RIGHTS-HONDURAS: Company Charged in Death of Union Leader

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, May 19 1998 (IPS) - Banana workers and rights groups in Honduras, are demanding that the government investigate the possibility of a US-based Fruit corporation’s participation in the murder of a union leader and his son.

Union leader Medardo Reyes and his son Wilmer were killed May 10 after leaving a meeting of past and present workers who claimed that their health was harmed by the pesticide Nemagon, allegedly used recently by the company Standard Fruit, a subsidiary of the California-based Dole Foods.

Rights groups and banana workers said Reyes had received threats for his outspoken defense of workers. They called on President Carlos Flores to investigate whether the company was retaliating against workers’ protests against the company.

Charging that people are being trained for paramilitary purposes on the plantation, Andres Pavon, regional representative of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, said the murders may have been committed by “the banana company’s paid gunman.”

Reyes’ murder occurred after “he was threatened by unknown men who recommended that he abandon the fight for workers rights,” said Obdulio Fuentes, a banana worker.

Standard Fruit had not responded by Tuesday to repeated enquiries by IPS for comment on the latest charges. In the past, the company denied using Nemagon since the 1960s. Local police reports said the murders were the result of robbery.

The Union Leader’s death followed workers’ protests against a recently released governmental commission report which dismissed charges that the banana company had recently used Nemagon, a pesticide which is known to cause severe birth defects, including babies born without brains. Workers strongly denounced this report arguing that officials yielded to the interests of the banana company.

The commission was formed in February to investigate the use of the pesticide after Omar Gonzalez, director of the Olanchito Hospital in the northern area of Yoro, revealed that 18 out of every 2,000 children were born with anencephaly, a malformation in which fetuses fail to develop brains.

Gonzalez stated that this phenomenon became apparent in 1997, when Standard Fruit allegedly began fumigating plantations at night.

Banned in many countries, including the United States since 1985, Nemagon, also known as DBCP, is classified as “extremely” hazardous by the United Nations World Health Organisation. Used widely on pineapples and bananas throughout Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, Nemagon has also been proven to cause sterility and reduced sperm counts.

Executives of the Standard Fruit said the use of Nemagon on plantations was prohibited in 1970. They used it in the 1960s via an irrigation system that delivered it directly to the plant, but use was prohibited when health problems associated with the pesticide became apparent, said Francisco Romero, an executive of Standard Fruit.

Health Minister Marco Rosa, a member of the government commission also said the pesticide was no longer used in Honduras. He also dismissed charges that barrels of Nemagon were buried on a number of plantations.

Banned in many countries, including the United States since 1985, Nemagon, also known as DBCP, is classified as “extremely” hazardous by the United Nations World Health Organisation. Used widely on pineapples and bananas throughout Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, Nemagon has also been proven to cause sterility and reduced sperm counts.

Executives of the Standard Fruit said the use of Nemagon on their plantations had been prohibited since the 1970s. They used it in the 1960s via an irrigation system that delivered it directly to the plant, but use was prohibited when health problems associated with the pesticide became apparent, said Francisco Romero, an executive of Standard Fruit.

Health Minister Marco Rosa, a member of the government commission also said the pesticide was no longer used in Honduras. He also dismissed charges that barrels of Nemagon were buried on a number of plantations.

After Gonzalez released the health report in February, about 2,00 former Standard Fruit employees – including the murdered union leader Reyes – took over the road between the towns of Tocoa and Trujillo demanding that the company reconsider their claims for compensation for injuries suffered as a result of past Nemagon use. Demonstrators caused a two-day delay in the shipment of 70,000 crates of bananas to Europe and 14,000 crates to Russia, but the government promise of an investigation ended the protest.

Just before the murder of Reyes, past and present workers discussed filing a lawsuit against the company.

“It is strange that the murders occurred just when the workers were getting ready to sue the company for using banned pesticides,” said Pavon

An earlier suit was won by workers in Honduras and Costa Rica in 1992. In the 1970s, approximately 1000 workers from Standard Fruit’s plantations on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica had been identified as sterile for life as a result of applying Nemagon on bananas.

About 20-25 percent of the male population working in this region were sterilised, said doctor Carlos Calvosa, one of the main physicians involved in the analyses acccording to Lori Ann Thrupp, a researcher with the Washington-based World Resources Institute.

With the help of lawyers in Texas, workers from Costa Rica sued Dole and two U.S. companies that produce the pesticide – Dow Chemical and Shell Oil. The case eventually settled in 1992 awarding the workers 20 million dollars. Later that year, Honduran workers won a parallel suit against the same companies, but most of the settlement money went to lawyers fees and only a small number of workers each received 100 dollars.

It remained unclear whether workers in Honduras still planned on filing another suit against the company, since the murder of Reyes.

Standard Fruit, along with Tela Railroad – a subsidiary of Chiquita International – reportedly export more than 250 million dollars of bananas per year from Honduras, second only to the coffee industry.