WUNRN
Honduras, Women Defending Land & Human Rights, Live in Danger from Drug Dealers, Extractive Industries, Corrupt Leaders +
By Ana María Enríquez - WeNews Commentator - Ana María Enríquez is former Chief of the UN Women's Fund for Gender
Equality and a Board member of Urgent Action
Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean.
On November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence
Against Women, Ana María Enríquez spotlights women in Honduras who are being
targeted by narco traffickers and corporate interests as they struggle to
defend their land.
Land rights
defender Miriam MirandaCredit: Felipe Canova
on Flickr under Creative Commons
(WOMENSENEWS)--
Miriam Miranda, a Garifuna land rights defender and head of a black human
rights organization, was attacked and kidnapped by heavily armed men this
summer.
The incident
was part of the massive struggle by the Garifuna people, who are descendants of
African, Carib and Arawak Indians and have owned communal lands for more than
200 years in Northern Honduras spanning the departments of Cortés, Atlántida,
Islas de la Bahía, Gracias a Dios and Colón.
Like
Miranda, many Garifuna land defenders live in a constant state of danger and
violence perpetrated not only by drug dealers but also by extractive
industries, land barons, local businessmen and state officials and who often
have ties to the narco traffickers and corporate interests.
As women exercise leadership and raise their voices, gender violence has
increased. A 2012 Arms Survey Report placed Honduras as the seventh country in the world for
its femicide rates. Overall, Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world.
Approximately
half of the Garifuna population between the ages of 12 and 30 has left the
country since mid-2013, and some to the United States.
Given this,
the U.S. should reconsider its support of militarization as part of its
antinarcotics strategy.
In the case
of Miranda, she and seven colleagues were conducting a routine visit to their
land in Vallecito, located in the Colón Department in Northern Honduras, in an
area where illegal invasions to Garifuna land have been occurring.
Drug dealers
had re-invaded Vallecito to reconstruct an illegal landing strip that had been
demolished months before by local authorities. Realizing that the landing strip
had been restored, Miranda and her colleagues took photographs. As they
continued inspecting a nearby agricultural area, they were attacked and
surrounded by heavily armed men who kidnapped them.
One of
Miranda's colleagues was able to hide in the bushes from the attackers and
called for help. Alerts to local and international land rights networks
prompted the often-negligent local police to arrive to the area in Vallecito.
As the armed
men were violently grouping their captives, they contacted via cell phone their
"narco head" and received instructions to keep the seven Garifunas in
the area and destroy the pictures taken. After a couple of hours in captivity
at gunpoint, Miranda and the others were freed and the armed men escaped.
THREATS
& VIOLENCE
Women's rights
activists, particularly black and indigenous women in Latin America, continue
to face threats and violence because of their defense of land rights.
Among
Garifunas, ancestral land is communal and it is passed on by mothers to their
children. This means Garifuna women are on the front lines to reclaim and
protect their ancestral land, and as a result, they have been specifically
targeted and attacked.
Not only
have Garifuna women traditionally been the ones inheriting land and cultivating
and harvesting it, but they play a role as leaders in the transmission of
cultural traditions and in the protection of the collective wellbeing of their
community, where communal land occupies a paramount role.
The Honduran
government has passed a series of privatization laws and has either imposed or
allowed international corporate projects such as tourism development and
agribusiness, without the consent of the ancestral landowners, the Garifunas.
For women, in particular, this process has meant the loss of their territorial
control through violence.
Gregoria
Flores Martínez, one of Miranda's predecessors in the Black Fraternal
Organization of Honduras, was shot and wounded in 2005 as she was collecting
testimonies regarding the wrongful imprisonment of a Garifuna land defender.
Martínez fled to live in exile. Martinez and Miranda were both granted
protective measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. But the
Honduran government has done very little to protect the Garifuna defenders and
address these crimes.
GALVANIZING
ACTION
Just last
month, the Honduran police and army evicted the Garifuna community of Barra
Vieja from their land, directly adjacent to the Indura Beach and Golf Resort.
Over 200
complaints, including this eviction in Barra, have been filed by Garifuna
communities with the municipal authorities with little result. The Garifuna
also have filed complaints with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
At the 2014 UN Climate
Change Summit Black and Indigenous women's land defenders in
particular urged heads of states to take action and to look at this issue with
a women's rights lens.
They
demanded respect and recognition for their knowledge and role in agriculture as
managers, cultivators and harvesters of mother earth and protectors of their
eco systems. They warned against corporate interests and privatization of land,
and argued for food sovereignty, restitution of communal ancestral lands, and
sustainable agricultural practices.
Land rights
activists have fought against industries that have appropriated their lands for
mining, monocultures of palm oil, and mega-tourism development projects because
these industries have caused severe environmental degradation and human rights
violations.
A 2014 Human Rights Watch report notes that, in rural Honduras, over
90 people have been killed in recent years in land disputes in the Bajo Aguán
Valley, in the Department of Colón.
A NEED TO
END MILITARIZATION
In face of
all these crimes, it is worrisome that the United States' policy towards
Honduras has focused on increasing militarization under the rubric of counter
narcotic operations, propelling human rights abuses. For example, in 2012, the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency with the Honduran police
"mistakenly" killed four innocent civilians in the village of Ahuas,
including a 14-year-old child and a pregnant woman.
Rather than
investing in militarization and its vicious cycle of violence and impunity,
U.S. foreign policy towards Honduras should focus on the promotion of human
rights, with specific attention to women in marginalized communities.
Without this,
any policy that disregards the gender specific aspects of violence would fail.
Miranda
speaks with resilience and determination about her community and life
struggles. For her, defending mother earth against environmental exploitation
parallels the defense against the ethnic, gender and racial discrimination that
Garifuna women and their bodies confront. She wishes for Afro-Indigenous
children that they will be free to benefit from the land that is their
birthright, and for the world to understand how this particular land struggle
is really the struggle of humanity as a whole.