PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 8 Defending the land with maps

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 8 Defending the land with maps Derek Denniston Introduction from those not powerful enough to defend it. According to Mac Chapin of Native Lands, a programme that works to secure indigenous In January 1989, two boatloads of pisteleros land rights: "conflicts over land rights have (hired guns for a cattle rancher) came down from the headwaters of the Patuca River in become the most incendiary and deadly issue eastern Honduras and pulled up on the shore of in Central America, and by far the biggest Krautara, a village of the Tawakha Sumu threat to the cultural survival of its indigenous Indians. Armed with pistols and submachine peoples". guns, they unloaded their chain saws and sacks Two years ago, Indian leaders and cultural of food. They proclaimed legal title to all of activists in the northeast corner of Honduras the surrounding land, even though they carried decided to remedy the political invisibility of no papers. For three months, they occupied the Indian village, forcing one family from its the Indians of the Mosquitia region by home and clearing at least 20 hectares of lush carefully mapping where and how these tropical rain forest for cattle ...