I WAS given the opportunity to witness at first hand how Trocaire works with others to help people in greatest need and my visit to Honduras was a truly remarkable experience.
I witnessed how people’s lives are being transformed in this part of Latin America, visiting a number of different projects including the Calidad de Vida which provides support for women who were victims of domestic violence and others who were HIV positive.
This centre not only provided shelter, but legal aid for women to obtain their rights through the courts and equip them with skills so that many could become self-sufficient when they return home.
I and my colleagues witnessed women being trained to produce a range of products including jewellery, with the centre also providing free counselling, access to social workers, HIV tests and drugs that could not be bought at local hospitals.
Moving beyond the city of Tegucigalpa to Marcala, we met with the CNTC Rural Development Association which assisted landless peasants to secure their rights.
We heard about 29 families who had farmed their land for centuries but who were forcibly evicted by a local landlord and now lived in squalid conditions on an acre of land on a mountain top.
Even here they were not safe as the landlord, with the help of the local police and army, burned their crops and shacks on three separate occasions.
Five miles outside Marcala, we met another group of 22 families who despite repeated harassment and attack, had managed to plant and harvest their coffee plantation. They had acquired a micro loan from Trocaire and were in the process of repaying it.
Having secured food for their families they were in a position to use part of their produce as a cash crop and were hoping to use some of the profits to improve housing. Farmers worked from dawn to dusk over a three year period to create a coffee plantation to be proud of.
We also visited Copradepi in the La Plaz region and one particular lady called Marta told how she borrowed £600 from one Trocaire’s partner organisations to buy a cow which enabled her to provide milk and cheese for her family. She now has four cows, had managed to repay her loan ans was able to diversify into a wide range of products which included coffee, potatoes, vegetables, fish, fruit and honey.
We then visited the school of an indigenous community who were fortunate to have the support of the local mayor. The children were very excited to see us and the school was well resourced with six classrooms which was in stark contrast to the experience of some of my colleagues in another school which had two classrooms with 75 pupils in each and only five text books for all pupils to share.
Education is seen as the route out of poverty and some children will walk three hours to attend school, with their day starting at 8am and ending at 1pm. Some teachers stay on in a voluntary capacity in the afternoon to teach older pupils.
Unfortunately, very few pupils manage to attend secondary school and only three percent of all Hondurans attend university. Many are required to work on the local farm or on some of the large coffee plantations and some marry in their teenage years. Another reason for attending school however is the security of receiving a meal. The children in this school ate tortilla, rice and beans which had been provided by the World Aid Programme.
We also met with the another of Trocaire’s partners, the UTC rural advocacy group in the mountain region of northern Honduras which supported women and children to secure their human rights.
We listened as one women’s group shared their short, medium and long term goals in the areas of agriculture, social and political representation and education and the co-ordinator of a children’s group which tries to provide a future for itself by making and selling arts and crafts.
On our journey to the town of La Ensprenza, we took the main connecting road from Marcala which had taken six years to construct and was no more than a dirt track as the company responsible for installing it had run out of money, leaving it with out tarmac and impassable during the rainy season. A journey of 35 kilometres took nearly three hours.
We were introduced to another of Trocaire’s partners AMIR which supports the Lenkos, another
Honduran indigenous group whose objective is to improve the standard of living for women, support their rights and work for gender equality.
We were also given a tour of a processing plant funded by the European Union which serves out-reach communities and gives a fair price to producers. Products range from jams, pineapples, jelly, marmalades and pickles all of which have been organically produced.
We then travelled south through the capital Tegucigalpa where on the outskirts hundreds of shacks have been built on the surrounding hills which were the “homes” of families who had come form rural areas in search of work. With no access to local services, the area looked like a wasteland and living conditions were appalling.
The end of my visit was spent in southern Honduras where we visited another of Trocaire’s partners called Adezpa. We visited one of the islands by boat and listened to its leader explain how 12 fishing communities in the area had been forced from the coastal regions to the mountain areas by a wealthy landowner who wanted their land to build holiday homes for rich families from Honduras and the US.
The trip ended with a visit to one of 12 communities called Porte Grande, the biggest community on the peninsula where we listened to a young girl called Roxanna tell how the youth had come together to set up a radio station so that each community could be informed of events and that people beyond the area could become aware of their struggle for justice.
On one occasion, 300 military personnel arrived and burned it to the ground but, in a true spirit of resistance, they set to work on rebuilding it.
A large landowner then set up his own rival radio station and presented himself as an environmentalist who was defending Honduras against land grabbers.
Honduras is truly a beautiful country and we received a wonderful welcome by so many people who wanted to tell their stories and were so happy that the delegation from Ireland had come to listen.
The people we met were articulate, hard-working and fully appreciated the help given to them by Trocaire and schools in Ireland who support its work.
I have been left humbled by the dignity of the people who respond to difficulties with a measured and strategic response. Violence we were told only leads to more
violence and increased suffering.