{"id":15842,"date":"2013-08-26T05:26:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T11:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=15842"},"modified":"2013-08-26T05:26:58","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T11:26:58","slug":"indigenous-territory-resources-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/indigenous-territory-resources-honduras\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvesting Justice 25: Without Our Land, We Cease To Be a People – Defending Indigenous Territory & Resources in Honduras"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A Gar\u00edfuna ceremony on lands stolen by organized crime networks in Honduras. Courtesy of OFRANEH.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 25 in the Harvesting Justice series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Miriam Miranda is a leader of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH), which works with the 46 communities of the Afro-indigenous Gar\u00edfuna of Honduras, to defend their territories, natural resources, identity, and rights.\u00a0Miriam\u2019s narrative below is from an interview with Beverly Bell in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

We live on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. We are a mix of African descendants and indigenous peoples who came about more than 200 years ago in the island of San Vicente. Without our land<\/a>, we cease to be a people. Our lands and identities are critical to our lives, our waters, our forests, our culture, our global commons, our territories. For us, the struggle for our territories and our commons and our natural resources is of primary importance to preserve ourselves as a people.<\/p>\n

The people, for their way of being, were declared part of the Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2004. We don\u2019t know what that means exactly, but we suppose it implies that the state must take action to protect and preserve the Gar\u00edfuna people\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

What we Gar\u00edfuna face is largely the same things faced by people all over Latin America, and in fact the world. Also, the problems of the South are not a problem just for us, but of all of us and the whole planet.<\/p>\n

If you map out the conflicts that are threatening our country, you\u2019ll see they reflect exactly where transnational capital is trying to take more resources from indigenous peoples. Maybe you believe that president Mel Zelaya was ousted in a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat [in 2009] because he was a leftist. No. It was because [those with wealth] wanted to take land and resources, which they are now doing. Look at the search for so-called alternatives to oil – through mining, the mega-dams, the biofuels, the production of African palm oil. All these resources are being taken from indigenous areas. There is more pressure on us every day for our territories, our resources, and our global commons.<\/p>\n

In Honduras, they\u2019re taking land that we were using to grow beans and rice so they can grow African palm for biofuel<\/a>. The intention is to stop the production of food that humans need so they can produce fuel that cars need. The more food scarcity that exists, the more expensive food will become. The mono-cultivation of some of these crops [for biofuel] requires thousands of millions of acres of land.\u00a0Food sovereignty<\/a>\u00a0is being threatened everywhere.<\/p>\n

Also we have a problem that is rarely spoken of: narco-trafficking. The Atlantic Coast of Honduras is the main trafficking route. A study showed that almost 90% of the drugs that are going to the North pass through Honduras. We\u2019re exactly in the way of the trafficking and we\u2019re so vulnerable. Honduras has one of the highest levels of crime and violence [per capita] of any country that is not actually at war. We have to fight not only for the permanence of our community, but also to not be kidnapped by traffickers.<\/p>\n

Another of our main challenges is the tourism industry. We live almost on the sea, right on the beach. It\u2019s a blessing but recently it\u2019s also become a curse, because of course all those with power want to have a place on the beach. The Honduran government has started on some tourism mega-projects. The displacement of communities and the loss of cultures that come with the development of tourism [is increasing].<\/p>\n

We have\u00a0occupied and claimed<\/a>\u00a0ancestral lands that had been taken by others, such as Vallecito Lim\u00f3n. We are also using international human rights law in order to guard our territories. We have a claim against the government in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Washington regarding\u00a0Triunfo de la Cruz<\/a>\u00a0[a beachside Gar\u00edfuna community whose communally owned lands have been taken]. We hope to have a decision in November or December. This will create an important precedent for all indigenous peoples, not just for the Gar\u00edfuna. It\u2019ll define the responsibility of the state to protect territories and rights of indigenous peoples. This will only be the [fourth] case ever brought that will help establish policies and mechanisms to protect the territories and resources of indigenous peoples, and all of humanity, of course.\u00a0 [The other three are]\u00a0Sarayacu<\/a>\u00a0in Ecuador,Saramaca<\/a>\u00a0in Suriname, and\u00a0Awas Tingni<\/a>\u00a0in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n

We are creating alliances with feminists in resistance, with other indigenous people, with campesinos, with groups like the\u00a0Mesoamerican Movement against the Extractive Mining Model<\/a>. These alliances are very important, and we have to strengthen them more. Nothing can come from the top; all these alliances have to be built from the community level. We are the ones on the ground resisting and creating possibilities.<\/p>\n

We have created our own media,\u00a0a community radio station for the Gar\u00edfuna. In response to mass media trying to block the protection of our indigenous territories, we have created alliances with the four other community radios, and have started \u2013 together with\u00a0COPINH<\/a>\u00a0[Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras]\u00a0a Mesoamerica Network of Community Radio.<\/p>\n

I want to talk about the role of women defending life,\u00a0culture, and territories, opposing a model of death that grows stronger each day. We are at the front of the avalanche of attacks. Everywhere throughout Honduras, like in all of Latin America, Africa, Asia, women are at the forefront of the struggles for our rights, against racial discrimination, for the defense of our commons and our survival. We\u2019re at the front not only with our bodies but also with our force, our ideas, our proposals. We don\u2019t only birth children, but ideas and actions as well.<\/p>\n

The marvelous women comrades in Triunfo de la Cruz, Gar\u00edfuna women, many of them elders, have incredible strength. They participate in meetings, in actions, tearing down walls that are built on the beach. They\u2019re sustaining the Gar\u00edfuna youth so that they know who they are, without shame. They\u2019re producing the yucca that is our staple food.<\/p>\n

If the problem is global, we have to have a global response. It\u2019s time for every human being in the global North to take up his or her responsibility in respect to the use of resources, responsibility relative to waste and to consumption. The standard of living that you all have in the US is unsustainable. You are the button-pushers. We [on the other end] have crises piled one after another. We are trying to resist and find every solution we can, but we ask ourselves: Hmm, are we the ones consuming all this energy? If those in the North are the consumers, why are we in Honduras paying? Why are we being displaced to generate energy for others? What are we supposed to do? Leave the planet to destruct, or make a change for future generations? They won\u2019t have land or water or air. This is not pessimism, it\u2019s reality. The time has come.<\/p>\n

Please respond to the\u00a0urgent alert<\/a>\u00a0from OFRANEH\u2019s close colleagues in the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), where three leaders face trumped-up charges over a five-month road occupation which has blocked an illegal dam from being built on Lenca indigenous land.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Lauren Elliott for editing assistance.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can order Harvesting Justice and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the\u00a0Harvesting Justice website<\/a>. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more from\u00a0Other Worlds here<\/a>, and follow us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. \u00a0Please credit any text or original research you use to Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We live on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. We are a mix of African descendants and indigenous peoples who came about more than 200 years ago in the island of San Vicente. Without our land, we cease to be a people. Our lands and identities are critical to our lives, our waters, our forests, our culture, our global commons, our territories. For us, the struggle for our territories and our commons and our natural resources is of primary importance to preserve ourselves as a people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":15843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,60],"tags":[50,18,6561,6562,6328,545,6329,6546],"yoast_head":"\nDefending Indigenous Territory & Resources in Honduras<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Honduran activist Miriam Miranda speaks to the challenges encountered by indigenous peoples trying to live traditional lives on tribal lands.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/indigenous-territory-resources-honduras\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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