Caño Manso Reclaimed its Collective Territory, but Security Concerns Persist

By Austin Robles
WFP Colombia Team

Colombians often refer to their country as one of laws but without law enforcement. For communities engaged in the legal process of land restitution in the areas most plagued by the armed conflict, waiting for the law to be enforced takes years. One community, tired of waiting, decided to nonviolently reclaim part of their territory without aid from the Colombian government.

In memory of Walberto. Caño Manso Humanitarian Zone, exclusive to the civilian population. Protected by provisional measures of  the IACHR (Inter-American Court on Human Rights)

Residents of the Humanitarian Zone of Caño Manso, located along the Curvaradó river basin in Colombia’s northern Chocó province, have been forcibly displaced several times over the past decade, but are finally making strides in regaining access to their ancestral collective territory. Three court rulings recognized their right to land that is illegally occupied by large-scale cattle ranchers and agricultural workers. A June report issued by the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (INCODER) demarcated the territory to which they are entitled (nearly 3,000 acres) and listed the names of each illegal occupier who must vacate the land.

Despite recognizing Caño Manso residents as the rightful owners of the land, these legal entities asked the illegal occupiers to self-vacate and provided no enforcement mechanism or date for their removal. The illegal occupiers refuse to comply with the law and proclaim they will leave when forced to do so. Instead of waiting years hoping for the government to mete out justice, community members decided to reclaim their territory on their own in a simple manner: by extending the fence surrounding their Humanitarian Zone to encompass the occupied land and asking the illegal occupiers to leave. In discussions leading up to their actions, community members repeatedly stated their commitment to acting peacefully and reiterated that if the illegal occupiers acted toward them with violence, they would respond with nonviolence.

Reclaiming the Land

Between July 13th and 16th, 11 Witness for Peace delegates, along with members of partner organizations Peace Brigades International and the Interchurch Commission of Justice and Peace, accompanied Caño Manso’s residents as they nonviolently reclaimed their collective territory.

The Humanitarian Zone encompassed a five-acre plot, and community members decided to increase it to eight by extending the perimeter. One group of residents expanded the barbed-wire fence marking their territory, closing it off to the illegal occupiers. Another group approached to home of the illegal occupiers and requested they leave. Those in the house first declared that they would leave, but later refused to go. Soon after, Colonel Javier Alberto Vallejos Delgado, commander of the Army’s 17th Brigade (responsible for security in the region), spread false reports on the radio. He claimed that Caño Manso, assisted by internationals, was kidnapping people in Curvaradó.

The situation escalated as the administrator of the lands, a few workers, and several unknown people entered the home. Both the Army and the Police, which had promised not to let anyone enter the Humanitarian Zone, let them in. The Army and the Police then promised that it would frisk anyone entering or leaving the Zone, but broke that promise as well, showing no regard for the security of the civilian community members. Another radio transmission hit the airwaves as a local representative (whose legitimacy is under question) told listeners that internationals were facilitating a land grab in Caño Manso.

As the security situation got more intense, we got word that representatives from the Office of the Attorney General planned to come and mediate the dispute. The next morning they arrived in a helicopter and held meetings with community members and the illegal occupiers. They also recognized the community members’ right to the land, pointing to the previous court ruling and the INCODER report, but stopped short of ordering the occupiers to leave. Their presence raised the profile of the community members’ struggle and de-escalated the security risks, but still did not resolve the issue of the occupiers.

On the morning of the 16th, before Witness for Peace was due to leave, community members decided to remove the illegal occupiers’ cattle from their collective territory. The animals, which include hundreds of cows and water buffalo, have trampled and destroyed the community’s food crops, and their massive weight ruins the quality of the arable land. Around 6:00am, we woke up and accompanied community members as they chased the animals off their land.

Setting Regional Precedent

Though the Witness for Peace delegates left, Peace Brigades International and the Interchurch Commission of Justice and Peace are maintaining a permanent presence in Caño Manso to ensure community members do not face repercussions for their actions in the paramilitary-controlled region.

After our departure, we learned that officials from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Agriculture met with community members and the illegal occupiers and came to several understandings:
1) the community acted within its rights in reclaiming its territory, but agreed not expand further without permission from the government;
2) the Army would maintain a permanent presence around the Zone’s perimeter to guarantee security;
3) the government agreed to name an inspector to handle similar displacement and restitution cases along the Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó River basins.

Caño Manso’s recovery of its ancestral land sets a regional and legal precedent, and its importance can not be stressed enough. Still, several problems persist. The illegal occupiers have not been evicted and reiterated that they would not leave until forced to do so. Community members’ security remains at risk from illegal armed actors. One member of the military, when approached by a community resident about security concerns, stated that the illegal occupiers “won’t kill anyone here; they’ll kill you somewhere else.” Until their security and right to land are guaranteed by the government, residents of Caño Manso Humanitarian Zone remain at risk.

U.S. Threatens to Cut All Aid to Nicaragua

By: Christine Goffredo
     WFP Nicaragua Team Member

Small chile farmers like Don Orlando (left), Don Roger (center) and Don Roger's son (right) are those that have benefited from USAID funded programs in Nicaragua like Chiles de Nicaragua, S.A.

Many people in the U.S. know about Nicaragua from the Sandinista revolution in the 1980’s, or they may have heard about the Iran-Contra affair.  But there is a 150 year history of tension between the United States and Nicaragua, and this history has continued to the present day.


Currently at issue in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations is the renewal of two separate “waivers”, without which Nicaragua would not receive any foreign aid from the United States in the upcoming fiscal year.  Last week Washington announced that Nicaragua would not receive one of the waivers, and the prospects of receiving the second so-called “property waiver” are not looking positive either. The new U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Phyllis Powers’ comments at a May 11 American Chamber of Commerce luncheon signaled as much:


 “I must be honest with you, the persistent failure in fiscal transparency, the incapacity of the government of Nicaragua to make concrete decisions in resolving the property invasions of U.S. citizens, and especially the grave irregularities in the electoral process of last year; and the absence of means that indicate that the conditions are improving for this year, make the decision for the disbursement of funds very difficult.” 


The first waiver deals with transparency in budgeting, and its denial will cost the Nicaraguan people $3 million in aid for the next fiscal year.  The approval of the property waiver still remains uncertain and could mean a cut of over $13 million in education, health, and small business development funding.  


The property waiver comes from Section 527 of a U.S. law called the Foreign Relations Authorization Act that gives the Executive Branch authority to cancel all aid to a country if cases concerning land confiscated or appropriated from U.S. citizens by that country’s government are not resolved in a satisfactory manner.   In addition, the U.S. government would have to veto any decisions by international financial institution, such as the IMF where the U.S. holds veto power, to disburse funds.  


While such a law may seem logical on its face—a way to protect U.S. citizens’ property—such laws have almost exclusively been used to punish government’s that disagree with U.S. policymakers.  


And this legislation is particularly problematic for Nicaragua. In the first place, due to the Hickenlooper Amendment that dates back to 1962 but was resurrected by Senator Jesse Helms and Representative Henry Gonzalez when they authored Section 527, the definition of U.S. citizen can be applied retroactively.  This means that Nicaraguans whose land was confiscated before they became U.S. citizens are applicable under this law.  One of the main motivations for this amendment is the Nicaraguan Agrarian Land Reform, passed after the Revolution in1979 that put an end to a 40-year long dictatorship by the U.S.-supported Somoza family.  The Reform confiscated land primarily from  Somoza family members,  soldiers in Somoza’s army that had committed war crimes, and those that had taken out hefty mortgages for their properties and then left the country for the United States, taking all of their wealth with them, and leaving the burden of the unpaid-for properties with the Nicaraguan government.   Following the U.S.-funded Contra War in Nicaragua, the democratically elected president of 1990, Violeta Chamorro, formalized the land turnovers, an act lauded by many as a great aid in the war reconstruction effort of the country.  The Agrarian Reform benefited over 60% of Nicaragua’s rural population by providing them with land after over a decade of war and destruction.  


In 1994, however, the U.S. passed Section 527 and even advertised it in stateside newspapers, urging new U.S. citizens from Nicaragua to file claims.  According to César Zamora, the vice president of the American Association of the Chambers of Commerce of Latin American and the Caribbean (Aaccla), these property claims have cost Nicaragua over $1.4 billion in 15 years, and that the resources that the country has utilized to return and compensate these confiscated properties makes up around 45% of the internal debt of the country.  This is on top of a $4.12 billion external debt that represents 52.6% of the country’s GDP, thanks to U.S. supported neoliberal policies that pushed borrowing from the IMF and World Bank.  


Today the Attorney General of Nicaragua, Hernán Estrada, has reported that in this year alone, 50 cases have been resolved, leaving 193 claims, representing 366 properties, still unresolved.  This shows a real effort to escalate the pace of case resolution, as there were 48 in 2009, 61 in 2010, and 62 in 2011.  Of the 193 claimants still remaining, only 6 are U.S.-born citizens, the rest are Nicaraguan who became citizens during the 80’s and 90’s, according to the Attorney General’s Office.  Estrada has also noted that some of the difficulty in resolving the remaining cases has to do with poorly filed claims, or lack of documentation for claims.  


Nevertheless, the decision that the Executive Branch will make is still uncertain.  In the case of the negation of the first waiver, the major reason cited was lack of transparency in the Nicaraguan budget. The other issue mentioned was inconsistencies in the 2011 Nicaraguan Presidential election.  This, despite that fact that the first waiver is based on the Department of State’s Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act, which evaluates only fiscal spending (specifically, making the national budget public).  In regards to the elections, there have been several documented instances of issues with that election, while the Nicaraguan government and its supporters maintain that the election was free and fair.  


Clearly these waivers are powerful diplomatic tools that raise very serious questions not only about national sovereignty, in terms of producing a national budget or electing a leader, but also about what the goal of foreign aid really is. Should U.S. assistance be used to ensure that a country obeys the will of the United States? Or to aid the millions of Nicaraguans that could benefit from financial assistance in health, education, and environmental programs?  


Sociologist Cirilo Otero told Witness for Peace in a recent interview, “I think that the two waivers are necessary for Nicaragua, in relation to the country’s interests with multilateral institutions and the commitments of the country to multilateral lending institutions.”  But he left an important reminder concerning these international lending institutions, their programs, and the majority of Nicaraguans:


“With or without the waiver, poverty will continue to be a difficult and denigrating situation for a large percentage of Nicaraguans, for many Nicaraguan families - I am speaking about roughly 3.5 million people, principally young people.  Up until now, the projects that have been executed with these loans have not succeeded in benefiting the poor of Nicaragua.”


Nevertheless, loss of United States development aid would seriously damage and possibly eliminate programs currently operating in Nicaragua that assist Nicaraguans around the country.


The decision will be made by July 30, so there is still time to act. Call John Ballard at the State Department’s Nicaragua Desk (202-647-1510) and tell him that you support extending both of these waivers to Nicaragua this year. 

Embattled Honduran Radio Station Reaches First Birthday

“The security forces have the power and the weapons. What do we have? Our voices?” Noelia Nuñez, Honduran human rights lawyer

Today marks the one-year anniversary of La Voz de Zacate Grande, a community-run radio station reporting on a violent land dispute in southern Honduras. The communities of the Peninsula of Zacate Grande have been struggling to obtain legal title to their land for eleven years and the small radio station rests on contested territory.

Changes to agrarian land reform in the 1990s paved the way for wealthy landowner Miguel Facussé to obtain a legal title to all the land on the peninsula. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund promoted these reforms.

A decree passed under ousted President Manuel Zelaya intended to resolve the land disputes that arose from laws passed during the 1990s. Zacate Grande’s campesino organization, the Development Association of the Zacate Grande Peninsula, known by its Spanish acronym ADEPZA, would have benefited from the decree but states that “the coup d’état paralyzed the process. Facussé increased security on the land and the presence of security guards, police and military has multiplied.”

The decree was annulled by the Supreme Court this past January, affecting thousands of campesinos, including those of Zacate Grande.

Less than two months after the inauguration of La Voz de Zacate Grande, the community reported that the station was surrounded by hundreds of police and military in an attempt to shut it down. Last month the director of the radio, Franklin Melendez, was shot in the leg. Later the same day another community member involved in the radio was reportedly threatened in front of witnesses. The police did not respond in either instance.

Just last week eight community members involved in the land dispute and active with La Voz de Zacate Grande received capture orders for disobedience against the State. Witness for Peace’s International Team spoke with one of the accused, who stated that they are currently in hiding.
Community members involved with the radio station, including youth, have also received threats over the past year, including death threats. The community leader and one of the station founders said that the government has not taken action to ensure their protection. However, they have received support and accompaniment from national and international NGOs such as COFADEH, the True Commission, the Honduras Accompaniment Project, Witness for Peace and Italian solidarity groups.

The landowner in dispute with the communities of Zacate Grande is also in the midst of a conflict in Bajo Aguan, in northern Honduras, which recently became deadly. This week a German development bank pulled a $20 million loan to Facusse for his African palm oil business due their concerns for human rights. Other international financial institutions, including the World Bank, still have investments in the business.

The situation in Zacate Grande illustrates several issues facing civilians throughout Honduras: increased military and police presence, a lack of trust in security forces, threats to journalists and dissidents and the struggle for basic rights. The United States continues to expand funding to the Honduran security forces and push for legitimization of the Honduran government despite the human rights concerns associated with those bodies.

Witness for Peace Nicaragua brought two delegations to Zacate Grande last August and September, meeting with representatives of the radio station. A full report on the delegation’s findings and the history of the struggle in Zacate Grande is forthcoming.