RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Women Fight to Keep Land off Auction Block

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 12 1998 (IPS) - Rural women in Argentina have managed to stop more than 200 of their small farms from being auctioned since 1995 by holding hands in front of the auctioneer, praying and singing the national anthem.

That simple ritual is the method used by Women in Struggle, a network of more than 4,000 rural women that has no funding or even an office.

It is “absolutely informal”, said its vice-president, Ana Galmarini, who owns a small farm with her husband. “We inform one other by telephone when an auction is going to take place, and the group goes over to stop it. Often, we don’t need to do anything: people do not go ahead with the auctions because they are afraid we might show up.”

The network was formed in 1995, when its current president, Lucy Cornelli, was deeply in debt and on the verge of losing her land. She called on other women to come together and finding a solution to the debt problem, and about 300 women in the central province of La Pampa answered her call.

“Lucy didn’t work on the land because in the rural areas, society is very macho and women stay home doing housework,” said Galmarini. “But in her case, her husband had fallen sick because he wasn’t able to deal with his debts arrears to the provincial bank and the loss of his crops.”

“The role of women in the countryside began that way, during crisis periods, when the men could not continue to work because of a lack of financing and the high concentration of land ownership, which forces us to sell or die,” she explained.

Cornelli works out of another province, Santa Fe, north of Buenos Aires.

“We recently mobilised people to prevent an auction in a small village in northern Santa Fe which has less than 1,500 inhabitants. Fearing a scandal, the governor ordered a stop to that auction and nine others that were to follow in that area,” she said.

In the 1990s, there was an intensive process of concentration of rural property in Argentina. Large ranches are now in the hands of large producers, mostly national and foreign firms that invest in fertile land on which to grow export crops.

This policy of stimulating large agricultural capital was acknowledged by a former official from the sector who declared in 1989 that Argentina had 200,000 small and medium-sized producers that were not viable and would eventually disappear. The women who make up the national movement remember that statement very clearly.

Economist Eduardo Basualdo, author of the book ‘The New Landowning Elite’ in Argentina, indicated that in the last several years land ownership has become concentrated in the hands of firms that accumulate hectares with the purpose of reducing costs and obtaining better prices for transportation, fuel and other inputs.

Basualdo estimates that between a 600-ha farm and a 3,000-ha one, costs can be reduced by 40 percent. In Buenos Aires province, the richest in the country, 2.4 million hectares are concentrated in the hands of only 53 owners.

In this scenario, there is little left for people like Cornelli with their 60 to 100 ha and without any kind of subsidy. Even when they plant soya or other very profitable crops, their accumulated high-interest debts force them to abandon their traditional sources of income.

Many farmers rent out their properties, and with that money, they move into town. But the women in the movement hope they will be able to stay on their land, and still not default on their loans.

“We are asking for an end to the auctions, that debts 20 years old and more be refinanced at interest rates pegged to profitability, and that the remaining principal be calculated beforehand, because in many cases 5,000-dollar loans grew to be 60,000-dollar ones with the interest payments,” said Cornelli.

Until now, the women have managed to put a stop to the auctions by showing up or through the mere threat of showing up before the auctioneer at the justice of the peace’s office, which is no small feat. This is far more than congressional representatives and bankers, who are still studying a long-term solution to this serious socio-economic problem, have achieved.

At the very least, Women in Struggle have discovered something new: the possibility of organizing themselves in defense of their land.

“We don’t have an office or a telephone. Our fax is the one at the office for legal aid, and we only recently obtained legal status, so now we can think about raising funds,” said Cornelli. “But we are already 4,000 women across the country and this month we published our first newsletter.

“We think we will make it.”