Honduras economic development zones worry residents, experts – KIRO 7 News Seattle

SAN MARCOS DE COLON, Honduras – (AP) – Row after row of new greenhouses are rising in the fields just a short walk from the land where the Zonia Amparo Vásquez family has grown corn and beans for four decades.

Construction began in January, but it wasn’t until June that locals learned that their community was part of a controversial government initiative creating semi-autonomous economic development zones that are exempt from many national laws and taxes.

The peppers and tomatoes that the greenhouses produce are destined for export, and other companies are expected one day to arrive.

President Juan Orlando Hernández, whose comments revealed the nature of the project to locals, promised that the Agroalpha project would be the largest of its kind in Central America, and eventually create more than 4,500 jobs in Las Tapias, a tiny settlement in San Marcos de Colon , a rural community of around 30,000 people near the Nicaraguan border.

Vásquez and others in Las Tapias say jobs are welcome, but they fear their property may one day be expropriated – something the law may give such developing areas the right to do.

“We’re scared because nobody has come to tell us what is really going on,” said the 64-year-old. Her daughter, 40-year-old Dora Elena Ramírez, said she lost sleep because she was worried about where they would live if they lost their land.

This is just one of many concerns critics have raised about the employment and economic development zones known as ZEDEs for their Spanish initials.

Inspired by libertarian and free market thinkers to attract foreign investment to the impoverished country, the zones were approved by a law passed in 2013 when Hernández was President of Congress.

A 21-person “Best Practices” committee has been set up to monitor and regulate the zones. It was dominated, at least initially, by foreign free market advocates, including several veterans of the Reagan administration, U.S. anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, and Reagan’s son Michael.

The zones are exempt from import and export taxes and can set up their own internal forms of government, as well as courts, security forces, schools and even social security systems. They manage their own sea and, if necessary, airports.

While the law says they must comply with most of Honduran constitutional principles and international human rights treaties, critics say they are basically creating a separate state within the state and undermining the country’s sovereignty.

Hernández said about 450,000 Hondurans need jobs and the ZEDEs can help create them. He spoke before an artistic vision of such a future: dawn over a gleaming city with towering skyscrapers and lush parks.

Funders have claimed the zones would attract so much investment that the country’s per capita income could multiply in just a few decades

For years the idea seemed to have stalled, but Hernandez pushed the idea forward and the Supreme Court recently dismissed legal challenges.

The response from business, religious and human rights groups has been largely hostile.

United Nations officials in Honduras warned that its creation could pose “serious risks to compliance with the general obligation of the Honduran state to respect and guarantee the free and full exercise of the rights of all residents without discrimination”.

The Honduran Council of Private Enterprise criticized the plan. The nongovernmental National Anti-Corruption Council moved Congress to repeal the law.

“The ZEDEs are the result of an illegal legislative and judicial process,” which changes the form of government established by the constitution, wrote the Executive Director of the Council, Gabriela Castellanos.

Some warn that the zones will become havens for criminal activity or those who wish to stay out of the reach of the law.

Ramírez, the daughter of Vásquez, recalled that the Mayor of San Marcos de Colon, Douglas Ordoñez, had previously spoken of a new business with jobs for poor people so that they would not emigrate to the United States, but he did not say that it was a ZEDE. ”

Ordoñez said it was because he didn’t know it himself until Hernández mentioned it on TV in June.

Héctor Herrera, director of the non-governmental Southern Platform against ZEDEs, said locals told his organization that people from the industrial park had pressured them to sell their land or risk expropriation.

However, Las Tapias municipal leader Filadelfo Izaguirre said that although he heard such rumors, no one approached him to purchase land. He has lived in the community for 48 years and said that the 60 or so families there would not leave their land so easily.

“It would be a lie for me to say that you (us) asked to sell,” said Izaguirre. “But if that happens, we will defend our country and there could even be deaths.”

Victor Wilson, an investor and promoter of the industrial park, said there was no intent to expropriate property.

“We are currently creating 500 jobs and our goal is to create more than 2,400 jobs in San Marcos de Colon,” said Wilson. “Without ZEDE, this investment would not have been possible, as the process is more agile and permits approval in 60 days.”

The normal process could take four years to start a project, he said.

“I think the subject of the ZEDEs is being skewed,” said Wilson. “A state within a state, that is wrong. It is a negative emotionality to achieve a goal, in this case the elimination of the ZEDEs. “

A perhaps more ambitious ZEDE off the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras has also sparked local protests. Local residents have similar concerns about possible expropriation, particularly for indigenous residents of the Bay Islands. The backers of the Prospera ZEDE on the island of Roatan also deny any intention to confiscate property.

Promotions for Prospera show futuristic apartments with a view of the sea and promise a place with “key controls of government, a catalog of fundamental rights to protect people of all income groups and an uncomplicated business structure”.

But Vásquez and her neighbors in Las Tapias are unnerved by the prospect of doing business with their own security guards enforcing their own rules.

“We agree to create more jobs, but when we talk about displacing ourselves, it’s not that easy,” she said. “If someone touches your things, it is delicate and we will defend ourselves.”

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