June 22 — Paraguay today reached the first anniversary of the destitution of its constitutional president by a Congress dominated by the same traditional parties which, once again, have negotiated a distribution of powers.
By organizing the hasty political trial of President Fernando Lugo in Parliament in order to dismiss him from the office to which he was elected, the Liberal and Colorado parties changed Paraguay’s recent history.
The rupture of the democratic process – which began with the defeat of the lengthy, U.S. backed Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989) – implied for Paraguay a kind of leap into a vacuum, isolating the country internationally.
The pretext for ousting Lugo was the bloody eviction of campesinos in Curuguaty, Canindeyú department, undertaken at the request of large estate owners, which led to the death of 11 farm workers and six law enforcement agents, in circumstances which have not been fully clarified.
The political trial ignored the backdrop of the tragic incident: the unjust ownership of land in Paraguay, where close to 90% of arable land is in the hands of less than 2% of owners, many of them proprietors of huge estates.
This statistical impact is accompanied by 300,000 landless campesinos in miserable living conditions in roadside areas, poverty stricken settlements or subsistence in rustic tents and precarious houses.
Lugo’s removal from office had as witnesses 11 South American foreign ministers who urgently flew to Asunción in an unsuccessful attempt to avert through dialogue what has gone down in history as a parliamentary coup.
International sanctions were not long in coming and Paraguay was suspended from the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), in conjunction with the condemnation of many other Latin American countries. A number of embassies in the region remained without their diplomatic heads, withdrawn to express lack of recognition of the coup government of President Federico Franco, and maintained the posture until a government emerged from elections.
In the wake of national elections, MERCOSUR and UNASUR leaders reached out to the elected government, headed by Horacio Cartes who, during his campaign, confirmed his interest in Paraguay’s immediate return to these regional bodies.
However, the urgent mobilization of right-wing sectors closely involved in the coup against Lugo, and exposed pressure from large national and foreign economic interests would once more seem to have placed Paraguay at a dead end.
The most conservative groups are talking of distancing the country from its natural environment to seek its fortune in Asian markets on its own account, plus an unlimited opening to the known voracity of transnationals based in the United States and other centers of power.
Warnings from left sectors recall the positive regional environment which always welcomed the Paraguayan economy and the limitations imposed on its commercial interests by its landlocked nature.
In the internal context, the new Colorado and Liberal pact has been denounced as the preamble to damaging measures for Paraguay’s poor, standing at close to 50% of the population, and anticipated attacks on progressive sectors.
This is the current panorama one year after the episode of June 22, 2012, which represented a setback for democracy in Paraguay.
Tag Archives: Paraguay News
Paraguay: Franco Regime Sitting on Powder Keg
Charges of corruption against Federico Franco, including revelations about the enormous increase in his personal fortune during the five months of his administration, have undermined even further the image of those who engineered the parliamentary coup against former President Fernando Lugo, this past June.
The Franco regime has rejected the presence of observers from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), demanding that the organization recognize the constitutional legitimacy of the legislative move, during which an elected president was charged, tried and ousted in the course of 24 hours.
The high-ranking UNASUR group charged with monitoring the situation in Paraguay reported the negative response given by the current administration, which is more inclined to accept the discredited Organization of American States representatives as adequate, along with those expected from the European Union.
Former Peruvian premier Salomón Lerner, president of the UNASUR group, told Prensa Latina that the issue will be the subject of a report at the next foreign ministers meeting, scheduled for November 29, as a prelude to the UNASUR Summit to take place the following day, which will be attended by heads of state.
In addition to the insecurity and charges of corruption, the Última Hora daily newspaper adds that according to the Comptroller General, Franco’s personal fortune has grown by some 1.2 million dollars over the last few months.
Franco tried to explain the rapid increase citing a previous, allegedly erroneous evaluation of his wealth by the Comptrollers Office, which he asked to be corrected.
An international organization has described Paraguay as a state in decline, given its instability, corruption and fragile infrastructure.
A global study disseminated by the Future Brand consulting firm and picked up by Prensa Latina, ranked Paraguay as number 104 among nations analyzed for its most recent report.
The investigation presents evidence of the declining trend within the nation which appears to be going from bad to worse.
Without mincing words, Future Brand indicates that the isolated Paraguayan government faces a poor reputation and lack of confidence on a world scale, exemplified by its expulsion from the integrationist blocs MERCOSUR and UNASUR.
Add to this the social conflicts which the current government cannot, or does not care, to address, since the population is incensed by the reigning poverty, low wages, corruption and the appropriation of land by national and foreign companies.
Just this month, taking to the streets have been literacy instructors in a program initiated by Lugo, who have not received their salaries in five months and on strike some 6,000 workers and officials in the court system demanding scheduled pay increases.
Most constant have been the demands of campesinos and indigenous peoples without land, whose protests continue across the country while the best areas remain, legally or not, in the hands of foreigners. Among other actions, some agricultural workers have chained themselves to trees outside of the Parliament building.
The campesino organizations’ coordinating committee, the largest group of its kind in the country, told AP that it has begun to mobilize thousands of workers in Caazapá and Misiones provinces, demanding that the government psovide food for families living in extreme poverty and the $65 monthly subsidy established by the Lugo government.
Franco is sitting on a powder keg and the fuse is lit.
Venezuela Expels Paraguayan Diplomats
The Venezuelan government has revoked the visas and diplomatic credentials of the Paraguayan government’s envoys in Caracas, in response to the expulsion of former Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicolas Maduro, and Venezuelan envoy, José Arrúe, from Paraguay in July earlier this year.
Both Maduro and Arrué were declared “personas non-grate” and told to leave Paraguay immediately in the aftermath of the Paraguayan coup, which saw the elected president, Fernando Lugo, replaced by the Liberal party’s Federico Franco. Lugo, a liberation theology priest, was impeached by the country’s staunchly conservative Senate on 22 June, in a move which has been described as an “institutional coup” by other Latin American governments.
Following the impeachment, the Paraguayan government also withdrew its ambassador to Caracas, claiming that the Chavez administration was “intervening” in its internal affairs. The Franco government referenced the emergence of a video which allegedly showed Nicolas Maduro “inciting rebellion” amongst the Paraguayan armed forces as justification for the expulsion.
Prior to being expelled, Maduro had flown to Paraguay as part of a 12-member delegation of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) countries who had been sent to mediate talks prior to Lugo’s impeachment. Maduro denied the allegations of the Franco government and was supported by both the Ecuadorean and Colombian ministers on the delegation.
The decision represents a worsening of diplomatic relations between the Franco government and the Chavez administration, which also suspended oil shipments to Paraguay indefinitely following Lugo’s removal.
Confirming the decision to revoke the Paraguayan diplomats’ credentials yesterday, the Venezuelan government described the move as a “formality” and maintained that the government had given the diplomats ample time to leave the country.
“The Paraguayan ambassador (Augusto Ocampos) left, but the other diplomatic staff didn’t. We gave them a reasonable length of time and when they didn’t (leave), their credentials and visas were revoked,” said a representative for the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministry. The diplomats now have 72 hours to leave the country.
The move has received strong criticism in Paraguay, with the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Félix Fernández Estigarribia, describing the decision as “drastic” and complaining that the Paraguayan government had only been informed of the expulsion by telephone. Estigarribia also asked Venezuela not to “complicate” issues for Paraguay, which was suspended from UNASUR following the removal of Lugo, as it attempts to re-establish normal diplomatic relations abroad.
“From an unpredictable government you can expect anything,” said Estigarribia, in reference to the Chavez administration.
Spokespeople from the Venezuelan opposition coalition, the MUD, have also criticised the way in which the Chavez government has handled the situation, with MUD spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Edmundo González, describing the government’s actions as “hardly serious.”
The MUD has also refused to recognise Lugo’s impeachment as a coup at the time and sided with the Franco government against the Chavez administration, calling Maduro’s expulsion a “logical consequence… given (his) excesses.”
Paraguay is due to hold presidential elections in April 2013, and although Lugo has expressed his intention to stand, it is unclear as to whether the country’s legal institutions will allow his candidacy.
In an interview earlier this week with Argentina’s state TV channel, Lugo asserted that the coup had come about through a “triple alliance” between the national oligarchy, the country’s traditional political parties and multinational corporations. He maintained that the country’s democracy has been “wounded” as a result of the coup.
The Lugo government, which formed part of a coalition with Franco’s party, enjoyed friendly relations with the Chavez administration and other leftist governments across the region. Many Latin American governments do not view the current Franco administration as having a popular mandate.
Paraguay: Battle for Land and Sovereignty
MARCHES, demands, hunger strikes and new land occupations are taking place in Paraguay amid announcements of the possible granting of a military base to the United States in the heart of the sub-continent.
A teachers’ strike and condemnations of the decision to allow the Monsanto transnational to freely sell transgenic seeds are some aspects of the internal situation created by the parliamentary coup resulting in the removal of President Fernando Lugo.
The oligarchical regime in Asunción headed by Federico Franco faces almost total isolation. Various governments in the region have announced that they will not attend the Ibero-American Summit in Cadiz, Spain if Franco is present, prompting Madrid to ask the Paraguayan not to come to the meeting.
Internally, thousands of campesinos are mobilized in a different context. Hundreds marched on the capital, once again taking up the struggle for agrarian reform, indefinitely postponed by the rich and landowning classes and to demand the continuation of social programs and projects initiated by the Lugo government.
Luis Aguayo, leader of the Coordinating Committee of Paraguayan Campesino and Indigenous Organizations (COCIP), comprising five campesino groups and an indigenous one, stated, “The march has been like a warming up exercise to once again strengthen the historic struggles and recover the essence of the campesino battle for agrarian reform.”
Another group of farm workers demanding land to work for their survival have been on hunger strike for a week in Misiones department, south of Asunción, outside the regional office of the Rural and Land Development Institute. They also belong to the Paraguayan Campesino Movement, one of the groups fighting to obtain parcels of land to sustain their families.
At the same time, Maggie Balbuena, national coordinator of the Organization of Working and Indigenous Women, called for a return to democracy in Paraguay (clearly violated) and the implementation of comprehensive agrarian reforms.
Balbuena hit the nail on the head by affirming that united demands by the country’s rural inhabitants include the recovery of land ill-gotten by large landowners and foreign enterprises, as well as these lands being handed over for alternative forms of production. She also described the current imposed presidential executive as a dictatorial model of government.
Groups of landless campesino families have once again occupied land at three points of Alto Paraná department in the east of the country, given the lack of any solution to their tragic situation, thus fanning the flames of the conflict.
Another land occupation is underway in the Maraca Mua colony in Hernadarias district.
Completing the panorama, the National Coordinating Committee of Campesino Organizations revealed that Paraguayan agriculture is to become dependent on the U.S. Monsanto multinational given the “magnanimous” liberalization of the use of transgenic seeds produced by Monsanto.
The Committee blamed the government for the serious consequences this has for agriculturalists defending national seeds, considered a heritage of the Guaraní people, historically responsible for agrarian improvements over thousands of years.
Various Latin America media commented on a report by a non-government organization commission stating that the still non-clarified massacre of campesinos in Curuguaty on June 15 was a premeditated provocation by members of the district attorney’s office, the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior. Although the commission does not say so, the Parliament dominated by the right wing could have been prepared in advance to impeach President Lugo in the space of 24 hours, without giving him time for a legal defense.
Campesino anger is compounded by another exponent In Paraguay’s social and political conflict, campesino anger is shared by 16,000 striking teachers and educational workers demanding the current minimum salary and payment of a salary increase due since 2009.
This explosive situation is completed by the revelation, still unofficial, that Franco’s government has decided to concede land to the United States for a military base in the country. Defense Minister María García, a graduate from the National Defense University’s Center for Hemispheric Studies, said more than enough, “Paraguay is free to choose its strategic allies,” according to the ABC Color newspaper.
Assessing the possibility, James Petras commented to Telesur, that Paraguay’s geography is an important factor given that neighboring governments are asserting a degree of independence in foreign policy. “American exercises within Paraguay are simply a preparatory exercise to see if, in the future, they can enter Bolivia or other bordering countries; given that as a military power it is obviously very insignificant. But U.S. intelligence operations in Paraguay could cover the whole continent and I don’t know if many people know that. It’s the same with the espionage they are engaged in, using the latest electronic advances, since Paraguay is the nerve center for these operations.”
Lugo Suggests Forceful Struggle to Restore Democracy
The suggestion by the deposed Paraguayan president, Fernando Lugo, to unleash a truly forceful struggle to restore democracy appears to have introduced a new element in the current situation in this Guaraní nation.
Lugo, who was in Sao Paulo last night for a medical checkup and political meetings, offered a special analysis of the situation with an emphasis on the immediate future and on the international isolation that is already affecting the country economically.
“After returning from Sao Paulo, we will fix this democracy that was destroyed by the coupsters, who want to continue dismantling it, and we will struggle for a true democracy, with real force and conviction, as our country deserves,” he said.
He emphasized that the political trial against him on June 21 and 22, replete with judicial and political contradictions, is entirely responsible for the instability in Paraguay and the isolation the country is suffering internationally.
To the current government’s arguments against the Common Southern Market (Mercosur), he sad that the regional bloc had simply invoked the clause relating to democracy, solicited by Paraguay itself on behalf of the entire region in order to protect democracy.
In another part of his statement, he recalled that the parliamentary coup was staged to remove the constitutional president from his work with the social movements, aimed at citizen participation.
The coup was also aimed at impeding the unity of a sovereign and integrated Latin America.
Lugo was emphatic in his denunciations of the coup as benefiting a political bureaucracy and a small group of powerful economic sectors who want to concentrate the wealth for themselves on the backs of an impoverished and marginalized majority.
He blamed that political leadership for the international isolation and warned that their aggressive statements against the presidents of Mercosur and the international community would only isolate them even further, aggravating a situation that would be difficult to reverse even with the restoration of democracy.
Finally, he announced that he would devote himself to achieving this restoration, as well as proving himself open to seeking a peaceful solution in Paraguay.
Paraguay’s Bitter Harvest: Monsanto and Rio Tinto Reap Benefits from Coup Government
In a July 22nd speech marking the one month anniversary of the parliamentary coup that overthrow left-leaning Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, the former leader denounced that a motivating interest among the coup-plotters was a sought-after deal between Paraguay and the Montreal-based mining company, Rio Tinto Alcan.
“Those who pushed for the coup are those who want to solidify the negotiations with the multinational Rio Tinto Alcan, betraying the energetic sovereignty and interests of our country,” Lugo told supporters.
Such an accusation represents the widespread discontent among Paraguayan people toward current negotiations between Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) and the government of Federico Franco, Lugo’s right wing replacement.
It also points toward the Franco administration’s larger strategy to open up Paraguay to multinational corporate exploitation, from Rio Tinto Alcan to Monsanto.
The RTA deal for a $4 billion dollar aluminum plant on the shores of the Paraná River had been stalled by the Lugo administration due to concerns over the plant’s environmental impact, as well as how much the company would pay for electricity from Paraguay’s Itaipú and Yacyretá hydroelectric power plants.
Yet shortly after taking office, Franco fast-tracked the RTA negotiations, pressuring his new Minister of Industry and Commerce to swiftly move forward with the deal. Civil society protests ensued and, as Lugo’s comments about the RTA deal suggest, the issue has become a rallying point for justice amidst post-coup Paraguay’s political and social crisis.
The views of Paraguayan engineer Ricardo Canese reflect the main concerns of citizens opposing the deal. In an article from the Paraguayan social research institute BASE-IS, Canese explained that the proposed deal with RTA would disproportionately benefit the company in that the government – through the taxation of the Paraguayan people – would be subsidizing a massive amount of RTA’s energy over a period of 30 years.
Canese further criticized the fact that the taxpayers would be spending $700 million dollars in infrastructure to allow the company to install their operations in the country. And while RTA pledges to create 1,250 jobs, the company would annually use the same amount of electricity that 9.6 million people use during the same period.
Because of the controversial terms that Franco is pushing for with RTA, Lugo believes that the contract will be discontinued once a democratic government returns to power; new elections are slated to take place in April of next year. In one interview, Lugo said, “I strongly doubt that the Paraguayan people will be respecting such a license that gives a single company the right to the electricity for a price as low as they have been talking about. This whole deal is very questionable.”
In addition to Franco’s work with RTA, his administration has also allowed Monsanto an expanded presence in Paraguay. Such a move will worsen the existing crisis in the countryside, an area ravaged by soy plantations and pesticides, and where just 2% of landowners control 80% of the land.
In the lead-up to the coup, Lugo and his administration resisted the use of Monsanto’s GMO cotton seeds in the country. Yet just after taking power, the Franco administration threw government critics of the plan out of office, and moved ahead to approve the use of the controversial seeds in the country.
These two relationships with multinational corporations clearly show where the interests of the Franco administration lie. They also demonstrate that, while the Lugo administration failed to fully implement its plans for land reform, justice and expanded rights in Paraguay, the Franco administration, in just one month in office, has already proven to be closer ally of corporate globalization.
As Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said in an interview regarding the coup in Paraguay, the Lugo government tried “to bring about changes that were aimed at making the country more independent and just, but this was an unpardonable sin for the power brokers.”
After Lugo Ouster, Paraguayan Oligarchs Implement Voter Suppression Laws
The Paraguayan government gave its final support today to the controversial congressional resolution that denies Paraguayans a direct vote in the 2013 elections, a move which has sparked huge demonstrations in recent months by Paraguayans angered by the measure.
Following a meeting held between Federico Franco, who took over as president of the Republic from the deposed president, Fernando Lugo, and the head of the Electoral Supreme Court, Alberto Ramirez, it was confirmed that the aforementioned regulation is now effective and direct elections will be applied only in 2015.
The measure concerns the comprehensive voting lists that force voters to choose candidates from only one party, depriving them of the right to choose specific candidates from any party, to either house in the Congress.
Actually, this kind of election system is defended by traditional parties and their associated economic interests, because it guarantees the election of assorted electoral bosses who control voting and favored parties.
The possibility of losing that personal privilege which greatly impacts the control of Parliament by certain political groups, among other benefits, is the reason for permanent resistance to change in the electoral system.
President Lugo, while in government, passed a law removing the voting lists and facilitating the direct vote of the citizenry, but the opposition majority in Parliament prevented its implementation in the 2013 April elections, citing lack of conditions.
This provoked large demonstrations in front of the Capitol building which even led to clashes between the population and the police and forcing lawmakers to flee legislative headquarters through back doors.
After the rapid impeachment of Lugo, the electoral regulation was revived, Franco ratified it and the popular reaction to that decision remains to be seen.
A Coup Over Land: The Resource War Behind Paraguay’s Crisis
Police evict landless farmers from settlement in San Marcos, Paraguay, 2008.
Photo Credit: Evan Abramson
What lies behind today’s headlines, political fights and struggles for justice in Paraguay is a conflict over access to land.
Each bullet hole on the downtown Asunción, Paraguay light posts tells a story. Some of them are from civil wars decades ago, some from successful and unsuccessful coups, others from police crackdowns. The size of the hole, the angle of the ricochet, all tell of an escape, a death, another dictator in the palace by the river.
On June 22 of this year, a new tyrant entered the government palace. The right-wing Federico Franco became president in what has been deemed a parliamentary coup against democratically-elected, left-leaning President Fernando Lugo.
What lies behind today’s headlines, political fights and struggles for justice in Paraguay is a conflict over access to land; land is power and money for the elites, survival and dignity for the poor, and has been at the center of major political and social battles in Paraguay for decades. In order to understand the crisis in post-coup Paraguay, it’s necessary to grasp the political weight of the nation’s soil. Here, a look at the history of Paraguay’s resource war for land, the events leading up to the coup, and the story of one farming community’s resistance places land at the heart of nation’s current crisis.
The Coup and the Land
Hope surrounded the electoral victory of Fernando Lugo in 2008, a victory which ended the right wing Colorado Party’s 61 year dominance of Paraguayan politics. It was a victory against the injustice and nightmare of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989), and a new addition to the region’s left-leaning governments. The election of Lugo, a former bishop and adherent to liberation theology, was due in large part to grassroots support from the campesino (small farmer) sector and Lugo’s promise of long-overdue land reform.
Yet Lugo was isolated politically from the very beginning. He needed to ally with the right to win the election; his Vice President Federico Franco is a leader in the right wing Liberal Party and was a vocal opponent of Lugo since shortly after Lugo came to power. Throughout Lugo’s time in office the Colorado Party maintained a majority in Congress and there were various right wing attempts to impeach the “Red Bishop.” Such challenges have impeded Lugo’s progress and created a political and media environment dominated by near-constant attacks and criticism toward Lugo.
At the same time, Lugo was no friend of the campesino sector that helped bring him into power. His administration regularly called for the severe repression and criminalization of the country’s campesino movements. He was therefore isolated from above at the political level, and lacked a strong political base below due to his stance toward social movements and the slow pace of land reform. None the less, many leftist and campesino sectors still saw Lugo as a relative ally and source of hope in the face of the right wing alternative.
The issue that finally tipped the scales toward the June 22 Parliamentary coup against Lugo was a conflict over land. In April of this year, 60 landless campesinos occupied land in Curuguaty, in northeastern Paraguay. This land is owned by former Colorado Senator Blas N. Riquelme, one of the richest people and largest landowners in the country. In 1969, the Stroessner administration illegally gave Riquelme 50,000 hectares of land that was supposed to be destined to poor farmers as a part of land reform. Since the return to democracy in 1989, campesinos have been struggling to gain access to this land. The April occupation of land was one such attempt. On June 15, security forces arrived in Curuguaty to evict the landless settlement. The subsequent confrontation during the eviction (the specific details of which are still shrouded in confusion) led to the death of 17 people, including 11 campesinos and 6 police officers. Eighty people were wounded.
While certainly the bloodiest confrontation of this kind since the dictatorship, it was but one of dozens of such conflicts that had taken place in recent years in a nation with enormous inequality in land distribution. The right’s response to such conflicts typically involved siding with the land owners and business leaders, and criminalizing campesino activists. With the tragedy of Curuguaty, the right saw yet another opportunity to move against Lugo.
The right blamed Lugo for the bloody events at Curuguaty, an accusation which was unfounded, but served as fodder for the ongoing political attacks against the president. In response to critics, Lugo replaced his Interior Minister with Colorado Party member Candia Amarilla, a former State Prosecutor known for his criminalization of leftist social and campesino groups, and who was trained in Colombia to export Plan Colombia-style policies to Paraguay. Lugo also made the Police Commissioner Moran Arnaldo Sanabria (who was in charge of the Curuguaty operation) the National Director of Police.
In this way, Lugo handed over the state’s main security and repressive powers to the Colorado Party. The move was an an effort to avoid impeachment from the right, but it backfired; the Liberal Party opposed Lugo’s replacements and, empowered by the criticisms leveled against Lugo’s handling of Curuguaty, collaborated with the Colorado Party and other right wing parties in Congress to move forward with the impeachment.
The process began on June 21, and within 24 hours the Senate gathered and officially initiated the trial, granting Lugo only two hours to defend himself. The next day, Lugo was removed from office in a 39-4 vote. He was accused of encouraging landless farmers’ occupations, poor performance as president, and failing to bring about social harmony in the country. Lugo stepped down and Vice President and Liberal Party leader Federico Franco took his place. New elections are now scheduled to take place in April of 2013.
This Parliamentary coup was condemned as undemocratic and illegal by many Latin American leaders who refused to recognize Franco as the legitimate president. In response to the coup, Latin American trade and political blocs such as Unasur and Mercosur have suspended Paraguay’s participation in their organizations until next year’s elections. Unsurprisingly, the Organization of American States decided to not suspend Paraguay’s membership in the group because, according to OAS secretary general Jose Miguel Insulza, doing so would create further problems in the country and isolate it regionally. This is the second such coup in the region in recent years; in June 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted under similar circumstances.
The backdrop to this political fight is a struggle over how to control, use and distribute Paraguay’s vast land. Approximately 2% of landowners control 80% of Paraguay’s land, and some 87,000 farming families are landless. While Lugo failed to meet many of his campaign promises to the campesino sector, he did in fact work to block many of the right’s policies that would worsen the crisis in the countryside. For example, Lugo and his cabinet resisted the use of Monsanto’s transgenic cotton seeds in Paraguay, a move that likely contributed to his ouster. Yet even before Lugo was elected, political alliances and victories were shaped by the question of land. Multinational agro-industrial corporations are fully entrenched in Paraguayan politics, and their fundamental enemies in this resource war have always been the Paraguayan campesino.
A Sea of Soy
For decades small farmers in Paraguay have been tormented by a tidal wave of GMO soy crops and pesticides expanding across the countryside. Paraguay is the fourth largest producer of soy in the world, and soy makes up 40 percent of Paraguayan exports and 10 percent of the country’s GDP. An estimated twenty million liters of agrochemicals are sprayed across Paraguay each year, poisoning the people, water, farmland and livestock that come in its path.
Managing the gargantuan agro-industry are transnational seed, agricultural and agro-chemical companies including Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta, Dupont, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Bunge. International financial institutions and development banks have promoted and bankrolled the agro-export business of monoculture crops—much of Paraguayan soy goes to feed animals in Europe. The profits have united political and corporate entities from Brazil, the US, and Paraguay, and increased the importance of Paraguay’s cooperation with international businesses.
Since the 1980s, national military and paramilitary groups connected to large agribusinesses and landowners have evicted almost 100,000 small farmers from their homes and fields and forced the relocation of countless indigenous communities in favor of soy fields. While more than a hundred campesino leaders have been assassinated in this time, only one of the cases was investigated with results leading to the conviction of the killer. In the same period, more than two thousand other campesinos have faced trumped-up charges for their resistance to the soy industry. The vast majority of Paraguayan farmers have been poisoned off their land either intentionally or as a side effect of the hazardous pesticides dumped by soy cultivation in Paraguay every year. Beginning in the 1990s, as farmers saw their animals dying, crops withering, families sickening, and wells contaminated, most packed up and moved to the city.
The havoc wreaked by agro-industries has created some of the most grave human rights violations since Stroessner’s reign. A report produced by the Committee of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of the United Nations stated that “the expansion of the cultivation of soy has brought with it the indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides, provoking death and sickness in children and adults, contamination of water, disappearance of ecosystems, and damage to the traditional nutritional resources of the communities.”
The expansion of the soy industry has occurred in tandem with violent oppression of small farmers and indigenous communities who occupy the vast land holdings of the wealthy. Most rural Paraguayans cultivate diverse subsistence crops on small plots of ten to twenty hectares, but do not have titles to their land nor do they typically receive assistance from the state. The Paraguayan government has historically represented the soy growers in this conflict by using the police and judicial system to punish campesino leaders.
The small farming community of Tekojoja has been on the front line of this struggle for years. Its history and struggle is representative of countless other farming communities in the Paraguayan countryside.
Tekojoja’s Resistance
The first of several buses we would take from Asunción toward Tekojoja in April of 2009 heated up like a sauna as polka played on the radio. Hawkers came on the bus selling sunglasses, radios, and pirated DVDs. Particularly dedicated salesmen gave impassioned speeches about the superior characteristics of their product, pushing samples onto the unwilling and bored passengers. One sales pitch promised that garlic pills could cure insomnia and cancer.
We passed countless fields of soy and Cargill silos, but also vegetable stands from small farmers and simple roadside restaurants where people could escape into the shade with a cold beer. The dirt road from Caaguazú toward Tekojoja was a rutted expanse of churning red sand; it took us three hours to travel 50 kilometers. The bus fought its way over the deep potholes, the engine reaching a fevered pitch, and every one of its metal bones rattling along with those of its passengers.
That same night, we arrived in Tekojoja and went to Gilda Roa’s house, a government-made structure without running water (though the government built the buildings, it never completed the plumbing). A land and farmer rights activist, Roa’s shirt portrayed plants breaking through a bar code. Inside her house, the walls were covered with anti-soy and anti-GMO posters. She pulled up plastic chairs for us in front of the garden with bright stars as a backdrop, and began talking. Roa spent 2000–2002 in Asunción studying to be a nurse, and had worked as one in a nearby town. At the time of our visit, in April of 2009, she was dedicated exclusively to activism in her community. As Paraguayan folk music played on the radio, and moths bounced around the lights, Roa told us the story of her community and its fight against GMO soy.
The community of Tekojoja is home of the Popular Agrarian Movement (MAP) of Paraguay. It is a place that has faced enormous repression from the soy farmers and their thugs, and led a legendary resistance against them, producing many campesino leaders.
Tekojoja stands on land given to campesinos as part of a Public Land Reform Program. In the 1990s, Brazilian soy farmers—with armed thugs, lawyers, and political connections to protect them—gradually expanded onto the community’s land, forcing a series of violent evictions of the farming families. In 2003, the MAP began to recover the lands taken from them by Brazilians, but corrupt judges and the mercenaries hired by soy producers kept pushing the farmers off their land.
On December 2, 2004, Brazilian land owners accompanied by police burned down numerous houses and farmland in Tekojoja as part of an eviction process. A statement from the MAP described this brutal act:
[A]fter the tractors destroyed our crops, they came with their big machines and started immediately to sow soy while smoke was still rising from the ashes of our houses. The next day we came back with oxen and replanted all the fields over the prepared land. When the police came, we faced them with our tools and machetes. There were around seventy of us and we were ready to confront them. In the end they left.
The campesinos’ houses and crops were destroyed and they had no assurances that the Brazilians would not orchestrate another eviction. Still, as most had no place to go, the community members decided to persevere, staying on the land and fighting for legal recognition as the owners. Roa explained, “We planted seeds with fear as we didn’t know if our crops would be destroyed. And we began to reconstruct the houses.” But again at 4 a.m. on June 24, 2005, the Brazilians and police attacked the community. “They arrested children, blind people, old men, and pregnant women, everyone, throwing them all in a truck.” Roa said. “They threw gas and oil on the houses, burning them all down as the arrests went on.”
In this standoff between the thugs, police, and unarmed campesinos, two farmers, who the Brazilians mistakenly identified as MAP leaders and brothers Jorge and Antonio Galeano, were killed by gunfire. One of the victims was Angel Cristaldo Rotela, a 23 year old who was about to be married, and had just finished building his own home the day before the police burned it to the ground. The wife of Leoncio Torres, the other victim, was left a widow with eight children. A memorial stands in the center of the community in memory of the fallen campesinos.
After the murders, campesinos and activists from around the country rallied in support of Tekojoja, supplying the besieged community members with tarps and food. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the land should go to the local farmers, and as part of the reparations for the violence the community suffered, President Nicanor Frutos commissioned the building of forty-eight homes. The plight of Tekojoja sheds light on the situation many farming communities are finding themselves in across Paraguay. While the residents of Tekojoja remain on their land, many others are forced to flee to slums in the city as soy producers push them off their land.
Roa explained this cycle of displacement:
When the small farmers are desperate, and the pesticides are hurting them, there is no money, and so they sell their land for a little money, which is more than they’ve ever had, thinking that life in the city will be better, easy—but it’s not so easy. A lot of people who end up gathering garbage in the city are from the countryside. They don’t know how to manage their money, so for example, they’ll spend all their money on a used, broken-down car first, and then end up in the city broke, without any jobs or place to stay.
The victory of Tekojoja was due to the tenacity of the farmers who refused to leave their land for the false promise of rich city life. But their fight is far from over. Though they tore the soy plants out of their land, residents live sandwiched between seemingly limitless expanses of soy, and they, their animals, and their crops continue to suffer from exposure to toxic pesticides.
By dawn the next day, most of Roa’s neighbors were already up, getting to work before the sun made labor unbearable. Chickens milled about houses, the red dirt yards were still damp from the night’s dew, and radios tuned in to a community radio station mixing music with political commentary in Guaraní. A neighboring community activist invited us to his house to start the day with Paraguayans’ essential beverage, yerba maté served hot in the morning and specially prepared with coconut and rosemary. We sat in his kitchen as the sun streamed through the cracks between the boards in the wall, illuminating ribbons of smoke from the fire, while his children and pigs played on the dirt floor.
An ominous presence loomed over this bucolic scene. The neighboring Brazilian soy farmers had already shown up with their tractors, spraying pesticides on nearby crops. I could smell the chemicals in the air already. We walked toward the fields until the sweet, toxic odor grew stronger. We passed one tractor very closely as clouds of the pesticides drifted toward us. I began to feel a disorienting sensation of dizziness and nausea. My eyes, throat and lungs burned and my head ached, something the locals go through on a daily basis. The physical illness caused by the pesticides contributes to breaking down the campesino resistance.
I am reminded that this is a besieged community, not just because of the soy crops that circle these islands of humanity, or the pesticides that seep into every water source, crop, and conversation, but also because the Brazilian soy farmers live next to and drive through these impoverished communities with total impunity, and with the windows of their shiny new trucks rolled up tightly. Mounted somewhat precariously on the back of a few mopeds, we bounced along the dirt roads, which petered out into paths to another cluster of homes. On our way there, we passed one Brazilian who glared at us until we were out of sight. Roa knew him: he had participated in the razing and burning of their homes. The fact that he was still free added insult to injury. And if the locals were to accuse him, said Roa, or even yell at the Brazilian murderers, police would show up and haul them off to jail. “This is the hardest part,” she explained. “That we see them and can’t do anything.”
The moped rolled to a stop in front of Virginia Barrientos’ home, a few miles from Roa’s, directly bordering a soy field. The land Barrientos lived on for the past four years is a peninsula jutting into the sea of soy. She occupied her land, which used to be covered with soy, in February of 2005 and won legal ownership to it. But life since gaining the land has been far from easy; pesticides have terrorized her family since they moved there.
“Just before we harvest our food the Brazilians will spray very powerful pesticides,” Barrientos explained. “This spraying causes the headaches, nausea, diarrhea we all suffer.” Her thin children were gathered with her on the porch of the home. “There are a lot of problems with the water,” she continued. “When it rains, the pesticides affect our only water source.”
Barrientos said the pesticides affected her plants and animals as well, making some of the crops that do actually grow taste too bitter to eat. Her pigs’ newborn babies died, and the chickens were ill. Part of the problem, she pointed out, is that the Brazilian soy farmers intentionally choose to fumigate during strong winds which blow the poison onto her land. We passed dead corn stalks on the way to her well, which she insisted on showing us. It was located at the end of a long field of soy, so that the runoff from the field dripped into the well, concentrating the pesticides in her only water source. The family lives in a poisoned misery, while the soy producer responsible for it lives in comparative luxury away from his fields.
Isabel Rivas, a neighbor of Barrientos’ with a big smile and loud laugh in spite of her grim living situation, told us, “When we drink the water we can smell the chemicals. It turns out they were washing the chemical sprayers in our source of water, in a little stream nearby.” Barrientos stood in front of her house while breastfeeding her baby as chickens pecked at peanuts in the yard. Her children stared at us with wide eyes. “We can’t go anywhere else.”
While Lugo’s inability and unwillingness to sufficiently address such hardships was a betrayal of this grassroots sector, the recent coup against Lugo was also a coup against hope, a coup against Barrientos and her children, Roas and her neighbors, and the hundreds of thousands of farmers struggling the countryside. Behind this coup lies the vast land, some of it poisoned, some still fertile, and much of it tear and blood-soaked. Until the demand of land justice is realized, there will be no peace in Paraguay, regardless of who sleeps in the presidential palace.
Paraguay: US Sponsored “Soft Coup” Targets Venezuela
Whether Paraguay’s infamously right-wing local oligarchy and its parties that seized an opportunity to bring left-leaning President Fernando Lugo down by itself, or whether the push came from the United States government, is yet to be confirmed.
The US was involved in the overthrow of many governments in Latin America in 20th century in a bid to sure up its domination of the region.
The US also supported a 2009 coup that overthrew elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, who had raised the minimum wage paid by US corporations in the textile industry and blocked privatisations. In the past decade, it has also been implicated in failed coup attempts against elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
However, whether the key movers were the Paraguayan oligarchs or US forces is a secondary consideration. The US state and US corporations operate through local intermediaries — the Paraguayan oligarchy — and have made no effort to conceal their intentions to use the recent coup to advance their agenda.
The coup has provided the US with a golden opportunity to work to reverse its declining influence in the region — and send a clear message to those willing to challenge its interests.
Paraguay is nestled between South America’s two largest economies — Argentina and Brazil — and its membership of regional integration bodies such as the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) gives it strategic importance for US interests.
By removing Lugo via an illegitimate coup only nine months out from elections, the US and its allies sent a message that, having lost the ability to keep control through formal democratic means, they are willing to use others.
The coup also gave the US an opportunity to escalate its military presence in the region.
The same day Lugo was impeached by Congress, a delegation of Paraguayan politicians, led by the head of the parliamentary defence committee and opposition member Jose Lopez Chavez, met with US military chiefs to negotiate the establishment of a US military base in the Chaco region.
Lopez Chavez said another topic of discussions was restarting US military “humanitarian assistance” programs in Paraguay, which had been halted by Lugo in 2009.
The Paraguayan oligarchy has made clear its intentions of allowing the US to turn the country into a base for military operations, with its sights set on Latin America’s radical governments.
As Lopez Chavez explained after a meeting in August last year with 21 US generals, the hope was that a US base would help Paraguay “liberate itself from the pressures, the threats from Bolivia, and even more so the threats that are constantly emerging from the Bolivarianism of Hugo Chavez.”
In June, US General Douglas M Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, also singled out Venezuela and Bolivia as potential hotspots for “geopolitical turbulence” that could affect US interests in the region.
Those that have been campaigning in support of Latin America’s turbulent process of transition face the urgent task of exposing the role of US imperialism, its corporations and its allies in Paraguay’s, and their bid to stop the process of regional integration across Latin America.
There is also a need to support the Paraguayan resistance to the coup and redoubling our solidarity with the anti-imperialist Bolivarian Alliance of the People’s of Our America (ALBA) led by Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Also see:
Paraguay: U.S. Intelligence Behind Return of Dictator’s Mafia
Paraguay: U.S. Intelligence Behind Return of Dictator’s Mafia
There is such confidence between Federico Franco, the coup President now installed in Paraguay, and the United States embassy in the country, that Franco was there discussing the overthrow of President Fernando Lugo as early as 2009. This was revealed in a Wikileaks document in which an intelligence official refers to a conversation with Franco, then the Vice President.
The text, dated May 6, 2009, was composed by a member of the diplomatic mission (read CIA) and was brought to light later by Australian Julian Assange’s group. It notes the disagreement observed between the President and his Vice President and makes the latter’s intentions clear.
The secret report indicated that differences between Lugo and Franco were escalating, but that Franco had told the ambassador, on April 28, that he was not involved in any plan to overthrow Lugo. Franco further stated that his position was one of patience, supporting democratic institutions in Paraguay.
Federico Franco belongs to the right-wing Liberal Radical Authentic Party, the soft opposition permitted by the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who subjected Paraguay to a bloody regime for 35 years. The coming to power of this liberal right-wing doctor, alongside the former bishop Fernando Lugo was the result of political machinations which are best understood by the traditional ruling class in this South American country.
The friendly relationship which Franco enjoyed with the U.S. embassy in Asunción demonstrates the close ties between imperialist diplomats and the Vice President, who did not hide his contempt for the “priest” whose administration he was part of.
Evidently to the yankees’ delight, he discussed and regularly shared his numerous arguments with Lugo, which emerged on almost a daily basis.
When Franco assumed the Vice Presidency, the U.S. State Department had already assigned to the embassy a figure with the necessary experience to confront an undesirable situation. The ambassador was James Cason, who had gained notoriety as the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the CIA station that passes for a diplomatic mission in the Cuban capital.
In Asunción, Cason thought of himself as entertaining, singing folk songs in Guaraní, but did not limit himself to such pastimes. The associate of the Cuban- American mafia took pains to provoke a record number of confrontational incidents with authorities.
The current ambassador in Asunción, Liliana Ayalde, arrived to take Franco under her wing and assure his integration into plans being made by Stroessner’s followers who control the nation’s parliamentary system, and have been conspiring against President Lugo.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE INCIDENT
In March of 2010, Paraguay’s Minister of Defense, retired General Luis Bareiro Spaini was called to appear before the Chamber of Deputies as a result of his “affronts to the U.S. ambassador.”
With 41 votes in favor and four against, deputies approved a reprimand of the high ranking official for a letter he had sent to Ayalde, accusing her of intervening in Paraguay’s internal affairs.
This happened during a luncheon organized at the embassy with Vice President Federico Franco and a group of visiting U.S. army generals in attendance, when Ayalde proposed a debate at the table about the political situation in Paraguay and the possibility of impeaching President Lugo!
The Congressional opposition did not reprimand Franco, but rather General Bareiro Spaini, for “involving himself inappropriately in affairs handled by the Ministry of Foreign Relations,” while Franco’s treasonous position was not even mentioned.
The plot was already in the works.
LUGO SURROUNDED BY SHARKS
The 2010 document revealed that speculation was already underway concerning plans to remove Lugo and the degree to which the Vice President might participate.
The text refers to political actors, informants who kept an eye on Franco and reported how an agreement had been reached with the coup plotter General
Lino Oviedo to accelerate plans for an impeachment, so that the Vice President could take power, with Oveido eventually elected as Vice President.
The report from the U.S. embassy in Asunción, revealed by Wikileaks, makes reference to the interest many politicians had in cutting short Lugo’s administration. The document indicated that rumors persisted that Lino Oviedo, former President Nicanor Duarte Frutos, and/or Vice President Federico Franco, were continuing to seek ways to limit Lugo’s term
The message, sent by the embassy to the State Department in Washington, referred to “political sharks” surrounding the President and indicated that U.S. personnel in Paraguay believed that he was under a lot of pressure to resign or face impeachment, a possibility which the composers of the letter considered increasingly likely.
Informed daily of all events at the highest levels of government, taking advantage of the complicity of every “shark,” those who longed for the days of Stroessner’s iron fist only needed the U.S. embassy’s espionage services to guide their steps.
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