EL SALVADOR-HONDURAS: Protracted Border Dispute Seems Endless

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Mar 26 1996 (IPS) - Three years after an international tribunal sought to settle a longstanding border dispute between Honduras and El Salvador, the status of the Honduran community of Nahuaterique remains a simmering source of tension.

Located in the central department of La Paz, Nahuaterique comprises 148.4 square kilometers. It is part of a border area Honduras and El Salvador have disputed for more than 100 years.

The community is rich in natural resources, especially forests, and includes 10,000 Salvadoran residents who have refused to abide by the 1993 International Court of Justice at The Hague verdict defining the borders between the two Central American countries.

Regarded as a popular support base for the guerilla insurgency during the Salvadoran civil war, Nahaterique’s Salvadoran residents reject the decision to allocate their region to Honduras, and this town remains the source of most of the outstanding border problems between the two nations.

Cruz Ramiro Perdomo, a 47-year-old Salvadoran, says the border verdict “is invalid. I’m one hundred percent Salvadoran and will only accept this international decision when I’m dead.”

“Only the laws that we Salvadorans make are valid here, and if necessary I’m ready to join what used to be the guerilla movement in my country to defend this land with my blood,” the peasant told the local press.

His attitude is shared by much of the rest of the population in the area, who turn to the Salvadoran authorities to resolve their problems because the Honduran presence there is “minimal.”

Honduran government spokespersons acknowledge that the country’s “limited sovereignty” over the area prevents it from effectively tackling the social and human problems that have emerged from the verdict.

Abraham Garica Turcios, the commissioner of the recovered territories, describes the principal border problems as land ownership disputes and deforestation.

He says the forests are being cut indiscriminately and the wood “moves freely to El Salvador before the eyes and indifference of everyone.”

He said there are only 25 Honduran soldiers in the area who “can’t use bullets to stop the wood trafficking because this would unleash a killing that doesn’t suit any country’s interest.”

Garcia said more forest-protection agents are needed in the area. A Honduran military report asserts that the Salvadorans cut 817,000 feet of wood in December 1995 alone.

The local press reports that some 15 Salvadoran trucks arrive daily in Honduras to load illegally-cut wood, and the forest depredations have prompted protests against Tegucigalpa’s inaction.

Congressional deputy Concepcion Ramos of the governing Honduran Liberal Party declared that the government’s neglect of the area encouraged wood smuggling and warned that the forests could be cut down completely in three years.

But the army says it lacks the resources to station a soldier for every border kilometer. Military officials add that their battalions are depleted and declare that the defense of national sovereignty is not just a matter for the military. “A nation’s dignity is defended in a united rather than an isolated manner,” army chief Gen. Mario Hung said last Wednesday.

On the other side of the border, there is no news about the circumstances of the 3,000 Hondurans whose dwellings became part of El Salvador following The Hague’s verdict.

The unappealable decision gave Honduras two of the three disputed territories along with a passage to the Pacific ocean.

Both Tegucigalpa and San Salvador acknowledge that the verdict has created problems regarding land ownership and the nationality of the border zone inhabitants.

Honduras is refusing to give dual nationality to the Salvadoran residents in its new territories, saying that its Constitution prohibits it.

The Honduran Constitution also prohibits foreigners from owning land within 40 kilometers of the border.

But the Honduran government has drafted a bi-national proposal to attempt to resolve these problems.

Mario Solano, a member of the Salvadoran commission negotiating the border problems, said last week that his country was studying the proposal but indicated he found it less than convincing.

Both Honduras and El Salvador attribute their disagreement on border matters to the “absence” of a specific legal framework for the area.

Meanwhile, the region’s inhabitants have their own myriad conflicts. While Nahuaterique schoolteachers instruct pupils in the trappings of Honduran patriotism, their Salvadoran parents educate them to be loyal to their former flag.