Above photo: Mother of four disappeared children, Maria Herrera Magdaleno, speaks at the launch of the Caravan for Peace, Life, and Justice in Tegucigalpa, March 28, 2016. | Photo: EFE From TelesurTV.net.
Honduras -Today (March 29, 2016), the Caravan for Peace, Life, and Justice visited La Ceiba, on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. We met with leaders from Garifuna and indigenous communities that are being forced from their lands by US and Honduran military forces who claim the communities are trafficking drugs. There have been multiple assassinations and massacres, including of innocent women and children, in Garifuna, Tolupan, and Miskito communities. The news says that cartel members were killed.
The military forces want to instill fear in these communities and force them to leave their coastal communities, leaving the land open for plantations and the beaches open to hotel and resort companies. The communities are fighting back though. A leader of the Garifuna organization OFRANEH said that “we are fighting with our culture, tradition, music, dance, and spirituality. We are fighting in peace and have won back some of our territories in this way.”
Every day of the Caravan we learn of new struggles for indigenous lands and sovereignty that are being threatened by the US-backed War on Drugs. These communities are leading the resistance effort. They are calling for an end to the War on Drugs that is militarizing their communities, killing their loved ones, and forcing them from their
homes.
Caravan participants, many who have lost family members to this war, are carrying their stories and the stories we collect along the way through Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States.
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