Posts
Thousands of people gathered yesterday at Tegucigalpa demonstrating in solidarity with the peasants of Aguán valley, demanding the retreat of the Army from this area, the liberation of the arrested citizens and the implementation of a radical agrarian reform in the country.
In Honduras 300,000 families have no land whatsoever while other 200,000 have just small plots of 1-3.5 hectares (an hectare is 2.47 acres or 100 x 100 meters). This is one of the main causes of poverty in the largely rural country of 7-8 million people (est.) Almost half of the population lives on less than half a dollar per day and 25% on less than 25 cents. Meanwhile the wealthiest 20% has almost 30 times the wealth of the poorest 20%, a very sharp divide.
After the usual IMF-imposed criminal reforms and the also usual dumping of subsidized crops by affluent countries like the USA, Honduras has gone from being the greatest grain producer of grain of Central America to not being able to feed its own people, being forced to import 1 million tons of maize, 20 thousand tons of legumes and 50 thousand tons of rice. Instead Honduras now is producing mostly oil palm for export, what does not benefit the people, suffering from genuine food instability, but only the landowner minority, which has appropriated the vast majority of the land, and multinational corporations.
Source: UITA (found via La Haine). For more photos see here.
