Radio Mundo Real

On September 22, 41 year-old Antonio Trejo Cabrera, the legal representative of the Authentic Peasant Movement of Aguan (MARCA), was shot to death near Tocontin International Airport in Honduras capital, Tegucigalpa.

The lawyer is part of a long list of victims in Valle del Aguan in Colon department and in other parts of the country. The day after Trejo’s murder, another three peasants were victims of an assault in Aguan. They were injured and taken to a health center in Tocao municipality.

Trejo had stood with the families of MARCA in their struggle to reclaim their property rights over three estates (San Isidro, La Trinidad and El Despertar), which purportedly were illegally acquired by land owners Miguel Facussé Barjum and René Morales Carazo.

On June 29, a court in Tegucigalpa issued a historical ruling in favor of the peasant families. However, an Appeals Court in Francisco Morazan department and in La Ceiba town issued a resolution that admitted an amparo appeal by the land owners, so the ruling had no effect. According to peasant organizations, the courts that accepted the amparo appeal had no power to do so.

The spokesperson of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA), Vitalino Alvarez, told Real World Radio’s correspondent in Honduras, Francisco Molina, that “the lawyer had already won the trial over the property of three plots of land”. “The problem is that the people in charge of delivering justice in this country have appealed the trial and think that by killing the lawyer they are going to weaken our struggle but they are wrong. Other lawyers will represent us”, said Alvarez.