Construction Firm Fnix Takes a Campesino Back to Court

EL SALVADOR / INEQUALITY



Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Efren Lemus
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The Salvadoran construction firm Fénix Investments and Real Estate has secured the retrial of a sick and unemployed 64-year-old campesino prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office as the company develops Eco-Terra Hacienda, a million-dollar housing project in Hacienda La Labor, in Ahuachapán, after facing protests for three years from the residents of several communities for illegally drilling wells.

Adonaldo Antonio Artero, a day laborer who has worked at the estate all his life, will newly stand trial for allegedly violently occupying the property where Fénix was drilling wells to supply the 1,789 houses of the Eco-Terra project, even though it did not have the environmental permits to do so. On Apr. 24, 2024, the Third Chamber of the Western Section annulled a judgment in which the campesino —agricultural worker— was absolved for lack of evidence. The appeals court ordered that he be tried anew.

On the other hand, the Third Chamber upheld the acquittal of the six other residents who were tried on Oct. 3, 2023, for the crime of violent occupation of communal, living, or working spaces. Of their group, only Adonaldo will continue to confront Fénix in court.

. . .

This company that reports millions of dollars on its balance sheets and that paid a fine of thousands of dollars for violating the Special Law for the Protection of Cultural Heritage is the adversary of a campesino named Adonaldo, a small black-haired man whose skin is weather-beaten by the sun and who earned between five and six dollars a day when he was working at the hacienda. Three years ago, the Attorney General's Office ordered his arrest, but he was granted conditional release. Since the case against him began, Adonaldo has stopped working in the fields; he says that he is physically ill with worry and he forgets everything now, but he has not been able to see a doctor because he has no money. “Financially, I can’t make ends meet. Remember that I don't fend for myself; I don't earn a salary. I live humbly,” he says.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202407/el_salvador/27510/construction-firm-fenix-takes-a-campesino-back-to-court