Thousands of Hondurans demonstrated across the country on March 8 to protest the National Congress's March 3 vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The protests were organized by the Popular Resistance, which estimates that CAFTA will drive 300,000 campesino families out of business, forcing 800,000 Hondurans into unemployment.

Some 2,000 people marched in Tegucigalpa from Obelisk Park to the Congress building, chanting: "With this new treaty you've murdered the people." The main speaker, Popular Bloc director Carlos H. Reyes, charged that CAFTA is the completion of a process of corporate globalization in Honduras that since 1990 has created 120,000 jobs in the maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing mainly for export) but has "produced 1.2 million unemployed . . . [F]or every job neoliberalism created in the maquila, 10 campesinos were left dying of hunger."

Elsewhere, hundreds of workers and campesinos blocked the northern highway for six hours in Las Flores municipality, Comayagua department and near La Entrada, Copan department; they ended the blockade after conversations with the police. There were also demonstrations in San Pedro Sula and other areas. [Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 3/9/05].