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Title Search Reveals that the Zúñigas do not own the land in Comayagüela The land the Zúñiga family claims to own in Comayagüela (part of the capital city Tegucigalpa) does not belong to them, according to a title search completed after a year of investigation by the legal team of the Association for a more Just Society (ASJ). ASJ worked with the support of the residents of the Flor del Campo neighborhood, a neighborhood within the land in question. The Flor del Campo residents have been working for more than 20 years to legalize their ownership of the land on which they have built their homes. The title search investigation included searching for and analyzing all the existing documents in the Registry of Property, with the purpose of determining the origin and ownership of each piece of property. "Our goal was to determine the extent of the land, to whom it belonged and what its origin was," explained the investigating coordinator of the Legal Issues Unit of ASJ. The title search was done with the support of the communities who had for many years been petitioning the city of Tegucigalpa to legalize their ownership of the land on which they have built their homes. Their claim is based on the assumption that the land was municipal land open for settlement. This same land is claimed by the lawyer and politician Oscar Siri Zúñiga, who asserts that the land is an inheritance from his grandfather, the poet Luis Andrés Zúñiga. However, the Zúñigas have never presented documents to prove their ownership of the land. Their petition is based solely on their testimony that their grandfather left them the land. The Zúñiga family claims ownership of 13 properties which total 168 acres. The investigation completed by ASJ reveals that at most only 67.2 acres belong to them. The title search reveals that many of the properties claimed by the Zúñiga family were registered up to 30 years after the Registry of Property was founded. It also shows that many of the titles the Zúñigas claim were registered 20 years after they were already registered by the city. The city of Comayagüela (now merged as part of Tegucigalpa) had a title signed by the Spanish Crown to the city of Comayagüela in 1777. Later, municipal lands were verified in 1892 and registered in the Origens of Property in 1899. Because of the poor condition of the documents and the boundary lines, the municipal lands were verified once more in 1900, but this version was not registered in the Registry of Property until 1911. It is known that the Zúñiga heirs used two legal instruments to register land that was not their property: first, with the suggestion that they had acquired the land in good faith, and second, that they had acquired the land through "prescription". ("Prescription" is a way of acquiring land by occupying it for a required number of years with no contesting ownership claims.) "Many people lived on property for 20 years without facing ownership claims from anyone. They were able to go and register the land as their own, saying that the property had no owner and that they had right to claim it because of the length of time they had possessed the property," explains the report. This apparently legal process allowed the Zúñigas to take advantage of and mock the good faith of the city authorities. "They acquired at least 70% of the properties they now claim in this way, according to the documents that show how a piece of land came to be owned," adds the report. "When they bought the land, they knew that there was already an owner, that the land was in fact municipal land belonging to Comayagüela. They knew it, but they did not admit it." In those days, the city ceded parts of its land under User Dominion to its citizens for use (but not ownership) in ranching or farming, "but when the Zúñigas transferred (those properties which were acquired by donation from the city) there was no mention of dominion, which would then suggest that it is in Full Dominion, available for ownership. The City, based on the premise that municipal lands are not available on the commercial market or for prescription (they cannot be claimed through occupation), opposed the heirs of the poet Luis Andrés Zúniga. The City asked that the titles be nullified because the dominion of the city takes precedence." THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE TITLE SEARCH 1. If we start with the premise that municipal land is inalienable and not available through prescription, the city has dominion over the land even if there are persons occupying the land, and the city may recover control of this land even if it has been registered to others. The city has a right to this land because it was registered by third parties through opportunism and treachery, because they knew that the municipal authorities were not interested in monitoring the land. 2. The process by which these lands were registered includes the treachery of transferring "land rights" from parents to children and grandchildren, which has allowed small family groups to gain control of large extensions of land in an irregular manner. 3. The neighborhoods of Flor del Campo, Villa Los Laureles, Las Torres, Altos de San Francisco, San Buenaventura, La Rodas, La Pradera and La Rosa are within the municipal lands defined since 1900. A map made in 1900 shows the boundaries of these 8 neighborhoods and they are within the municipal land of Comayagüela. 4. The boundaries of municipal land in Comayagüela are easily identified. 5. The title search uncovered that many of the boundaries claimed by the Zúñigas vary because the measurements used back then are not used now. For example, a measurement based on rows of planted corn was used. There are four or five properties that changed from two measurements of corn to 12 manzanas, which is to say that the measurements were altered. 6. Some of the properties claimed by the Zúñigas changed in both the form of possession and the size. 7. Another relevant aspect uncovered by the investigation is that the ancestors of Siri Zúñiga-including Manuel Zúñiga and Luis Andrés Zúñiga-had in their custody the Books of the Curator, which were the books that served to register the municipal lands before the Registry of Property existed. They were judges and would have been able to register land in favor of their family. They had the authority to easily register the properties. 8. The Zúñigas claim ownership of land called El Zanjón. The investigation determined that there are two properties with this name, one of three manzanas (5.04 acres) and one of eight manzanas (13.44 acres). The Zúñigas solicited a verification of this property and registered it as 50 manzanas (84 acres). There is proof that the boundaries of El Zanjón are highly abnormal.
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—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 |
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