I. The struggle for agrarian reform in Paraguay

In Paraguay, the rapid transferring of State property and its natural resources (wood, yerba mate tea and natural pasture lands) into the hands of international capital, after the devastation left by the Triple Alliance War towards the end of the 19th century, gave rise to the creation of the great extensions of private land holdings known as latifundios and originated the beginning of the fi ght for land by the uprooted peasants living in the countryside.

In January, 1875, the Offi ce of Public Lands was created, which obliged owners to present their title deeds and land possession documents, under penalty of being considered merely as occupants of fi scal property. Later that year, on November 4, 1875, a law was promulgated which allowed the Executive branch of government to sell fiscal lands for prices that were not to surpass the sum of six million pesos. These fiscal properties were to be sold to occupants and all claimants that would be able to cancel the payment of the acquired real estate within the peremptory term of twelve months. Furthermore, the purchaser would lose all rights in the case of being one month tardy or delinquent in the payment of the outstanding amount. Due to the restrictive nature of this legislation, poor peasants and small subsistence farmers were excluded from acquiring property.

In this manner, one of the principal causes of the limited economic and social development of Paraguay, and of the deterioration of the material living conditions of peasant workers constitutes the monopoly of land under the power of great enterprises based on the extraction of natural resources, with ownership by foreign capital and operating outside of the State’s control. In addition to this circumstance, we must also add the following causes of rural poverty: the substitution of relationships based upon exchanges and private property in place of the community scheme found within the traditional peasant economy, and the scarcity of industries capable of absorbing both the production obtained from farming and animal husbandry, as well as that of the work force that became idle as a result of being uprooted from the land.

Paraguay continues to be dragged down by the long-lasting effects of this social, economic and political phenomenon and the concentration of land holdings is a problem that as of the present has not been overcome. According to the 1991 Farming and Animal Husbandry Census, carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, 77% of the surface is occupied by the one percent of the agricultural establishments that have an extension of 1,000 or more hectares. Meanwhile, 80.6% of the agricultural establishments have less than 20 hectares and occupy only 6.1% of the surface. Nowhere else in the world may one find a similar pattern of distribution of land, characterised by such a level of inequality.

More recent data derived from the 2002 Integrated Census of Households, carried out by the General Directorate of Statistics, Surveys and Censuses (DGEEC), indicates that there are 121,658 landless rural families, thereby constituting 29.7 per cent of Paraguay’s rural population. Sixty per cent of the population owns the least percentage of land, with ownership of small parcels amounting to 6.6 per cent of all rural real estate. The ten per cent of the population that has the largest percentage of land owns 66.4 percent of the country’s rural property.

The State of Paraguay has never implemented real policies for the redistribution of land, except for the decades of the 1960’s and 1970’s (when it still counted with great extensions of fiscal lands), and even less has it implemented an entire agrarian reform. The agrarian policy proclaimed as the progressive elimination of the latifundios as well as the small minifundio plots resulted to have a completely opposite effect: it increased even more the gap between peasants with small subsistence plots and the owners of great landholdings, meanwhile increasing the critical poverty in rural areas. Following the running out or depletion of fi scal lands towards the end of the 1970’s, the role of the state agency in charge of agrarian policy, the Institute of Rural Welfare (IBR)3, basically consisted in the mediation of conflicts between peasants and landowners. In practice, the IBR abandoned its mission of promoting and carrying out the agrarian reform. Not one of the governmental administrations during the post-dictatorial era (1989-2005) elaborated a strategy for agrarian reform or of rural development. The State has only acted in response to pressures, resolving some of the most urgent problems by means of giving deed titles to landless peasants and then later abandoning beneficiaries to their own luck or plight.

In parallel fashion, the protests in claim of an integral agrarian reform that were carried out by organisations of rural workers exploded acutely during the first months following the downfall of authoritarianism, and the conflicts over land became massive in character. This took place in the context of public liberties that were recovered at the beginning of the democratic transition. In the absence of a policy of agrarian reform and rural development on the part of the State, the organisations of rural workers tried various strategies for exerting their incidence or bearing. In many cases, legal actions were combined with acts of civil disobedience.

Customarily, the organisations begin the administrative procedure in the first place by going before the IBR to denounce specific real estate in order for it to be sold or expropriated. This action is preceded, however, by the organisation and census of landless peasants by community or neighbourhood commissions, and the investigation of the particular situations as regards domain and ownership. In addition, research is conducted regarding the agrological conditions of the lands that will be requested. After several years of negotiations or paperwork, if the legal and administrative efforts have been exhausted or prove to be insufficient to achieve the required results, then the organisations move towards other actions of incidence that are based on pressure and civil disobedience strategies.

Amongst these strategies, occupation is the one most utilised by landless peasants. This is the strategy that produces the greatest impact upon authorities as well as on public opinion. By means of this strategy, the conflict becomes public, thus laying bare the inequality and asymmetries of land distribution, and consequently obliging land owners to negotiate, authorities to seek solutions, and the remaining social role players to issue statements. Another strategy used by peasants with no land is that of massive mobilisation. Landless peasants resort to this mechanism in order to accelerate the bureaucratic procedures within the public institutions, to make public opinion more sensitive, or to pressure landowners, legislative members, or judges so that they will reach decisions favourable to the occupants. These measures usually consist of camping along the parameters of the properties that are under claim, setting up camps in public spaces located in front of the Congressional buildings or the Supreme Court of Justice, occupying the offices of the National Institute of Rural Development and Land (INDERT), or eventually setting up blockades or otherwise stopping traffic on roads and highways.

In addition to the demands for access to land, there has arisen during these last years the problem of the mechanised production of soybeans, with its negative consequences stemming from the lack of control of agrochemicals, the contamination of soils and sources of water, and the loss of biodiversity. These are some of the health problems that affect populations living close to plantations. Further more, the peasant organisations have denounced INDERT staff members that have been involved in the sale of the rights to possession of public lands, thereby selling occupation and land exploitation rights (derecheras) to large scale soybean producers that do not meet the requirements to qualify as beneficiaries of the agrarian reform.

During fifteen years of the transition towards democracy (1990-2004), there have been 895 conflicts over land; 571 public demonstrations or assemblies, which in some cases have involved the stopping of traffic on public roads; 370 occupations of private properties; and 357 evictions of occupants, carried out with violence by public forces (police or military staff). In like manner, at least 7,296 peasants, both men and women, were arrested or detained in the case of lawsuits or criminal trials related to occupations and the closing of public roads.