US embassy cable - 04TEGUCIGALPA1581

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TEGUCIGALPA 001581 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR OES, EB, WHA AND WHA/CEN 
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CEN 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, SENV, KCRM, KJUS, PHUM, SNAR, SOCI, HO 
SUBJECT: March For Life Focused on Forests Reenergizes 
Honduran Environmental Movement 
 
REF: 03 Tegucigalpa 1812 
 
1. (U) SUMMARY:  The March for Life (Marcha por la Vida) 
appears to have successfully launched a new committed 
environmental protection movement in the country.  It 
remains to be seen if the movement can sustain its momentum 
and maintain political pressure on the government and 
Congress, and whether the Government of Honduras (GOH) will 
respond to the demands of the movement.  Negotiations appear 
to be at a standstill with leaders of the March for Life, 
who have stayed in Tegucigalpa to press their agenda, 
demanding an immediate halt to all logging until better 
standards are put in place.  END SUMMARY. 
 
2. (U) The March for Life began on June 24, from four 
cardinal points across the country (Olancho, Siguatepeque, 
Danli, and Choluteca) converging on June 30 in front of the 
Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa.  Father Andres Tamayo is 
a Salvadorian priest who resides in Olancho and heads the 
Olancho Environmentalist Movement (MAO).  According to 
Tamayo, the March for Life is a collective complaint and 
call for a united front against politicians who benefit from 
the projects of transnational companies that allegedly 
deforest and exploit the country's natural resources.  He 
called on the government, transnational companies, and 
Honduran citizens alike to share in the responsibility to 
remedy the situation.  Roughly 3,000 people participated in 
the march, less than the 10,000 that organizers expected. 
 
3. (SBU) Among the marchers in front of the Presidential 
Palace were several members from a Center for International 
Policy (CIP) delegation led by former U.S. Ambassador to El 
Salvador Bob White.  In an e-mail to White prior to the 
march, Minister of the Presidency Luis Cosenza Jimenez tried 
to discourage CIP members from attending the march.  Cosenza 
cited as a reason the June 21 declaration by Catholic Bishop 
of Copan, Luis Alfonso Santos, that he would not participate 
in nor support the march because it allegedly would seek to 
undermine the government and ask for the President's 
resignation.  He feared the possibility of violence and 
indicated that the marchers could be in danger.  Other 
groups, including the left-wing Democratic Union (UD) Party 
and the Catholic church itself, minimized their 
participation.  Finally, in a last ditch effort to derail 
the march, President Ricardo Maduro himself invited the 
leaders of the march to dialogue with him rather than march. 
He even offered full press coverage, so that all of Honduras 
would bear witness to the dialogue on this critical issue. 
 
4. (U) The government went to great lengths to exploit its 
efforts to combat the problem of illegal logging and 
deforestation.  A year ago, the President ordered operatives 
to control illegal logging in Olancho, Cosenza said.  As a 
consequence, more than 100,000 board feet of wood were 
seized, several people were arrested, and vehicles and arms 
were decommissioned.  Recently the operation was repeated 
with a similar outcome.  However, these isolated actions do 
not properly address or resolve the illegal logging problem 
in the long term.  Moreover, Cosenza stated, President 
Maduro has submitted new legislation to Congress (which 
returned from its recess July 6) to adopt stronger 
enforcement measures. 
 
5. (U) These new measures include reforming the Mining Law, 
prohibiting the transport of wood between 6:00pm and 6:00am, 
and establishing a motor vehicle registry.  Additionally, it 
would prohibit the auction of national forest lands, except 
for those agreed to by the inhabitants of the local 
municipality.  The GOH also urged municipalities to 
establish commissions to assure compliance with 
environmental requisites, such as compliance with the law 
requiring the submission of management plans to the Honduran 
Corporation for Forestry Development (Corporacion Hondurena 
de Desarrollo Forestal or COHDEFOR) authorities.  President 
Maduro stated that he would name a commission to intervene 
in COHDEFOR operations and (starting July 2), investigate 
the actions of COHDEFOR and its proposed reforms.  Beginning 
in 2005, the GOH also plans to have COHDEFOR become a 
centrally funded institution and eliminate its partial 
dependency on the auction of national timber and fees from 
private timber sales.  During the past two years, COHDEFOR 
has been reduced from over 1,000 employees to fewer than 500 
- an issue that has also reduced COHDEFOR's ability to 
monitor the implementation of forest land management plans. 
Finally, Maduro proposed to revise and strengthen the new 
Forestry law.  (Note: Tamayo stated at the initiation of the 
March on June 24, that despite government promises such as 
the intervention at COHDEFOR, the reality is that the 
sacking of the forests continues and thus the march would 
proceed.  He is calling for a total ban on any logging until 
stronger, more effective enforcement measures can be put in 
place.  See below.  End Note.)  See septel for more 
information on COHDEFOR. 
 
6. (U) In a letter to President Maduro, Tamayo along with 
other march organizers (Roger Escober, Bertha Oliva de 
Nativi, Jorge Varela, P. Osmin Flores, Walter E. Ulloa, 
Angel Amilcar Colon, and Rufino Rodriguez) outlined the 
march's objectives and demands.  Immediate demands of the 
marchers included the investigation and capture of "those 
who put a price on the lives of the participants in the 
march and in the fight for the environment;" an end to 
police and judicial impunity; and sentencing for the 
murderers of Jeannette Kawas and Carlos Escaleras (, the 
1998 killing of environmental activist and Catacamas town 
councilman Carlos Antonio Luna Lopez, and the June 2001 
killing of community leader and environmental activist 
Carlos Roberto Flores in Olancho.  Post does not know the 
dates or locations of the Kawas and Escaleras murders. 
(Note: In June of last year, the first National March for 
Life began from Juticalpa led by Father Tamayo as well as 
Carlos Arturo "Oscar" Reyes.  Reyes (23) was the leader of 
the campaign to stop the deforestation of Olancho.  Shortly 
after the march, armed men gunned down Reyes outside of his 
home in Olancho on July 18, 2003 (reftel).  There are 
allegations that timber magnates, frightened by Reyes' 
organizational capabilities, offered a reward of USD 40,000 
to anyone who killed the environmentalist.  Tamayo himself 
has received death threats in the past.  End Note.) 
 
7. (U) (Note:  In May and July 2002, police arrested Jose 
Angel Rosa and Jorge Adolfo Chavez Hernandez, a former 
member of Battalion 3-16, for the 1998 killing of Carlos 
Luna Lopez.  An appeals court later freed Rosa; however, in 
May 2002 police arrested him for the attempted killing of 
Sylvia Esperanza Gonzales, which is related to the killing 
of Luna Lopez.  Rosa is still in prison on unrelated 
environmental charges.  In May 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 
against a motion to dismiss the charges against Chavez, and 
he is also in prison.  Former security official Jose Marcos 
Hernandez Hernandez and two other suspects remained at 
large.  In December 2002, a court sentenced Oscar Aurelio 
"Machetillo" Rodriguez Molina, to 20 years' imprisonment for 
the murder of Luna Lopez and seven years' imprisonment for 
grave injury to Gonzales.  In January, two NGOs brought the 
case to the IACHR.  Three suspects are in jail and three 
remain at large in the June 2001 killing of Carlos Flores. 
Post has no further information on the Kawas and Escaleras 
murders.  End Note.) 
 
8. (U) Other specific demands that the environmental 
movement is making on the government are fourfold.  First, 
an immediate halt to both legal and clandestine logging, as 
well as declaring a state of emergency in the forests by 
legislative decree and an immediate stop to logging for 90 
days.  Second, an investigation into all private property 
titles to determine their legality.  Third, an immediate 
review of all forestry programs and projects to better align 
them with the policy of poverty reduction.  According to 
march leaders, this last demand should also include greater 
community participation in the management and utilization of 
local natural resources.  Fourth, a government audit on 
forestry resources to be conducted by a qualified 
international firm, which would involve the participation of 
the community and non-governmental organizations who are 
involved in the proper management of natural resources. 
Additional demands include the use of social audits where 
citizens can supervise the behavior of forestry industries 
and functionaries by means of regional forestry tribunals 
and the creation of an inter-institutional commission to 
supervise and control the wood industry. 
 
9. (U) March organizers are not completely against the 
harvesting of wood.  One of their recommendations consists 
of making the communities responsible for managing and 
harvesting the forest areas in their vicinities.  March 
organizers also called for the abolishment of the Mining Law 
which was approved in the wake of Hurricane Mitch because, 
according to march organizers, it allows excessive 
exploitation of mining resources by unscrupulous 
transnational companies that make pacts with corrupt local 
functionaries.  The marchers argue this should include 
closing the Office of Mining Development (Direccion de 
Fomento de la Mineria) and replacing it with another 
organism that would attend to national interests before 
those of the international businesses.  Father Tamayo's 
group is opposed to the new Forestry Law for several 
reasons, including that it is designed to permit the private 
concession of forestry resources to national and 
international companies.  The group also is seeking a 
separate law just for protected areas.  They urge the 
government to conduct a technical and administrative purging 
of the regional COHDEFOR offices. 
 
10. (U) Tamayo had consistently stated that the march would 
not "end where it ends, it begins where it ends."  Now that 
the march is over, members of the national commission of the 
March for Life have said they will stay in the capital. 
They have said they are ready to organize the necessary 
political forces to bring about the completion of their 
demands at the executive and congressional levels.  Tamayo 
stated that they say they are finished with unconstructive 
dialogue.  The group demands that the president act now to 
address these issues in order to save what is left of the 
country's natural resources. 
 
11. (U) According to march organizers, the initial response 
of the government was to send an unmarked and unsigned two- 
page letter to them on June 30.  According to Tamayo, the 
letter purported to respond to each one of the specific 
demands made on the GOH, in a "we are already doing this" or 
"we already did this" tone and not addressing or referring 
to several points.  Nevertheless, Tamayo stated that they 
accept the president's invitation to continue the discussion 
of their stance. 
 
12. (SBU) Comment:  Two of the leading presidential 
candidates, the Nationalist Party member and President of 
Congress, Pepe Lobo, and leading Liberal Party candidate Mel 
Zelaya, are from Olancho.  During a prior administration, 
from 1990-1992, Lobo was head of COHDEFOR.  In addition, 
Zelaya owned a sawmill and has been president of the 
sawmiller's association in Honduras.  Neither is pre- 
disposed to support the march organizer's goals.  The group 
protest was peaceful and demonstrated a cohesiveness that 
has put the Maduro government on the defensive.  If the 
marchers continue to press their agenda, however, they could 
run into violent opposition by the powerful economic 
interests who stand to lose the most by greater 
environmental protection enforcement and any changes/reform 
to the current system.  End Comment. 
 
PALMER