Hondurans Reject Handing Over Land To Private Capital

[sandensea]

1. Past is prologue in Latin America

This is all very reminiscent of the Juan Melgar Castro dictatorship, which during its 1975-78 tenure rolled back much of the land reform enacted under his predecessor (Osvaldo López Arellano) at gunpoint.

The best known example was a successful worker's co-operative founded by peasants in 1974 on abandoned Standard Fruit lands - which was violently disbanded by the Honduran Army on Melgar's orders.

Melgar was in turn himself overthrown in 1978 - though not for his abuses, but instead by generals who were chomping at the bit to make Honduras a major cocaine trans-shipment point.

Which, with Reagan administration help, it certainly did.

Reagan's point man? Ambassador John Negroponte - the neocon who later became a household name for his role in Bush's Iraq invasion. He famously expelled the DEA's Honduras office, just as cocaine exports were taking off in '83.