Evan Abramson

Reportage: A Hunger for Land

Peasant farmers in Paraguay pit themselves against a $600 million dollar industry in their fight to protect the environment and their right to work the land

Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--Transgenic soybean plantations fill the horizon as far as the eye can see, reaching a crossroads from all sides. Soybean agroindustry has taken over virtually all of the land in the highly fertile eastern and southern regions of Paraguay, and is moving steadily into the central parts of the country, where the majority of Paraguay's population carves out a living in subsistence farming. Since the first soy boom in 1990, nearly 100,000 small-scale farmers have been uprooted from their land and forced to migrate to the slums of the big cities. The total expulsion of famers due to expanding soy production reaches nine thousand families per year.
   
Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--Once a town of several hundred, the village of Lote 8 has all but been abandoned as transgenic soybean producers from Brazil began farming the area's highly fertile land, driving farmers to sell their land at low prices due to repeated exposure to the agrochemicals used in industrial soybean production. Although Paraguayan law states that a minimum of 100 meters of natural protection in the form of trees must exist between any areas where pesticide spraying occurs, and houses, schools, health centers, churches, plazas, water sources or roads, throughout Paraguay it is a commmon to see industrial soybean fields reaching right up to the road, surrounding houses, churches, even schools.
   
Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--A church is bordered by a transgenic soybean field in the village of Lote 8 without any protective separation. According to Paraguayan law, a minimum of 100 meters of natural protection in the form of trees must exist between any areas where pesticide spraying occurs, and houses, schools, health centers, churches, plazas, water sources or roads. Notoriously corrupt on all levels of authority, Paraguay is a country where the environmental laws are rarely, if ever enforced.
     
  
Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--Brothers Ángel and Pedro Ramirez stand on the plot of land where their family's home once existed, now a transgenic soybean field. They, like most of their neighbors, sold their home in Lote 8 once the fumigation started. Ángel (27 years old, left), a self-described militant, puts it this way: "It's either leave, or stay and die."
   
Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--One of Cargill's 41 industrial facilities in Paraguay. Cargill earns more than 3 billion dollars a year and dominates the world grain market. They first began operation in Paraguay in 1978, during the height of the Stroessner dictatorshiop, and presently lead the agrobusiness sector in Paraguay with the commercialization of more than 1,300,000 tons of soy, wheat and corn per year. This is the equivalent of 30% of the total harvest of Paraguay each year.
   
Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Young transgenic soybean plant. Soy production has increased exponentially in recent years due to rising demand worldwide for meat and cattle feed, and the booming biodiesel industry in European countries such as Holland and Belgium. In 2007, soy covered 6.2 million acres in Paraguay and soy is expected to increase to 8.6 million acres by the end of 2008.
     
  
Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--When Silvio Peralta was 10 years old, he went outside his family's house one night in the rain and washed his eyes out with water that was running in his yard from the field across the street. The field was a transgenic soybean plantation and Silvio became blinded as a result of the chemical runoff that the water contained. Now 13, Silvio is blind in one eye and sees five feet ahead in the other. His eyelashes contain streaks of white and according to his neighbors, sometimes his eyebrows turn white as well. He very rarely blinks. Silvio's family is one of the few that remain in Lote 8 after industrial soybean farming took over most of the community. He is unable to continue studies in his rural village as a result of his blindness.
   
Naranjal, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Chemically treated transgenic soybeans are marked with red dye before planting, to distinguish them as highly toxic and inedible. Soy cultivation dumps more than 24 million liters of agro-chemicals in Paraguay every year, including World Health Organization Class I and II extremely and moderately hazardous pesticides. These include Paraquat, a chemical with no antidote if ingested, 2,4-D, Gramoxone, Metamidofos, which has proven to reduce sperm count and health in exposed males, and Endosulfan, a teratogenic substance that causes birth defects in the infants of repeatedly exposed mothers, according to the EPA.
   
San Marcos, San Vicente district, San Pedro--October 27, 2008--National police stand guard at the edge of a Brazilian-owned genetically modified soybean farm, after a court-ordered eviction of a landless farmers' settlement on the edge of the property. Peasant farmers’ demands for land have increased since a soy-farming boom gathered pace five years ago in Paraguay. A wave of land takeovers is sweeping the nation, putting the $600 million dollar transnational soy industry in Paraguay at risk, which represents more than 30 percent of total exports for the country. Soy production has increased exponentially in recent years due to rising demand worldwide for meat and cattle feed, and the booming biodiesel industry. Industrial soy is directed toward these markets. Most of the soybean producers are Brazilian and Argentinian who moved to Paraguay in the last 10-15 years. Of the current 600,000 soybean producers in Paraguay, only 24% are Paraguayan.
     
  
San Marcos, San Vicente district, San Pedro--October 27, 2008--Farmers are detained by national police after a court-ordered eviction of a landless settlement on the property of a Brazilian genetically modified soybean producer. Land invasions on the part of peasant groups generally have an ecological character: landless farmers not only demand land to work, but are also protesting against the widespread deforestation, and the use of agrochemicals on the part of the transnational soy producers that dominate the tropical countryside. People living in the countryside face indiscriminate spraying of pesticides by soy producers. Farmers describe the days following a fumigation: headaches, nausea and skin rashes, problems seeing and respiratory infections. It is common for their chickens to die, and for the cows to abort their calves and their milk to dry up. The non-soy crops they produce for their own consumption also perish.
   
Santa Rosa district, San Pedro--October 25, 2008--National landless leader Elvio Benítez takes a cellphone call before starting a meeting with landless leaders representing several different communities. Benítez is the leader of the National Coordinating Table of Campesino Organizations (MCNOC), who describes his mission as stopping the advance of transgenic soybean production in Paraguay. An infamous figure in the national press, painted on a daily basis as a lawless gunslinging invador of land, Benítez is much more comfortable speaking in the native Guaraní tongue than in Spanish. At the meeting he quotes the Paraguayan constitution as saying: "Social interest is more important than private interest."
   
Santa Rosa district, San Pedro--October 25, 2008--Landless farmers at a meeting representing several local settlements, where plans are made to invade a nearby property held by an Italian who presumably has no titles to prove its legality. Land invasions by peasant groups have become increasingly frequent, with landless squatters invading and trying to take over soy plantations which they claim are on public land. Since the first soy boom in 1990, nearly 100,000 small-scale farmers have been uprooted from their land and forced to migrate to the slums of the big cities. Paraguay has little industry, however, and 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. The total expulsion of famers due to expanding soy production reaches nine thousand families per year.
     
  
Santa Rosa district, San Pedro--October 25, 2008--National landless leader Elvio Benítez is shown a map drawn by leaders from local settlements, of a nearby property held by an Italian who presumably has no titles to prove its legality. They make plans to invade the property within two weeks.
   
San Pedro--October 24, 2008--Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (left) meets town hall style with a group of mostly Brazilian soybean producers, to hear their complaints concerning land disputes in the highly conflictive department of San Pedro, where peasant resistance to agroindustry is the strongest in the country. Although the meeting was open to the public, landless groups refused to attend, insisting instead that the President visit them personallly in their settlements to discuss the land reform with them. Known as "Bishop of the Poor" for his open advocacy of Liberation Theology, Lugo was bishop of San Pedro until two years ago, when his campaign for president began. Since his inauguration last August, peasant groups have been hoping for the land reform which they were promised for years and never given. But Lugo is hampered by having only a tenuous majority coalition in Congress, which by law must approve all land expropriations. During the meeting in San Pedro, 9 Brazilian and Brazilian-Paraguayan landowners sold a total of 55,000 acres of land under conflict back to the government, which will subsequently be distributed to peasants according to Paraguayan law.
  
Naranjal, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Jorge Rodolfo Heisecke, Director and General Manager of the Agropeco corporation, drives past a landless farmers settlement just on the other side of his company's property. Landless farmers claim that Agropeco occupies more property than their land title states. Land reform is the single biggest issue in Paraguay right now, and the biggest challenge affecting President Lugo. Lugo's supporters plan a national survey to determine who owns what land—a project would take at least two years. But landless farmers groups aren't waiting. In recent months, land invasions in Paraguay have gotten increasingly violent, and it has become common for large landowners to hire teams of private armed guards to stand watch over their crops 24 hours a day. On October 7, 2008 the Paraguayan government prohibited the sale of land to citizens of neighboring countries up to 50km from the border.
     
  
Lote 8, Minga Porá district, Alto Paraná--October 29, 2008--In Lote 8, 150 landless families occupy the edge of a 700 acre property belonging to a Brazilian transgenic soy producer, hoping that the land will be granted to them if land titles are not presented. The next day, a local district attorney ordered the families to be evicted in time for planting season. Paraguay's $600 million dollar transnational soy industry represents more than 30 percent of total exports for the country, and many district attorneys in the soy producing regions have close personal and economic ties to soy production.
   
Naranjal, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Armed private security guards patrol the 30,000 acre property of the multinational soybean producer Agropeco 24 hours a day. A landless farmers' settlement is seen in the distance, right outside the property's edge. Landless farmers claim that Agropeco occupies more property than their land title states. A public corporation comprised of American, Italian and Paraguayan owners, Agropeco formed 25 years ago, during former dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year reign as president. They sell almost all of their production to transnationals Cargill and ADM for exportation.
   
Santa Rita, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Transgenic soybean and seed producer Onorio Guntzel, a Brazilian of German ancestry, in the warehouse his company uses to store herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals for use in their agricultural production. In Paraguay approximately 90% of the soy produced is transgenic Roundup Ready RR, a variety patented by the U.S.-based Monsanto corporation to be resistant to their patented herbicide Roundup. Fields of RR soy are fumigated indiscriminately with Roundup or other pesticides with a glyphosate base, killing everything in their path except the Roundup Resistant soy itself. According to Monsanto representatives, Roundup contains the same surfactant as its parent compound, a chemical known as POEA (polyethoxylated tallowamine), along with other "proprietary" chemicals as a blend. POEA is about three times as toxic as glyphosate in standard toxicity tests, and causes gastrointestinal as well as nervous system damage, respiratory problems and destruction of red blood cells in humans.
     
  
San Isidro, Los Cedrales district, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Miguela Céspedes Bogado, 15, was born in the village of San Isidro without legs. She has a partial foot extending directly from her right thigh, and two fingers are missing from her right hand. Her father used to use a backpack kit to apply pesticides and herbicides to his fields for his family's own consumption, but stopped doing so about 8 years ago. In San Isidro, a small community composed of a hundred or so houses clustered around one single road, transgenic soy plantations surround the village on all sides, at a higher elevation than community itself. Cancer rates are high there, as well as miscarriages, and several children have been born with birth defects.
   
San Isidro, Los Cedrales district, Alto Paraná--October 30, 2008--Wilma Elizabeth Benítez holds her daughter Ana Pabla, 4 years of age. Ana's joints appear wobbly and weak; she cannot hold herself up or much less, stand on her own feet or speak. Wilma says, "We believe (this is happening) because of intoxication. Because in San Isidro, there are just too many people with disabilities."
   
Carumbey I, Lima district, San Pedro--October 25, 2008--The story of Luis Rodríguez (left) and Francisco Avalo (right) is typical of members of Paraguay's landless movement: as part of the Christian Agrarian League in the 1970s and 1980s, they were persecuted and tortured during Paraguay's 35-year dictatorship; the land where they live now with their families was obtained by settling unused tropical forest belonging to the government. Today they are fighting against the intrusion of industrial soybean farming in their communities. Both farm primarily for their family's own consumption, producing corn, yucca, rice, sweet potato, plantains, fruit, vegetables and raising livestock. Unlike many other Latin American countries, most of Paraguay's population is still rural based and are farmers by trade.
     
  
Carumbey I, Lima district, San Pedro—October 25, 2008—Landless farmers maintain camp 24 hours a day at the edge of a 7,000 acre property that borders their community, and which was acquired illegally during former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year reign as president. The farmers hope for the property to be investigated and its ownership to be declared illegal by INDERT, the national land reform institute of Paraguay, in order for it to be returned to the government and subsequently gifted to the farmers themselves.
   
Carumbey I, Lima district, San Pedro--October 26, 2008--Farmers from Carumbey I fish in communal land belonging to their village as the smoke and floating ash of deforestation from a neighboring transgenic soybean plantation pollutes the air and paints the water black. Although the land that is being clearcut and set ablaze is beyond the boundaries of the Brazilian soybean producer's fence, and thus belongs to the community, the farmers say that there is little they can do to stop it. Like most district attorneys in Paraguay, the one who handles land disputes in Carumbey I is a sympathizer of the economic growth brought about by the new frontier of agro-industry in the San Pedro department. For the most part, the demands of local communities who exist on subsistence farming go unnoticed.
   
Carumbey I, Lima district, San Pedro—October 26, 2008—Landless farmers maintain camp at the edge of a 7,000 acre property that borders their community, and which was acquired illegally during former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year reign as president. Peasant farmers’ demands for land have increased since a soy-farming boom gathered pace five years ago in Paraguay. A wave of land takeovers is sweeping the nation, putting the $600 million dollar transnational soy industry in Paraguay at risk, which represents more than 30 percent of total exports for the country. Soy production has increased exponentially in recent years due to rising demand worldwide for meat and cattle feed, and the booming biodiesel industry. Industrial soy is directed toward these markets. Most of the soybean producers are Brazilian and Argentinian who moved to Paraguay in the last 10-15 years. Of the current 600,000 soybean producers in Paraguay, only 24% are Paraguayan.