By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 8 1998 (IPS)

The black Garifuna communities along Honduras’ Atlantic coast are up in arms over a government plan that would permit foreign investors to purchase land for tourism projects in border and coastal areas.

The plan, which is pending a constitutional amendment, surprised the Garifunas – one of the seven ethnic groups in Honduras. The communities now fear that the development of tourism will bring a host of social ills like drug use, alcoholism and prostitution, and threaten their culture.

“We blacks are on a war footing. We will not allow ourselves to be wiped out as an ethnic group in the name of savage tourism,” Celeo Alvarez Casildo, a Garifuna leader, told IPS. “That is what will happen when foreign investors come and kick us off our land and beaches in the name of development.”

“We think the government’s decision is wrong. We are working on a proposal that would guarantee us access to sustainable human development, through the application of ecological tourism,” said Alvarez Casildo, with the Black Organisation of Community Development based in the northern Honduran city of La Ceiba.

The tourist industry has only generated low-quality jobs in Honduras, “and we don’t want that for our communities,” he added.

The government announced that it would seek an amendment of article 107 of the constitution in order to foster investment and tourism in coastal and border areas.In the name of national sovereignty, article 107 prohibits land located within 40 kms of the country’s borders and coasts, or on islands, keys, crags and sandbanks from being sold to foreign nationals.

The private business community has been lobbying for eight years for a repeal of the article, which it says hinders the growth of tourism and the economic development of Honduras.

That argument has caught on in the governing party, and the speaker of parliament, Rafael Pineda Ponce, presented a draft amendment of article 107 that would allow foreign investment in coastal and border areas.

“The times give rise to changes, and societies must modernise themselves. For that reason I think it is opportune to reform this article for the sake of ensuring foreign investment in the tourist industry,” said Pineda Ponce.

He said that the ban on real estate sales to foreign nationals in the areas in question would be left standing, but that exceptions would be made possible “in the case of tourist development projects duly approved by the executive branch, through special legislation.”

Honduras, a Central American country of close to six million inhabitants, seeks to insert itself into the globalised world and free market through a series of laws and amendments aimed at attracting foreign capital, which provide for tax incentives and exemptions in specific cases.

The new project has been encouraged by the government of Carlos Flores and backed by a majority of the 128 members of parliament, who will debate the question next month and are expected to approve it towards the end of the year.

Tourism is Honduras’ fifth largest foreign exchange-earner, bringing in 120 million dollars a year. The government wants to increase that figure to 450 million dollars, and sees the constitutional amendment as indispensable for achieving that objective, said Tourist Minister Norman Garcia.

One of the country’s main tourist attractions are the traditional ceremonies of the black communities living all along the Atlantic coast, whose livelihoods depend on fishing and farming. Local inhabitants hold frequent religious festivals complete with song, which attract droves of tourists as spectators.

The Garifunas, scattered from the department of Cortes to the remote jungle region of Mosquitia, live in some of the tourist areas most sought-after by foreign investors.

“For years we have been able to take care of these lands, protect nature and live in harmony with the environment. Now they want to deprive us of those things, without giving us any guarantee of a dignified lifestyle. We will thus go from the owners of our lives to slaves, something we will not allow,” said Alvarez Casildo.

This week, President Flores announced the creation of a Presidential Investment Programme Commission, one of whose main objectives will be the development of tourism.

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