Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: A Study to Help Stop Rural Evictions

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 23 2006 (IPS) - Students and professors from the National University of La Pampa, in central Argentina, are beginning a census this month of peasant farming families threatened with eviction in five departments of La Pampa province. The study is an effort to halt the removal of some 300 families of subsistence farmers who have occupied lands, with no title, for more than 20 years.

Private title-holders are reclaiming possession of some of these areas, where minerals and petroleum have been found in recent years.

“The government is delaying solutions, and our preliminary surveys show, for example, that in just one site there are 17 oil wells,” Claudia Salomón, of the Support Movements for the Land Struggle, told Tierramérica.