The march gathered representatives from 16 out of the 18 departments of the country. Even women from Bajo Aguan, a region characterized by the extreme violence (including murders) against the peasant population, participated.

The demonstration was carried out in the International Women’s Day. “For the right to land of peasant, native and garifuna women, we’ll all mobilize on March 8th”, read the call to the protest. “For the dignity of women, we demand our right to land”, concluded the press release.

Real World Radio interviewed the general coordinator of the Council for the Integral Development of Peasant Women (CODIMCA, an organization that represents the Afro-descendant population of the country), Leoncia Solórzano, the spokeswoman in today’s protest. The contact was facilitated before the march by environmentalist Francisco Molina, of the Movimiento Madre Tierra – Friends of the Earth Honduras, Real World Radio’s collaborator in Honduras.

More mobilizations of peasant women are scheduled to take place today in several parts of Central America to pressure governments to define specific strategies and policies to ensure the access of women to land. The women of La Via Campesina Central America will launch the regional campaign “For the Dignity of Women, we Demand our Right to Land”.

In Tegucigalpa there was a call for a march from Plaza Coprosumah to the National Congress and the Government Building to demand the president successor of the Dictatorship, Porfirio Lobo, to grant them lands to live and work.

“We, women, need land. We don’t have access to it because the Honduran legislation has always tried to make us invisible, as if women didn’t exist in Honduras. All the owners of land are men, we don’t have anything”, said Solórzano to Real World Radio.

The leader said the mobilization was peaceful and there was no coordination with the national police or the government to hold the protest. “We went to the streets without talking to the government or the police, because we believe we have the right to take the streets and protest”, she said.

Solórzano believes access to land is part of the antidote against the “extreme poverty there is in this country” and highlighted feminicide as one of the main problems suffered by women in the countryside.

The spokeswoman of the Honduran protest highlighted the importance of women for the production of food in her country and said that they will continue struggling until the authorities “get tired and give us lands”.

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