[News] Cooperation as Rebellion: Creating Sustainable Agriculture in Paraguay

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Cooperation as Rebellion: Creating Sustainable Agriculture in Paraguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1505/1/

Written by April Howard    Wednesday, 01 October 2008

Source: <http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1419/1/>Toward Freedom

In Paraguay, where 1 percent of the population 
owns 77 percent of all arable land, corrupt 
agrarian reform and the booming soybean industry 
is leading the country towards an industrial 
agricultural export model that leaves no room for 
small food producers. While many Paraguayan 
campesino [small farmer] families have moved into 
urban peripheries, tenacious farmers have fought 
not only for their right to land, but also to 
redefine and recreate the agricultural model 
based on cooperative, organic and people-friendly 
alternatives. As newly elected President Fernando 
Lugo moves to make good on campaign promises, the 
proposals of Paraguayan farming movements already 
point the way to sustainable change.

Land Reform in Paraguay: A Prostituted Fight

Across Latin America, incomplete or corrupt 
agrarian reforms have left farmers fighting for 
their right to grow food for themselves. Agrarian 
reform has been attempted in Paraguay since 
independence, but most would agree with the 
statement of a recent columnist that Paraguay’s 
fight for land has been "completely prostituted."

After Independence in 1811, maverick dictator Dr. 
de Francia seized control of all property of the 
Roman Catholic Church and created largely 
successful communal farms on the nationalized 
lands. However, Dr. de Francia and his 
successors’ isolationist trade policies angered 
the British, who instigated the War of the Triple 
Alliance, in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay 
fought Paraguay and completely decimated the 
country. The Paraguayan government was crippled 
with war debt, and new leaders liquidated its 
land holdings, which at that time were 95% of the 
country. Political cronies and wealthy foreigners 
became Paraguay’s new ‘landed gentry.’ An 
incomplete and corrupt agrarian reform conducted 
by the Colorado dictator Alfredo Stroessner left 
most campesinos landless, occupying unused land for subsistence farming.

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former 
bishop, was born in 1951 and grew up in a family 
opposed to the Stroessner dictatorship and his 
three brothers were exiled. As a young man he 
taught in a remote rural school "so remote that 
he was able to escape the usual rule that 
teachers had to be members of the Colorado 
Party." After he became a priest in 1977, he 
worked as a missionary in Ecuador, then studied 
at the Vatican and returned to Paraguay in 1982 
and became the Bishop of the San Pedro province. 
His support for landless families’ occupations of 
large estates put him in conflict with the Catholic hierarchy.

In 2006 he led a march of nearly 50,000 
Paraguayans in Asuncion against then-president 
Nicanor Duarte’s plan to change the constitution 
to allow a second run for president. Lugo was 
catapulted into the national political scene and 
social movements requested that he run for 
president.[1] On August 15, Lugo assumed the 
presidency of Paraguay and all the challenges 
that it is currently facing. His election marked 
the end of the official rule of the Colorado 
Party, but leaves its legacy of corruption, 
clientilism and violent repression. Indeed, the 
sector of Paraguayan society that has the most to 
gain or lose from Lugo’s presidency is the 
dwindling and often criminalized campesino 
population. Nowhere is the need for change more 
urgent than in the Paraguayan countryside.

The Agricultural Export Industry: A Poisonous Green Desert

In eastern Paraguay, farmers once grew diverse 
crops and raised a variety of livestock 
intermingled with the necessary shade and 
fruit-bearing trees of the biologically diverse 
Interior Atlantic Forest. However, today only 
5-8% of that forest remains. The land now most 
closely resembles the rolling hills of a green 
desert. Brazilian industrial farmers selling to 
companies such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland 
and Bunge have literally invaded eastern 
Paraguay, buying up land bit by bit, and 
strong-arming farmers to grow monoculture crops 
for export, such as soy, corn, and cotton. For 
those who are familiar with the term "banana 
republic," it is not at all an exaggeration to 
say that Paraguay and parts of Brazil and 
Argentina have become "soy republics."

Soy production has increased exponentially in 
recent years due to rising demand worldwide for 
animal feed, as well as the ecologically 
defrauded, but still booming, agrofuel industry. 
In Paraguay especially, the expansion of the soy 
industry has occurred in tandem with violent 
oppression of small farmers and indigenous 
communities. Indebted farmers have been bullied 
into growing soy in exchange for loans. Farmers 
who live next to the soy fields are driven away 
by the chemicals, which kill their crops, animals 
and cause illnesses. Since the first soy boom, 
the industry has evicted almost 100,000 small 
farmers from their homes and fields and forced 
the relocation of countless indigenous communities.[2]

Mechanized production meant that even those who 
stayed to work in the soy fields soon lost their 
jobs to tractors and combines. Entire communities 
have fled to the cities to be street vendors and 
live in the exploding semi-urban slums around 
large cities. Farmers who refused to leave their 
land have been targeted. More than 100 campesino 
leaders have been assassinated, and more than 
2,000 others have faced trumped-up charges for their resistance.

Saying No To Soy: Triumph and Equal Terms

 From the beginning of the soy boom, Paraguayan 
farmers have fought back. In spite of the arrests 
and assassinations, remaining campesino 
communities have become increasingly organized 
and radicalized. In January 2008, one hundred 
campesino residents of the Ybypé community in the 
province of San Pedro were able to physically 
block the crop spraying of a new soy field in 
their community. Communities are making appeals 
for legal protection, which have been backed by 
the Paraguayan Human Rights Committee 
[Coordinadora de Derechos Humanos del Paraguay 
(CODEHUPY)], which focus public attention on soy 
growers’ lack of observance of means of 
protection, such as the installation of live 
barriers like tall bushes or other plants to 
block the drift of soy field pesticides the into 
community lands.[3] Farmers’ attempts have not 
always been so successful. In 2004, residents of 
the Ypecuá community were beaten and killed for 
attempting to block spraying.[4]

Various campesino organizations have joined 
forces to fight the violence and criminalization 
experienced by their members. The Front for 
Sovereignty and Life is made up of the National 
Workers’ Center, the Authentic Unitarian Center 
of Workers, the Permanent Popular Plenary, the 
Coordinating Table of Campesino Organizations, 
the National Campesino Organization, and the 
National Coordinator for Life and Sovereignty.[5] 
Some groups have taken the next step and are 
working not only to stop the fumigations and 
criminalization, but to create alternative models of agriculture.

The main community that brought Lugo into the 
presidential limelight is the Tekojoja 
settlement, located 70 km from the city of 
Caaguazu. The community is part of the many 
campesino movements, and its campesino 
organization, the Popular Agrarian Movement (MAP) 
has also promoted the Tekojoja Popular Movement 
of which was Lugo is head.[6] The Tekojoja 
Movement also saw gains in congress in the recent elections.

Tekojoja, meaning "equal terms" in Guaraní, is 
one of the peasant settlements recovered during 
the land reform, a land settlement of 500 
hectares where 56 peasant families live. In 2003, 
residents began to organize against soy producers 
invading the community. Nearly half of 5,000 
hectare community lands had become soy fields. 
According to community leader Jorge Galeano, it 
was "a terrible period for us, every day we 
witnessed how 7 to 8 families were leaving their 
land. We calculated that 120 families had been 
expulsed because of the entrance of the Brazilian 
producers." Residents complained, but INDERT, the 
land reform institution, made contracts granting 
the lands to Brazilian soy producers.

In 2003, campesinos forcefully reoccupied their 
lands, but they were served an eviction order in 
2004, which resulted in the burning of 46 houses 
and the destruction of 20 hectares of crops. 
According to community members, "after the 
tractors had destroyed our crops, they came with 
their big machines and started immediately to sow 
soy while smoke was still coming out from the 
ashes of our houses. 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, we were around 
70 people and were ready to confront them. In the 
end they left." In 2005, soy producers evicted 
400 and killed 2 community members,[7] and since 
that time, the community has repeatedly denounced 
illegal and inappropriate use of agrochemicals in neighboring soy fields.[8]

El Triunfo

Another determined agricultural community is part 
of the Association of Alto Paraná Farmers 
(ASAGRAPA), a campesino organization that works 
the eastern province of Alto Paraná, one of the 
principle zones of production of genetically 
modified soy in Paraguay. It is a regional 
chapter of the CNOCIP, the National Center of 
Indigenous and Popular Organizations, but in many 
ways it leads the organization. Tomas Zayas, the 
leader of the (ASAGRAPA) and the (CNOCIP) has 
been a senatorial and presidential candidate for 
the Workers’ Party. While the goals of CNOCIP and 
ASAGRAPA have changed over time, their main focus 
now is the danger of the growing green desert of 
soy. In this context, it started the "Stop the 
Fumigation: In defense of Communities and Life" campaign in December of 2007.

While many campesino organizations in Paraguay 
share the vision of ‘agroecology,’ Zayas believes 
that the movement needs a "philosophical and 
theoretical framework so that it can become a 
project not only of resistance, but of the 
construction of a new society that prioritizes 
human life." ASAGRAPA promotes small scale 
organic farming of a diversity of crops for 
self-supply, and community ownership of land to 
protect farmers from isolation and land 
speculation and fumigation. The organization also 
challenges hierarchies and gender roles within 
itself and rural live. Nidia Fernandez, secretary 
general of ASAGRAPA, sees her work in the 
organization as an opportunity to change gender 
relations in rural communities as well as 
fighting for sustainable agriculture.[9]

In 1989, Zayas helped found the community where 
the Ramírez family now lives, a community with 
vision. El Triunfo [The Triumph] is a community 
formed by farmers involved in ASAGRAPA, and is 
designed to prove that small-scale, non-chemical 
agriculture is possible.[10] When I visited El 
Triunfo in February of 2007, the shady 
agricultural town seemed like an oasis in the soy 
desert. Each family has two parcels: one in the 
residential center for their house and small 
gardens, and another for larger fields of crops. 
Over the years, the community has built a health 
clinic, school, and soccer field. The community 
started as a squat, and has been attacked several 
times by what the farmers call the local "soy mafia."

The land is communally owned and the charter does 
not allow farmers to sell their land. If they 
decide to leave, the community assumes possession 
and can give the land to a new member. Members 
see the formation of a democratically-led 
collective (Minga, in Guaraní) with indivisible 
and non-transferable ownership of land as the 
only way to ensure that members do not sell their 
land to soy growers, subjecting the community to 
fumigations and pressure to grow soy. While all 
farmers may choose what to grow on their land and 
may sell some of their produce, they must use 
their land to plant diverse crops for their own 
consumption without pesticides.[11]

ASAGRAPA reaches out to communities in Alto 
Paraná that need to defend their land physically 
or legally, or want to learn more about its 
organic "agro-ecological" model. "It has been 
difficult to convince people," said Zayas. "They 
are told that you can’t grow anything without 
chemicals, that you need to grow soy to make 
money, and then we show them that soy and 
agro-toxins are killing us, and people are 
unsure. They don’t want to take risks. But every 
year it becomes more obvious that soy only 
benefits the big businesses." When communities 
decide that they do want to stop growing soy, 
they face more challenges. The pesticides used to 
grow soy are so toxic that after a few seasons of 
growing soy, microorganisms in the soil die, the 
soil compacts, and vital nutrients are lost. 
ASAGRAPA shows farmers how to use plants with 
deep, strong roots to reclaim and aerate the 
destroyed fields. In 2007 ASAGRAPA used a grant 
from the European Union to help farmers plant fruit orchards on their land.[12]

In March of 2008, the Worker’s Party published a 
Proposal for Agrarian Reform, which draws on a 
model of agrarian ownership as created in El 
Triunfo. It calls for the "confiscation of large 
estates, without compensation, and delivery of 
the land to campesinos." The Worker’s Party 
writes that it has pulled out of the fight to 
give land to poor campesinos, but that they will 
"work within the fight with two axes that point 
in the direction of even more integral change." 
They see the occupation of land by cooperatives 
as the only viable way for campesinos to gain 
property. Their declaration reads "The conquest 
of land will only come through the force of our 
organization, mobilization and fight, never 
through the good will of bourgeois governments." 
They call for an end to the use of pesticides and 
the nationalization of all large agro-export 
businesses. "Right now," they write, "the 
campesino is a stranger in his own land because 
the countryside is bought up by foreign 
businesses. The monocultivation of soy is 
directly commercialized by the multinationals, 
which have also appropriated the business of 
agricultural products and seeds." The proposal 
also calls for the creation of a national 
production program of food security, and 
sovereignty over natural resources, that promotes 
sustainable agriculture geared toward ending 
hunger and creating campesino farming communities.

State Prospects for Agricultural Change

The campesino struggle has gained strength and 
press over the past few years, and in the build 
up to the election, presidential candidates 
postured themselves either against soy expansion 
or in favor of it. A large part of Lugo’s base is 
made up of farmers who have been hurt by the 
industrial soy companies, and Lugo promised them comprehensive land reform.[13]

In the first month of his presidency, Lugo has 
started to make good on several campaign 
promises. Lugo recently went to Brazil to demand 
a renegotiation of the countries’ contract over 
the Itaipu Dam, and, with Brazilian president 
Lula da Silva, ordered officials to address 
Paraguay’s concerns soon.[14] By the end of 
August, Lugo had replaced the leaders of the 
country’s army, navy, military and police, and 
promised that the military’s main work in the 
future would be to perform humanitarian acts to 
benefit the poor.[15] Less reported on was the 
new Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, 
Candido Vera Bejarano, who said that technical 
support and agrarian reform would be the 
ministry’s new goals.[16] However, taking on the 
giants of Brazil and the military might prove to 
be the easier of his Herculean tasks. Land reform 
will be the ultimate test of the ‘Bishop of the 
Poor’s’ political strength and his commitment to Paraguayans.

On September 8, Agriculture minister Vera 
Bejarano announced two parts of the reform 
program, which he hopes to present to Congress in 
the form of a bill by the end of the year. One 
strategy to prevent conflicts between industrial 
soy growers and peasent farmers will be 
soy-growing bans on state lands dedicated to small scale farming.[17]

Another proposal, sure to cause conflict, is 
taxing soy exports. Bejarano said that the 
government will try to negotiate a tax with 
producers, in hopes of avoiding clashes like 
those seen in Argentina this past spring. 
Argentina was the first country in the Southern 
Cone to tax soybean experts, and Brazil and 
Uruguay still do not. Soy producers say that they 
will protest taxes on exports.[18]

As Lugo recently told Democracy Now!, "We’ve had 
an initial meeting with landless and peasant 
farmers, state institutions, technical experts 
and landowners. . . As long as [we use] . . . the 
tool of dialogue, and work out consensuses, then 
it’s possible for us, ourselves, to design an 
integrated land reform that would benefit the 
majority of landless peasant farmers. . ."[19]

Implementing the Agro-Ecological Vision: Challenges and Models

In 2008, one thing has become clear: by any name, 
endogenous development or food sovereignty, 
leaders across the world would do well to focus 
on feeding their citizens. Food prices have risen 
globally in what the United Nations World Food 
Program has called a "silent tsunami." In late 
April of this year, the presidents of Bolivia, 
Nicaragua and Venezuela and Cuba's vice-president 
met at a summit in Caracas, where they agreed on 
a $100 million plan to offset the shock of rising 
prices on their countries’ poor. Summit host Hugo 
Chavez called the food crisis "the biggest 
demonstration of the historic failure of the 
capitalist model."[20] The agricultural-export 
model is not going to insulate Latin American 
countries from rising food costs, but 
state-supported agrarian reform emphasizing food 
production for domestic consumption might.

So, in a country without the kind of natural 
resources Venezuela and Bolivia are using to fund 
social programs, how will the state respond to 
campesino demands for agrarian and agricultural 
reform? While campesino organizations in Paraguay 
certainly have concrete proposals for how to 
transform destructive industrial-export 
agriculture into an "agro-ecological" model to 
serve the Paraguayan people, it remains to be 
seen how Lugo will integrate Paraguayan’s 
proposals into a central government program like 
that of Venezuela, or those proposed in Bolivia.

Admittedly, agrarian reform is one of the most 
contentious topics a new leader can take on and 
the most likely to cause uproar amongst powerful 
landowners. Officials from Bolivia’s National 
Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) have been 
beaten and threatened at gunpoint this year while 
trying to inspect estates in the province of 
Santa Cruz.[21] In Paraguay, land reform will be 
an even more contentious issue than taking fallow 
fields from the landed gentry. In this case, soy 
land is in use, and owned by Brazilian farmers 
and multinational corporations. Since no 
agro-industries are currently owned by the state, 
nationalizing agro-industry in Paraguay would 
require even more governmental courage than 
Venezuela’s renegotiation of oil contracts. On 
top of that, even if land is reclaimed, soil 
health would need to be salvaged in order to grow non-Roundup Ready crops.

In Paraguay, social movements and farmer’s 
organizations, are ready to share their proposal 
and the models of their communities with the 
state, but are also likely to maintain autonomy 
from government bureaucracy, as pre-existing 
cooperatives in Venezuela have done. It is 
probable that social groups that helped bring 
Lugo to office will have to exert similar 
pressure on their new president. Indeed, in 
Venezuela, and more recently Bolivia, social 
protest has helped governments strong-arm laws through conflicted congresses.

On the night of Lugo’s election, the often empty 
streets of Asuncion were filled with celebrations 
as Paraguay elected its first non-Colorado Party 
president in more than 60 years. Reporter Michael 
Fox, in Asuncion the night of the election, 
described complete euphoria in the streets. A 
Paraguayan acquaintance told him "For the first 
time in our lives, we have hope, we have 
possibilities...  We are a new nation!"[22]

Lugo’s base will need to both pressure and 
protect their president, perhaps to the extent 
that Venezuelans protected Chavez from a coup 
attempt in 2002. And yet, the joy that flooded 
the streets of Asuncion on April 20th indicates 
that Paraguayans are more than ready for change. 
If they are also willing to fight to create and 
preserve their "new nation," it is possible that 
if the people lead, the leaders will follow.

***

April Howard is a instructor of Latin American 
Studies at SUNY-Plattsburgh University, and an 
editor of UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on 
activism and politics in Latin America. Email April.M.Howard(at)gmail(dot)com

Notes:

1. Nickson, Andrew. 
"<http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_power/politics_protest/paraguay_fernando_lugo>Paraguay: 
Fernando Lugo vs the Colorado machine." 
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/>Open Democracy (02-28-2008).

2. Dangl, Benjamin and April Howard. "The 
Multinational Beanfield War." 
<http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3093/the_multinational_beanfield_war/>In 
These Times (04-12,-2007).

3. Sondreger, Reto. "Paraguay: Campesino Families 
Block Fumigation of Soy Fields" 
<http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1081/44/>Upside 
Down World (01-10-2008).

4. Sondreger, Reto. "Paraguay: Campesino Families 
Block Fumigation of Soy Fields" 
<http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1081/44/>Upside 
Down World (01-10-2008).

5. Frente por la Soberanía y la Vida  - contiene 
el Central Nacional de trabajadores (CNT), 
Central Unitaria de Trabajadores Autentica 
(CUT-A), Plenaria Popular Permanente (PPP) Mesa 
Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones 
Campesinas (MCNOC), Organización Nacional 
Campesina (ONAC), Coordinadora Nacional por la Vida y la Soberanía (CNVS)

6. View the <http://www.tekojoja.org.py/v1/index.php>Tekojoja website.

7. BASE-IS "The Battle of Tekojoja, Paraguay" 
<http://www.lasojamata.org/node/15>La Soja Mata.

8. Galeano, Jorge. "Contamination, Violence and 
Oppression Continue in Tekojoja, Paraguay." 
<http://www.activistmagazine.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=763&Itemid=143>The 
ACTivist Magazine (11-05-2007).

9. Howard, April. "Paraguay: Women from Farming 
Communities Fight to Change Agriculture and 
Patriarchy." 
<http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/659/44/>Upside 
Down World (03-09-2007).

10. Glenza, Fernando "Informe sobre la situación 
campesina en Paraguay." 
<http://www.prensamercosur.com.ar/apm/nota_completa.php?idnota=677>APM 
(06-16-05).

11. Personal interview, February, 2007

12. Research in Paraguay, February 2007

13. 
"<http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7b770AA124-FBE2-4D79-9F1A-969BB3B74B93%7d%29&language=EN>Paraguay: 
Land Reform for Sure, Says Lugo." Prensa Latina, (3-27-2008)

14. Clendenning, Alan. "Paraguay seeks to 
renegotiate Brazil energy treaty." 
<http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gLPkQpkpAK94q3-MR7lf3v4RKuYwD938QSSO0>Associated 
Press (09-17-2008).

15. 
<http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1464100>"Paraguay's 
new president replaces military command." Associated Press. (08-21-2008).

16. "Priorizarán apoyo técnico y reforma agraria 
en el MAG." 
<http://www.abc.com.py/2008-08-15/articulos/441751/priorizaran-apoyo-tecnico-y-reforma-agraria-en-el-mag>ABC 
Color.

17. Cristaldo, Mariel. "INTERVIEW-Paraguay may 
limit soy farming in land reform." 
<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12440739.htm>Reuters (09-12-2008).

18. Craze, Matthew. "Paraguay's Lugo Plans to Ban 
Some Soybean Farming, Raise Taxes." 
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=adHyq5DcUXlA&refer=latin_america>Bloomberg.com 
(09-09-08).

19. "Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo on US 
Relations in Latin America, the Iraq War, 
Liberation Theology and Being the ‘Bishop of the 
Poor.’" 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/23/exclusive_paraguayan_president_fernando_lugo_on>Democracy 
Now! (09-23-08).

20. "LatAm leaders in food price pact." 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7364153.stm>BBC (04-24-08).

21. "Q&A: Land Reform Agents Try to Free Indians 
from Servitude in Bolivia" 
<http://ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=42120>IPS (04-24-08).

22. Fox, Michael. "Paraguay Celebrates Lugo's 
Historic Victory." 
<http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1243/44/>Upside 
Down World (04-20-08).
Written by April Howard




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