transnational corporations at the direct expense of
campesinos, are contrary to such proposals.
With respect to the current violent
crisis in Izabal, Rights Action calls for an end to the impunity enjoyed by the
material and intellectual authors of the violence with an immediate focus on
the following measures:
Ø
Paramilitary groups
operating in Izabal must be immediately disarmed.
Ø
A new District Attorney
for the department of Izabal should be appointed.
Ø
All National Civilian
Police officers in Morales should be rotated to another area.
Ø
Del Monte Fresh Produce
(DMFP) and other international investors should actively participate in
achieving a negotiated solution to the conflicts in the area.
Ø
The criminal and civil
responsibility of investors who economically benefit from the paramilitary
violence and intimidations on land they control should be investigated.
1 - The Political History: Coups, Corporate Interests and Resistance
a. 1821 – 1944: Changing Colonial Affiliations
In 1821, the oligarchy of
present day Guatemala declared independence from Spain. This change in power
had little effect on the overwhelmingly poor, isolated Mayan population.
Historians have highlighted the search to control indigenous lands protected by
the Spanish crown and the Catholic Church as a major motive in the independence
movement. During the late Colonial
period a system that recognized and protected communally controlled indigenous
land, known as ejidos, developed in
Mexico and Central America. This system
evolved from pre-hispanic land administration systems and was inadvertently
perpetuated by the Catholic Church when it came to control these lands in order
to ensure the conversion of indigenous communities. Ejido systems treated
land as a social good necessary to sustain the life, culture and well-being of
a community rather than as a tradable commodity. Most indigenous lands were
protected in communal land holdings.
Beginning with the 1823
Monroe Doctrine, but really gaining strength through a series of US military
and mercenary actions in the beginning of the twentieth century, the United
States replaced Spanish colonial influence and control in Guatemala and Central
America. During this time, large-scale
international investors, with the cooperation of the Guatemalan Government,
seized national lands, traditional Mayan lands and Catholic Church property to
institute production of export crops. German immigrants pioneered coffee; the
United Fruit Company (UFCo) initiated with bananas; the local oligarchy
established sugar plantations.
Formally founded at this
time, the Guatemalan Army’s principal functions included securing land for export
agriculture. The mostly Mayan small-scale agricultural producers were forced
into the rapidly expanding sector of cheap manual labor that was dependent on
the wage system, a highly volatile source of subsistence given the effects of
market ripples. To make matters worse,
they were victim to unjust land appropriation and national vagrancy laws. The
latter required ‘unemployed’ people (self-employment on small farms was not
considered employment) to render forced and unpaid labor 150 days annually creating
infrastructure, such as roads, to support the needs of exporters.
The inter-related opening of
the national economy to foreign capital, the robbing of local people’s material
goods including land, the forced abdication of individual and personal rights,
and the successive Guatemalan military dictators provided the ideal economic
conditions for US companies and individuals’ investment. The United Fruit
Company (UFCo) took advantage of this context to initiate operations in
Guatemala. At the close of the nineteenth century, the UFCo established banana
plantations on the Atlantic Coast and expanded their holdings throughout
Central America. In the early twentieth
century, the UFCo, like other investors in Central America, cultivated
relationships with the US Armed Forces, regularly employing mercenaries to
overthrow national leaders and replace them with dictators that supported their
economic interests. Until the more
simple action of supporting different strongmen with funds, arms and
mercenaries became the unfortunate norm, the U.S. Marine Corps directly
intervened on multiple occasions in the first two decades of the twentieth
century.
The decade-long military
regimes of presidents Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and Jorge Ubico
(1931-1944) provided ample opportunity for UFCo economic expansion and
incursion into national affairs. Ubico’s “greatest achievement” was sponsoring
a national road system built almost entirely by forced labor. UFCo further
consolidated its political and economic power by monopolizing banana
production, the one international port, the railroad system, the shipping
industry, and the communications network. Providing loans to the government,
the UFCo received enormous tax breaks and operated its lands with complete
autonomy.
b. 1944 – 1954: Democracy, Land Reform, and CIA
Disapproval
The political system
established upon independence—oligarchic military dictators that rotated with
coups—changed little until the 1944 “October Revolution” when a popular urban
uprising overthrew the Ubico regime. Headed by a three person triumvirate of
Major Francisco Arana, Captain Jacobo Arbenz, and civilian businessman Jorge
Toriello, this interim government framed a new constitution, bestowed voting
rights to all citizens, established labor rights and other basic democratic
principles. The first democratic elections in the nation’s history brought
philosophy professor Juan Jose Arevalo to the presidency.
In the 1950 elections,
Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala. His reformist government
instituted a series of progressive reforms to national labor laws and land
ownership including the end to forced labor, the implementation of minimum wage
laws, and the right to collective bargaining in labor relations. The most
controversial of his policies, however, was the land reform program that
expropriated large portions of uncultivated productive land which targeted all
large land holdings, including those of the UFCo. This government decree
included economic restitution for the effected landowners based on the lands’
declared tax value and provided for land redistribution to landless campesinos. Arbenz’s refusal to remove
Communists from lower level government offices in toleration of political
freedom was equally controversial to Northern interests. These two points
provided the basis for the Eisenhower Government’s charge of “Kremlin
subversion” in Guatemala.
After the successful 1954
coup orchestrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the
hard-lobbying UFCo (which had already instigated two other unsuccessful
insurrections against the Arbenz administration), these reforms abruptly ended.
Years after the coup, declassified US government documents proved that the CIA
had created, funded, trained, and supplied the “Liberation Army.” Furthermore, CIA operatives flew the planes
that aerial bombed Guatemala City and jammed radio broadcasts. The “Great
Liberator” and leader of this anti-democratic force, former Army colonel Carlos
Castillo Armas, was hand-picked by the CIA for his willingness to obey US
orders.[i]
c. 1954 – 1996: Military Rule, Genocide and
International Complicity
Established via the 1954
coup, the Castillo Armas government reversed most of the Arbenz era reforms,
sponsored massive violent repression, and set the stage for the forthcoming
36-year internal armed conflict (1960-1996). International aid, suspended
during the Arbenz government, flooded into the country. Six years later, in 1960, elements of the
Armed Forces in opposition to the Castillo Armas regime formed the first armed
insurgency, or guerrilla movement. With
only one exception between 1954 and 1986, a series of military dictators ruled
Guatemala. During the course of the internal armed conflict more than 200,000
Guatemalans were extra-judicially assassinated and disappeared. According to the United Nations-sponsored
Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), State forces were responsible
for 93% of the violence; the vast majority of the victims of the conflict were
civilian Mayan peasant farmers. The CEH determined that the military strategy
of massacring entire Mayan villages constituted genocide. The Peace Accords
signed in 1996 included a reduction in the military forces, the extension of
basic services such as health and education to rural inhabitants, and important
mechanisms to rectify land conflicts and establish basic land reform policies.
Since the coup against
Arbenz, the Guatemalan government has maintained unconditional support for the
system of export-oriented agricultural production typified by large, single
crop plantations (called latifundias
or fincas) that produce coffee (21.2%
of exports), sugar (7.1%), bananas (6.2%), and cotton. Successive governments symbolically have
attempted to resolve agricultural workers’ demands for land, like the US
government’s Alliance for Progress initiative to create the National Institute
for Agrarian Transformation (INTA) in the 1960’s. This institution neither
affected the powerful landholders nor protected campesinos from the increased militarization in the region
supported and encouraged by US foreign policy.
2- The Land Struggle
- A
Social Good or Another Commodity in the “Free” Market
As briefly stated above,
many Indigenous peoples’ lands were expropriated by the government at the end
of the 19th Century for coffee export. Prior to this, community
lands existed for several centuries in a system known as during the Colonial
period as ejidos that had evolved
from pre- Hispanic systems of social organization. This system functioned in
much of Central America and Mexico, and many communities still collectively
manage land today. These lands have been fundamental to the maintenance of
Mayan cultures and in meeting the need for food and other basic resources. The
communal land holdings represent a world-view that places land outside the
realm of commodities as a source of social security and as the location of
cultural inscription.
This model of land tenure
has been attacked by a market based model that treats land as a tradable commodity. Land is thus treated as capital to be
accumulated, used to produce other tradable commodities and is the location of
capital creation. Essential to this system is a constant supply of seasonal
low-skilled cheap labor and access to international markets, transportation and
financing. Additionally, mono crop,
export oriented plantations result in low productivity per land unit.
Throughout the war, foreign
aid supported the interests of foreign investors and secured their investments.
International investment and development aid supported military juntas in
Guatemala. Programs such as the Alliance for Progress channeled millions of
dollars of “aid” to standardize and strengthen a professional army capable of
confronting the guerrilla opposition. These funds enabled the Guatemalan Armed
Forces to further consolidate their economic power through the creation of new
industries, the purchase and seizure of Government lands, and the formation of
a military bank.
b.
World Bank and Free Trade Agreements Consolidate Free Market Land Policies
Since there is not a
functional land registry system in Guatemala, identifying land holdings and
boundaries is extremely difficult, which facilitates the regular practice of
illegal expropriations by private individuals, companies and government
institutions. This situation makes
impossible the resolution of thousands of unsettled indigenous land claims and
makes impoverished campesinos and
indigenous communities easy targets for illegal and often violent land grabbing.
A key element of the 1996 Peace Accords was an agreement to, within three
months of the signing of the accord, begin the catastro nacional
(national cadastre), a
proposed program to measure land, clarify land ownership, and demarcate
property lines. Other critical
provisions of the Peace Accords included establishing incentives for the sale
of uncultivated productive lands including enforcing realistic property taxes,
adjudicating national lands to farming communities, repossessing illegally
adjudicated national lands, creating a system for titling of legitimate claims
and access to credit for land purchases.
Unfortunately virtually none
of these essential measures, obligations the government acquired in the signing
of the Peace Accord, were instituted. Under the pretense of compliance with the Peace Accords, in 1996
the Guatemalan government created the national land fund, FONTIERRAS. Based on
a World Bank developed model that had
been implemented with disastrous effects in Colombia, Brazil, South Africa and
the Philippines, FONTIERRAS stated purpose is to promote access to land through
the “free market” by mediating land sales, and facilitating credit for land
purchases by small farmers. Contrary to
the stated objective of extending land ownership to small farmers, nations
where these programs were instituted have witnessed a growth in the unequal
concentration of land; subsistence farmers ability to access land was lessened.
FONTIERRAS structure is contrary to its goal since it promotes “free market” principles
of deregulated land markets with minimal government intervention.
Unfortunately, programs like
FONTIERRAS are not the only factors that contribute to the promulgation of
unregulated land markets. In neighboring Mexico, for example, as a precondition
to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican
government modified Article 27 of the national Constitution that permitted all
adults to solicit the use of communal lands or ejidos. The modification allowed for the “regularization”
or privatization of ejido lands, a system that had evolved from pre-
Hispanic systems through its codification during the Mexican Revolution
(1910-1920). This modification has
opened way for a new epoch of encroachment on indigenous and campesino lands in Mexico.
Theory and practice have
demonstrated the non viability of the World Bank approach to resolve the
tremendous demand for land. A report recently published by the National
Coordination of Peasant Farmer Organizations (CNOC) critiques the FONTIERRAS
system for failing to meet the needs of subsistence farmers. The report
proposes that if the amount of available land surpasses the number of potential
buyers fair competition is ensured and will allow this land program to function
properly. The current FONTIERRAS structure fails because the land sales in this
system are voluntary, and property taxes are virtually non existent. In reality there is not much available land
on the market. Since the market price is based on demand, prices for the few pieces
of land on the market are drastically inflated. This “free market” approach
does not allow poor landless peasant communities to purchase over-valued and
expensive land. Ultimately, those with excess capital and/or credit are the
only buyers capable of paying the asking price. FONTIERRAS has only worsened
the disparity in land distribution.
The deteriorating situation
of land distribution, unresolved land conflicts and the deplorable labor
conditions for agricultural workers has led to recent land occupations. According to CNOC, currently there are more
than 60 land occupations, 1,000 loan requests for land purchase pending with
FONTIERRAS, 80,000 requests to regularize land titles, and hundreds of
unresolved land conflicts.
c. Crisis in International Markets
The “free market” model
treats land solely as a tradable commodity. The perspective that land is a
social good and a source of food security is directly opposed to this “free
market” land model. Due to historical processes previously mentioned, small
subsistence farmers often lack sufficient land to support their families and
have developed a system of combining the harvest of basic grains for their food
security with seasonal labor on export plantations for cash. In times of market fluctuations that affect
the export economy and the availability of agricultural labor, their lands
serve as the source of food security.
However, without access to
sufficient land to provide this needed food security, fluctuations in the
international market have dire consequences.
Families are forced to either sell land or stave, and if they have
already become landless, hunger is the only option. Land shortage is not simply the result of inadequate land reform
programs but an ongoing historical trend with encroachment of communal lands
and small farms through violence and the effects of the “free market”. Without mechanisms to regulate the land
market, during times of crisis that result from the lack of social security,
health services and credit, families are forced to sell lands leading to
permanent landlessness.
In the 1990s two events
deeply affected the export agriculture production system. The World Bank
initiative to encourage coffee production by non traditional exporters like
Viet Nam led to overproduction for northern markets and the plummeting of
international price for coffee, then Guatemala’s largest export crop. Banana
prices have fluctuated due to international markets and changes to the
multilateral trading regime. For example, at the behest of US banana producers,
the US successfully challenged before the World Trade Organization (WTO) the
European nations’ preferences granted to their former colonies. These two
events gravely aggravated the worsening situation of subsistence farmers and
forced a change in production methods.
Partially in response to
these changes, coffee producers reduced overall production and focused on
‘gourmet’ or high-price coffee production. They have reduced land under
cultivation and left the rest to fallow. These corporations have diversified
their holdings, particularly into the financial sector. The fruit companies
began to restructure their operations to “outsource” production of bananas to
large local producers on lands still held by the four large multinational companies.
Local producers sell to these multinationals which have focused on the
transport and international marketing aspects of the business.
d. Predictable Starvation and Land
“Invasions”
Starvation and increased
levels of extreme poverty are the predictable results of these market
fluctuations. In Guatemala’s eastern
rural region of Camotán, Chiquimula, over 100 children and adults have died of
starvation and starvation-related illnesses in 2002. On the South Coast and in
the northern regions of Quiche and Huehuetenango, more have died from similar
causes. Few that understand and have visited these areas were surprised since campesinos in these regions constantly
live on the edge of survival.
More then sixty plantations
are considered to be currently “occupied,” with the majority in the departments
of Izabal, Alta Verapaz, and Baja Verapaz, which incidentally were the areas in
which extensive land grants were made to German and U.S. investors at the end
of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century that led to
extensive landlessness of campesinos. In many cases the occupying campesinos have well-substantiated
claims based on historic titles, compensation for violation of labor rights of
agricultural workers, and government responsibility acquired in the signing of
the Peace Accords to grant national lands to campesinos. Smaller land conflicts throughout the country number in
the thousands. Oddly, the national
press and public only refers to the land occupied by campesinos as land
“invasions” while lands encroached upon and questionably occupied by powerful
large landholders are not.
- Campesinos
Organize
Many campesino
organizations struggle, amidst great danger, to defend campesino
communities land rights. This report focuses on three communities that are
members of CUC (Committee for Campesino Unity). Since its founding in 1978, CUC has
struggled to defend indigenous and ladino campesinos’ land rights. CUC maintains over
10,000 national members and a large international solidarity network. The
organization currently represents twelve communities involved in land
occupations across the country, lobbies the government for viable solutions to
land conflicts and the indictment of persons responsible for the assassinations
and disappearances associated with these conflicts. CUC constantly demonstrates
their ability to mobilize the poorest sectors of the country, independently and
with the national coordinating body CNOC, through coordinated national
roadblocks, massive protests in the capital city, and sustained attention and
publicity around the government’s failure to implement the 1996 Peace Accords.
On 18 July 2002, the
association of large landowners— the Chamber of Agriculture (Cámara del Agro)—
presented a legal complaint in the Attorney General’s office against six
leaders of the landless peasant movement, including leaders from CNOC, CUC, and
the National Indigenous and Peasant Coordination (CONIC – a splinter land
rights organization that separated from CUC in 1994). Presiding head of the Chamber of Agriculture’s board of directors
Alfredo Gil Spillari formally accused Rafael Gonzales, Daniel Pascual and Rosario Pu of CUC, Juan Tiney and Pedro Esquina of
CONIC, and Gilberto Atz of CNOC incitement to land usurpation.
The indicted organizations
maintain that their directors have not encouraged campesinos to invade
land; rather, the occupations are due to the current social, economic, and
political conditions. The Chamber of Agriculture accusations are based on
“evidence” that is nothing more than these leaders public statements on the
agrarian situation as reported in the national press.
- Creating
Paramilitaries: TNCs, Cattle Ranchers, and Contracting Banana Production
in Izabal
a.
The Transnational Corporations - TNCs
Once controlling 75% of the
world’s banana trade, the infamous United Fruit Company (UFCO), later United
Brands, was dissolved in a 1958 anti-trust case that eventually forced it to
sell all its Guatemalan holdings to Del Monte in 1972. A provision of the
Guatemalan Constitution that prohibited the sale of border lands (much of this
banana producing land borders Honduras) to foreign interests blocked this
purchase. Nonetheless, after Del Monte paid a nearly half million dollar
“consulting fee” to Cuban-born Domingo Moriera, a close associate of then
president Coronel Arana (1970-1974), the constitutional provision was waved.
Land rights organizations question the form in which lands granted in
concessions to the UFCO evolved from being national government owned land
conceded for limited times to corporations to becoming apparently privately
owned. Until at least the 1980’s, Del Monte retained many of the benefits
enjoyed by the UFCO, such as not paying property taxes.
Del Monte is not the only
TNC active in the nine thousand kilometers squared Izabal department. Since the
UFCO dissolution, Chiquita and Dole have initiated banana production in Izabal
and other Guatemalan departments. Multinational corporations and international
investors are also involved in mineral extraction, petroleum exploration,
logging and cattle ranching in other parts of Izabal.
b.
The “Cattle Ranchers”
After taking control of the
UFCO holdings, Del Monte through its Guatemalan subsidiary Bandegua began a
practice of placing cattle on uncultivated land; the overwhelming majority of
Del Monte held land has been uncultivated. In the 1970’s company executives
explained that cattle ranching was not a source of income for Del Monte,
however, the presence of the cattle served to protect the landholdings against
expropriation laws relating to unused land and to prevent peasant farmers from
using the land.[ii] Since at least the early 1970’s Del Monte
has maintained and paid “cattle ranchers” who are simply extra-official
security forces to protect their landholdings.
Currently, the Izabal region
is plagued with a number of paramilitary groups locally referred to as ganaderos
(cattle ranchers) or pistoleros
(gunmen). According to former Del Monte
workers and land activists, the powerful Guatemalan families which lead these “cattle
ranchers” continue to use the land in close connection with the Del Monte/
Bandegua management. Known throughout the municipality of Morales and in the
surrounding towns for the violent tactics they employ, local sources maintain
that these “cattle ranchers” have ties to the Guatemalan military. Furthermore, evidence suggests that these
families are involved in drug trafficking in this region and nationally. Izabal
is one of the main drug running routes in Central America.
Del Monte/ Bandegua maintains
an official company security force. This force controls plantation entrances
ensuring that only authorized vehicles enter the property. Only those workers
possessing a company-issued permit are allowed to own cars. In attempt to deter
unwanted persons on the plantation, these workers are not allowed to transport
non-workers past the entrance barricade. Some local community members have
recognized “official” security personal that were hired from the bands of pistoleros.
The paramilitarization of Morales,
which evolved from the activities of the “cattle ranchers”, has negatively
affected the entire region. The area is
plagued by violence and associated drug trafficking instigated and controlled
by groups of armed men known as cattle ranchers. This situation affects banana plantations and non banana
producing regions in this zone.
- CASE
STUDY: The Lanquin II “Occupation”
- The
Labor Dispute
Del Monte divided its
fresh-fruit division in the early 1990s and created Del Monte Fresh Produce
(DMFP). The principle shareholder, the Abu-Ghazaleh family of Dubai maintains
the DMFP executive headquarters in Florida. Until 1999, DMFP and its Guatemalan
subsidiary BANDEGUA directly oversaw banana production on thousands of hectares
of land. The banana production process
that begins on the plantation and ends in supermarket includes production,
packaging, land and sea transportation. Founded over 50 years ago under the
UFCO, this model of vertically integrated production permitted the development
of the only successful agricultural workers union in Guatemala, the Union of
Banana Workers of Izabal (Sindicato de Trabajadores Bananeros de Izabal-
SITRABI).
In the 1990’s Del Monte and
other multinational banana companies began decreasing their direct role in
banana production, hiring private contractors for production, and focusing on
sales in lucrative Northern markets.
Outsourcing production to multiple small contractors makes unionization
efforts extremely difficult and consequently decreases workers’ wages and labor
standards on the plantations controlled by local contractors, which enables the
company to cut costs of banana production at the expense of agricultural
workers.
Former workers assert that
Bandegua used the destruction of Hurricane Mitch as a pretext to break a
collective agreement with SITRABI, then the strongest private-sector union in
Guatemala. Former workers report that
the Bandegua management sent them to break dykes which retained the flood
waters and led to the resulting inundation that destroyed the plantations.
Using this destruction as a justification, the company summarily fired 918
banana workers from four plantations on September 27, 1999. Bandegua then began the process of leasing
the four plantations and the packaging facilities to local producers which
maintain production contracts with DMFP/ Bandegua.
The SITRABI union responded
by proposing a protest to the mass firing and contract violation by asking all
employees to use a clause of the collective agreement that permitted ten days
leave, thus creating a legal ten-day ‘strike’. At the October 12-13, 1999
SITRABI general assembly meeting to ratify this proposal, 200 armed men stormed
the union hall and rounded up 22 union leaders. This armed group forced the top
five SITRABI leaders to submit resignations by fax to Bandegua and announce on
the local radio that SITRABI cancelled the strike. Only after several days and
with international pressure, particularly from the International Union of
Foodworkers (IUF), did the DMFP announce that it would not accept the
resignations.
The union leaders were
forced to leave to the United States in exile. In March 2001, 24 of the group
of 200 armed men who participated in the takeover of the Union Hall were tried
in local courts. Twenty-two were convicted of illegal detention and sentenced
to three and a half years of imprisonment. The guilty parties had the
opportunity to commute their sentences to fines. Following the forced renunciation of the SITRABI union leaders,
new union elections were held.
In the fall of 2000 the IUF
negotiated an agreement with Del Monte Fresh Produce (DMFP) on behalf of
SITRABI. As part of the IUF- DMFP agreement, the 918 illegally fired workers
had to be rehired by the independent producers that leased and held production
contracts with DMFP. If not, DMFP was
obligated to rehire those not employed by the independent producers. Another part of the agreement stipulated
SITRABI retained the right to represent the fired workers.
Though the union’s new
leadership is less experienced and operates in a highly volatile and violent
context, it worked to negotiate two new collective contracts, one for DMFP/
Bandegua workers that they represent and another for the illegally fired
workers that had been rehired by independent producers. The contract terms for
DMFP/ Bandegua workers are significantly better than those of the independent
producer workers. Workers for the local
producers now receive a daily wage of approximately US$3 (Q25) which greatly
contrasts with the average DMFP/ BANDEGUA daily wage of US$5 (Q45) that is
supplemented with a variety of benefits. Furthermore, DMFP reportedly created
another subsidiary, PRECSA, SA, which rehired the fired workers that the
independent producers did not employ.
PRECSA employees work under the conditions of the independent producer
contracts. This is an apparent
violation of the IUF- DMFP agreement since workers do not enjoy the conditions
of other DMFP workers.
- The
Lanquin II Land Dispute
Another stipulation of the
IUF- DMFP agreement was that DMFP/ Bandegua would not allow those who had
participated in the Union Hall violence to lease or buy DMFP/ Bandegua lands.
This agreement forced DMFP to terminate a leasing agreement and production
contract they had already extended to Obdulio Mendoza Mata, one of the most
infamous pistoleros who had taken a
leading role in the SITRABI union hall takeover and is commonly suspected to be
one of Guatemala’s leading drug traffickers.
During the time that this investor controlled the plantation,
neighboring campesinos and banana workers claim to have witnessed planes land
on the plantation that was then burned, a common procedure for the disposal of
drug-running planes.
Apparently since the IUF-
DMFP agreement was signed, banana production facilities and plantations were no
longer contracted to those who participated in the union hall takeover. After being forced to desist in this
measure, DMFP/ Bandegua began leasing land not cultivated with bananas to
several cattle ranching families implicated in the takeover. Some of these “cattle ranchers,” well-known
both locally and nationally for their control of armed paramilitaries and
suspected association with drug trafficking, have a historic relationship with
Del Monte, having served as the extra-official security force of cowboys that
DMFP/ Bandegua began using in the 1970´s to prevent neighboring campesinos from farming uncultivated
land.
Much of the land leased to
cattle ranchers who had participated in the violence against the union was land
that the illegally fired workers had been given rights to cultivate as part of
their collective contract. Furthermore,
other areas of land leased to the ganaderos
was land that other campesino
communities or communities of former DMFP/ Bandegua workers had cultivated for decades, even
generations. CUC asserts that there are
serious doubts as to the legitimacy of DMFP/ Bandegua’s land title over the
Lanquin II plantation. Land registry
studies undertaken by CUC on neighboring plantations have demonstrated that
these land tracts did not belong to DMFP/ Bandegua but was actually national
land. Moreover, it is clear that all of the land is located within 15
kilometers of the Honduran border, which according to the Guatemalan
constitution prohibits foreign interests from owning land within 15 kilometers
of the border. It also makes the land
an ideal site for drug trafficking
After their illegal firing,
former workers vacated the land they had cultivated as part of their collective
contract while SITRABI negotiated compensation with DMFP/ Bandegua. However, fired workers found that the
conditions of their new contract with independent producers was inadequate to
meet the basic needs of their families, and out of necessity in October
2001former workers settled on and began farming Lanquin II land. Since
occupying the area, other landless agricultural workers have also claimed land
in Lanquin II. Not only representing the labor dispute, the current situation
reflects the national problem of inaccessibility to land. Although originally
more than 700 families began farming land on Lanquin II, now only approximately
450 use the land in question. As a result of violent intimidation and
assassinations, the rest have desisted.
Of the remaining 450 families approximately half are workers that were
illegally fired in the mass firing and that currently work for independent
banana producers.
In October 2001 DMFP/
BANDEGUA charged the former workers who settled on Lanquin II with land
usurpation, a criminal offense, and demanded their eviction from the
plantation. The Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC) immediately
petitioned for a suspension of the criminal charges pending resolution of the
labor dispute. After the First Circuit Court of Izabal ruled that there was insufficient
cause to suspend the criminal procedures, CUC appealed the ruling arguing that
the judge was unduly biased in favor of the interests of DMFP/ BANDEGUA.
Although the Zacapa appeals court rejected the petition, CUC appealed the
decision to the Supreme Court, which in mid -October agreed to review the case.
While under legal review by the courts, no legally authorized eviction can
occur.
Parallel to the legal battle, negotiations are underway. In the first negotiation meeting community
representatives asked to purchase 2.79 hectares (the equivalent of 6.89 acres)
per family for Q10,036 (approximately $1,340) per hectare. At the time 757 families were asking for
land, making area of 2,112 hectares (5,892 acres) requested for purchase. The community has maintained the size of
land requested at 2.79 per hectare, but due to the repression there are
currently only approximately 450 families participating in the negotiation
process.
The first meeting between campesinos and land holders was held in November
2001, convoked by institution responsible for land conflict negotiations in
Izabal (Mesa de Negociación de Izabal),
which is mediated by the governor of Izabal, the United Nations Verification
Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), the State institution for land conflict
resolution (CONTIERRA), the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH), the
Executive branch’s Secretariat for Strategic Analysis (SAE) and the state
social land fund (FONTIERRAS). Representatives
of the community on Lanquin II met with Cesar Castillo and Squinar Klee, who
presented themselves as legal representatives of DMFP/ Bandegua. The community presented the request for land
purchase. The next meeting was held in
January 2002. In this meeting Castillo
and Klee presented themselves as representatives of Precsa, the newly formed
subsidiary of DMFP. They promised to
sell 89.45 hectares (220 acres) of land to the campesinos while negotiations advanced.
A third meeting was scheduled for March 19, 2002 to coordinate this
land purchase. However, following the
March 8, 2002, murder of Benjamin Perez (see below), the Governor of Izabal
sent a message to the community saying that the next meeting would not be with
Precsa, but rather with the Mendoza Mata brothers, the same people who had murdered
Benjamin Perez and led the 1999 attack on the SITRABI union hall. The community sent notice that they would
not attend the meeting because of the murder, essentially withdrawing from
negotiations.
Several months later, CUC and the community on Lanquin II requested to
reopen negotiations, on September 24, 2002, a new negotiating table was opened,
this time facilitated solely by CONTIERRA.
Castillo and Klee attended the meeting to inform that the company had
sold the land to the cattle ranchers and that DMFP/ Bandegua or Precsa would no
longer participate in negotiations. A representative of three cattle ranching
corporations (Agroganadera Altos de Monte, SA, Compañia Ganadera Bobos, SA and
Agroganaderia Entrellanos, SA) began participating in representation of the
current “owners.” Though the Byron
Berganza was presented as the legal representative of the companies, the
Lanquin II residents suspect that Mendoza Mata, Ponce, and Archilla families
are also owners, as they use the land.
The community, with support
from CUC, and the cattle ranchers have held three meetings since late September
2002. These negotiations have occurred
in a threatening atmosphere.
Representatives of the government negotiating team told the CUC
representatives that they must accept the cattle ranchers offer to sell 186
hectares, an area totally inadequate to meet the community’s needs, because
company shareholders who are Guatemalan military officers, stated that they
will remove the people from the land at any cost (“por buenos o malos”).
- Human Rights Abuses in Lanquin II
Since March 2002 this
conflict has caused at least one extrajudicial assassination. A climate of terror exists in area
communities resulting from constant threats, occasional attacks and presence of
heavily armed men. Not only do these crimes remain unpunished, many of these
violations occurred with the complicity of the Civilian National Police. Given
DMFP/ Bandegua’s knowledge of the region and its actors, the violence that
ensued after leasing of the land to well-known paramilitaries, many of whom
participated in the take over of the SITRABI union hall, either could have been
easily foreseen or was the expected and desired outcome.
On March 8, 2002, 21 year-old farmer and land rights activist Jose
Benjamin Perez Gonzales was shot and killed on the Lanquin II plantation in
Morales, Izabal. Given constant threats and intimidation against the community,
farmers regularly travel together to their fields. On the morning of March 8,
2002 a group of more than 100 farmers living on the Lanquin II plantation
entered a field that they intended to plant with rice.
According to community witnesses and international human rights
accompaniers, a band of more than thirty armed cattle ranchers driving in an
open truck, blocked the farmers passage on the road. They mounted a grenade
launcher on the roof of the truck and trained their weapons, AK-47´s and M-16´s
on the crowd. Leaders attempted to
dialogue with the armed group, while the other farmers waited in a nearby
field. Both the ranchers and the
farmers called the National Civil Police in Morales. When the police arrived they lined up alongside the cattle
ranchers. The cattle ranchers shouted, ”Lets get started” and the police and
cattle ranchers charged the farmers in the field.
According to multiple eyewitnesses, local National Civilian Police
officers shot Jose Benjamin Perez Gonzales in the back. As Perez Gonzales lay
injured on the ground, a member of a notorious paramilitary group shot him once
at close range to instantly kill him. The National Civilian Police captured
Cecilio Mendez Hernandez, a fellow farmer and land activist, and charged him
with murder and illegal weapons possession. Witnesses assert that the
authorities planted weapons on Mendez Hernandez after the arrest. Before being
released on bail, he was imprisoned for three months.
Witness to the killing presented their testimony to the District
Attorney’s office in Izabal. One of
these witnesses claims that while giving his testimony District Attorney’s
office personnel threatened him, stating that the cattle ranchers in the area
were powerful and capable of doing anything to the witnesses. All of the witnesses have been subject to
constant intimidations since presenting their testimony, including being shot
at, followed and stalked by trucks full of men armed with AK-47s, M-16s and
other high caliber weapons. Despite
multiple appeals for witness protection and two meetings with high ranking police
officials in Guatemala City, no measures to ensure their safety have been
taken.
A report from the Ombudsman’s Office for Human Rights in Puerto
Barrios, Izabal determined the participation of National Civil Police officers
in the extrajudicial execution of Jose Benjamin Perez. Despite maintaining a
high profile in the Morales area, the cattle ranchers and police officers
identified by multiple eyewitnesses as responsible for this crime have not been
arrested or charged. Over seven months later, in August 2002 several witnesses
were called to give testimony in a Guatemala City court.
The DMFP security force
controls the entrance to the plantation within which the residents own their
homes. Though vehicles cannot enter to
visit community residents or workers without requesting permission 48 hours,
DMFP/ Bandegua security allows the entrance of trucks with armed paramilitaries
and armed gunmen on motorcycles. In
addition to the March 8 killing, these gunmen continually threaten and
intimidate local inhabitants, creating an atmosphere of terror. For example, on
December 23, 2001 three pistoleros fired a 9-millimeter weapon over the
heads of community members. The following day, on December 24, 2001, riders in
a pick-up truck with tinted windows and an unidentified man on a motorcycle
ambushed Finca Lanquin II residents Antonio López Díaz and Osvaldo López Díaz
as they walked down the road.
5 – CASE STUDY: Creek Zarco
a. Land Dispute in Creek Zarco
The residents of the Creek
Zarco and Shane, towns of DMFP/ Bandegua banana workers, had cultivated lands
apparently within the DMFP/ Bandegua Lanquin II plantation with food crops for
over forty years. Following the 1999 mass firings, DMFP/ BANDEGUA began leasing
these lands to cattle ranchers who had participated in the take over of the
SITRABI union hall, ranchers known to employ well armed gunmen (pistoleros) that actively employ
violence. These ranchers have a
historic relationship with DMFP/ Bandegua, working as the extra-official
security force of cowboys as described above.
These cattle ranchers, Jorge Ponce and Elias Archila, began closing off
access to roads, fencing in land, and diverting irrigation systems for the land
that Creek Zarco and Shane residents had farmed.
In response, leaders of the
Association for the Development of Creek Zarco presented a complaint to the
Izabal District Attorney’s office on May 9, 2001. The District Attorney found it was unable to investigate the
charges. On June 27, 2001 the community presented the issue to the local
institution responsible for land conflict resolution, the Mesa de Dialogo de Izabal.
During the negotiations the cattle ranchers intimidated members,
including voicing death threats against the community representatives.
b. Human Rights Abuses in Creek Zarco
On June 28, 2002 René Augusto Hernandez of the Association for the
Development of Creek Zarco was shot while walking home from the local store.
Before dying in the hospital several hours later, he identified by name his
assailants to police and his family. He named cattle ranchers and brothers
Jorge and Mario Ponce. This murder occurred following several acts of
intimidation and threats by Jorge Ponce against Rene Augusto Hernandez,
including death threats during the dialogue process facilitated by the Mesa de Dialogo de Izabal.
Rene Augusto Hernandez represented the Association for the Development
of Creek Zarco in conflict negotiations with cattle ranchers Jorge Ponce and
Elias Archila. On August 23, 2001 Jorge Ponce arrived at the negotiating table
with approximately ten heavily armed men, so intimidating those present that
the Governor called in police but did not remove the armed men. During the next
meeting, on September 27, 2001 Jorge Ponce threatened to kill Augusto
Hernandez, as is documented in the official minutes of the meeting.
Despite the high profile
that the Ponce brothers maintain in the area, there has been no legal action
taken against the presumed assassins. They are reported to have an amicable
relationship with local justice operators. The majority of the community
affected by the land conflict greatly fear the armed men directed by Jorge
Ponce. Augusto Hernandez’s assassination weakens the community’s possibilities
to ensure that their land rights are respected.
Less than two weeks later,
on July 7, 2002, men armed with machetes ambushed Raul Humberto Ramirez, a
member of the Board of Directors of the Creek Zarco Community Association.
While recovering, he fled the area directly from the hospital for fear of
assassination and his whereabouts are unknown. This criminal act also remains
unpunished.
Creek Zarco suffers from the
constant presence of armed paramilitaries which pass in trucks and motorcycles
through the community. According to a
local witness, groups of heavily armed paramilitaries maintain a presence in
the community store, regularly threatening community members. On one occasion a threat was reported to
local police who arrived and instead of interviewing those threatened, sat down
to drink beer with the paramilitaries. According to local sources, in
mid-October 2002 a young man from the community was assassinated, but this
crime was not reported to local police for fear of reprisals.
- CASE STUDY: Los Cerritos Community “Invasion” of
The Las Quebradas Farm
- Las Quebradas Farm Land Conflict
The Las Quebradas plantation
(approximately 2,600 hectares), as it is known today, is a portion of a 5,110
hectare government owned land that was granted in concession to Potts and
Knight Company for mining in 1908. Around 1940, the government revoked this concession. For an undefined amount of time, villages of
campesinos on and neighboring Las Quebradas plantation farmed different
areas of the plantation, including the communities of Los Cerritos, El Mirador,
San Juancito, San Miguelito, Quebrada Grande, Mirasol, Los Laureles, La Burra
and Las Quebradas.
From at least the 1940s
until 1971, families from Los Cerritos community farmed the land between the
Bobo and Pablo Crek Rivers, an area of approximately 250 hectares. Being the
largest and most well organized of the villages, in 1953 the families of Los
Cerritos who had cultivated this land received a land title during the Arbenz
land reform program. As a result of the
coup, the paperwork for the titling was never completed. At this same time, a
government concession granted to Las Quebradas Timber Company gave the company
permission to exploit timber on a greater part of the plantation not planted by
the campesinos.
In 1966 encroachment on Las
Quebradas community land began, ranchers began releasing cattle into the
campesinos fields thus destroying crops and then installing fences to prevent
the campesinos from accessing their land.
This encroachment continued until between 1970 and 1972 when many
campesinos farmers permanently lost their lands and two communities, Las
Quebradas and La Burra were burned, permanently destroyed and the population
displaced to neighboring villages and outside of the region.
In the past three decades,
various landholders have maintained control of the plantation. For the communities
affected by the conflict it has been impossible to know with certainty who
“owned” the plantation at what time.
However, it is believed that in 1990 or 1991 Segundo Arguda, apparently
a US citizen of Cuban origin began to represent himself as owner of the Las
Quebradas plantation to neighboring villagers.
Between 1993 and 2000 he visited the plantation every month. However, his presence in the area and
relationship with men known to employ violence and with rumored connections to
drug trafficking dated to at least 1969 or 1970 when he apparently began
claiming ownership of the Los Piscoy plantation bordering the town of
Bananeras. Local sources report that
his heirs still claim that land, although they appear to be in conflict with
the Bananeras mayor over rightful ownership.
In 1991, Raul Ayala Vargas
and Isauro Vargas Leon founded the Atlantic and Pacific Development
Corporation, Inc. (Compañía de Desarrollo
del Atlantico y del Pacífico Sociedad Anónima), contributing three
plantations, including Las Quebradas, to form the capital of the corporation. Segundo Argudo and his wife, Margaret Alice
Moore Hagans, were included in the founding articles as Board members. It is impossible, without a court order, to
determine who currently owns shares of the Atlantic Pacific Development
Corporation. Interestingly, in 1990
Raul Vargas’ brother, Arnoldo Vargas, was reportedly the first and only drug
cartel head to be arrested. At the time he was mayor of the neighboring town of
Zacapa. He was later extradited to the
United States where he is serving a 30-year prison sentence. Although this corporation now claims
plantation ownership, the process under which this land passed from being
national land granted in timber concessions to private property remains
unclear. Indeed there are now
indications that the government may intend to expropriate the land having found
it to be national land.
Although illegally evicted
from their lands by the supposed owners, Los Cerritos and other neighboring
communities never accepted this situation and constantly attempted to recover
their land rights. During this time, plantation security forces and
administration killed many leaders (described in detail below) that created a
climate of terror victimizing the people of the area. In 1995 residents of the Los Cerritos community were granted land
titles for the land on which the Los Cerritos community is located.
In June 1999 people from
various communities affected by the land conflict, particularly Los Cerritos,
began organizing to form what would eventually become the Campesino
Association for the Development of Los Cerritos with the goal to have their
land rights recognized. Immediately
plantation administrators began offering payments for information about the
association’s plans, meetings, participants, etc. Intimidations against leaders began immediately.
Three to four months later
the Governor of Izabal, via Mesa de
Dialogo, attempted to open a negotiation process between the Atlantic
Pacific Development Corporation and Los Cerritos Community Development
Association. However, the Corporations
legal representative, Margaret Alice Moore de Arguda, Segundo Argudas widow,
did not present herself. By that time
community association leaders could no longer travel on public transportation
because plantation security, under the command of the administrator, twice had
shot at community leaders. On one
occasion while a group of sixteen association representatives were in the Governor’s office, Rolando Vargas, the
Las Quebradas plantation administrator, circled outside the negotiations in a
car with government license plates, two military officers and armed men from
the plantation’s security force.
On April 15, 2001 Sarbelio
Ramos Hernandez was assassinated in his field. Though there were no
eyewitnesses, his Los Cerritos neighbors are certain that this was one more
expression of the constant violent pressure levied against the community to
gain further control of their land. Outraged over this crime, community members
decided to repossess their lost lands.
On April 16, 2001
approximately 200 families repossessed the area between the Bobos and Pablo
Crek Rivers, forming one of the approximately 60 land conflicts that large land
owners and the national press consider “invasions.” The town that they established, now known as San Vicente, is home
to approximately 200 families who farm the surrounding land. With an additional
300 families from the neighboring villages that share rights to land
cultivation, there are approximately 5,000 people that currently live off the
land. Since returning in April 2001, community members have been intimidated,
threatened and murdered.
On June 26, 2001, the
Atlantic and Pacific Development Company charged the Campesino
Association for the Development of Los Cerritos with land usurpation, a
criminal offense, and petitioned for the Los Cerritos farmers’ eviction. The
Puerto Barrios First Circuit criminal court on September 3, 2001 ruled that an
eviction order could not be issued until a civil process to ascertain the land
ownership was conducted. The Atlantic and Pacific Development Company appealed.
On October 24, 2001 the Sixth Appeals Court of Zacapa confirmed the September
3, 2001 ruling. Guatemalan authorities and a civil proceeding are currently
investigating land ownership.
Despite the favorable legal
position of the Los Cerritos community and in clear demonstration of their
desire to end this conflict, leaders attempted to negotiate with the owners of
the Las Quebradas plantation. They opened discussions via the institution
responsible for land negotiations in Izabal (Mesa de Negociaciones de Izabal). In mid 2001, the Izabal governor
arranged a meeting between the Los Cerritos community representatives and the
Atlantic and Pacific Development Company, inviting principal shareholder
Margaret Alice Moore Hagans de Argudo, who failed to appear.
Unable to pursue legal means
to evict the local farmers, through the use of a paramilitary ‘security’ force
of more than thirty men armed with heavy arms such as AK-47s and M-16s, the
plantation’s administrators promote a campaign of violence against the campesinos. One possibility to explain
the serious interest in eliminating the local farmers’ presence is the alleged
use of the Las Quebradas farm for drug trafficking.
- Human Rights Violations in Las Quebradas
On April 10, 2001, a
plantation administrator and one of the security guards for the Las Quebradas
plantation verbally threatened and shot at two leaders of the Campesino
Association for the Development of Los Cerritos, Transito Roman Ramirez
Hernandez and Francisco Pinto. The shots came from the guardhouse from which
the plantation security maintains a 24-hour watch over Los Cerritos and impedes
their movements.
Five days later on April 15,
2001 Sarbelio Ramos Hernandez from Los Cerritos Community Association was shot
as he worked in his fields. On
September 5, 2001 a hundred men formed into paramilitary group, paid by the
supposed plantation owner, fired shots at the San Vicente community.
On the morning of September
27, 2001 Eugenio Garcia, another member of the Campesino Association for the
