UNUSUAL MAP HELPS INDIANS OF HONDURAS PUSH FOR LAND RIGHTS
By Lisa Swenarski de Herrera
LA MOSQUITIA, Honduras, March 17, 1993 -- Quintin Castro, a Miskito
Indian who lives in the rainforests of the Mosquitia in eastern
Honduras, travelled on foot for seven hours last August, sometimes
walking through mud up to his thighs and crossing chest-high
rivers. When he arrived at the small settlement of Fuente de
Jacop, villagers he had considered his friends threatened to kill
him. But now he feels the trip was worth it.
"I resented what they said, but I don't regret going," he says.
"From deep in my heart, I'm committed to this project." Castro is
one of 22 indigenous people elected by their communities to gather
information about how the inhabitants of the Mosquitia utilize the
land. The result is a land-use map that the Indians hope will
influence the Honduran government to both grant them titles to
their land and help them prevent continuing immigration into the
area by non-Indians, who burn the forest to graze cattle and grow
subsistence crops.
More than 35,000 Miskito, Garifuna, Tawahka and Pech Indians live
in the Mosquitia, a region of dense tropical forest and grassy
savannah, but the population has swelled in the past decade with
the arrival of ladinos of mixed heritage, who threaten the Indians'
way of life, as well as the region's natural resources.
Castro and the other surveyors met with 200 communities in 22
regions of the Mosquitia, asking both indigenous and non-
indigenous residents where they cultivate, hunt, fish, pan for
gold, gather materials for house and boat construction and where
they collect medicinal plants. They travelled in dugout canoes, by
horse, motorcycle, bicycle and on foot, sometimes under heavy
rainstorms in isolated areas.
"The weather was terrible," remembers Olegario Lopez, a member of
the Garifuna ethnic group, who collected data from eight
communities. "There was so much mud that it came up to the chest
of my horse, so I had to get off and pull him out. My
questionnaires got all wet."
According to Andrew Leake of MOPAWI, a Honduran nonprofit group
that is working with the Indians on a land-title campaign, almost
all of the 22 surveyors encountered villagers fearful of saying too
much, like where they find hardwood trees and where they pan for
gold, information that government officials or private companies
could use for personal economic interests. Quintin Castro and
other surveyors received threats from suspicious countrymen. "In
one village they told me they would give me information only
because they knew me, and so if I cheated them, they'd know where
to find me," Castro recounts.
After completing their questionnaires, the surveyors shared the
results with Peter Herlihy, a cultural geographer and professor at
Southeastern Louisiana University who has lived in the Mosquitia.
Herlihy drew up the first draft of a land-use map of each of the 22
regions, which the surveyors then took back to the communities to
be reviewed and corrected. In some cases, the corrections took
longer than the original map, says Herlihy, because once people saw
the map, they enthusiastically provided more information. After
the corrections were made, Herlihy produced a composite map of the
entire Mosquitia.
Honduran law does not recognize indigenous lands as protected
areas, so the Indians of the Mosquitia have no legal rights to
their land. Because the Honduran government is legally entitled to
sell off national land outside protected areas, conservationists
are pushing for more land protection in the Mosquitia.
"If you're talking about natural-resource conservation in protected
areas, you have to talk about indigenous populations and their
social use of the land," says Herlihy. "There are 240 protected
areas in Central America, and indigenous populations live in or use
resources in 85 percent of those areas."
Last September, MOPAWI, Castro and other Indians presented the
land-use map to the Honduran vice president, government ministers
and military officials at the First congress on Indigenous Lands of
the Mosquitia. In the months following the congress, the Honduran
military has taken a surprisingly active role in the defense of the
Mosquitia, Leake reports.
For example, Wellington Hall, a North Carolina-based timber
company, proposed expanding its logging operations in the
Mosquitia. In a rare move, the Honduran Ministry of Defense joined
conservationists in opposition to the company's plan.
The military's support should help the Indians' campaign for legal
title to their land, says Mac Chapin of the U.S. indigenous-rights
group Cultural Survival, which provided financial support for the
land-use survey and map and is assisting MOPAWI's land-legalization
program. "In most countries of Central America there is no history
of legislation of Indian lands which are communal lands," he adds.
"The map and the congress got a lot of the Indians to think about
what kind of development they want. With the Center for Studies
and Social Action of Panama, we're supporting a similar process
with the Ember , Wounaan, and Kuna Indians in eastern Panama."
Contacts: In Honduras, MOPAWI (504/37-7210); in the U.S., Peter
Herlihy (504/549-2107); Mac Chapin, Cultural Survival (703/243-
0230). Photographs are available from Cultural Survival.
Please note the Rainforest Alliance's new New York phone number:
212/677-1900.
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