Deadly Conflict Over Honduran Palm Oil Plantations Spotlights CEO
Deadly Conflict Over Honduran Palm Oil Plantations Spotlights CEO
by Jennifer Kennedy, CorpWatch Blog
December 31st, 2012
Months before he was killed this past September, Antonio Trejo-Cabrera, reportedly sought protection from Miguel Facussé, the owner of Dinant Corporation, a major Honduran snack food and agricultural company. Trejo had good reason to be afraid – he was a lawyer who represented peasant movements fighting palm oil plantations in the Honduras in the last three years – many of whom were subjected to violence and other human rights abuses.
A recent profile of Facussé in the Los Angeles Times describes the 89-year-old businessman as “a symbol of the old style of patriarchal power” that has “ruthlessly developed the country over the decades from a hot and dusty backwater to an international producer of bananas, cheap clothing and, more recently, biofuels.”
Facussé joined the biofuel rush by planting African palm trees, backed by funds from bilateral and multilateral loan agencies like the World Bank. The palm trees yield a fruit which can be processed to produce biofuels that is in high demand by governments who want industry to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels like coal and petroleum in order to meet international obligations to mitigate global warming under the Climate Change convention.
Dinant quickly became one of the biggest players in this field in the Honduras - it manages 22,000 acres of plantations, exporting half of the produce to other countries.
More:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15802