Fear has become a part of life for the inhabitants of Flor del Campo, San Buenaventura, Altos de la San Francisco, La Rosa, Villa Los Laureles, La Rodas, Las Torres and La Pradera-- neighborhoods located in Comayagüela that face problems with one man claiming ownership of their land: Oscar Siri Zúñiga.

Unpaved roads and very modest homes characterize life here, along with the uncertainty that one day soon someone could evict them and seize their property.

"I am not disposed to worry much about them coming to take from you. Look, you prefer not to think about bad things, you reject them. I prefer to be positive. But you cannot help but worry. Because of this I am involved in getting my land registration," said Mrs. María Luisa Mendoza, a resident of Flor del Campo.

There are hundreds of testimonies like this one--people who live with their "soul on a string," as they say, and who have, in some cases, lost their homes or faced imprisonment.

In these eight neighborhoods, over which the city and the lawyer Oscar Siri Zúñiga are in dispute, one finds people who do not know whom to pay for the land on which they have built their homes. Many began to pay monthly sums to Zúñiga and his family, but most of those who received titles have not been able to register them with the Registry of Property.

Many others paid the city of Tegucigalpa. In other cases, people have paid both the city and Zúñiga. But they have not been able to register their titles due to the legal tricks that keep the legal status of the land in limbo.

As if this were not enough, many who paid for their land have found that Zúñiga has sold their homes to others, leaving them with lost investments or even jail time for delinquency.

"The city promised us they would fix this problem"

Secundino Antonio Casco was born in Soledad, El Paraíso, but he has lived for 21 years in Flor del Campo in Tegucigalpa, where he has educated his five children and filled his home with grandchildren. Today 14 people live in his home.

"When I first came here there were no homes. There was only one house here. I was one of the first people to come to live here. My house was one of the first. In the beginning it was just a little wood house, but little by little I have fixed it up some," he explained.

Casco added that he has worked hard to replace the first wooden planks with cement and brick walls, which he paints whenever he can afford it.

Casco is one of the cases of unregistered land titles. In other words, after he paid the city, he received documents naming him the owner, but due to the legal actions of Zúñiga, his dream of ownership has yet to be fully realized.

"We are waiting for the city to help us solve this problem. I paid the city. I have had my title for 7 months. When I meant to register it, we went to pay, I had the money, they gave me all the papers necessary for the registration and then we learned that the Registry of Property would not register it," he recounted.

According to Casco, the situation worries him because no one wants to be tangled up in something, much less involving their home. He added that he hopes that the city will fulfill its promise; "the city promised us to fix this problem."

"Sometimes we do not know what to do"

At the end of dirt road in one of the zones of Flor del Campo, you can spot the red roses covering the house of Natalia Rodas.

Rodas arrived in Tegucigalpa in 1969. She came to the capital from Reitoca, Francisco Morazán filled with hope. She was recently married and she and her husband rented a small room in La Pradera, planning to later move to Flor del Campo.

"I have lived here since 1981 and I have paid the city of Tegucigalpa for my little house, but I still do not have it. We went to a meeting held by the Zúñigas, but we did not give them money because we already had the agreement with the city. We only went but we were not in agreement with them," she explained.

Rodas spent a lot time trying to figure out who to pay for the land on which she lives. On side the city was demanding money and other side Zúñiga was sending notices to collect payments in order to issue land titles. "We did not know who to pay and we were stuck. We did not come to any agreement with the Zúñigas because it seemed more secure to me to work with someone in authority. So I work with the city where I owe only 1,500 lempiras," she added.

Natalia Rodas is another of the cases of titles caught up in litigation. She still does not possess title to her land because the same city government that asked for her payments has yet to resolve the legal problems with Zúñiga.

"I still do not have my title. They tell you to pay and you pay. They tell you to stop and you stop. Last year I was about to finish my payments, but we stopped when the city told us to. Sometimes I really do not know what to do," she said.

"A piece of my soul"

Many of the residents of the neighborhoods in dispute have found it necessary to pay twice for their land. It is not hard to find these cases.

One example is Maria Luisa Mendoza, who has lived here 23 years and has paid equal amounts to the city and to the Zúñigas, though she has received nothing certain about title to her land.

"The truth is when you pay someone, you at least want them to tell you, you can go here or you can go there. They should give you a paper showing what you bought, but the gave me a paper and told me to come back in three years to ask if it was a title. I have noticed that this has not worked out for anyone. The titles from the Zúñigas have not worked for anyone," stated Mendoza.

According to her, the first dealings with the Zúñigas began six years ago. She paid them a sum of 4 million lempiras, plus the cost of the title registration, which was 1,500 lempiras, and which she has never seen.

"To finish it off, I already paid the city too. I have the receipts and I began the process of getting the title. In the mayor's office the clerk Antonieta de Andino told me that she felt very sorry for me, but there was nothing she could do with the payments I made to Zúñiga. I told her I had a problem and I told her that I had already paid the Zúñigas and I asked if this meant I did not have to pay the city. She told me: Look, this is something I feel bad about, but there is nothing to be done about it. They do their thing, but here it is another matter," Mendoza related.

And although María Luisa has paid the city of Tegucigalpa, her case is the same as it was with the Zúñigas. They still have not registered the title giving her ownership of the property.

"This house has cost me part of my soul. I am 49 years old and until now I have had the shelter of this house that I paid for, because to rent is suffocating. My two sons and I built this house ourselves," she said, with evident anguish.

"I had to go pay for what was already mine"

Life has not been just for those who have been forced to pay twice for the same property. But it is even more unjust when they are asked to pay three times and then face the possibility of jail.

In the San Buenaventura neighborhood there is a small house built of wooden planks. Bushes and flowers decorate the front but inside there is only a wooden table, three chairs and two small armchairs covered with a sheet. Paula Corrales lives here, a humble women of 59 years of age who has paid three times for her property.

Corrales bought it the first time more than 15 years ago from an individual, but when legal problems began to arise over the land, she decided to pay the monthly payments the city demanded.

Eleven years passed and Corrales, who raised 9 children, received a notice that a stranger claimed to have bought the property twice. Mr. Luis Beltrán brought the police against Corrales with the intention of evicting her, with the evidence of a title granted by the Zúñigas. In other words, they had sold him land she had paid for years earlier.

"They sent me three eviction notices. The first time he told me if I reached an agreement with him, there would be no problems, but I was alone in my house with one of my children who has mental problems. He said that if we did not want to leave we had to pay 60,000 lempiras because there was already an eviction order. The street was full of police, but thank God, all my neighbors supported me and I was not evicted," said Corrales.

The second time that the police arrived at her house, Corrales did not have so much luck. She was arrested on the street at the entrance to her house and put in jail with common criminals.

"I was under arrest for five days. They caught me as I was coming from work. A poor person has to work and although I am old, I have to struggle to get through my life. When I came home at about 5 o'clock in the evening, Luis Beltran was at the corner store and the police were outside. They said to me: You are Paula Raudales. I told them my name was not Raudales, but they said it did not matter and they had an order to arrest me for staying on the land illegally," she remembered.

After paying an expensive lawyer to get her released from prison, the harassed woman continued to receive eviction notices and under the constant pressure, she finally agreed to pay for her house for the third time.

"Finally I came to an agreement with Beltrán and I paid him 60,000 lempiras. My daughter-in-law told me that I could not keep running from this because I did not have anywhere to go. She helped me with the money. Beltrán said that he bought the land from the Zúñigas and he had a title from them," she recounts.

"I lived here 11 years when I paid the city and I have the papers that say I have bought my land. To the city I appear as the owner, but still I had to turn around and buy what was already mine."

"She said she had paid Siri Zúñiga"

The dream of finishing her home was denied to Maria Hilda Triminio, who learned one day that another person had been installed in the land on which she was building her home.

"I had a piece of land in the San Buenaventura neighborhood that I bought in 1992. I was building on it. The walls were up to the level of the windows. I made a good investment in it-I paid for water services and electricity and for the drains in the street," she told us.

Everything looked good until one day I learned that a stranger was staying in the construction. "The bricklayers came to collect their money and then on Sunday morning they came to tell me that a woman, Sara Lagos, had invaded my property. I went to look and there inside my brick walls there were wooden and tin wall and she had started to live there."

Lagos alleges that she had bought the property from Oscar Siri Zúñiga and she would not leave the property and she is still there. María Hilda Triminio has not been able to return to her property.

"I called the city where they said she had to move, but she said no because she bought the property from Siri Zúñiga. I have the notices against her that she could not be there or build there, but nothing worked," she said.

The documents show that the City of Tegucigalpa prohibited Ms. Lagos from continuing construction, but now the house is finished. "She said that since she had paid, nothing could stop her. I went everywhere, but I was not able to solve anything."

"I only have the hope that this can be solved, that I can get back what is mine. I talked with her and told her I had spent 15,000 lempiras on the walls, more on the sand and the barrels and other supplies that were left inside. But we did not get anything back. I told her to give me 30,000 lempiras and everything would be over. I signed a transfer, but I do not want to lose what I have already done," she said.

Hilda Triminio has presented receipts of payments to the city where it is certified that her payment are valid and that she only owes 400 lempiras. But those payments were stopped due to the litigation with Siri Zúñiga.

"The City has profited"

There are hundreds of people who have received titles from the City of Tegucigalpa who have not been able to register their titles. The Altos de la San Francisco neighborhood has 300 such cases and there is no solution in sight.

"My situation is that the city gave me a title but I have not been able to register it in the Registry of Property because of a the claims of Oscar Siri Zúñiga. Sales or contracts cannot be finalized and they are not accepting any titles. My title was issued in December and the lawyer that did it finally had to tell me that he could not register it," said Concepción de Jesús Zelaya, president of the neighborhood council in Altos de la San Francisco.

According to the information offered by Zelaya, this community of about 527 homes has 300 with title from the city that cannot be registered, 32 that are registered, and the rest are still being paid for.

"We demand that the city take more action and more care with this problem, because during all these years they have profited from it," concluded Zelaya.

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Doña Paula Corrales

—Index—

Title Search Reveals that the Zúñigas do not own the Land in Dispute

Unregistered property in Honduras totals $12.900 billion

The boundaries of city land in Comayagüela have been clear since 1900

Siri Zúñiga could get 100 million lempiras due to the negligence of the City

A solution is proposed to the legal problems of tenancy in urban areas