Asunción

The criminalization of social movements in Paraguay worsened with the recent detention order against social and political leader Tomas Zayas, a municipal councilor, and three campesinos (small-scale farmers), who were all charged with “attempted homicide and criminal accessory”.  These charges are a result of a three-year conflict over the intense agrochemical fumigations suffered by the community Leopoldo Perrier de San Cristóbal in Alto Paraná, Paraguay.  Tomos Zayas is a leader of ASAGRAPA (The Farmer’s Association of Alto Paraná) and CNOCIP (The National Center for Indigenous and Popular Organizations), as well as a senatorial candidate for the Worker’s Party in the April 20^th elections.

ASAGRAPA is a campesino organization that works in one of the main zones of transgenic soy production in Paraguay.  The campesino communities in these zones live surrounded by immense soy fields and are highly exposed to the intense agrochemical fumigations used in large-scale monocultures.  ASAGRAPA is one of the principal organizations in the region fighting for land. They demand a comprehensive agrarian reform and the recognition of campesino community’s rights.  It is in this context that ASAGRAPA launched the campaign to “Stop Fumigation, in Defense of the Communities and Life” in December 2007.

In the campesino community Leopoldo Perrier, agrochemical contamination reached a critical point in August 2007, when Jesús Jiménez, a three-year old child, died after a round of intense fumigations.  The local population and the parents of Jesus denounced the lack of an autopsy (La Nación, October 18, 2007, p. 40).  As soy producers rejected the possibility that he had been poisoned by agrochemicals, the organizations were successful in pushing for a judicial order to exhume the body and perform an autopsy as well as a socio-environmental evaluation of the community by three state institutions.  The autopsy demonstrated the presence of high levels of agrochemicals in Jesús’ body.

This past February, in the midst of a full round of cultivation and fumigation, the affected population resisted the fumigations and mobilized pacifically.  As a result of this mobilization, the Public Prosecutor recently charged four people, three of them relatives of the child, members of ASAGRAPA and its leader, Tomás Zayas.  The prosecutor charged them with being an accessory to the crime and for attempted homicide for supposedly shooting a firearm in the air.  The local inhabitants pointed out that Zayas was not even present during the mobilization, and nor were there any gunshots.

What happened to Jesús Jiménez is not an isolated incident. On repeated occasions, the community has denounced the fumigations for causing grave problems.  Reports from the local press indicate that in Leopoldo Perrier, soy producers “do not respect legally demarcated tracts of cultivation, regarding human settlement, educational institutions and waterways” (ABC Color, November 1, 2007, p. 19).

Other press reports make clear that “school is often canceled on fumigation days for farms 20 meters away because the children faint from the smell.  Also, fumigations cause miscarriages... kill fish, pigs, and other animals” (La Nación ibid.).

The denunciation of the impacts on the local population generated by the soy monocultures has reached an international level.  The United Nations’ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights pointed out that “the expansion of soy cultivation has entailed the indiscriminate use of agrochemicals, causing the death and illness of children and adults, the contamination of water, the disappearance of ecosystems, and has affected community’s traditional food resources” (Final Observations of CDESC, Economic and Social Committee, E/C.12/PRY/CO/322_10-2007, p.3).

An investigation carried out in the same year in the four departments with the highest soy production revealed that in the communities studied 78% of families had some health problem caused by the frequent soy field fumigations and 63% had health problems caused by water contamination (Palau et al. 2007).

In Leopoldo Perrier, after the population denounced the fumigations, they began to receive constant threats.  The municipal mayor verbally intimidated the population because it is politically organized.  However, what happened in this community is part of a larger process.

The state persecution that campesino organizations suffer is reflected in the Report of International Fact-Finding Mission in Paraguay, which shows how the Executive has concentrated power “with the armed forces in its control, the Public Prosecutor as an ally, and the Supreme Court as a guarantor of impunity, and has conducted a campaign of massive repression against the campesino sector in order to facilitate and guarantee the expansion of the frontier of soy production” (International Fact-Finding Mission in Paraguay, 2006 Report, p. 6; SERPAJ Paraguay).

This strategy, under which more than 2,000 campesino leaders have been charged, invokes four motives for persecution [1]:

1. Categorizing campesino leaders as common criminals
2. The criminalization of protest, judicializing conflicts and initiating lawsuits against protestors.
3. Linking campesino leadership to kidnappings
4. Linking the campesino leadership to supposed incipient guerrilla activity, mainly to long-time guerrillas such as the Colombians.” (ibid., p.35).

In this context, it is worth mentioning the events that occurred last month: the capture of three Patriotic Socialist Alliance candidates because they visited a campesino land occupation, the assassination under ambiguous circumstances of a political leader from the Popular Tekojoja Movement, the publication in various news outlets of two supposed guerilla groups that are allegedly in alliance with campesino organizations that happen to be running candidates for this year’s elections.

The government and the groups in power are using the Public Prosecutor and all of the tools at their disposal, in violation of political rights and rights to organize.  As the national elections get closer, more acts of violence and criminalization are being carried out against any opposition.

Claudia Russer, from the Soy, Cereal and Oilseeds Producers Association (APS), stated in 2007 interview that leaders such as Tomás Zayas instigate confrontations against working people.  Supposedly they are against the use of agrochemicals, but it seems that what they want is a civil war (sic)” (ABC Color, October 31, 2007, p.14)

Zayas’ response in the media is direct: “The war that she (Claudia Russer) mentioned, they themselves [the soy producers] started some time ago, but it is a chemical war against our community and the community has a right to defend itself” (ABC Color, November 1, 2007, p.19).


[1] Since 1989, the year that the Stroessner dictatorship fell, over 100 campesino leaders have been assassinated, of which only one case has been investigated and the culprit convicted; the rest remain in impunity.  The criminalization of protest itself is even graver.  In 2004, campesino organizations registered 1,156 detentions, and a similar number of charges and prosecutions against rural workers (Rulli,J. 2007).

Written by: Marco Castillo, Regina Kretschmer, Javiera Rulli, Gaby Schwartzmann
http://www.lasojamata.org

(Translation:  Thea Riofrancos)

Source: Journalist Union of Paraguay, Bulletin No. 223