These are cooperatives El Despertar, la Trinidad and La San Isidro, affiliated to the MARCA movement, member of La Via Campesina Honduras.

Businessmen and landowners of Honduras and Nicaragua are trying to acquire these lands in order to establish sugar-cane and palm oil monoculture plantations to produce agrofuels. This is an old story in Aguan, the region where most conflicts over land have taken place, and where these conflicts have reached the greatest levels of violence, with over 50 deaths of leaders and community members so far this year.
MARCA denounced the favoritism and complicity of the Honduran judicial system in favor of businessmen in a press conference held on Tuesday 28, in Tegucigalpa, capital of the country.

During the press conference, Via Campesina leader, Rafael Alegria, said that the precautionary measure in favor of the peasants was ignored and other illegitimate judicial tools were used.

The companies involved are OLEOPALMA, owned by Nicaraguan businessman Rene Morales Carazo and Dinant Corporation, of landowner Miguel Facuse.
Meanwhile, MARCA leader, Ramon Navarro, made reference to the long way travelled by cooperatives to obtain their lands in a formal way, confronting business interests.
The Court ordered to render the peasants titles null and reestablish ownership to the landowners, said Navarro.

The peasant movement directly blamed the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Congress and the government for the “widespread worsening of the crisis in Bajo Aguan and any peasant blood bath that takes place in the following days”.

Photo and testimony by Mabel Marquez / VC Honduras for Real World Radio