On June 12, Garifuna leader Felix Ordoñez Suazo was assassinated at the community of Punta Piedras, in Colón department on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Community residents identified the killers as members of a group of land invaders who have been encroaching on Punta Piedras' titled lands. The conflict began in 1992, when a group of campesino settlers financed by business interests linked to the military began colonizing the area. Despite the fact that Punta Piedras had title to the lands in question as an ejido since 1921, the National Agrarian Institute (INA) granted the invaders a title to overlapping territory in 1999. Punta Piedras is preparing to bring a complaint in the matter to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH). (Oil Watch Mesoamerica [2], June 13)
See our last posts on Honduras [3] and the Central America [4].
