PBI-Honduras accompanies the CNTC in Yoro and reiterates concern about the criminalization of land defenders
PBI-Honduras has posted:
“Yesterday we accompanied the CNTC Tegucigalpa in a meeting with the peasant base Brisas del Humuya (El Progreso, Yoro), to hear about their advocacy work in the community. From PBI we applaud the work of the CNTC to ensure food security and reiterate our concern about the criminalization of land defenders in Honduras.”
Access to land
The National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) is a small-scale farming and trade union organization that fights for the distribution of land.
In Honduras fewer than 5% of landowners control 60% of the fertile terrain.
PBI-Honduras has previously explained: “Of the 404 communities that form the National Union of Rural Workers, just 20% have titles to their lands. Many others have worked and lived on their lands for three or four decades and have spent 15 years awaiting the official recognition of their rights that never seems to arrive.”
As a result of this, evictions of farmers are not uncommon.
Government policies that have prioritized mining concessions, hydroelectric dams and large-scale export monoculture further complicate the situation.
Threats against the CNTC
In April of this year, Ojalá (a digital weekly co-founded by Canadian journalist Dawn Marie Paley) reported: “Over the last 15 years, private and state security forces have killed at least 180 organized agricultural workers.”
That article adds: “More recently, semi-autonomous assassins and paramilitary groups became increasingly important. Some of these have documented ties to private security operatives known to have worked for palm corporations, as well as to military officers.”
In January 2023, Abelino Sánchez, regional secretary of the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) and president of a peasant cooperative in the department of Cortés, was seriously injured after being shot twice by two men who came to his house. He had received death threats related to a land conflict.
This past June, PBI-Honduras tweeted about the risks experienced by members of the CNTC: “We are concerned about the situation of threats, surveillance, attacks and criminalization against the people of the organization and its bases.”
In August 2024, CNTC member Olman Garcia was murdered. At that time, PBI-Honduras stated: “We recognize the important and courageous advocacy work that Olman carried out to promote access to land and land tenure for small farmers in Honduras. His murder highlights the risks that land defenders continue to face in the country.”
We remember too that ten years earlier, Honduran campesino movement leader Margarita Murillo, a founder of the CNTC, was shot and killed on August 26, 2014.
Photo: Margarita was a founder of the CNTC in 1985 and became a member of its Board of Directors. She was 55 years old when an assassin shot her in the forehead while she was working the land in Planón, Villanueva, Cortés.
Even further back, Amnesty International raised concerns about the lack of investigation into the possible extrajudicial execution of Manuel de Jesus Guerra Arita, assistant secretary of the CNTC, on December 8, 1991.
The rights of peasants
At this time, we recall that Canada abstained in the vote on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018.
PBI-Honduras has noted that this UN Declaration recognizes key elements such as “the right to land, to natural resources and to food sovereignty, based on the principle of equality between men and women.”
The full text of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas can be read here.
Despite Canada’s abstention, the resolution in support of the Declaration passed.
The CNTC and the labour movement
The CNTC is affiliated with the Unified Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH) which in turn is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), along with 150+ labour organizations including the Canadian Labour Congress.
PBI-Honduras has been accompanying the CNTC since May 2018.
Photo: Franklin Almendares, General Secretary, National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC).
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