Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
companies on the North Coast in sucient quantities to provide for the
unemployed.'' 66 Some 200 signatures were appended to the petition that
claimed that at least 5,000 workers were unemployed and that available
landwasscarceduetothe''differentrailroadandbananacompaniesestab-
lished on the lands most accessible to centers of consumption.'' The fol-
lowing year, the Governor of Atlántida, noting the ''constant'' stream of
cultivators who appeared to request protection of their rights to either
ejidolands(controlledbymunicipalgovernments)orthoseabandonedby
the banana companies, authorized municipal chiefs of police to assist cul-
tivators without property titles to establish property boundaries. 67 Efforts
toresolvelanddisputesoftenproceededslowlyinpartduetotheinability
of municipal governments to cover the expenses associated with a titling
process that one local o cial described as ''protracted and costly.'' 68
Frustrated with the di culty of obtaining land in export banana
zones, some Honduran worker organizations turned their gaze toward
Mosquitia—a large region lying between the department of Colón and
the border with Nicaragua that was inhabited primarily by indigenous
populationslongviewedasprimitivebySpanish-speakinghighlandelites.
Honduran labor leaders first proposed colonizing Mosquitia in 1911. 69
During the 1920s, North Coast worker organizations showed renewed
interest in the region. In July 1926, the Sociedad Lucha Obrera wrote to
the Ministerof Development declaring its intention to acquire a land con-
cession in the Mosquitia region, ''a place coveted by foreign elements and
the only one that remains available to us on the North Coast.'' 70 Acouple
of months later, a letter from a La Ceiba-based artisans' guild urged the
national government to approve a concession for 50,000 hectares of land
''suitable for agriculture'' near the Patuca River in Mosquitia. 71 Through-
out 1927, guild members donated their labor on Sundays to build a sail-
ing vessel for the purposes of making a preliminary expedition into Mos-
quitia. The organization also sponsored cultural events, including plays
and holiday pageants, in order to raise funds for the project. 72
In a 1927 address delivered in La Ceiba, Zoroastro Montes de Oca,
secretaryof the Honduran Railroad Workers Union, wove the language of
both class and nationalism in exhorting his comrades to support the Mos-
quitia project: ''How many families can we take to Mosquitia without the
helpofthestate?Everyworker'sorganizationintheRepublicthatholdsto
the ideal of controlling all of Mosquitia's land for the common good and
healthoftheRepublicoughttoaskitselfthatquestion.Aswe,theworkers,
understand it, those lands belong to the nation.'' 73 In the view of Montes
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