Land Rights
The land disputes date back to efforts in the 1960s to entice landless farmers to the fertile region of the Bajo Aguan. The initial agrarian reform laws contained protections intended to ensure that the land remained in the hands of small landowners by limiting the amount of hectares individuals could accumulate. In 1992, the Law for Modernisation of Land gutted many of the protections written into the original agrarian reform efforts, creating pressure on peasant land cooperatives to sell their land to large landowners.
This past December 10th, the British magazine The Economist published an article that makes a reference to a memorandum of understanding between the government of Honduras and two United States firms regarding the construction of Model Cities (Charter Cities) in Honduran territory, without notifying the Honduran people up to now of the planned transactions.
At 3,000 square miles, the Aguan River Valley in northeastern Honduras is about the same size as California's Death Valley. But despite being green and fertile, the Aguan basin is becoming famous as a "valley of death."
Dear Colleagues - I send you this updated comprehensive list of politically related assassinations in Honduras. The list also includes an incomplete list the names of disappeared and severely wounded. Special thanks to FIAN Honduras, whose reports have offered the most timely and comprehensive updates and analysis - and for the larger team of you that translates documents and urgent actions from Spanish into English.
On October 31, 2011, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) did two reports on the Canadian mining industry in general, on HudBay Minerals and serious human rights violations in Guatemala, and on the new, non-binding Corporate Social Responsability Counsellor in Canada.
