by Jorge Jorquera
Green Left Weekly, Australia, 1 Dec 2004
A national civic strike demanding land redistribution has come to an end in Paraguay, with hundreds of campesinos (rural workers) still imprisoned and none of the demands of the strike met, not withstanding continuing promises by President Nicanor Duarte to purchase new land allotments for the landless. The national strike was preceded by a campaign of progressive land occupations targeting more than 50 latifundios (large landowners' properties) that each exceeded 3000 hectares. These occupations, organised by the Frente Nacional de Campesinos (FNC), culminated on November 16, the beginning of the civic strike. The strike was led by the Frente Nacional de Lucha por la Soberania y la Vida (National Front of Struggle for Sovereignty and Life - FNLSV) and the Coordinadora Obrera, Campesina y Popular (Popular Coalition of Workers and Peasants - COCP).
On the morning of November 16, the popular assemblies of the COCP led road blockades, including on three major routes into the capital Asuncion. The strike quickly mobilised more than 20,000 people in road blockades, land occupations and street protests. While the strike was organised to last for only one day in Asuncion, it was indefinite in 10 of the 17 Paraguayan departments. The government responded with the immediate mobilisation of 12,000 troops, threatening to chase the campesinos "back into the mountains", at the same time as organisations within the FNLSV lodged their third application to the Supreme Court attempting to have the government's increasing use of the military against social protests declared unconstitutional.
Paraguay is a late comer to neoliberalism; serious privatisation began in 1999. The popular response to these reforms started with 1999 "Paraguayan March" protests, which culminated in a massive general strike in 2000. Since then, the Duarte government has tried to appease the growing social unrest with promises of land and other concessions. For example, on October 28, the Senate broadened the energy subsidy, marginally extending the eligibility for discounts on energy bills. However, in the cut-throat economy of Latin American neoliberalism, the Paraguayan ruling class has no choice but to push ahead with unpopular "reform".
While Duarte has tried to contain the social movement in a "negotiation table" and a "Crisis Cabinet", the Rural Association of Paraguay (which groups together the main big property owners) has been threatening a military coup. The government has decreasing room to manoeuver. The privatisations and cuts to public spending have thrown tens of thousands of urban workers into the 38.8% of the population that is un- or underemployed. At the same time, more than 300,000 families have been thrown off their land. This is due to the so-called soy-isation of the Paraguayan economy. The soya industry is growing at 10% per annum, with over 2 million hectares of land, half Paraguay's cultivatable land, taken up by genetically modified soya production. Campesinos are selling their land to soya multinationals at US$500 per hectare. The resulting influx into the streets of Asuncion, however, means they are not finding the life of luxury they expect. Instead, they fill the slums, like El Banado where 15,000 families just manage to hang on to life.
This is but one example in a country with a population just over 5 million, where there is a deficit of 700,000 homes and 1% of the population control 80% of the land. The government has repressed this last wave of protest but the demands of the movement - negotiations over 400,000 hectares of land, a 24.3% wage increase, a price freeze on basic consumer goods, increased social spending, no university fees, lowered energy prices, and a revocation of the government decree deregulating the use of genetically modified soy - will only gain further currency in the months to come. As in the rest of Latin America, we can expect a growing political crisis in Paraguay. With the youngest population on the continent, the Paraguayans will certainly make a fight of it.