Translation by Witness for Peace Nicaragua Team
For the original version in Spanish please visit OFRANEH’s blog.
The massacre perpetrated in the Patuca River in the early morning
last Friday, May 11th, when a canoe from Barra Patuca was approaching the
Miskita community, Ahuas, is an indicator of the violence to which the
Miskita people of Honduras are subjected. The attackers shot their machine guns
from helicopters presumed to be from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
resulting in four deaths and four injured Miskito people.
Among the victims are Emerson Martínez, Chalo Brock Wood,
Candelaria Tratt Nelson and Juana Banegas; the two women who passed away were
pregnant. Furthermore, as a result of the attack, Melanio Eulopio, Hilda Lezama
de Eulopio, Wilmer López and Lucio Adán are hospitalized in La Ceiba.
The National Police Director, Commissioner General Ricardo Ramirez
del Cid, in a press conference indicated that “while respecting human rights…there
was an exchange of gunfire at the scene.” However, the versions of the
hospitalized survivors indicate that they received an indiscriminate shower of
fire from machine guns and grenades.
The Miskito people of Honduras for years have found themselves between the crossfire of narco-traffickers and state “security” agents.
Furthermore, from the prevailing feudalism in this region of the country, the
Miskito people have been subjected to extreme poverty, at the mercy of the
masters of narco-trafficking and the exploitation of the divers; of whom 1700 have been
left injured and an enormous quantity dead.
Lessons from Iraq and the War Against Drugs in Honduras
The New York Times in its May 5th edition published an article that stated in its first paragraph: “The United States military has brought
lessons from the past decade of conflict to the drug war being fought in the
wilderness of Miskito Indian country, constructing this remote base camp with
little public notice but with the support of the Honduran government.”
The Iraqization of Honduras is more evident than ever: the induced
failed state has a script fabricated in the U.S. Southern Command, having among
other results, a Honduras submerged in violence to the point of occupying the
denigrating first place in homicides in the world, in addition the unstoppable
arms trafficking, an example of which is the Castaway Operation, promoted by
the Department of Justice.
The low intensity war and the implementation of terror are
strategies that the United States has imposed far and wide across the globe,
with the purpose of cementing its hegemony and subsequent plunder of
resources.
Noam Chomsky recently delivered a series of commentaries in which
he points out that the failed consequences of the fight against drugs are
intentional.
To date it has been 40 years of the same recipe, defining its
failure more clearly every day. However, [the recipe] on a military level
authorizes the United States to fumigate, jail and even gun down innocents.
Moskitia and the MesoAmerican Corridor of Biofuels
Every day the social and economic conditions of the Miskito people
worsen. From the prohibition of diving for lobster in the year 2013, to the
accelerated degradation of their soils, to the destruction of their wetlands
due to the construction of three dams in the Patuca River.
As an accomplishment of the “glorious” joint operation of Honduras
and the United States, a voluntary curfew in the Moskitia has been decreed:
traveling at night is at their own risk for the Miskito people, who always had
been accustomed to using their territory without fearing for their lives.
The result of the high cost of living and the absence of job
sources, for many years has been a heavy migration of the Miskitos to other
areas of the coast and to the nation’s urban centers. The inexistence of a
national border policy has maintained their isolation, even more so due to the
high transportation costs in the zone. The violence that is being imposed will
probably entail a mass exodus, which will serve to invade Moskitia with African
palm.
From the deposit of oil and natural gas that exist both in the
continental shelf and the wetlands, to the expansion of the corridor of
biofuels, and the construction of mega-dams in the rivers that run towards the
coast, form part of the National Plan the Lobo administration is
promoting.
There even exists a call for a consultancy on the part of
the PNUD, titled An Analysis and Appraisal of the effects of the African
palm in Moskitia, and another about the definition of the mechanisms for free
and informed prior consent by the Miskito people.
The militarization and aggression against the Miskitos will
facilitate the imposition of the Mesoamerican corridor of biofuels, which
replaced the expired MesoAmerican Biological Corridor. It will limit any claim
about the royalties of the hydrocarbons of the territory, which possibly in the
future will be the American version of the Niger delta.
To demand justice for the murders committed by the occupying
forces, in a country where seven out of 100 murders are tried, more than a
dream, it is a nightmare.
La Ceiba, Atlantida, May 15, 2012, OFRANEH
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