By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 17 1997 (IPS)

Indigenous leaders in Honduras are taking action against the government of Carlos Reina for its neglect and failure to live up to promises, which have aggravated the marginalisation and poverty in which native people here are mired.

A delegation of the Confederation of Autochtonous Peoples of Honduras (Compah) travelled Thursday to Costa Rica to lodge a suit before the International Labour Organisation (ILO) against the government’s failure to comply with covenant 169, which guarantees access by native people to opportunities for comprehensive development.

Honduras is home to 500,000 indigenous people from seven ethnic groups, two of which are on the verge of disappearing.

The Compah leaders will also lodge a complaint against the Reina administration for its violation of a commitment to deliver 9,000 hectares of land to the Lenca and Chorti ethnic groups.

The Commission of Guarantors set up to oversee the commitments protested the government’s inaction, and said it would take measures to press the government to live up to its agreements.

“We thought things would turn out all right, but by now we feel, along with our indigenous brothers and sisters, that our good faith has been ridiculed,” Juan Almendares, one of the guarantors, told IPS Thursday.

The human rights activist said “the government has lied to the indigenous people and the population at large. Lies are becoming institutionalised.”

Bertha Sanchez, with the Council of Indigenous Peoples from the West, told IPS that the government’s debt to its native population was “bigger than the foreign debt.

“We will march again to Tegucigalpa on peaceful pilgrimages if we don’t receive immediate answers,” she warned.

Sanchez said the government had promised to resolve, by June, the deaths of Chorti leaders Candido Amador and Ovidio Perez, who were killed three months ago by gunmen reportedly hired by landholders from Copan, the cradle of Mayan civilisation in western Honduras.

Guarantor Andres Thomas with the Methodist Church in the United States said the government was not interested in resolving the murders.

The Reina administration has also failed to live up to its promise for a general disarmament of Copan, where according to the guarantors, the Chorti people are being deprived of their machetes while landholders are allowed to keep their FAL, M16 and AK-47 rifles.

Ubodoro Arriaga, with the governmental Agrarian Institute, said Thursday that the entity was not able to deliver the land due to legal questions, and that it was willing to grant only 1,500 of the 9,000 hectares initially promised.

Arriaga denied that the government had approved slightly over 500,000 dollars for a programme for distribution of land to native groups, saying the money would be used for “more necessary things.”

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