Latin Peace Marchers Vow to Defy Ban From Honduras, El Salvador

Participants in a march for peace walked into the Nicaraguan capital Thursday and vowed to go through Honduras and El Salvador, where the governments have barred their entrance.

“We cannot accept the decision of the Honduran government to forbid a march that is completely independent of all European and American political parties,” said Peter Holding, an Australian lawyer and spokesman for the March for Peace in Central America.

In Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, Immigration Director Sergio Flores Toscano said Wednesday that “instructions have been given that this march cannot enter the country because the participants may cause problems.”

Holding said, “We will go to the (Nicaraguan) border with Honduras and hope they change their mind.”

Marchers Seek Visas

Members of the group, which includes activists from 20 countries, met with Honduran Embassy officials in Managua to try to obtain visas the government has refused to give them.

Participants in the caravan first encountered difficulties in Costa Rica on Monday, when President Luis Alberto Monge expelled them after an “anti-Communist” group, composed chiefly of the ultrarightist Free Costa Rica Movement, hurled stones at them.

Monge, speaking Thursday at a sports event in Panama, criticized the group, saying their march “was more in favor of Nicaragua than against the war.” He said the hostile group that threw stones committed “an unpardonable error because Costa Rica is tolerant of outside ideas.”

The marchers began their 1,800-mile trek north through Central America last week to draw attention to U.S. intervention in the area and to call for an improvement in human rights.

Speaking for the marchers, U.S. organizer Blaise Bonpane apologized Tuesday for the $27 million in non-lethal aid given by the United States to Nicaraguan rebels attempting to overthrow the leftist government.

‘Express Our Shame’

“We want to express our shame for what has happened here with the intervention,” Bonpane said.

The marchers arrived in Managua in a caravan of seven buses from Masaya, 15 miles south of the capital, and staged a symbolic march on foot to the Plaza of the Nonaligned in front of the offices of President Daniel Ortega.