Out of desperation, flood victims in Asunción have built makeshift shelters in public spaces, like this improvised camp opposite the Congress building. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jul 3 2014 (IPS)

The worst floods in the history of Paraguay have forced 300,000 people to flee their homes. Asunción, the most affected area, and other urban and rural areas were flooded by the rain-swollen Paraguay and Paraná rivers, foreshadowing what might happen when the El Niño phenomenon kicks in.

“I lost everything, I had my workshop but nothing is left, I only salvaged my tools,” one of the flood victims, Antonio Esteban, told IPS as he tried to fix a television set next to the four walls of wood and metal sheets he put up as a shelter for his family in front of the Congress building, after fleeing the Chacarita neighbourhood.“I just want to weep, but I hold it back. I have to be strong and keep working, because this flood has left my husband without work." -- Myriam Agüero

“The main problem is getting water for drinking, cooking and bathing,” he said.

The bad news is that the Paraguay river could soon rise further, after reaching the record level of 7.19 metres in the port of Asunción, pushing the waters into the heart of the city after completely flooding the low-lying neighbourhoods along the banks, where boats have become the only means of transport.

Heavy rains have flooded not only Paraguay, but also regions of the Parana basin in Argentina and Brazil. At least 12,000 people have been evacuated in Argentina and 50,000 in Brazil, and the authorities of both countries have warned that the situation will get worse, because more rain is forecast for the coming days.

In Paraguay, more than 15,000 families have been displaced by the floods, according to official figures which are lower than those of local and international organisations. In the capital city with its population of 514,000, over 60,000 people have had to leave their homes to live in camps on military bases or public spaces.

Alejandro Max Pastene, of the climatology department at the National Directorate of Meteorology and Hydrology, told IPS that June, July and August are usually dry months in Paraguay. But this year, heavy rains began in June.

So when the normal rainy season arrives, from October to March, “there will not have been time for the river level to fall.”

Moreover, this year “the rains from October onwards will be particularly intense because of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation meteorological phenomenon,” he said. This is caused by warmer than usual surface temperatures in the east and central tropical Pacific ocean.

Pastene said that the critical level for flooding of the Paraguay river is 5.5 metres, nearly two metres below its current level of 7.19 metres. “In a single day, Jun. 27, as much rain fell as in a normal month,” he said.

Residents in lowlying shanty towns like Bañado Sur, Tacumbú and Chacarita had to evacuate with virtually no help at all.

In improvised shelters on public land, the homeless are living in crowded structures of wood, plastic and metal sheeting. Drinking water and sanitation are their major needs.

Aldo Zaldívar, director of operations at the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN), told IPS the situation had exceeded all forecasts and assistance had not arrived as quickly as was required.

He said the SEN has provided provisions, materials and logistics to 75,000 people in Asunción and over 150,000 people in affected areas in the rest of the country.

The worst affected zones are in the department of Presidente Hayes, in the Chaco region (west), in the department of Ñeembucú (southwest), and in the department of Alto Paraná (north).

“Our orders are to do whatever is necessary to meet the needs of the population. And we are doing this, but sometimes we cannot arrive as soon as people want,” Zaldívar said about the situation that began in June.

But criticism is mounting over the slow and insufficient reaction of the authorities to the worst river flooding in 30 years, especially from social organisations working in the affected areas.

The government of rightwing President Horacio Cartes is coming in for particular criticism for failing to support the lowlying neighbourhoods, local residents and activists reported. Later on, images were being circulated showing representatives of the ruling party proselytising with state aid to the flood victims.

Part of the deficiencies were alleviated by solidarity campaigns organised by NGOs, clubs, youth groups and neighbourhood organisations that collect money, clothes, food and materials to resettle families who have to evacuate their homes.

At present the authorities have opened 86 shelters to house families who had to abandon their homes in Asunción. Two thousand families have been relocated on three military bases alone.

Conditions in the shelters are far from ideal. The main problem is sanitation, as there are no more chemical toilets. The SEN has commissioned the building of toilets and showers in containers, which will be used to alleviate the lack of these facilities in the camps.

The “palangana” (washbowl)

Miguel Barrios is a blacksmith, like Esteban, and he was unable to salvage much when the waters reached his home. He finds it incredible that Chacarita is still being flooded after the works built along Costanera avenue, that were supposed to act as a retaining wall by the river.

“The neighbourhood was left in the ‘palangana’ (washbowl), between the Costanera avenue and the Asunción city wall,” he said.

Juan Ramón Martínez, another Chacarita resident, experienced the great flood of 1983, the biggest on record so far in Asunción, and in his view the present flood is much worse.

At the camp in front of the Congress building, people are working with spades, sawing wood and hammering nails in roofs, women and children included. All around, clothes are spread to dry in the sun.

In another part of the city, not far from the historic centre and the downtown area where public institutions are located, Myriam Agüero is evacuating from the Yta Pyta Punta neighbourhood with her husband and four children.

“The floodwaters have arrived, we have no alternative. We can’t even stay on the second storey of our house,” the 33-year-old woman, a leader in the Domestic Workers’ Union in Paraguay, told IPS.

Agüero was born in the lowlying belt of shanty towns in the floodpains along the banks of the Paraguay river, where many women go out to work as domestic employees.

“I just want to weep, but I hold it back. I have to be strong and keep working, because this flood has left my husband without work,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Teodosia Duarte, another flood victim, said with resignation, “They say we will be here for many months.”

According to forecasts, the river level will not fall markedly until 2015.

Duarte is distressed by the thought of what she will find when she eventually goes back to her home and neighbourhood. She pressed her hands against her chest and said in Guaraní, the mother tongue of Paraguayans: “Ñandejara tuicha ohecha kuaá va´era ñandeve” (God is great, he will help us).

The indigenous hip hop group Bro MC'S from Brazil, during the Todos por Sawhoyamaxa intercultural festival in the Paraguayan capital in December. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jan 7 2014 (IPS)

The Sawhoyamaxa indigenous community in Paraguay have spent over 20 years fighting to get back their land, which they were pushed off by cattle ranchers.

They started the new year by collecting signatures to press Congress to pass a bill that would expropriate their ancestral territory from ranchers, in order for the state to comply with a 2006 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Justice ordering the restitution of their land.

“More than 20 years after being expelled from our ancestral land and living [in camps] along the side of the road, watching the cows occupy the place where we used to live, we decided to return because that land is ours,” the Sawhoyamaxa said in a message accompanying the petition drive.

“Che rohenói, eju orendive, aldeia unida, mostra a cara” (I am calling you, come with us, the people united, show your face) thousands of people sang at the “Todos con (everyone with the) Sawhoyamaxa” intercultural festival in Asunción in mid-December.

The event launched the start of their new crusade demanding enforcement of the Inter-American Court sentence, which ruled that they be given back their territory and that they be provided with basic services, such as medical care and clean water.

The “Che rehenói” chorus was heard over and over again in a mix of Guaraní (one of Paraguay’s two official languages, along with Spanish) and Portuguese, sung by the hip hop ban Brô MC’S, whose members belong to the Jaguapirú Bororó indigenous community from Brazil.

The goal set by the Sawhoyamaxa leaders is to gather 20,000 signatures, to pressure Congress to approve the expropriation of the land.

The epicentre of the community’s two-decade struggle is the Santa Elisa settlement, where the largest group of families are camped out along the side of the road 370 km north of Asunción en Paraguay’s semiarid Chaco region.

They are living “in extreme poverty, without any type of services, and waiting for the competent bodies to decide on the land claim they filed,” according to the 2006 Court ruling.

The Sawhoyamaxa form part of the Enxet linguistic family. There are 19 indigenous groups belonging to five language families in Paraguay, spread out in 762 communities mainly in the east of the country and the Chaco region, a vast dry forest area.

According to the 2012 census, 116,000 of Paraguay’s 6.7 million people – or 1.7 percent of the population – are indigenous, with over half of that group belonging to the Guaraní people. However, the overwhelming majority of the population is “mestizo” – people of mixed European (principally Spanish) and native (mainly Guaraní) descent.

The Sawhoyamaxa, who had no title deeds to the land where they had always lived, were displaced from their land, which was taken over by large cattle ranchers.

“They don’t want us to progress in our way of life,” the leader of the community, Carlos Cantero, told IPS. “We want the land to dedicate ourselves to our ancestral activities, like hunting and gathering in the forest.”

He was referring to the powerful cattle industry, which has successfully lobbied to block implementation of the 2006 binding sentence handed down by the Inter-American Court, an autonomous Organisation of American States (OAS) body.

Cantero said it was important for the situation to be resolved immediately because “there is still a little forest left on our land, some swamps and streams; but if the state does not take a stance on this soon, those reserves are going to disappear.”

Cattle ranchers have steadily advanced on Paraguay’s Chaco region, where in November 549 hectares a day were deforested, according to the local environmental organisation Guyra Paraguay.

The Chaco scrub forest and savannah grassland, which covers 60 percent of Paraguay but accounts for just eight percent of the population, makes for good cattle pasture.

Since the 19th century, the worst dispossession of indigenous people of their lands in this landlocked South American country occurred in the Chaco, especially after the 1932-1935 Chaco War with Bolivia, when the government sold off huge tracts of public land to private owners.

Today, less than three percent of the population owns 85 percent of Paraguay’s arable land, making this the Latin American country with the greatest concentration of land ownership.

The Sawhoyamaxa community is fighting for 14,404 hectares of land.

In a largely symbolic move, when the final deadline set by the Inter-American Court expired in March, the native community began to “recover” their land, setting up small camps on the property to which they are waiting to be awarded a collective title.

Their fight for the return of their ancestral lands dates back to the early 1990s. After exhausting all legal recourse available in Paraguay, they took the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 2001, which referred it to the Court.

The Sawhoyamaxa case is one of three in which the Inter-American Court has handed down rulings against the Paraguayan state in defence of the country’s native people. None of the resolutions has been fully complied with.

After the 2006 sentence, the government attempted to acquire the land in question in order to live up to the resolution and return the property to the native community. But it failed, due to the refusal by the rancher who holds title to the property, Heribert Roedel, whose 60,000-hectare estate includes the land claimed by the Sawhoyamaxa.

“The other route for expropriation is through the legislature, for which a bill was introduced, currently being studied in the Senate,” said Oscar Ayala, a lawyer with Tierraviva, which supports indigenous communities in Paraguay.

This local non-governmental organisation and Amnesty International Paraguay are the main civil society supporters of the cause of the Sawhoyamaxa.

The bill Congress is debating was presented by the government in August for the expropriation of the land, in order to fulfil the Inter-American Court order.

According to Ayala, there is a more positive environment than in the past. “The impression we have is that there is greater openness” for an eventual solution and for justice to be done in the case, he said.

On Dec. 18, the Senate commission for audit and oversight of state finances pronounced itself in favour of expropriation of the land.

“This first favourable ruling is a good indicator; these questions are always complex because caught up in the middle is that deeply rooted economistic view of land, but in this case those issues are no longer in debate,” Ayala said.

The bill will now go to the agrarian reform and finance commissions and then on to the Senate floor, before being sent to the lower house.

Some 120 families – around 600 people, half of them children and adolescents – are living in the Santa Elisa settlement.

The Court also ordered the state to provide food and healthcare assistance to the community. But while the situation in this respect has improved in the new settlements, much more needs to be done.

“We have a health promoter but no health post,” Cantero said. “The worst affected are the children, who are suffering from dehydration because of the bad quality of the water.”

The settlements receive clean water every month, but it is not enough, and they depend on rainwater, which is scarce in the semiarid Chaco.

To find a solution, Sawhoyamaxa men and women have been knocking on doors everywhere, showing people papers that describe the history of their community, their struggle, and the Court ruling, in search of support.

“We won’t stop until we are living on our land; our very survival depends on that,” Cantero said.

The “toilet paper roll” protest in the Plaza de Armas, which kicked off Paraguay’s “indignados” movement. Credit: Natalia Ruíz Díaz/IPS

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Nov 29 2013 (IPS)

A few hours before a human chain was to surround the Paraguayan Congress on Thursday, Senator Víctor Bogado, accused of fraud and misuse of public funds, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

On Nov. 15, an earlier vote in which 23 of the 45 members of the Senate voted for the ruling Colorado Party lawmaker to keep his immunity triggered the first social media-organised protest against corruption, which ultimately ended up forcing Congress to hold a second vote and reverse the decision.

Under pouring rain, dozens of protesters gathered in front of Congress in the Plaza de Armas Thursday evening to celebrate the first victory of the demonstrations, instead of forming a human chain in protest.

And while the number of demonstrators was smaller than in the previous protests in the plaza because of the torrential rains, the police presence was heavy, with hundreds of officers and anti-riot water cannons. At times there were more police than demonstrators in the downpour.

Natalia Paola Rodríguez, a 35-year-old lawyer and university professor, arrived late “because the torrent almost swept my car away.” But she told IPS she needed to be there “to share the excitement; what we did is really important” for this country of 6.6 million people – the second-poorest country in South America after Bolivia, and one of the most unequal.

Hugo Galeano, a 23-year-old student, also defied the weather, “because the celebration had to be here.”

“Public pressure twisted the arm of one of the branches of government,” a euphoric Galeano told IPS. “This isn’t over, this will become an ongoing thing,” he added, before walking off, chanting along with the rest of the protesters.

Topo Topone R. is the alias used on the social networks by lawyer Alejandro Recalde, one of the people behind Paraguay’s protest movement, which has labelled itself #15Npy, along the lines of Spain’s 15 May (15M) movement of “indignados” or angry protesters.

The movement debuted in the Nov. 15 demonstration in the Plaza de Armas, when hundreds of protesters lobbed toilet paper rolls at the legislature, to “clean up” Congress. The protest, which got heavy media coverage, was followed by others.

Topo, 40, explained to IPS that the aim of the movement is to become a kind of citizen oversight mechanism to keep an eye on the authorities, through constant demonstrations and public participation.

“We will be wherever citizens feel alone because there is no organisation or political party fighting for their demands, until the corrupt political class, which uses the people instead of serving them, is eliminated,” he said.

A taxi driver who did not want to give his name told IPS that “we got tired of the abuses,” before pointing out that “my colleagues contributed a lot to this triumph.” Taxi drivers were the first to refuse to provide service to the 23 senators who defended Bogado in the first vote in Congress. The boycott was then joined by restaurants and other businesses in Asunción.

#15Npy is a movement organised over the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as political blogs, one of them created by Topo himself shortly after left-wing president Fernando Lugo was removed from office in June 2012 through a controversial impeachment trial.

José Carlos Rodríguez, a sociologist and political analyst, said the term “popular uprising” was not fitting in this case.

“Paraguay’s ‘indignados’ are an expression of a new middle class, which has moral grievances. They are different from the movements that have emerged in the Arab countries and in Brazil. In the Arab countries, the focus was the dictatorships, and in Brazil the protesters were demanding rights,” he told IPS.

But like the waves of demonstrations in North Africa, Spain or Brazil, the movement in Paraguay has been organised through the social media.

A precedent for #15Npy was the “after office revolucionario” (after-office revolutionary) protests held during the Lugo administration (2008-2012) to back the president’s veto of a scandalous increase in the electoral court’s budget, which had been approved by Congress, dominated by the right-wing Colorado Party and other opposition forces.

Public pressure forced the legislature to backtrack at that time too, and it cancelled the budget hike. That led to the emergence of the new contemptuous slang terms “senarratas” and “dipuchorros”, which mix up the terms “senator”, “deputy”, “rat” and “thief”.

Rodríguez believes the protests will continue. “The people are going to go for more,” he said, adding that the Bogado case is only the tip of an iceberg of impunity enjoyed by the political leadership, which Paraguayans are fed up with.

Politics in Paraguay has historically been infamous for the high levels of corruption, impunity, nepotism and perks. And in the eyes of the citizens, Congress is the biggest culprit.

A broad range of people are participating in #15Npy – from office workers and students to artists, civil servants, taxi drivers, shopkeepers and ordinary people.

Some come from a background of activism in trade unions, social organisations or even political parties. But the great majority form part of the anonymous public, which up to now had been more resigned than participative in the face of realities such as living in one of the most unequal and corrupt countries in South America.

There are no leaders in the movement, only people who serve as reference points in different groups that communicate through Facebook and Twitter. On the networks they have already made it clear that Bogado’s loss of immunity will not bring the protests to a halt.

The next one will be a mid-December march on the courthouse, the seat of justice, “one of the branches of the state where corruption flourishes, and which provides citizens with anything but justice,” Topo said.

Both he and the demonstrators in the plaza stressed that President Horacio Cartes, a business tycoon in office since August, “should also take note” of the protests.

“Either he stops the repression of campesinos [small farmers] and only thinking about privatising and addresses the people’s demands, or we will go after him,” the taxi driver said.

“We are going to work at the grassroots level and go after the three branches of government; our agenda isn’t marked by anyone,” said Professor Rodríguez, who is very active in #15Npy.

Rodríguez the political scientist said these movements “produce a change in consciousness, but they do not directly bring about transformations.” In the case of Paraguay, the analyst said the support that the demonstrations received from the press and sectors of the business community played a key role.

In the Plaza de Armas Thursday evening, the protesters called for the resignation of the 23 senators who defended Bogado. The political scientist said “demands are always maximalist, you have to call for things even if you won’t get them, but basically the big victory is that Congress has changed, and it’s not going to be the same from here on out.”

In his first month as president of Paraguay, Federico Franco has thrown open the doors of his country to foreign investments that have raised questions about environmental safety.

Among the measures taken by the new government were fast-track approval of the planting of transgenic cotton and authorisation of the construction of an aluminium plant.

Franco was named to replace Fernando Lugo after the centre-left former Catholic bishop was removed as president in a swift impeachment trial on Jun. 22. The government has failed to overcome its international isolation, having only been officially recognised by Taiwan and the Vatican.

“It is concerning that a government that was not elected by popular vote is giving the green light to these foreign investments, without any oversight or control,” Luis Rojas, an economist with BASE Investigaciones Sociales, a local non-governmental organisation, told IPS.

As an example, Rojas cited the government’s authorisation to plant Bollgard genetically modified cotton developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, without waiting for the preliminary studies required by law.

Franco named Jaime Ayala, the president of an agrochemical company, to head the National Service for Plant and Seed Quality and Health (SENAVE). Ayala immediately included Bollgard in the national registry of commercial plant varieties (RNCC), which had rejected the genetically modified cotton a few weeks earlier on the grounds that the company had not met the requisites.

Rojas said the approval was illegal because the environment and health ministries had not yet issued their technical opinion, as required by law.

Civil society groups are also criticising plans for the construction of a 3.5 billion dollar aluminium plant by the Montreal-based mining and metals major Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA).

“The negotiations began practically the day after the change of government, indicating a total openness for the company to set up shop in Paraguay,” analyst José Carlos Rodríguez told IPS.

Lugo had set up a technical team to study the project. But after the impeachment trial, Franco immediately gave his consent for the start of negotiations, without waiting for the results of the study.

Rodríguez said the new government is not carrying out any cost-benefit analysis or studies of the economic and environmental implications of the installation in Paraguay of a potentially polluting operation like an aluminium plant.

The Franco administration defends the decision by arguing that the factory would generate some 4,000 direct jobs. But in December, then minister of public works Cecilio Pérez Bordón said the plant would only need 1,250 workers.

In a report presented at a public hearing, Pérez Bordón explained that all of the company’s raw materials and supplies would be imported. He also said RTA would use 9,000 gigawatt/hours (GWh) of electricity a year, and was seeking a power consumption contract that would last from 2016 to 2045, and which could be renewed.

Paraguay currently needs 11,000 GWh a year of energy, and produces 56,000, with a potential of around 7,500 megawatts (one gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts), including the Acaray hydroelectric dam and the 50 percent of output of the Itaipú and Yacyretá dams – shared with Brazil and Argentina, respectively – which corresponds to Paraguay.

That means the installation of the RTA plant would require more than twice the energy that this South American country currently consumes.

The then minister said it was important not to subsidise the cost of energy, and recommended that the firm pay the real cost of electrical service: 60 dollars per MW/hour.

“If energy is sold to RTA at 38 dollars per MWh for 30 years or more, Paraguay will lose between 195 million and one billion dollars annually, which means it will have to raise the rates for other users – including households, raise taxes, or cut public spending,” said Pérez Bordón.

Social organisations, which have stepped up their opposition to the Franco government, say that one of the underlying reasons for the impeachment of Lugo was to facilitate the entry of transnational corporations.

Rojas said: “The government is not a valid interlocutor because it is not interested in a dialogue with civil society; it only talks to business.”

Politician Bernardino Cano Radil said his party, the right-wing Colorado Party, has not discussed the case in enough depth to reach a position on the question.

Foreign investment is generally a positive thing, but a detailed study of the benefits for local companies and workers is needed, said Cano Radil, whose party first sought impeachment of Lugo at the start of his term in 2008, when the former bishop put an end to 60 years of government by the Colorado Party.

The new government has not been successful in its bid to get Mercosur (Southern Common Market) to lift its suspension of Paraguay from the bloc, a measure adopted by the three other members – Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – at a summit in late June.

The government’s hopes are now set on the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose observers’ mission recommended that Paraguay not be suspended. But the decision has not yet been reached.

Analysts say Franco took over an economy that was in good shape. And now investment projects, donations and other initiatives for a combined total of at least 500 million dollars that were blocked during the Lugo administration have been approved.

In addition, personal income tax (IRP), with a fixed rate of 10 percent for people who earn more than 120 minimum monthly salaries a year – equivalent to some 45,000 dollars – has finally gone into effect after years of delays.

The bill to implement the IRP was blocked in Congress during the Lugo administration, and was not scheduled for debate until 2015. But it passed on Jul. 5 and was signed into law by Franco this week.

“This is only 10 percent of the surplus income of people who earn a lot of money” – a very small minority in this country, Rodríguez said.

In the initial stage, the tax will apply to 12,000 taxpayers in this country of 6.4 million people, where between one-third and two-thirds of the population lives below the poverty line, depending on the source of the statistic.

Lugo's supporters demonstrating in Asuncion. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jul 6 2012 (IPS)

Paraguyan rights groups are disappointed at being denied access to a delegation of the Organisation of American States (OAS) sent in this week to discover the facts behind the impeachment and removal of President Fernando Lugo on Jun. 22.

The mission, headed by OAS secretary-general José Miguel Insulza, is expected to make public, on Jul. 29, its official report to the permanent council of the 35-member OAS that has its headquarters in Washington.

The country “is peaceful” and the situation “is not serious, although it is delicate,” Insulza said during the delegation’s Jul. 1-3 visit to Paraguay.

While the delegation held consultations with a range of social, economic and political actors, to learn the circumstances leading to  Lugo’s ouster and his replacement by former vice-president Federico Franco, rights groups were kept away from the OAS team.

Representatives of political parties, agricultural producers, business  media, campesinos (peasants), indigenous people and the Catholic church were seen filing in and out of the hotel in downtown Asunción where the OAS delegation held consultations.

Prior to his departure, Insulza said, “We are leaving under the impression that there was openness from everyone to provide us with information on the case.”

He admitted, however, that the delegation “would have liked to have met with some other social sectors.”

Human rights organisations criticised the fact that the mission did not receive them despite their requests, and staged a demonstration at the airport when the OAS representatives left.

“In our capacity as organisations recognised by the OAS itself, as well as by the United Nations, we asked to talk to the OAS observers, but they did not receive us and that is regrettable,” complained Elba Núñez, a member of the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinating Committee (CODEHUPY).

Núñez, coordinator of the Paraguayan chapter of the Latin-American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), regretted “the biased view the OAS mission is taking away with them, as they have not heard all the voices, nor have they met with all sectors.

“The human rights movement cannot be disregarded in this way in the case of a parliamentary coup d’état such as we have just experienced,” she told IPS.

“We had high hopes of this visit, but now we have low expectations of their conclusions,” she said.

She also said that social activists were being persecuted more than ever since Lugo’s removal, to the point where activists were the targets of threats. “It is reminiscent of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989).”

Political analyst José Carlos Rodríguez said the main outcome of the OAS mission may be to mitigate the harshness of external sanctions against Paraguay.

“The international community has formed a vacuum around the Franco government,” he told IPS, because the legitimacy of the new leader “has still not been recognised by countries like the United States, Canada and Mexico.”

Neither has Asunción confirmed diplomatic recognition by Germany or Spain – as some international media had reported. Only Taiwan and the Vatican have actually recognised the new government officially.

Paraguay has been suspended from the membership of Mercosur (the Southern Common Market), as also from the 12-nation regional Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

Rodríguez said this is worrying as it means the country cannot defend its interests in any international forum. “At the moment, Paraguay is a pariah state,” he told IPS.

In the view of former Liberal senator Gonzalo Quintana, now one of Franco’s advisors, the OAS visit was “a slap in the face” for ambassadors from countries of the Americas that have diplomatic representation in Paraguay.

“Rather than being seen as under punishment, Paraguay is currently being admired because, although it is such a small country, it has stood up to two giants – Brazil and Argentina,” he told IPS.

The Franco government went on a diplomatic offensive against its neighbours on Tuesday, accusing Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolás Maduro of interfering in the country’s internal affairs.

María Liz García, the new defence minister, claimed that on Jun. 22 Maduro met with commanders of the Paraguayan armed forces and urged them to rally in defence of Lugo.

As evidence, she displayed a video, with no soundtrack, showing Paraguayan military commanders, and shortly afterward Maduro, walking through the corridors at the seat of government, as Unasur foreign ministers flew into Asunción to seek a solution to the crisis.

When the OAS observers arrived in Paraguay they were met by protesters claiming that Lugo was the victim of “a parliamentary coup,” and also by pro-Franco supporters objecting to Paraguay’s Mercosur and Unasur suspensions.

Some 20,000 people demonstrated in support of Lugo on the streets of Asunción and in the provinces last week, mobilised by civil society organisations and leftwing political activists.

Rodríguez estimates that pro-Lugo demonstrators represent 20 percent of the electorate but lack cohesion as a group. “They are progressive sectors that lack structure, and so they are like leaves that can be blown by the wind in any direction,” he said.

On the other hand, the movement backing Franco lacks enthusiasm, he said. He cited a demonstration in support of the new government that was cancelled at a short notice with no explanation offered.

Coverage of the crisis by the Paraguayan media has been harshly criticised by Lugo supporters.

Rodríguez said privately-owned media clearly favoured the dismissal of Lugo, a former Catholic bishop. “The media supported the trial and are betting that Franco will stay in power until next year’s elections (due in April 2013). But there is actually no guarantee that he will last that long,” he said.

In contrast, ‘Televisión Pública’, the state channel created by the Lugo government two years ago, has a different slant. Its main offices have become the focal point for the pro-Lugo movement called ‘Resistance to the Coup’.

The channel’s “open microphone” programme has served as an outlet for expressing rejection of the new government ever since the president was deposed.

Núñez said the private media “avoid portrayal of what is really happening in the country; they do not reflect all the views and voices. And this prevents people from getting a clear overall picture.

“Private media are helping to propagate a state of fear in the population. That is why people are not holding mass demonstrations – because of fear,” she said.

Lugo supporters protest on the streets of Asunción. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jul 5 2012 (IPS)

Paraguay’s isolation, following the impeachment and ouster of President Fernando Lugo 11 days ago,  has grown thanks to slender recognition for the new government and souring diplomatic relations with the neighbours.  

On Wednesday, Paraguay moved to downgrade diplomatic relations with Venezuela by withdrawing its ambassador in Caracas, citing “serious evidence of intervention by Venezuelan officials in the internal affairs of Paraguay.” 

Venezuela was admitted into Mercosur last week with the leaders of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay taking advantage of the temporary suspension of Paraguay from the trade bloc, citing irregularities in the impeachment of Lugo and “rupture in the democratic order.” 

The Paraguayan parliament has resisted ratification of Venezuela’s  membership since 2006 when the accession protocol was signed by four Mercosur presidents.

Paraguay’s suspension from Mercosur – the Southern Common Market – and Unasur, the 12-member Union of South American Nations, was decided at their consecutive summit meetings in the western Argentine city of Mendoza on Jun. 29. 

“The suspension will cease when full restoration of the democratic order in (Paraguay) is verified,” says the Mercosur declaration, signed by presidents Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and José Mujica of Uruguay. The bloc stopped short of imposing economic sanctions.

The government of Franco, the Liberal former vice-president in Lugo’s administration, ran into difficulties soon after he was sworn in as president on Jun. 22. Only the Vatican, Canada, Germany, Spain and Taiwan have officially recognised Franco as the head of the new government.

No Latin American country has recognised Franco’s presidency as  as legitimate.   

At an extraordinary meeting of the permanent council of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Washington on, Jun. 26, doubts were raised as to whether due process had been followed at Lugo’s impeachment. 

On Jul. 2, OAS secretary-general José Miguel Insulza, leading a fact-finding mission, met Franco and his foreign minister Jose Fernandez Estigarribia. Insulza is expected to submit a report to the permanent council later this week. 

Speculations continue over the decisions taken at the Mercosur and Unasur summits with the fact that economic sanctions were not imposed on Paraguay seen as a relief. 

Paraguay will continue to have access to the Mercosur Structural Convergence Fund, of which it is the main beneficiary. Paraguay is assigned 48 percent of these funds, while Uruguay receives 32 percent and the remaining 20 percent goes to Argentina and Brazil.

Carlos Filizzola, former interior minister in the centre-left Lugo administration, told IPS that the ousted government would prefer that the international community does not impose sanctions on Paraguay. 

“We are not asking for sanctions, but we do want to denounce to the competent multilateral bodies that there has been a rupture of democracy,” Filizzola said.

To shore up his standing and that of the new government, Franco is seeking to strengthen political and business alliances at home. 

By selecting senator Óscar Denis as his vice-president, Franco has put the entire executive branch in the hands of his own political party, the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA).

In a communiqué, industrialists and business leaders have rejected what they view as an intervention by Mercosur countries in the internal affairs of Paraguay. Lugo’s removal, they stress, did not result in “disturbances of public order or abrogation of the rule of law.”

Economic analyst Ricardo Rodríguez Silvero said business leaders appeared to have underestimated the economic consequences, both direct and indirect, of the country’s suspension from Mercosur that will continue until the general elections due in early 2013.    

“Paraguay will have no representation on any of the bloc’s decision-making bodies, and so runs the risk of suffering negative impacts on trade, customs and diplomacy,” he said.

Lawmaker Justo Cárdenas, of the rightwing Colorado Party, told IPS that the actions of Mercosur were intended, in his view, “to marginalise Paraguay in order to incorporate Venezuela” as a full member of the bloc. 

Franco has asked Congress to approve a bill introducing personal income tax – something Lugo had requested repeatedly without success – as well as appropriation worth 480 million dollars for social assistance programmes. 

Leftwing parties and social movements that swept Lugo into office in 2008 are continuing to demonstrate in different parts of the country, protesting his summary removal from office just nine months before the next general elections.

“We want Lugo to return to his rightful place,” Filizzola told IPS.

Luis Aguayo of the National Coordinating Committee of Peasant Organisations told IPS that his groups “supports not so much Lugo as the democratic process, which cost a great many years of committed struggle and spilled so much Paraguayan blood.”

In contrast, sections supporting Franco accuse the left of deliberately creating disturbances, an argument forwarded to explain the lack of visible public support for the new government.

In Cárdenas’s view, Franco must adhere strictly to the constitution in order to govern. Negotiations are underway for a framework of basic agreements between the two traditional parties, the Colorado Party and the PLRA, a former Lugo ally.

“The Colorado Party has neither sought nor negotiated for positions in the new government, precisely because it is pursuing a return to power via the ballot box,” said Cárdenas whose party ruled Paraguay for six decades, including the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989).

Filizzola said the left was nominating candidates for the general elections, but this was separate from the ongoing struggle to restore democratic order.

The Paraguayan Congress removed President Fernando Lugo from office Friday in an impeachment trial that lasted only a few hours.

The move, formally based on the constitution, triggered an institutional crisis for the fragile democracy in this South American country, and has been rejected by the rest of Latin America.

Lugo accepted the summary decision, which cannot be appealed, although he likened it to a coup and said the law had been “twisted.”

Vice President Federico Franco will complete Lugo’s term, which ends in August 2013.

Calls from the rest of the region, from Washington to Buenos Aires, for the proceedings to be carried out with guarantees for due process, fell on deaf ears. Nor was a mission of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) foreign ministers, who arrived Thursday, successful in mediating the crisis.

While thousands of demonstrators gathered outside Congress to protest the impeachment of Lugo, a former Catholic bishop considered a moderate leftist, UNASUR studied the possibility of refusing to recognise the Franco administration, and members of the mission described the impeachment as a coup.

Latin America is thus facing a new institutional crisis, after the June 2009 coup in Honduras, where then President Manuel Zelaya was ousted and flown out of the country in a military coup backed by Congress.

After accepting the decision, Lugo said in a speech that “Today it was not Fernando Lugo who was removed from power; it was Paraguayan history, Paraguayan democracy that have been deeply hurt.”

When he took office in August 2008, the man who was known as “the bishop of the poor” put an end to 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party and launched a process of social inclusion, in one of the most unequal countries of the world.

“Fernando Lugo does not answer to the political classes, or to the mafia or the drug traffickers,” he said.

The lower house of Congress voted Thursday to impeach him, and in the Senate vote on Friday, 39 senators voted to remove him, four opposed the move, and two were absent.

Franco of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), one of Paraguay’s traditional parties, immediately replaced Lugo, who was elected in April 2008 with the backing of an alliance of the PLRA and left-wing political movements.

This week the PLRA suddenly withdrew its support from Lugo, and threw its backing behind the majority coalition in Congress led by the Colorado Party and including two smaller parties, UNACE and Patria Querida, to impeach the president.

”Today in Paraguay, through a constitutional mechanism, the parties are alternating in power,” Franco said, after promising that all international laws and treaties would be respected by the new government.

He announced measures in favour of land reform, referring to the immediate cause of the impeachment, which was the bloody eviction of landless small farmers a week ago who were occupying part of an estate in the northeastern province of Canindeyu.

Eleven peasants and six police were killed in the clash, the latest episode of violence in the context of a long-running problem of land tenure in a country where 85 percent of all farmland is owned by just two percent of the population.

Franco also promised to hand over power on Aug. 15, 2013 to the winner of the April 2013 elections.

Franco was one of the political leaders who met with the mission of foreign ministers sent by UNASUR ahead of the impeachment trial.

The bloc’s secretary general, Ali Rodríquez, said Friday before the Senate vote that the bloc feared bloodshed if Lugo were impeached.

In a statement, the UNASUR mission said it “had not received a satisfactory response” with respect to the preservation of democratic procedures in the impeachment trial.

Rodríguez had stated that the group was pessimistic regarding the success of its mediation efforts because “little can be done about a decision that has already been reached ahead of time.”

UNASUR warned that the impeachment could violate the democracy clauses of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc – to which Paraguay belongs, along with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – the 12-member UNASUR, and other Latin American organisations.

Rodríguez told the Telesur TV station that one of the mission’s aims was to help prevent violence from breaking out when the Senate handed down its decision.

The UNASUR’s democratic clause specifies measures to be taken against countries where the political process is not respected, including the possible suspension or expulsion from the bloc.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called the impeachment trial a coup – a view shared by the foreign ministers of other UNASUR countries, and by Lugo himself.

Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General Miguel Insulza expressed deep concern over the crisis in Paraguay and the apparent lack of guarantees of due process for Lugo.

Lugo’s lawyers, who were given just two hours for their defence, were refused more time to prepare. Lugo did not attend the Senate impeachment trial.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro, another member of the UNASUR mission, warned that the bloc was about to take measures “that will shake this country,” and wondered why the country’s political authorities did not wait for Lugo to hand power over to his elected successor in August 2013.

He did not elaborate on the measures that could be taken.

Many businesses and some schools in the capital closed Friday, and hospitals got extra beds ready in case violence broke out.

After the vote in the Senate, disturbances took place outside Congress, where the security forces broke up demonstrations by Lugo supporters.

Analyst Alfredo Boccia said the situation obviously directly benefited Franco, but hurt the country because it created a situation of profound uncertainty.

“It will not be easy for Franco to govern, because he will not have legitimacy,” Boccia told IPS.

He cited the economic impact of the coup in Honduras. “When they removed Zelaya in a very similar way, the economy was seriously hurt. And the same thing could happen in Paraguay,” he said.

Colorado Party analyst Bernardino Cano told IPS that Lugo’s removal was the product of an agreement between the two traditional parties, which are long-time rivals: the PLRA and the Colorado Party.

“What we hope now is that Franco will be sensible enough to understand that he is an acting president,” he said.

* With additional reporting by Estrella Gutiérrez.

The death of 16 landless peasants and police officers in a clash in northeastern Paraguay drew attention once again to the long-standing problem of land ownership in the country, where 85 percent of all farmland is owned by just two percent of the population.

Discussing the incident, analysts mention conflicting political and economic interests, a deeply-entrenched conflict, the danger of a social explosion, and the return to a heavy-handed approach to security.

On Friday Jun. 15, 10 peasant farmers and six police were killed during an attempt to evict peasants from land they had occupied, in the latest episode of violence involving land tenure – one of the most pressing social problems in this South American country.

The incident has put moderate left-wing President Fernando Lugo, who is already facing a threat of impeachment for other problems, up against the wall.

Lugo responded to the killings by replacing Interior Minister Carlos Filizzola with Rubén Candia of the Colorado Party, the main opposition force, whose 60-year grip on power was only broken when Lugo won the 2008 elections.

He also removed police chief Paulino Rojas and his two immediate subordinates, in an effort to mitigate the impact of the incident, which has given rise to conflicting reports and versions.

Candia, who was attorney general until late 2011, was among those named by a senior military officer in 2008 as allegedly taking part in a conspiratorial meeting against Lugo, a former Catholic bishop who took office on Aug. 15 of that year.

The new minister suspended the protocol for evictions of people occupying land put in place by his predecessor, which required that the police exhaust all avenues of dialogue with peasants occupying land before carrying out an eviction.

“What happened clearly shows that there is an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of social struggle and demands made by peasants for decades, such as the recovery of land that was ill-gotten (by the current owners),” Luis Aguayo, the head of the National Coordinating Board of Campesino Organisations, told IPS.

The violent eviction took place on an estate in Curuguaty, in the department (province) of Canindeyú, 380 km northeast of Asunción. The estate is in the name of the Campos Morombí SAC y Agropecuaria agribusiness company, owned by Blas N. Riquelme, a Colorado Party businessman and politician.

According to the Office of the General Prosecutor and the National Institute of Rural Development and Land, the rural property in question actually belongs to the state.

The Truth and Justice Commission (CVJ) – which from 2003 to 2008 investigated human rights abuses committed during the 1954-1989 dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner – also stated in its final report that the property is publicly-owned.

The CVJ said the property was donated to the state by the La Industrial Paraguaya SA, and was earmarked for distribution as part of the land reform process.

“We cannot allow the democratic achievements gained after so many years of struggle to be undermined,” said Aguayo, whose organisation publicly denounced that the violence was caused by a group that infiltrated the landless peasants, with the aim of triggering bloodshed and sparking a political crisis.

For his part, Bernardino Cano, an analyst with connections to the Colorado Party, maintained that the clash was caused by armed groups with ties to the Lugo administration.

He said “the backdrop to this is the existence of sectors, which could be of the extreme left or the extreme right, that do not want elections to take place in 2013.”

Paraguay is already gearing up for the April 2013 elections, when Lugo’s successor will be elected.

Cano told IPS that one big problem in Paraguay is that there are many parts of the country where the state has no control, and marijuana is grown widely. “It’s obvious that narco-guerrillas could have been behind what happened,” he argued.

Sociologist Ramón Fogel, meanwhile, told IPS that the reason these violent incidents happen is that there are at least eight million hectares of land that was sold or handed over under “irregular circumstances” in Paraguay.

He pointed out that eight peasants were killed in an earlier conflict in January, in Ñacunday on the border with Brazil.

“That is the issue that all of the sectors should sit down to discuss calmly, with each side compromising as necessary, in order to achieve social peace,” he said. Otherwise, he warned, violence will spread out of control in the country.

Fogel said that underlying the deaths in Curuguaty are growing inequalities that marginalise peasants from development.

The conflict over land ownership is one of the most complex and thorny aspects of this marginalisation, in a country where over one-third of the population is rural, and there is no real solution in sight due to the lack of political will among the different branches of government, he said.

“The judicial system doesn’t leave any avenue open for the recovery of ill-gotten land and for the start of a truly transparent process with respect to land titles and other aspects,” he said.

The latest agricultural census, carried out in 2008, found that 85.5 percent of the farmland is in the hands of just 2.06 percent of the population of Paraguay.

The CVJ found that 6.75 million hectares of land were illegally sold or handed over during the Stroessner regime, and one million in the following 15 years – in other words, 64 percent of the land sold or distributed between 1954 and 2008; 33 percent of all farmland; and 19 percent of the national territory.

Fogel also mentioned another factor: “the hatred of poor Paraguayans, of campesinos (peasants), especially among the elite,” in a country where 2.6 million people, out of a total population of 6.4 million, still live in rural areas.

In response to the killings, Lugo has now handed national security and its large budget to the opposition, ahead of the elections.

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz and - -
ASUNCIÓN, Feb 28 2012 (IPS)

A group of landless families occupying rural property claimed by large landowners in eastern Paraguay agreed to move to the Ñacunday National Park, defusing a tense situation.

The latest high-profile dispute over land in Paraguay had threatened to lead to violence. But the 350 families of “carperos” – as they have been dubbed for living in “carpas” or tents – reached an agreement with the government to relocate to the park.

However, the WWF expressed concern over the relocation of the families to a protected area.

Warning about possible environmental damages caused by the move, the organisation urged the government to protect the park.

The families laying claim to the land near the park say it belongs to the state and was never sold but was merely grabbed by landowners.

“The ‘carperos’ should be treated like the wives of ‘malandros’ (criminals); they only respond to beatings,” businessman Tranquilo Favero, the biggest soy producer in Paraguay, told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

The Brazilian-born Favero was referring to the Liga Nacional de Carperos, the association of landless “campesinos” or peasants who had occupied land that the landowner claims as his own, in the eastern Paraguayan province of Alto Paraná.

His diatribe poured fuel on the fire in the conflict, which flared up in November, giving rise to fears of direct confrontations between poor campesinos and large soy producers in that area who are known as “brasiguayos” because they are either Brazilian-born or descendants of Brazilians.

Experts say the roots of the problem go back to the granting of huge swathes of land to members of the military and friends of those in power, especially during the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), which aggravated the already extreme social inequality in this landlocked South American country of 6.3 million people.

“There is no other solution to the land problem than the legalisation of land ownership, especially in the cases of large extensions of land,” Ramón Fogel, a sociologist, told IPS. “The government has been unable to live up to its promise of land reform, because it has been blocked by the legislature and judiciary, which generally go against poor Paraguayans.”

Land reform was one of the key campaign promises of centre-left President Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop elected as the leader of a broad alliance of political parties and social movements, whose five-year term began in August 2008.

Paraguay is the Latin American country with the greatest concentration of land ownership. According to the last national agricultural census, a full 77 percent of the country’s fertile land is controlled by just one percent of all landowners. Meanwhile, small farmers, who represent 40 percent of the population, own a mere five percent of all farmland.

Fogel said one of the main reasons for the growing pressure by campesinos is the fact that there are doubts about the land ownership of at least 30 percent of Paraguay’s territory of 406,000 square km.

The problem with land titles and the unequal distribution of land is especially associated with the dictatorship of Stroessner, who belonged to the Colorado Party, and the 14 years of Colorado Party governments that followed his overthrow – the period described as Paraguay’s transition to democracy.

The dictatorship awarded military, business and Colorado Party cronies thousands of hectares of land belonging to the government and to poor campesinos, many of whom lacked title deeds to the small farms that had been in their families for generations. Numerous peasant and indigenous communities were violently displaced.

The conflict over land is one of the biggest pending challenges inherited from the dictatorship, says the report by the Truth and Justice Commission (CVJ) created by law in 2003 to investigate the human rights abuses committed since 1954.

Of the eight million hectares distributed between 1954 and 2003 – the period covered by the CVJ – 64 percent was illegally acquired.

“The delay in addressing the demands of poor campesinos and the increasing penetration of Brazilians in Paraguayan territory, displacing indigenous people from the land they have been granted, are other aspects that are aggravating the conflict,” the report adds.

Luis Aguayo, secretary general of the Mesa Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (MCNOC), an umbrella group of campesino organisations, agrees that the conflict in Ñacunday shows that “the regularisation of land ownership can not be put off any longer.

“A land register has to be built up, but the soy producers are opposed to it because they have land that is irregularly owned. The border protection law (prohibiting foreigners from owning land near the border) should also be enforced,” he said.

In November, the justice system began to carry out land surveys under instructions from the National Institute of Rural and Land Development (INDERT), at the request of the carperos.

On Feb. 23, after several rounds of negotiations, the government threatened to evict the carperos. But they then reached an agreement for the families to relocate to the national park.

The Paraguayan economy posted record growth of 14.5 percent in 2010, driven by the boom in farm exports. But the World Bank projects growth of just four percent this year.

According to recent statistics from the Paraguayan chamber of exporters of grains and oilseeds (CAPECO), soy covers more than 2.6 million hectares, or 60 percent of Paraguay’s farmland.

The president of the Paraguayan association of producers of soy, oilseeds and grains (APS), Francisco Regis Mereles, told IPS that the land disputes would have a major impact on soy producers. “The future looks complicated for the productive sector,” he complained.

The businessman said that in order to solve the problem of land tenure, control over the real estate sector should be given to the municipal authorities, and a hi-tech system for identifying rural property and its owners should be implemented by the municipal governments.

The agribusiness sector accuses the government of being an accomplice to Victoriano López, one of the leaders of the carperos, who says the land the families were occupying in Ñacunday belongs to the state and he has the documents to prove it.

“That’s why we are demanding that the land be transferred to us, because we have documents collected over the space of years in our work as a community commission,” López told IPS.

He said that in the Alto Paraná region alone there are more than 543,000 hectares of land that the state never sold, but which was grabbed by large landowners.

Excerpt:

“I want my own computer so that I can talk to my cousins who live in Italy,” says eight-year-old Camila Ojeda, sitting in front of a computer monitor on a bus that acts as a mobile cybercafé in the Paraguayan capital.

The Oguatava (“walking” in Guaraní, an official language in Paraguay) Mobile Telecentre visits low-income neighbourhoods (barrios) offering access to the new information and communication technologies (ICT).

Camila Ojeda and friends watch a video on computer monitors in a bus converted into a cybercafé. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

Like Ojeda, who attends the Carlos Antonio López school, at least 5,000 children from the barrios of Loma Pytâ, Bañado Norte and Zeballos Cué in Asunción, and settlements further afield like Limpio, in Central department (province) and Villa Hayes in Bajo Chaco, have acquired computer literacy on this bus, the most eye-catching part of the community telecentres project run since 2005 by the cooperative radio station Radio Viva 90.1 FM.

Here, Ojeda has learned to do her school homework on the computer, which makes it easy “to see a lot of information at the same time”. When IPS arrived in the Loma Pytâ neighbourhood, she and her classmates were amusing themselves watching a video on the importance of hand washing, simultaneously displayed on the bus’s 17 monitors.

Her teacher, Nancy Ruiz, says that pupils who learn to use the computers perform much better in communication and mathematics, their work is better presented and they express themselves more fluently.

“Having access to technology opens their minds,” Ruiz told IPS as she watched the schoolchildren’s behaviour in front of the monitors.

According to the 2009-2010 Mercosur Human Development Report, barely five percent of Paraguay’s 6.4 million people have access to the internet, the lowest proportion in the Mercosur bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Only 14.9 percent of young men aged 15-29 have access to ICT, and 13.8 percent of young women in the same age group.

Telecentres have opened a window on ICT not only for children and adolescents, but also for adults.

“In these past six years of work, the project has taken technology to more than 14,000 people of all ages,” social communicator Zunilda Acosta, coordinator of the community telecentres programme for Radio Viva, told IPS.

But why would a radio station be interested in promoting the use of other media?

This “cooperative citizen’s radio station” came up with the idea in order to promote the democratisation of communications, a commitment it assumed as the sole representative of Paraguay at the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, in November 2005.

One of the documents adopted at that summit, the Tunis Commitment, states “ICTs are making it possible for a vastly larger population than at any time in the past to join in sharing and expanding the base of human knowledge.”

Thanks to Radio Viva’s efforts, seven community telecentres have been established in the Asunción barrios of Puerto Botánico, Zeballos Cué, Loma Pytâ and Bañado Norte.

The telecentres were provided with equipment by Radio Viva, but community leaders in each barrio, usually members of the neighbourhood councils, administer them, set their opening hours and regulate the number of users. An estimated 2,000 people a year come to them to use the internet.

Acosta never ceases to be amazed every time she views the telecentres’ web sites on social networks, because, she says, “I find all my neighbours from Puerto Botánico (a barrio on the banks of the Paraguay river) surfing the internet, which never happened six years ago when we started the project.”

Local people served by the telecentres now appreciate that they need technology to improve their quality of life. “Many young people have landed a job through the social networks, and have realised how very useful the internet is in creating better opportunities,” Acosta said.

The project had start-up support from the Swiss and Finnish cooperation agencies. At present it is supported through agreements signed with the state telephone company COPACO and the National Electricity Administration (ANDE).

Radio Viva is an initiative of the independent Asociación Trinidad (Trinity Association for Citizenship, Culture and Development), which proclaims that “radio broadcasting, as the publicly spoken word, is an exercise in freedom of expression.”

In Loma Pytâ the computer class is over, and the pupils get off the mobile telecentre. Camila Ojeda realises she didn’t manage to search for certain information and she crosses her arms and bows her head in dejection. But she is all smiles again as soon as she is told that the computer bus will be back next week.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Nov 23 2010 (IPS)

“I go out with my cart and collect plastic bottles, cardboard, paper, plastic bags; that is my work,” said Laura Cardozo, proud member of a recycling group that works the Paraguayan capital’s streets.

Karen Ríos and fellow Asunción recyclers. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz

“We decided to organise so that our demands would be stronger, because we are always ignored,” said Karen Ríos, coordinator of the group.

Their gathering site is a chapel in the Banco San Miguel neighbourhood, on the banks of the Paraguayan River. It is a residential and recreational area of Asunción, and home to some 300 families. The area is also known as Bañado Norte (North Marsh) because it is a flood zone.

This is where the recycling association was formed two years ago.

It began with 17 people, and has grown to 40 — 35 are women. The female presence is reflected in the board, which has only one man, the trustee.

One of the main motives for organising was that the workers felt exploited by intermediaries, the companies that purchased the collected materials to sell wholesale.

“We didn’t have a fixed price, but since we organised ourselves we demand respect for a amount determined by our producers,” explained Ríos.

Nevertheless, their incomes are still meagre.

Currently, for one kilogram of plastics they are paid the equivalent of 31 cents on the dollar, while for a kilo of cardboard it is just seven cents.

Mutual cooperation was another reason to come together as a group. To deal with emergencies, such as problems with the carts they use to transport the materials, the members receive economic aid to help them get out of the predicament.

“The association covers the total cost of repairs, but the individual is responsible for paying back 50 percent of that sum, which can be in payments over time,” said treasurer Benita Falcón.

According to its statutes, the owners of animal-drawn carts pay one dollar a month, other carts 30 cents per month, and those who collect and carry their recyclables in sacks, 20 cents per month.

Coordinator Ríos believes that above all, the association has one fundamental objective: to improve the quality of life of every one of its members.

As she spoke with IPS, Ríos, 27, a single mother of children ages five and seven, quickly and expertly separated out bottles and cardboard. She said her immediate hope is for her family “to enjoy happy holidays” in December.

She does not think about seeking other work, but she does hope that people stop treating her and her colleagues “as if we were nothing, that they won’t discriminate against us, and that they stop calling us ‘street people’.”

“I hope that when we arrive at their homes they won’t hide from us, or deny us a glass of water, because we are human beings who instead of stealing are sacrificing to provide food for our families,” she said, without missing a beat as she sorted.

“We all have hopes and dreams. Day to day, I fight so that my kids don’t go through the same things I did, so they have a decent future. That’s what I’m fighting for,” she said, before shifting the topic away from the personal to underscore that everyone believes that the Association’s work is producing results.

Earlier this year, in a series of meetings with Asunción municipal officials, the workers set up a programme that allows the Association to collect recyclable waste during and after various public events.

Asunción, with a population of just over a half-million people, generates about 1,000 tonnes of waste daily, of which 95 percent goes to the Cateura municipal landfill.

According to figures from the government’s planning office, the average rate of solid waste production in urban areas across Paraguay in 2002 was about one kilo per person per day.

There are more and more recycling workers on the streets and in the landfills. In the area surrounding the Cateura landfill, located south of Asunción, an estimated 1,000 “gancheros” live and work, known for the hooks, “ganchos”, they use to manipulate the materials. These workers are at high-risk for health problems.

In Paraguay, one of the poorest countries and one with highest economic disparities in the Americas, about 40 percent of its 6.3 million people live in relative or extreme poverty.

“The work of the recyclers in the streets is important because it reduces the volume of waste going to the dump by five percent,” Asunción city councillor Carlos Galarza told IPS.

Thanks to their effort, materials that can be re-used are not wasted, and the reduction of trash could reach 10 percent if the city had a recycling plant, he said.

But the Asunción city government has been talking about a recycling plant — without taking action — for such a long time that Galarza didn’t hesitate to refer to its “apathy” towards the problem.

“There is no follow-up by the municipal administration. There have been sporadic attempts to set up recycling programmes in recent years, but none were successful,” said the councillor.

An additional problem is the lack of a legal framework to regulate the work of the recyclers, or rights guarantees, or their obligations.

To ease hardships and to press for institutional guarantees, the Banco San Miguel recyclers are joining efforts with similar groups working in other residential zones along the river.

This process of extending the organising efforts has the support of the non- governmental Peace and Justice Service Paraguay, which is developing a training and legal advising programme for the recyclers.

Through workshops, the recyclers learn about human rights, gender equality and community leadership, aimed at boosting self-esteem and helping them to recognise that they have the same rights as all Paraguayans.

“The authorities have the obligation to listen and provide solutions to our complaints,” said Association treasurer Falcón, who sadly noted that many segments of society continue to reject the recyclers.

But she has channelled that pain, turning it into a song to motivate her colleagues. With a talent for singing and songwriting, she uses music to portray the daily — and nightly — experiences behind the cart, with lyrics sung to a slow and somewhat melancholy tune.

“Dawn is breaking / the sun is rising / I am walking; I go slowly with my cart / I recycle everything that I find / my cardboard and my plastic / a recycler am I / I recycle the disdain and strange glances from the people,” sings the group resolutely before dispersing to begin their day.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Oct 28 2010 (IPS)

Paraguay’s economy is currently growing at the fastest rate in Latin America, due to by growing demand and high prices for agricultural products, especially soy, which is driving the expansion. But the question is whether the benefits of the boom will trickle down to the poor majority.

Soybean fields in Paraguay. Credit:

The Central Bank reported that GDP for the first half of this year grew by 11.7 percent compared to the same period in 2009 — and by 12.2 percent in the second quarter of 2010, from the same quarter last year.

“The country has an open economy, and over 80 percent of GDP is generated by exports and imports,” analyst Lila Moliner told IPS, explaining the basis for Paraguay’s economic growth.

The main driving force is a record soybean harvest of 7.5 million tonnes in 2009-2010, 1.5 million tonnes more than the previous season, the Soy Producers Association said Monday. Revenue from this year’s soybean exports is expected to reach 2.3 billion dollars.

Paraguay is the world’s fourth soybean exporter, after Brazil, the United States and Argentina.

Economist Manuel Alarcón said good climate conditions played an important part in the record output levels, as did investment in agriculture.

In 2009, GDP shrank 3.8 percent, mainly due to a 25 percent contraction in agriculture caused by bad weather and the global economic crisis.

Both domestic and international forecasts indicate the economy will return to normal in 2011, with a growth rate of around five percent, only a few tenths of a percentage point higher than the average growth of Paraguay’s GDP in the last six years, not counting 2009.

But social scientists and economists are not optimistic that this boom will reach the majority of the population, in a country which ranks along with Bolivia as the poorest in South America, and which is marked by appalling social inequalities.

“This good patch is no bad thing; the pity is, we do not have a solid social protection system linked to the farming and livestock sector, and we lack a strong domestic market,” Moliner said.

She pointed to low agricultural wages, which go hand-in-hand with reduced social security and health coverage.

In this country of 6.2 million people, the economically active population is close to three million, of whom only 17 percent have social security coverage. Some 30 percent of jobs are in the primary sector.

Added to this, the farm industry contributes very little to tax revenue, so that the current economic boom is not reflected in the state’s coffers.

In fact, the tax burden in Paraguay is the lowest in the Americas, at 12.4 percent, which means that many individuals become rich while the state is poor, a distortion that the IMF itself and other global and regional bodies insist must be corrected in order to improve the social situation in the country.

In particular, the IMF and other global organisations say that Paraguay must urgently abandon its position as the only country in Latin America that does not levy personal income tax.

A bill to introduce personal income tax is bogged down in Congress, where the moderate leftwing government of President Fernando Lugo is in the minority and the rightwing Colorado Party, which he ousted from power after 61 years of uninterrupted rule, is resisting the measure.

Moliner pointed out that taxes on agricultural earnings currently stand at just 2.5 percent, in spite of the vast areas of land devoted to agro-exports.

According to the 2008 Agricultural Census, soybean cultivation occupies more than 2.4 million hectares, out of a total of 3.3 million hectares under crops.

“This economic growth has swelled interest on bank loans and profits for big importers of agricultural machinery and inputs, but it has not had the impact on workers that it should have had,” Moliner said.

This month, Lugo again underlined the need for Congress to pass the personal income tax bill, “because it will bring in the revenue needed to cover social spending,” he said. But the Senate, dominated by the Colorado Party, has already voted to postpone the introduction of the tax until 2013.

The legislature is also putting obstacles in the way of the government’s proposed budget of eight billion dollars for 2011, which is one billion dollars higher than in 2010, partly to honour debts contracted during the 2009 crisis, as well as to pay for new social programmes.

Paraguay is riven by social inequalities. Twenty percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, on incomes of less than one dollar a day, and another 36 percent live below the poverty line.

Meanwhile, 80 percent of the land is owned by just one percent of the population. To speak of an economic boom means very little to most Paraguayans, in spite of the country leading the continent in terms of GDP growth.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Oct 7 2010 (IPS)

Just two months before the austral summer season begins, Lake Ypacaraí, centrepiece of Paraguay’s campaign to promote tourism, has become the centre of attention for its polluted waters.

Garbage is an eyesore on this Paraguayan lakeshore. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

The main attraction in San Bernardino, which has been dubbed “summer city,” is this 90-square-km lake. But it is no longer the blue jewel evoked in the song “Recuerdos de Ypacaraí” (Memories of Ypacaraí).

“Although we’ve been working for a long time with the local municipalities on reducing pollution, the waste keeps coming,” José Luis Casaccia, the government’s environmental prosecutor, told Tierramérica.

The lake is surrounded by at least 10 cities in the Central and Cordillera provinces, in Paraguay’s southeastern region.

The common denominator of those cities is the lack of sanitation systems. Sewage and wastewater run untreated into nearby watersheds, including the San Lorenzo and Jukyry rivers, and into area wetlands.

At this time of year, furthermore, green algae flourish along the shoreline.

“The algae is the product of excessive nutrients and lack of oxygen in the lake resulting from the over-accumulation of mud and sewage sediments,” said Casaccia.

In 2005, the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office found that about 100 industries were engaged in activities that harmed Lake Ypacaraí, which was declared a national park in May 1990.

The protection associated with park status was not enough to stop the effects of urbanisation or the damage caused by industries lacking adequate infrastructure, or the impacts of tourism in places like San Bernardino and Areguá.

Drastic measures are needed, according to Casaccia, who is a former environment minister. But the municipal authorities don’t see the problem as urgent.

San Bernardino’s Mayor Berna Espinoza said in a Tierramérica interview that he doesn’t think the situation of the lake is so serious.

“It has always been like this. The algae, for example, appear in hot weather; they rise to the surface because of the heat of the sun. They are not toxic, like some say,” said Espinoza.

Gustavo Florentín, president of the Paraguay Environmental Awareness Foundation, warns about the use of cleaning products, such as detergents with certain ingredients, which end up in the lake.

“The green appearance of the water is due to the excess of nutrients in the lake from household and industrial runoff with high content of sodium triphosphate,” Florentín told Tierramérica.

The chemical compound elevates the concentration of nitrogen and phosphate, which in turn drives the presence of organisms like algae.

There are plenty of plans for cleaning up Lake Ypacaraí, including some drafted by foreign experts.

“But there is always the drawback of the local share” in the costs for the plans, said Casaccia. The Paraguayan government was to contribute some 10 million dollars for a recovery strategy whose total cost was 60 million dollars.

The Ministry of Public Works presented a plan in August for the recovery and clean-up of the lake’s watershed, which is to be financed by the Korean corporation Samsung, as part of a corporate social responsibility policy. The budget for that initiative is five million dollars.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

Increasingly murky waters and the proliferation of trash along the shore await visitors to Paraguay's Lake Ypacaraí.

Garbage is evident on Paraguayan city beach. - Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

The state of Lake Ypacaraí is cause for concern because it is a major destination for domestic tourism, especially in the municipality of San Bernardino, 48 kilometers from the capital.

The main attraction in San Bernardino, with its title of “summer city,” is this 90-square-km lake, which is no longer the blue jewel evoked in the song “Recuerdos de Ypacaraí” (Memories of Ypacaraí).

“Although we've been working for a long time with the local municipalities on reducing pollution, the waste keeps coming,” José Luis Casaccia, the environmental prosecutor, told Tierramérica.

The lake is surrounded by at least 10 cities in the Central and Cordillera provinces, in Paraguay's southeastern region.

The common denominator of those cities is the lake of sanitation systems. The sewage and wastewater runs untreated into nearby watersheds, including the San Lorenzo and Jukyry rivers, and area wetlands.

At this time of year, furthermore, green algae flourish along the shoreline.

“The algae is the product of excessive nutrients and lack of oxygen in the lake resulting from the over-accumulation of mud and sewage sediments,” said Casaccia.

In 2005, the Environmental Prosecutor's Office found that about 100 industries were engaged in activities that harmed Lake Ypacaraí, which was declared a national park in May 1990.

But the protection associated with park status was not enough to stop the effects of urbanization and industries lacking adequate infrastructure, or the impacts of tourism in places like San Bernardino and Areguá.

Drastic measures are needed, according to Casaccia, who is a former environment minister. But the municipal authorities don't see the problem as urgent.

San Bernardino's Mayor Berna Espinoza told Tierramérica that the situation of the lake is not so serious.

“It has always been like this. The algae, for example, appear when it is hot; they rise to the surface because of the heat of the sun. They are toxic, like some say,” said Espinoza.

Gustavo Florentín, president of the Paraguay Environmental Awareness Foundation, warned about the use of cleaning products, such as detergents with certain ingredients, that end up in the lake.

“The green appearance of the water is due to the excess of nutrients in the lake from runoff of household and industrial waste with high content of sodium triphosphate,” Florentín told Tierramérica.

The chemical compound elevates the concentration of nitrogen and phosphate, which in turn drives the presence of organisms like algae.

There are plenty of plans for cleaning up Lake Ypacaraí, including some drafted by foreign experts.

“There was always the drawback of the local share,” said Casaccia. The Paraguayan government was to contribute some 10 million dollars for a recovery strategy whose total cost was 60 million dollars.

The Ministry of Public Works presented a plan in August for the recovery and clean-up of the lake's watershed, which is to be financed by the Korean corporation Samsung, as part of a corporate social responsibility policy. The budget for that initiative is five million dollars.

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Aug 13 2010 (IPS)

Small-scale agriculture based on the principles of solidarity and cooperation is the only way to guarantee food sovereignty in Latin America, said peasant and indigenous activists meeting in the Paraguayan capital this week.

While the concept of food security refers to the availability of, and access to, sufficient food, food sovereignty — a concept introduced by small farmer movements — puts the emphasis on how food is produced and on the right of each country to determine its own agricultural policies in order to ensure development and guarantee the right to food.

During one of the conferences at the Fourth Americas Social Forum, running Aug. 11-15 in Asunción, the focus was on “food sovereignty and struggles for territory and agrarian reform”. The panelists included representatives of civil society groups from Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala and Paraguay.

Referring to the struggle between the agribusiness and agroecological models of farming, the panelists said small farms are the only way to ensure healthy and sustainable diets and food sovereignty.

Dolores Sales with the Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina de Guatemala, a national association of indigenous and peasant farmers from Guatemala, said the fight for the defence of the right to land must become a top priority focus of the agenda in the Americas.

“This should be a struggle taken up by everyone, above and beyond the impressive speeches,” said Sales, who pointed out that many indigenous communities are threatened by the expansion of monoculture crops and tree plantations, which are endangering human sustenance.

Roberto Baggio with Brazil’s landless movement, the MST, said agrarian reform, food sovereignty and agroecology are essential elements of the proposed model of grassroots, sovereign agriculture.

And in order to bring this about, he said, certain things are essential: the democratisation of access to property and production, and the development of an economy that is sustainable and based on solidarity and cooperation.

“When we talk about agrarian reform, we’re talking about making access to property more democratic and laws that make it possible to take action, because a good land reform programme is not sufficient, if concrete actions are not taken,” he said.

Another point mentioned by the Brazilian activist is the importance of agroecology as the basis for small-scale farming aimed at generating food in an autonomous, healthy manner, without toxic pesticides and fertilisers.

Luis Andrango, head of the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras (FENOCIN), a national confederation of peasant, indigenous and black farmers of Ecuador, said that despite the land reform processes attempted in Ecuador in 1964 and 1973, in the last few decades governments have only backed the agro-export model, which has resulted in increasing concentration of land ownership.

A full 75 percent of arable land in Ecuador is dedicated to just five agro-export crops, which “have supposedly created jobs, but the only thing they have left are higher levels of land concentration, pollution and exploitation in the countryside.”

But the Ecuadorean rural leader said that despite the undermining of the family farm, four of the most widely consumed farm products on the local market are still largely produced by peasant farmers.

For example, 64 percent of the potatoes consumed by Ecuadoreans are produced by small farmers, along with 42 percent of the milk, 46 percent of the corn, and 48 percent of the rice.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 80 percent of the food consumed in the developing world is produced by small farmers.

But the agro-export model has turned small farmers in Latin America into paid rural workers, who earn low wages and work in poor labour conditions, said Andrango.

“They continue to deceive us” with arguments that agribusiness generates jobs, “but the truth is that peasant labour is gradually being replaced by machinery,” he said, citing the case of Chile, where 60 percent of all fruit is produced by just three transnational corporations.

Andrango said that what is needed is an agrarian reform effort that not only involves the redistribution of land, but also introduces reforms with regard to elements that have been privatised along with land, like seeds, water, credit and farm insurance.

Paraguayan sociology professor Tomás Palau called for the questions of food and land reform to be included in the political debate.

He said food security is a problem of the loss of territorial and cultural sovereignty, and noted that in Paraguay, 20 percent of the land is foreign-owned, mainly by agribusiness interests.

The Americas Social Forum ends Sunday with a speech by leftwing Bolivian President Evo Morales, possibly accompanied by Paraguay’s centre-left leader Fernando Lugo, who celebrates his second anniversary in office that day.

However, Lugo’s participation has not been confirmed, because he is under treatment for recently diagnosed lymphatic cancer.

Uruguayan President Pepe Mujica, a former Tupamaro guerrilla, is also expected to attend the gathering, which has included nearly 400 workshops, lectures, panels, conferences and cultural activities organised by some 600 participating local and international groups and movements

The Americas Social Forum forms part of the regional activities of the World Social Forum, the world’s largest gathering of organisations and movements opposed to capitalist globalisation.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Aug 11 2010 (IPS)

The Fourth Americas Social Forum kicks off Wednesday in the Paraguayan capital with a colourful march through the streets, as some 12,000 people prepare to take part in the activities organised by 50 local groups and 550 organisations from Argentina to Canada.

Preparing for Fourth Americas Social Forum Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

“The Forum is a statement by social movements from the entire continent, to reaffirm the changes in this country, strengthen democracy, and discuss the region’s common problems,” Fernando Rojas of the Paraguayan NGO Decidamos (Let’s Decide), who is a member of the organising committee, told IPS.

He stressed the significance of the fact that Paraguay was chosen to host the five-day event, whose earlier editions were held in Ecuador (2004), Venezuela (2006) and Guatemala (2008).

“The choice of the country where the Americas Social Forum is held has to do with the process of change — that is why Paraguay was chosen,” Alessandra Ceregatti of the World March of Women commented to IPS.

She was referring to the election of former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo in 2008, who put an end to 61 years of rule by the rightwing Colorado Party.

“There is a lot of interest in the gathering, especially from abroad,” said Rojas, who pointed out that 70 percent of the activities have been organised by groups from other countries or international movements.

The personalities who plan to attend the Americas Social Forum include Bolivian President Evo Morales, Argentine political scientist Atilio Borón, the executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Emir Sader, and two Nobel Peace Prize-winners: Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú and Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

Although he was just diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, Lugo also plans to address the activists. His government has declared the meeting a matter of national interest.

Morales and Lugo will be key-note speakers at the central conference on the issues of national sovereignty and regional integration.

Other major issues on the agenda are Latin America and the global crisis, threats and alternatives; the power of ideas, knowledge and the media; the concept of “living well” and the rights of Mother Earth; and militarisation.

The stands of the thematic exhibits and the camps of peasant farmer and youth groups are set up in the Consejo Nacional de Deportes sports complex in the capital.

Rojas said the organisation of the Forum has had a major impact nationwide, with social movements and grassroots groups working in a coordinated fashion to plan activities in 15 different spots around the country.

Since the first World Social Forum, conceived as an alternative to international meetings pursuing free-market economics, was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001, local, thematic and regional gatherings like this week’s have been organised in different parts of the world.

“Our people and our nation are opening up to this experience, to share and to debate, which will help deepen and strengthen our democratic process,” Rojas said.

The sign welcoming participants to the Forum reads “the Americas are still mobilising against militaristic policies and the criminalisation (of social protest), patriarchal and racist violence, neoliberal solutions to the crisis, and environmental destruction.”

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jul 14 2010 (IPS)

A year ago, Ramona Pereira was stuck with humdrum domestic drudgery in a rural village in Paraguay. Now she is the leader of a committee of women dairy producers in her community, and at 38 she feels like a new woman.

Ramona Pereira and Aurora Ramos with two other committee members. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

The “tambo”, the term used in the southern cone of South America for a small dairy farm which sells unpackaged milk directly, is run by a partnership of a dozen women working in three shifts.

These women mow and chop hay and mix it with a supplement to provide balanced nutrition for the cows. They milk the cows twice a day, feed them and keep the community “tambo” spic and span, as well as selling the surplus milk that their families do not consume to neighbouring villagers.

Every day they strive to strengthen their committee, named “Jaikove Porlâ Rekávo” (“Aiming for Wellbeing”) in Guaraní, which is spoken by 94 percent of Paraguayans and is an official language, alongside Spanish. The committee was created in August 2009 by 30 women from Aveiro, ultimately reduced to 12 partners, all of whom have children.

“There are many reasons why women drop out, but it is mainly because of the pressure they face at home,” said Blanca Toledo, an agrarian extension worker with the extension service of the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry.

Toledo, who advises the committee, was referring to resistance by husbands who are opposed to their wives developing interests outside the home, let alone an independent economic activity.

“It’s not easy, but we are confident in our work,” Pereira said as she recalled cases of women leaving the group.

She said with pride that she is lucky, because her husband not only approves of her work, but also willingly lends a hand when one of the partners is unable to work her shift.

“It’s no trouble at all to help mix the feed for the cows,” said Domingo Gavilán, who lives within a stone’s throw of the tambo. He also joins in work to improve the buildings, such as repairing the stable’s walls and roof.

“Some men still don’t like their wives to concern themselves with anything other than caring for the family. I don’t agree with that,” said Gavilán, standing to one side of the barn and avoiding the limelight because “this is the women’s business.”

“My wife has changed, she is happier and we have a better relationship than before; we talk to each other more. Times have changed, and women have changed too,” he said. Some time ago he gave up agricultural work to become a street vendor in Itá, he said.

The women took up the challenge of becoming dairy producers at the suggestion of the agrarian extension service (DEAg), part of the National Programme for Family Agriculture.

The core principles of the programme are diversifying production, self- management, farm product marketing and food security. Food security is an area of work reserved only for peasant women who have children.

The goal is for these mothers to devote a small plot on their land to plant a vegetable garden for their family, or to establish a dairy. These enterprises are aimed at increasing family consumption and generating a surplus for direct local sale, or for sale to larger farming businesses.

Within the food security project, women are given training in areas like food preparation, biodegradable products and recycling.

Jaikove Porâ Rekávo is the first women’s committee to run a dairy farm in the Itá district, located in Central province, the smallest of the 17 provinces in Paraguay but home to 35 percent of the country’s 6.2 million people.

More than half of the Paraguayan population lives off the land, in a country where the economy depends on agriculture and livestock raising, services and tourism. Thirty-six percent of the population lives in poverty, and 20 percent in extreme poverty, surviving on less than a dollar a day.

According to DEAg, there are about 3,000 men and 1,000 women farm producers in Central province, mostly organised in committees. In the Itá district there are 97 committees, 25 of them made up of women.

Committees must fulfil a number of requirements and be recognised by the municipal and provincial authorities and by DEAg, in order to ensure that the projects each of them undertakes are viable.

The women in Aveiro waited several months after forming their committee before the cows arrived. One of their chief problems was finding a suitable area of land, which was solved when a neighbour loaned them a large plot.

Thanks to this, they received five cows and five calves in March. Since then, milk produced in the community dairy is sold unpackaged to villagers, and the income reinvested in the tambo.

The 10 animals are part of an assistance package worth 6,500 dollars, including basic infrastructure and services as well as training.

Toledo said that the basic diet of the 12 families has improved, as previously they drank milk only occasionally. The tambo is expected to start making a profit in November, and a month later product diversification will get under way, in the form of making and selling dairy products like butter and cheese.

Aurora Ramos, a mother of five and another member of the women’s committee, is confident that profits will be earned, but stresses that “at the moment, the main thing is to keep the tambo going.”

Ramos is doubly committed to the project, because she set aside three hectares of her small family farm to grow pasture for the cattle.

The four women working their shift during IPS’ visit said it is all a novelty to them: becoming entrepreneurs and raising livestock, operating by collective self-management and marketing their product.

“Sometimes we wonder what we have let ourselves in for,” Ramos said, “but we all encourage and support each other when there are difficulties.”

Pereira added with conviction, “we want to grow, this is our challenge, and together we are managing to do so,” as she filled the mangers with supplemented fodder.

One of the cows has already delivered the first calf born on the tambo. “When that happened, we felt a bonanza was on its way, even if it’s just a silly idea of ours,” she said, blushing and laughing at once.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Jun 29 2010 (IPS)

Of the many things that are not within the reach of everyone in Paraguay, safe drinking water is the one the indigenous population longs for most.

Neira Esquivel and other Sanapaná women have to walk a long way for a little water. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

Esquivel travelled to Asunción with leaders of her community to demand water, food and formal recognition of their land rights from the National Indigenous Institute.

These journeys to the capital, more than 400 kilometres away, are a permanent feature of their lives. They go especially to voice their water needs.

Communities in the Chaco region, a semi-arid expanse of dense thorn scrubland in northern and western Paraguay, suffer most because in addition to the lack of infrastructure for water supply, droughts are common.

In the area around Karanda’y Puku, which is home to 70 families, “it hasn’t rained for seven months; our reservoir is dry and the reserve tank is empty,” said Esquivel.

Average rainfall in the Chaco — an area of over 247,000 square kilometres, covering 61 percent of the national territory — is 400 millimetres a year, and there is little surface water, while the groundwater is salty.

The sparsely populated Chaco is home to half of Paraguay’s 108,000 indigenous people, who represent just over 1.7 percent of the country’s population of 6.2 million, 75 percent of which is made up of people of mixed European and indigenous descent.

Water supply is a longstanding problem in the Chaco. Every year, there are shortages in the dry season and an emergency has to be declared to cope with the crisis, Santiago Bobadilla, an expert with the non-governmental Tierraviva organisation which works for the rights of native peoples, told IPS.

Most indigenous villages have reservoirs for rainwater catchment, created by digging hollows in the earth, but they dry out when the rains fail.

“The indigenous people are constantly asking for help. Water supplies sent by truck are only palliative, and the water is not of drinking quality,” Bobadilla said.

The Ministry of National Emergency sends the trucks, but responsibility for water distribution falls largely on local governments. According to indigenous leaders, the aid does not reach the remotest communities.

Sixty percent of indigenous households, comprising some 65,000 people, use surface water or rainwater as their sources of supply because they are not connected to piped water.

These figures are from the report “Actualización y Análisis Sectorial de Agua Potable y Saneamiento de Paraguay” (Update and Analysis of Drinking Water and Sewerage in Paraguay), published early this year by government bodies and financed by the Spain-UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Trust Fund.

Fifty percent of the rural population has little to no access to piped water, the report says. Nineteen percent of Paraguayans live in extreme poverty.

According to the Indigenous Household Survey 2008, nearly 38 percent of native families get their water from reservoirs and rivers, 21 percent from wells, 34 percent from groundwater and only six percent from piped supplies.

When there is drought in the Chaco, women have the task of trudging long distances in search of water. “We walk many kilometres, and we often have to fill our containers from other people’s properties,” said Esquivel, referring to farms belonging to Mennonite communities.

In this inhospitable region as elsewhere, development makes all the difference. The Mennonites who settled here in the late 1920s now number 30,000 people, organised in large cooperatives which control 75 percent of the national dairy industry.

They are equipped with the infrastructure needed for rainwater catchment and storage, deep-well extraction of groundwater, and desalination.

In contrast, the lack of clean water causes unending health problems among the indigenous people, especially the children, who also lack proper healthcare.

In the view of Celso Zavala, a leader of the Enxet indigenous people, one of the main problems is that health centres are so far away.

“On the one hand, we take water directly from the streams, which causes problems, especially among the children; and on the other hand, we have no access to healthcare,” Zavala told IPS.

The document analysing drinking water and sewerage in Paraguay stresses that health care provision must be urgently improved to raise indigenous people’s quality of life, and recommends that it be provided free, and in a way suitable to the customs and traditions of native people.

It also highlights the need to promote environmental and health education, to reduce the risks of contamination and water-borne diseases, like diarrhoea.

“We come to Asunción because we have needs: we have no food, we have no water,” Esquivel repeated before returning to her village.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Jun 17 2010 (IPS)

Extensive cattle farming in northwestern Paraguay is the leading cause of deforestation in the Gran Chaco, one of the world’s leading regions in biodiversity and South America’s second largest forested area, after the Amazon.

Aerial view of expanding agricultural frontier in Paraguay's Chaco region. Credit: Courtesy of the Guyra Paraguay Association

The association’s study also found that in the first quarter of this year, 18,000 hectares of forested land disappeared from this rich ecosystem, located in the centre of South America, with 80 percent of that loss occurring inside Paraguayan territory.

The Gran Chaco is a semi-arid expanse of dense thorn scrubland that covers more than one million square kilometres: 25 percent in Paraguay, 62 percent in Argentina, 12 percent in Bolivia, and the remaining one percent in Brazil.

Eladio García, director of integrated environmental monitoring at SEAM, told Tierramérica that government regulation of the area is difficult due to the lack of resources.

“There is a complete lack of awareness about respect for natural resources,” said García, who noted the private landowners’ violations of the country’s existing land-use and land management laws.

Forestry Law 422/73, which regulates management and use of renewable natural resources, establishes that 50 percent of forests must be maintained on farms that are in preservation zones, and 25 percent on farms that are not.

The Pojoauju Association, an umbrella of dozens of non-governmental organisations, issued a statement earlier this month urging an “ecological pause” to logging in the area in order to establish a balance between economic production and forest preservation.

The association’s argument is that “the landowners and the agro-export companies are deforesting areas of the Chaco to transform the land towards livestock production and genetically modified soybean cultivation.”

“They are carrying out a process of grid-mapping the Chaco for a system that already destroyed the natural resources in the eastern region” of Paraguay, Víctor Benítez, an expert with the organisation Alter Vida, told Tierramérica.

The farmers in this process fail to take into account the location of fragile areas of biodiversity, protected areas or “uncontacted” indigenous groups, he added.

According to SEAM figures, there are just one million hectares remaining of the 3.5 million hectares of forest that existed in the 1970s in the eastern region, which encompasses 14 of the country’s 17 provinces, and where 97 percent of the 6.2 million Paraguayans live.

“It isn’t a call for a zero-deforestation law, but rather for the government, through its institutions, to declare an ecological pause,” said Benítez, though he did not specify how long the moratorium should last.

Law 2524 was enacted in 2004, prohibiting activities that transformed or converted forest-covered areas in the eastern region. The policy remained in force until 2006, and was then extended to 2013.

With that legislative tool, Paraguay was able to reduce logging 85 percent in that area, but it pushed farm expansion to the Chaco, as part of the development dream for that region.

A SEAM investigation found that most of the rural landowners of deforested areas are Brazilian, and are located in ancestral indigenous territory, in the extreme north of the Chaco.

Benítez believes there must be dialogue between the farmers and ranchers and the institutions representing the indigenous communities’ social, environmental and cultural interests.

About 51 percent of the national indigenous population — some 108,000 people — lives in the Chaco or western region, which covers 60 percent of the 406,752 square km of Paraguayan territory.

The Ayoreo community is one of the principal indigenous groups of the Gran Chaco, numbering about 5,600, with 2,600 in Paraguay and the rest in Bolivia.

The 2009 report “Paraguay: The Ayoreo Case,” prepared by the Amotocodie Initiative and the Native Ayoreo Union of Paraguay, indicates that about 100 of these indigenous peoples still live in the Chaco forests, outside of contact with the rest of Paraguayan society.

“In the Chaco there are areas that are clearly for livestock, to which we have no objection at all, and that is why we are calling for an end to land-use changes in the indigenous zone,” said Benítez.

The 2008 Agricultural Census found that in the western region there were about 3.9 million head of cattle, 37 percent of the national total.

The environmentalists say the responsibility for saving the Paraguayan Chaco lies with the authorities and depends on a commitment from society.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

Paraguayan authorities admit they are powerless to stop the advance of ranching and soy farming into the forests of the Gran Chaco, which his home to more than half of the country's indigenous peoples.

Aerial view of farm expansion in the Paraguayan Chaco. - Courtesy of the Guyra Paraguay Association

The non-governmental Guyra Paraguay Association reported to the Secretariat (ministry) of Environment (SEAM) that deforestation last year totaled 267,000 hectares, 17 percent more than in 2008, just in the northern provinces of Boquerón and Alto Paraguay.

The association's study also found that in the first quarter of this year, 18,000 hectares disappeared in this rich ecosystem, located in the center of South America, with 80 percent of that loss occurring inside Paraguayan territory.

The Gran Chaco covers more than a million square kilometers, 25 percent in Paraguay, 62 percent in Argentina, 12 percent in Bolivia, and the remaining one percent in Brazil.

Eladio García, director of integrated environmental monitoring at SEAM, told Tierramérica that government regulation of the area is difficult due to the lack of resources.

“There is a complete lack of awareness about respect for natural resources,” said García, who noted the private landowners' violations of the country's existing land-use and land management laws.

Forestry Law 422/73, which regulates management and use of renewable natural resources, establishes that 50 percent of forests must be maintained on farms with preservation zones, and 25 percent on those without.

The Pojoauju Association, an umbrella of dozens of non-governmental organizations, issued a statement earlier this month urging an “ecological pause” to logging in the area in order to establish a balance between economic production and forest preservation.

The association's argument is that “the landowners and the agro-export companies are deforesting areas of the Chaco to transform the land towards livestock production and genetically modified soybean cultivation.” “They are carrying out a process of grid-mapping the Chaco for a system that already destroyed the natural resources in the eastern region” of Paraguay, Víctor Benítez, an expert with the organization Alter Vida, told Tierramérica.

The farmers in this process fail to take into account the location of fragile areas of biodiversity, protected areas or “uncontacted” indigenous groups, he added.

According to SEAM figures, there are just one million hectares remaining of the 3.5 million hectares of forest that existed in the 1970s in the eastern region, which encompasses 14 of the country's 17 provinces, and where 97 percent of the 6.2 million Paraguayans live.

“It isn't a call for a zero-deforestation law, but rather that the government, through its institutions, declare an ecological pause,” said Benítez, though he did not specify how long the moratorium should last.

Law 2524 was enacted in 2004, prohibiting activities that transformed or converted forest-covered areas in the eastern region. The policy remained in force until 2006, and was then extended to 2013.

With that legislative tool, Paraguay was able to reduce logging 85 percent in that area, but it pushed farm expansion to the Chaco, as part of the development dream for that region.

A SEAM investigation found that most of the rural landowners of deforested areas are Brazilian, and are located in ancestral indigenous territory, in the extreme north of the Chaco.

Benítez believes there must be dialogue between the farmers and ranchers and the institutions representing the indigenous communities' social, environmental and cultural interests.

About 51 percent of the national indigenous population — some 108,000 people — lives in the Chaco or western region, which covers 60 percent of the 406,752 square kilometers of Paraguayan territory.

The Ayoreo community is one of the principal indigenous groups of the Gran Chaco, numbering about 5,600, with 2,600 in Paraguay and the rest in Bolivia.

The 2009 report “Paraguay: The Ayoreo Case,” drafted by the Amotocodie Initiative and the Native Ayoreo Union of Paraguay, indicates that about 100 of these indigenous peoples still live in the Chaco forests, outside of contact with the rest of Paraguayan society.

“In the Chaco there are areas that are clearly for livestock, to which we have no objection at all, and that is why we are calling for an end to land-use changes in the indigenous zone,” said Benítez.

The 2008 Agricultural Census found that in the western region there were about 3.9 million head of cattle, 37 percent of the national total.

The environmentalists say the responsibility for saving the Paraguayan Chaco lies with the authorities and depends on commitment from citizens.

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, May 6 2010 (IPS)

From passion for football, to football as a profession: many parents in Paraguay are hoping this sport will provide a career for their sons, who flood into football schools with the burden of their dreams — and their parents’ demands — to become sports idols.

Youngsters training at the SC10 football school. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

In the adjacent field, where the over-13s are training, technical demands, skills and expectations begin to take over from simply having fun.

From the stands, a father acting as an impromptu coach is constantly giving his son directions: “Oh, no, you lost it again! That’s no good! You’ve got to stick to the ball!”

This school is a training ground for 180 boys between the ages of seven and 13. Older boys who have what it takes go on to play professionally, with the hope of being selected by a first division Paraguayan club.

“We promote football as a sport, from the perspective that it is healthy fun,” Luis Romero, the head of SC10, told IPS.

Football schools have mushroomed all over Paraguay since 1986, when the national team took part in the Mexico World Cup after a gap of 24 years of failing to qualify for the championship.

One year later, the Paraguayan Association of Children’s Football Schools (APEFI) was created. Dedicated to organising tournaments, it was the first organisation to bring together children’s football centres, Rubén Maldonado, president of the Confederation of Football Schools (COFEFU), told IPS.

The success of the tournaments and the proliferation of football schools led to the creation of the Paraguayan Federation of Football Schools (FEPEFU) in 1991, whose coverage spread from Asunción to the rest of the country. COFEFU, founded in 2002, now has under its umbrella five federations in the metropolitan area of Asunción, including 15,000 children enrolled in 92 football schools.

Maldonado said the phenomenal growth in the number of football schools was boosted by the gradual disappearance of neighbourhood football grounds — improvised pitches on empty plots of land where local youngsters used to play.

These free spaces have almost all disappeared and have been replaced by artificial turf pitches in private establishments.

Another very important positive influence was that Paraguayan players became international football stars and local idols. In 1998, Paraguay classified again for the World Cup held in France, after not making it to the two previous four-yearly Cup tournaments. This time the team was captained by José Luis Chilavert, later named the best goalkeeper in the world.

The 1999 Copa América tournament dazzled young Roque Santacruz, trained in the football school run by Olimpia, one of the foremost Paraguayan clubs. Santacruz went on to make local history when he was transferred to the German team Bayern, in Munich, for seven million dollars.

“Having a son play professionally is every father’s dream, but here in this school we keep our feet on the ground. Our role is to teach the boys and train them,” said Romero.

In Maldonado’s view, “some parents have their eye on becoming millionaires through their children’s success” when they take them to a football school.

The idea of football as a means to fame and fortune caught on rapidly in a country where 36.6 percent of the population of 6.2 million live in poverty.

In fact, except for those run by the professional clubs, most football schools are set up on the initiative of parents’ groups.

SC10 is an exception, as it belongs to Salvador Cabañas, the Paraguayan striker at the 2006 world championship in Germany. His jersey number at the time was 10.

“Salvador is his idol, and that encourages him to train hard,” said Gómez about his son as he watched him dribble up the side of the field.

Whether or not Cabañas will be playing in the World Championship that opens on Jun. 11 in South Africa is still uncertain, following his injury from a gunshot wound to the head in January in Mexico City, where he plays for the América team. The incident caused a huge commotion and a wave of expressions of support from his fans in both countries.

Sports analyst Benicio Martínez told IPS that it was unprecedented for an incident involving a sports star to have such a wide and deep impact throughout society in Paraguay. “Never before has such a mass interest in football been so clearly demonstrated,” he said.

Maldonado highlighted the fact that 90 percent of the Paraguayan national team has come up through the football schools, showing that they work well as a seedbed of future football stars, although “their primary goal is entertainment and discipline for the boys,” he stressed.

Cabañas is an example of the process. He trained at a football school in Itauguá, a small town 30 kilometres south of Asunción.

Now he is recovering in Argentina, and there is no official word yet whether he is to be excluded from the Paraguayan team that will go to South Africa.

Meanwhile Iván and Pablo, aged 13 and 14 respectively, are training vigorously. They are the most outstanding in a group of promising youngsters at the SC10 school, whose dream is to represent their country in a future world championship, like the founder of their school.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Apr 28 2010 (IPS)

Military troops and extra police are being deployed in northern Paraguay after a state of emergency was declared to crack down on an armed rebel group that calls itself the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP).

As part of Operation Py’a Guapy — “tranquility” in the Guaraní indigenous language — 3,300 Paraguayan army, navy and air force troops along with 300 national police officers have been sent to the northern provinces of Concepción, San Pedro, Amambay, Presidente Hayes and Alto Paraguay.

On Sunday, Apr. 25, President Fernando Lugo signed into law a bill declaring a state of emergency in the conflict zone, which encompasses five of the country’s 17 provinces.

According to government security agencies, these are the provinces where the EPP is active. Its roughly 100 members operate in remote, inaccessible forested areas, with the support of high technology equipment, where there is little or no police protection.

The emergency measures have been condemned by civil society organisations and met with reticence by the political opposition, but Lugo insists that they are needed to restore peace and security to the area of the country affected.

While the police and troops deployed have yet to undertake a major offensive into the mountainous forest areas, they have stepped up their presence in the towns of Arroyito, Belén, Paso Barreto and Puentesiño, in the province of Concepción, where the latest attacks attributed to the EPP took place.

Lugo called for the emergency measures after a police officer and three civilians were killed in an EPP attack in Arroyito, when they discovered a rebel camp while investigating cattle theft.

Under the state of emergency, suspected EPP members can be arrested without warrants. The measures adopted also include a ban on public gatherings and protests and tighter controls on the circulation of vehicles on highways and local roads in the provinces affected.

The EPP leapt into the public spotlight when it claimed responsibility for the September 2004 kidnapping of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former president Raúl Cubas (1998-1999). Cecilia died in captivity and her body was recovered in February 2005.

At the time, Paraguay was governed by Nicanor Duarte (2003-2008) of the Colorado Party, which dominated Paraguayan politics throughout the 20th century and now heads up the right-wing opposition that holds a majority of seats in Congress.

Since 2006, the government has attributed a number of crimes committed in the northern region of the country to the EPP. Several EPP members are currently in prison on kidnapping charges.

Minister of the Interior Rafael Filizzola announced that the troops and police deployed have been fully equipped with all of the necessary weapons and ammunition.

Under Operation Py’a Guapy, army troops will patrol the forested areas that form a triangle between the provinces of Amambay, Concepción and San Pedro, while navy patrol boats will monitor the Paraguay, Aquidabán and Ypané Rivers and their tributaries, with the support of an additional 50 members of the navy.

For its part, the air force will conduct aerial reconnaissance and will be in charge of the transportation of troops and logistical support.

The entire operation is to be coordinated by General Bartolomé Pineda, the commander-in-chief of the army, while information will be handled by the Joint Operations Command.

While Operation Py’a Guapy got underway, controversy began heating up in the political arena after Vice President Federico Franco declared that the real objective of the state of emergency was not the elimination of the EPP.

Since taking office in August 2008, the left-leaning Lugo has frequently clashed with Franco, his second in command.

Lugo, a former Catholic bishop, denied Franco’s allegations and said that the military and police deployment proved the vice president’s claims to be false.

The president, whose work with the dispossessed earned him the nickname “bishop of the poor”, was elected at the head of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, a coalition of opposition parties and social movements. Franco, his running-mate, belongs to the centre-right Authentic Radical Liberal Party, which was the largest opposition party at the time.

Established for a period of 30 days, the state of emergency affects 800,000 of Paraguay’s 6.2 million people, and can be called off earlier if its objectives are not met.

Under the Paraguayan Constitution, a state of emergency can be declared in the event of an international armed conflict or a serious internal upheaval that poses an imminent threat to the Constitution or the functioning of state institutions.

In a press release, the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinating Group (CODEHUPY) highlighted the fact that at this point in time, Paraguay is neither involved in an international armed conflict nor facing a situation that could endanger the state institutions of the five provinces in question.

The current situation, according to the press release, is a matter of “criminals acting outside the law who should be apprehended, charged and sentenced under the regular legal system.”

CODEHUPY believes that “to claim that an armed group of approximately ten individuals is producing an internal upheaval and justifies a state of emergency is to acknowledge the incapacity of the country’s security agencies.”

A similar view was expressed by the trade union federation Central Nacional de Trabajadores, which stated that it will remain vigilant in the event of any violation of the public freedoms established by the constitution.

The declaration of the state of emergency in the five northern provinces coincided with an attack by armed gunmen on Senator Robert Acevedo, of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, in the capital of the province of Amambray.

Acevedo’s driver and bodyguard were killed in the attack, which has been attributed to organised crime organisations involved in drug trafficking operations around Paraguay’s northern border with Brazil.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
SAPUCÁI, Paraguay, Apr 19 2010 (IPS)

Uncontrolled expansion of cattle farming in Paraguay has led to “cutting down trees and planting exotic grasses,” says environmentalist Guillermo Gayo. To put a halt to this practice in the southern department of Paraguarí, the foundation he heads has implemented what is known as “permaculture.”

"The bamboo place" on Roke Hill, in Paraguay. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

A decade ago, the Takuara Renda Foundation (“the bamboo place” in the Guaraní language) settled near the town of Sapucái, on a hilltop that forms part of a remnant of the Atlantic Forest, which extends through parts of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, with just seven percent of its original coverage remaining.

For its project of simple integration with nature, the non-governmental foundation chose an area that had been severely degraded by forest fires and logging.

“The technology we are developing aims for production without much transformation of what is natural,” Takuara Renda director Gayo told Tierramérica.

The foundation promotes permaculture, which is the design and maintenance of small productive ecosystems, including the harmonic integration of people and their homes, in order to meet their needs in a sustainable way.

This approach utilises materials like tacuara cane, a type of bamboo, and plant fibres for bioconstruction.

“We can’t have a house that is our habitat and is aggressive to the environment,” said the environmentalist.

Takuara Renda is not trying to establish bamboo as a crop in the area, but rather is using it to help the degraded forest to recover.

“If you cut a branch off the bamboo, another grows in its place. That is how we are replacing the wood,” he said.

At the Roke hill project, one will find various species of tacuara cane, which are used in different ways. The foundation’s land holding is just six hectares, but its efforts are felt far beyond.

On 25 surrounding hectares, a process has begun to expand the forest with larger tree and bush species, and an emphasis on preventing fires and halting extensive cattle operations.

The 2008 Agricultural Census found that Paraguarí department, with some 500,000 hectares of forage for cattle, was home to four percent of the 12 million head of cattle in all Paraguay.

Also found in the area are exotic grasses like the Brachiaria, originally from Africa, which pushes out native species like the mbocayá palm (Acrocomia aculeata) as it extends across the terrain.

Roke Hill is also the main source of freshwater for Sapucái, population 6,000. Continued deforestation endangers the water supply.

The foundation has reservoirs for treating water – using natural techniques – to be used for sanitation and washing, and ultimately recycled for irrigation. Also, rainwater is stored in tanks for these purposes.

Takuara Renda’s connection to the local community has strengthened over the years, in part due to the workshops it provides for how to use natural resources in sustainable ways.

According to Gayo, the community adopted sustainable farming techniques to grow food, based on their experiences with the foundation, whose own garden includes a variety of food plants, some commonly consumed in the region, and others previously unknown here.

“At Takuara Renda, they taught me about vegetarian foods, which is interesting because they eat only vegetables that are prepared in unusual ways,” Myriam Ramírez, a young student from a nearby community who visited the foundation with classmates.

“I was surprised by the house made from tacuara cane and its furniture,” said Ramírez, who also participated in workshops about bioconstruction, where she learned about building structures out of bamboo.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

As the farming frontier pushes into forests and threatens natural resources, in southern Paraguay an effort is under way to cultivate tacuara and other cane species in harmony with nature.
Uncontrolled expansion of cattle farming in Paraguay has led to “cutting down trees and planting exotic grasses,” says environmentalist Guillermo Gayo. To put a halt to this practice in the southern department of Paraguarí, the foundation he heads has staked its bets on an approach known as “permaculture.”

Just looking around one of the highest points of Roke hill, where the project is being developed, one can see the threat of expanding pastureland.

A decade ago, the Takuara Renda Foundation (“bamboo site” in the Guaraní language) settled near the town of Sapucái, on a hilltop that forms part of a remnant of the Atlantic Forest, which extends through parts of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, with just seven percent of its original coverage remaining.

For its project of simple integration with nature, the non-governmental foundation chose an area that had been severely degraded as a result of forest fires and logging.

“The technology we are developing aims for production without much transformation of what is natural,” Takuara Renda director Gayo told Tierramérica.

The foundation promotes permaculture, which is the design and maintenance of small productive ecosystems, including the harmonic integration of people and their homes, in order to meet their needs in a sustainable way.

This approach utilizes materials like tacuara cane, a type of bamboo, and plant fibers for bioconstruction.

“We can't have a house that is our habitat and is aggressive to the environment,” said the environmentalist.

Takuara Renda is not trying to establish bamboo as a crop in the area, but rather is using it to help the degraded forest to recover.

“If you cut a branch off the bamboo, another grows in its place. That is how we are substituting the wood,” he said.

At the Roke hill project, one will find various species of tacuara cane, which are used in different ways. The foundation's land holding is just six hectares, but its efforts are felt far beyond.

On 25 surrounding hectares, a process has begun to expand the forest with larger tree and bush species, and an emphasis on preventing fires and halting extensive cattle operations.

The 2008 Agricultural Census found that Paraguarí department, with some 500,000 hectares of forage for cattle, was home to four percent of the 12 million head of cattle in all Paraguay.

Also found in the area are exotic grasses like the Brachiaria grass, originally from Africa, which pushes out native species like the mbocayá palm (Acrocomia aculeata) as it extends across the terrain.

Roke hill is also the main source of freshwater for Sapucái, population 6,000. Continued deforestation endangers the water supply.

The foundation has reservoirs for treating water – using natural techniques – to be used for sanitation and washing, and ultimately recycled for irrigation. Rainwater is also stored in tanks.

Takuara Renda's connection to the local community has strengthened over the years, in part due to the workshops it provides for how to use natural resources in sustainable ways.

According to Gayo, the community adopted sustainable farming techniques to grow food, based on their experiences with the foundation, whose own garden includes a variety of food plants, some commonly consumed in the region, and others previously unknown here.

“At Takuara Renda, they taught me about vegetarian foods, which is interesting because they eat only vegetables that are prepared in unusual ways,” Myriam Ramírez, a young student from a nearby community who visited the foundation with classmates.

“I was surprised by the house made from tacuara cane and its furniture,” said Ramírez, who also participated in workshops about bioconstruction, where she learned about building structures out of bamboo.

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Mar 25 2010 (IPS)

Police officers Juan Cantero and Karin Colmán are sometimes exhausted and depressed by the time they reach the end of their shift. But they quickly recover because they feel their work at a special new police unit for abused women and children in the Paraguayan capital is important.

Police officers in domestic violence unit. Credit: Natalia Ruíz Díaz/IPS

The plan is to gradually set up such units around the entire country.

“Normally you receive all kinds of complaints in police stations, with domestic violence cases being mixed in with the rest, which means the people filing this kind of complaint often don’t receive the proper attention and follow-up,” Cantero commented to IPS.

His colleague Colmán said specialisation and training for this work is crucial, because most police officers lack a gender perspective, which is necessary in order to deal properly with such cases.

Statistics and investigations led authorities in this South American country to the conclusion that better police handling of domestic violence cases was needed.

For example, 911, the emergency number, received 17,000 domestic violence calls last year, but only 286 led to a formal police complaint.

In this country of 6.2 million people, which has an overall homicide rate of 16 per 100,000 population, one woman is murdered every 10 days on average, with 32 killed in 2009, according to government figures.

Based on 2008 data, the Paraguayan Centre for Population Studies found that 17 percent of girls and teenagers suffered physical violence before the age of 15 and 20 percent saw or heard their father or stepfather physically abuse their mother.

The new police units are the creation of an “inter-institutional committee for integral care for victims of violence”, set up in 2008 by the ministries of the interior and public health and the secretariats of women and children and adolescents.

In their aim to put in place mechanisms to protect and promote human rights, with a cross-cutting theme of gender equality, these government bodies identified police handling of domestic violence cases as the Achilles’ heel in efforts to fight such abuse.

The interior ministry then decided to create the new police units, with donor financing from Spain.

María Liz Román, head of the Colectivo de Mujeres 25 de Noviembre, a women’s group that provides advice and assistance to victims of domestic violence, said the initiative is “an essential step in the fight to eradicate gender violence.

“Many women have had to suffer the indifference of police officers when they file a complaint, meeting with phrases like ‘just go home, he’s your husband’, or ‘who knows what you did’, which were all too commonly heard by victims,” Liz Román told IPS.

Mercedes, a 39-year-old Paraguayan woman who asked that her last name not be used, is one domestic abuse victim who has felt more frightened of the prospect of bringing a complaint than of her husband’s blows.

At least three times she walked through the door of a police station near her house, with visible bruises and sometimes a broken lip.

But when she saw that detainees and victims were all mixed in together in the police station, and a gruff, unfriendly policeman told her to talk, and to do so fast and in front of everyone else, she would get uneasy, thinking about her husband’s threats to kill her if she ever reported the abuse, and would turn around and walk out.

And no one ever tried to stop her from leaving, even though she bore obvious signs of violence.

Her two daughters, ages 14 and 17, have pressed her to file a complaint, and have offered to go with her, while neighbour women have insisted that not all police are the same.

But “I’m terrified that my husband will go even more berserk, although one day maybe I’ll work up the nerve and go back to the station, for my daughters’ sake,” she told IPS.

Cantero said that he is now aware that domestic violence is a serious problem in Paraguay, and that a different kind of treatment by the police is needed.

“The victims are treated as vulnerable people – you have to be patient and help them feel safe and get them to understand that they will receive support,” he said with conviction.

The unit has a staff of 30 officers between the ages of 24 and 30, who after they were selected received two months of training on issues like human rights, a gender perspective and avoiding behaviour that “revictimises the victim.”

Colmán said the abuse victims make their complaints in private, and that they are given detailed advice on what steps to take.

Since it opened, her unit has received 110 domestic abuse complaints, with the largest number coming from women, and a smaller number from youngsters. The complaints included physical, sexual and psychological abuse, as well as death threats.

The unit also responds to consultations from police stations around the country regarding how to deal with such cases.

In the pilot phase of the project, six police units for women and children will be set up, three in Asunción and three in other cities, in districts chosen because of a high level of domestic abuse cases.

Colmán said the sharing of experiences with other police officers is essential. “We get together to see what we’re doing right or wrong, to improve our work,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jan 28 2010 (IPS)

Black communities have for the most part remained out of sight and out of mind in Paraguay, but now they are organising and claiming equal economic and social rights, while building an Afro-Paraguayan identity.

“The Paraguayan state does not recognise us as an ethnic minority,” José Carlos Medina, the general secretary of the Kamba Kuá (“black people’s hollow,” or “cave,” in Guaraní) Afro-Paraguayan Association, told IPS.

The first survey of Afro-descendants in Paraguay was carried out in 2006-2007 in order to gain a basic knowledge of the characteristics of this group, and as a basis for the social struggle against their historical neglect in Paraguayan society.

The Kamba Kuá Association was the prime mover of the initiative, with support from the government census office (DGEEC) and the United States government’s Inter-American Foundation.

The survey found 8,013 persons of African descent, equivalent to 0.13 percent of the 6.1 million people in this landlocked South American country. (Besides tiny white and Asian minorities, the rest of the population is of mixed Spanish and Guaraní Indian descent.)

The data in the survey were collected in three specific areas in eastern Paraguay: Kamba Kuá in Central province; Kamba Kokué, which means “black people’s farm” in Guaraní, in Paraguarí province; and Emboscada, in the province of Cordillera.

Out of the total number of blacks, 5.6 percent live in Kamba Kuá, 4.9 percent in Kamba Kokué and 89.5 percent in Emboscada.

These settlements originated in the Spanish colonial period. In 1782, Afro-descendants made up 11.2 percent of the total population of what was then the Province of Paraguay, to which slaves had been brought from Africa since 1556.

Emboscada, now a municipality of 14,000 people, was founded in 1740 with the name of Emboscada de Pardos Libres (“place of ambush of free blacks” in Spanish), because ambushes frequently took place there, and its first settlers were 500 freed people of black and indigenous ancestry.

Similar communities grew up in Paraguarí and other places in the region, where slaves were kept on cattle ranches belonging, for example, to the Jesuit missions.

Kamba Kuá was settled by members of a regiment of 250 lancers, both men and women, who in 1820 went into exile in Paraguay with General José Artigas, the revolutionary independence leader of the Banda Oriental (now Uruguay).

This is the best-known Afro-descendant community in Paraguay, because of its staunch loyalty to its identity and culture, promoted through its traditional festivals.

“The survey prompted closer relations between the communities, and so we formed the Paraguayan Afro-descendants Network (RPA), because we were convinced that if we were united, our demands would be more effective,” said Medina.

He said their main demand is recognition as an ethnic minority by the Paraguayan state, and their immediate goal is to include specific identification of the Afro-descendant population in the next national census, to be carried out in 2012.

To this end, members of the RPA are holding conversations with the DGEEC, but Medina complained that the process is getting bogged down.

The Report on Human Rights in Paraguay 2009 by the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinating Group (CODEHUPY) contains an article presenting, for the first time, the living conditions of blacks in this country.

It says the state is guilty by omission of racism, in that it has neglected to formulate specific policies for this population group. It also points to racial prejudice and discriminatory behaviour in mainstream culture.

“Our children have great difficulty in constructing their Afro identity when, at school, they are so often discriminated against, either because of their skin colour or their clothes,” he said.

Access to education and health are two key demands of the communities. They emphasise that 7.4 percent of the Afro-descendant school-age population is illiterate, while only 15 percent of this ethnic group has health insurance.

In Kamba Kuá, the school drop-out rate is a major concern. The community has no primary school of its own.

Lorena Medina, a young mother of two and a member of the Kamba Kuá ballet, dropped out of secondary school for financial reasons.

“This is the reality for many young people in our community. We drop out of school because we can’t afford to continue studying,” she told IPS.

Most of the women in the community are domestic employees, while the men are construction workers, have low-level jobs or are informal street vendors.

José Carlos Medina said the communities have been working in a coordinated fashion since the RPA was set up, which is increasing their visibility as they participate in society as organised groups.

“We are proud of our identity and origins, and we want the Paraguayan state to recognise us as the Afro-Paraguayan population we are,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jan 6 2010 (IPS)

“Did you have to pay for anything?” is the obligatory question these days in the waiting room at the Mother and Child Hospital in Fernando de la Mora, on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital, where people still have doubts that the public health services are free of charge, as the government had announced.

“They took great care of me. I had my baby by cesarean and the operation was free, and so was the medicine,” Gloria Ramírez, who gave birth on Christmas – the day nearly all public health service fees were eliminated nationwide – told IPS.

The measure was one of the campaign promises of centre-left President Fernando Lugo, a former bishop who took office in August 2008.

“Before I was admitted to hospital, I had planned on paying the fees. But luckily it was all practically free,” said Ramírez.

Seven percent of Paraguay’s population of 6.1 million currently have private health coverage, 20 percent are covered by the health services of the social security institute, the Instituto de Previsión Social, and the rest depend on the public health system.

But an estimated 40 percent of the population were unable to afford health care of any kind.

“What we are doing is making health care a right, regardless of a person’s ability to pay,” Diego Gamarra, director general of health services in the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS), told IPS.

There are some 1,000 public health hospitals and health clinics in Paraguay.

“It is still necessary to improve the quality of health care, and the way patients are treated in public hospitals,” said political scientist Milda Rivarola. “But without a doubt, free health care is the best thing that has been done so far in the democratic transition period, and is the measure that has had the most positive impact in terms of public services.”

Lugo was sworn in shortly before the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the dictatorship of late Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989). His election as the candidate of a centre-left alliance of opposition parties and social movements put an end to 61 years of rule by the right-wing Colorado Party.

But Rivarola stressed that reforms are needed, to make free health care sustainable in the long term.

“There is too much informal economy, and very high levels of evasion of social security payments. It’s the state that ends up paying, and in this scenario, free health care will not be sustainable,” she said, calling for an efficient fiscal policy as well.

Gamarra said the measure will cost around six million dollars a year.

The total public health budget for 2010 is 385 million dollars, seven percent higher than last year’s, but only just over five percent of the entire state budget, which makes it one of the most underfunded sectors.

“A central aim is to make the public health issue a question of national debate,” said Gamarra.

In his view, until spending on public health is increased from the current low level of 2.8 percent of GDP, adequate coverage will be impossible, even if people receive health care free of charge.

“The tax system has to be reformed to make that possible. But we had to start somewhere,” he said.

The MSPBS gradually began to make some public health services free in September 2008, when fees for office or outpatient visits and emergency room visits were waived. Later, hospital admission fees were eliminated, along with charges for intensive care, post-op incision care, nebulizer treatments, treatment in an infant incubator, oxygen therapy, surgery and other services.

In late 2009, fees were removed for diagnostic tests in all specialties, and for dental and ophthalmological services.

In his Christmas message, Lugo mentioned the steps taken to make public health care free of charge, as one of the main achievements of his government.

But Rivarola said that “when a government dedicates a large part of its time and efforts to staving off collapse, it is impossible to advance much in terms of state policies.”

She was referring to the conservative opposition’s majority in Congress, which has undermined governance, as well as constant threats of impeachment that have come from the opposition, mainly the Colorado Party. In addition, the Supreme Court is made up of magistrates appointed over decades by that party.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Dec 23 2009 (IPS)

It all started with a warning on the quality of bottled water in Paraguay. But concern has now spread about the extent of pollution of the country’s underground water reserves.

The Patiño aquifer “can no longer be recommended as a source of bottled water, because it no longer meets the conditions for water quality,” Félix Villar, a member of the Paraguayan Association of Water Resources and a professor at the National University engineering school’s groundwater department, told IPS.

According to the National Office on Environmental Health, 40 percent of this land-locked South American country’s population of 6.1 million uses water from the Patiño aquifer, which lies below Greater Asunción.

The aquifer stretches for 173 square kilometres beneath the capital, which is in the most densely populated and urbanised Central department (province), and under part of the Paraguari department, in the southwest of the country.

The water quality problem hit the headlines when the National Food and Nutrition Institute (INAN) issued a press release in late November on the results of tests it had carried out on mineral water from 11 bottled water companies, saying faecal coliform bacteria had been found in some of the samples.

The statement caused a commotion, with consumer groups demanding that the agency, which is under the Public Health Ministry, release the names of the firms that had been monitored.

But INAN refused to provide the names of the companies, and downplayed the issue, saying it involved isolated incidents and that the firms had already corrected the problems.

The Contraloría General (Inspector General’s Office) then asked INAN for a report on the results of the monitoring tests, to determine whether they indicated contamination of the Patiño aquifer.

In response, the agency said its statement had been misinterpreted and distorted by the press, and that it was not true that bacteria were found in the water sold by 11 companies.

The ASUCOP consumers’ association of Paraguay then urged the public not to buy mineral water until guarantees of its safety and quality were provided.

There are currently 360 registered industrial water wells in the area of the Patiño aquifer, which extract some 249 million litres of water a year, used by hundreds of water bottling plants, soft drink, beer and dairy companies, cold-storage plants and car wash firms.

Only 65 percent of households in Paraguay receive piped drinking water from the national grid, while a significant part of the population depends on wells for domestic consumption.

A total of nearly 176 million litres of water a year enter the aquifer, 73 million less than what is extracted for industrial and domestic uses, according to a study on “Policies on the Environmental Management of the Patiño Aquifer”.

Not only is the quantity of groundwater insufficient, but the quality of the water is declining as a result of domestic and industrial waste, lack of controls and monitoring of wells, the growing number of companies drilling wells, and a lack of oversight and regulation.

“Based on a series of studies carried out since 2000, we have noted a significant increase in contamination with nitrate (levels higher than 45 mg per litre), which comes from sewage,” said Professor Villar.

In 2006, the engineering school where he teaches issued a warning that the groundwater reserves were increasingly polluted, mainly from faecal matter. Of 100 samples of water that were analysed, 34 had bacteria levels above the acceptable limit for human consumption.

The studies reflected the problem of lack of sanitation. Only 23 percent of households in the area of the Patiño aquifer are connected to the sewage system, while 77 percent use cesspools, which often leak into the groundwater.

But Villar pointed out that the amount of water replenishing the aquifer would decrease if the sewage flow from cesspits diminished. To compensate for that once sanitation has been extended, he proposes piping water into the aquifer from the Paraguay river.

The studies also revealed an increase in saltwater from Paraguay’s Chaco region, a semi-arid expanse of dense thorn scrubland that covers the northwestern and western two-thirds of the country.

The Chaco has a shallow saline groundwater table that is causing high salinity levels in wells near the Paraguay river.

“These are freshwater areas that have become increasingly salinated, through natural processes,” said Villar.

Fernando Larroza, director of water resources in the Environment Ministry, told IPS that 10 years ago the public was completely unaware of the threats to the country’s groundwater.

“Today we have more information on the aquifers, but we don’t have the resources to undertake government plans to protect them,” he said. As an example, he cited the 2007 law on water resources, “which is in effect but has not been enforced.”

The Patiño aquifer has been described as the “younger brother” of the Guaraní aquifer, considered the third largest subterranean freshwater reservoir in the world, which extends 1.2 million square kilometres under Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The Guaraní aquifer is also threatened by pollution, but is in less danger in the short-term than the Patiño aquifer, mainly due to the differences in size and in discharge and recharge volumes.

Paraguay only uses 0.5 percent of the total water in the Guaraní reservoir, said Larroza.

The Guaraní aquifer stretches under 70,000 square kilometres in eastern Paraguay. It is mainly recharged by infiltration of rainwater from the ground surface in the south-central and southeastern departments of Caaguazú and Alto Paraná.

According to Larroza, a national plan on water resources could partially curb the increasing deterioration of the Patiño aquifer and the growing pollution threat facing the Guaraní aquifer.

But the Environment Ministry official said that despite the serious threats facing water supplies and consumption in Paraguay, there are no signs of measures to address the problem in the short run.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Dec 22 2009 (IPS)

Some 100,000 Guaraní people live in the area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge, according to a new map drawn of the indigenous group’s ancestral territory, which also highlights the threats, such as expanding soy cultivation, to their natural surroundings.

“The Guaraní have a sense of their territory, but they don’t have the technical means of putting it on a map. This map shows that, despite the fact that the ethnic group is dispersed, there is a specific Guaraní territory,” Bartomeu Meliá, national coordinator of the multi-institutional team that drew up the Guaraní Retâ Map, told IPS.

The study, presented last week in Asunción in a ceremony hosted by Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, shows that there are approximately 500 Guaraní villages and communities in the larger tri-border region, and that the native group’s territory stretches from southern Brazil to eastern Paraguay and the northeastern province of Misiones in Argentina.

It also points out that the Guaraní are one of the largest indigenous groups in South America.

Besides the territory outlined on the map, there are large numbers of Guaraní living in Brazil’s Atlantic forest coastal region to the east, and in the Chaco, a sparsely populated semi-arid lowland region farther to the west, which stretches from eastern Bolivia through northwestern Paraguay to northeastern Argentina, taking in a small part of the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso as well.

There are four main branches of the Guaraní people: the Mbya; the Pâi Tavyterâ (known in Brazil as Kaiowá); the Avá Guaraní (Ñandéva in Brazil); and the Aché, previously known as the Guayakí.

The Guaraní, who refer to themselves as Avás (which simply means “men”), originally lived in the Amazon jungle, before their territory gradually shifted southwards. But it was in the Rio de la Plata basin – a vast area drained by the Uruguay and Paraná rivers, which empty into the Rio de la Plata estuary – that they mainly settled since the late 15th century, especially in Brazil and Paraguay.

According to different sources there are a total of around 250,000 Guaraní people in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. However, there are an estimated five million Guaraní speakers, as it is one of the two official languages in Paraguay, where it is even more widely spoken than Spanish.

“These are living peoples, with different cultures,” President Lugo said at the presentation of the map in the presidential palace. He lamented that what was an “open and natural territory yesterday” no longer belongs to what he described as its rightful, legitimate owners.

The fertility rate of the Guaraní is currently between five and six births per woman. But child mortality is high, at 80 per 1,000 live births, in a population that is young overall, as roughly 45 percent of Guaraní are under the age of 14.

Wherever they live, the Guaraní share certain basic aspects of their culture, although they speak different dialects of the Guaraní language group, and have different religious rites and ceremonies and ways of relating to the natural environment.

“The map shows the large number of and the size of (Guaraní) communities, and that they have very close ties,” said Meliá, a Spanish-born Catholic priest who has lived in Paraguay since 1954 and is known for his work on behalf of the Guaraní.

According to the study, the Guaraní see their world as a region of jungles, plains and rivers, where they live according to their age-old customs and way of life.

But with the expansion of monoculture plantations, large swaths of the ethnic group’s ancestral territory have been completely deforested, as shown by the map, which also outlines the areas where forests and scrubland remain intact.

The study shows that much of what was originally Guaraní territory has been destroyed or is threatened by large-scale soy and sugar cane production and plantations of fast-growing non-native trees, like eucalyptus and pine in the province of Misiones in northeast Argentina.

The introduction of exotic grass species from Africa has also been disastrous for Guaraní agriculture.

“Fenced-in fields, pasture land and large landed estates have driven them from their land,” said Lugo – a former Catholic bishop who worked with the rural poor – before calling the attention of Paraguayan society as a whole to the rights of the Guaraní people.

Another aspect cited by the study as a central factor in the transformation of the ecology of the region was the construction of the giant Itaipú hydroelectric dam on the border between Brazil and Paraguay and the Yacyretá dam between Argentina and Paraguay.

The map shows that a number of Mbya and Avá Guaraní villages were left under water by the construction of the dams.

Hipólito Acevei, president of the Coordinating Group for the Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples, stressed that one of the main sources of concern is the ongoing deforestation, because it leads to “the massive invasion of indigenous territories.”

He said the map is a tool that can be used to support the fight of indigenous organisations against the destruction of the natural ecosystem in areas that are home to native peoples.

Indigenous organisations took part in producing the study, by identifying different native groups, for example. “We worked hard for a year reviewing the report, especially to make sure the territories of the Guaraní people were properly located, which was a big task for us,” said Acevei.

The study was drawn up by the Guarani Retâ Interinstitutional Working Group with support from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Through an agreement among NGOs, the map will be distributed in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, with the aim of drawing government attention to the situation of the Guaraní people.

The study says that sufficient territory and secure tenure of land are not only a right of indigenous people, but are indispensable for warding off “imminent ethnocide”.

Acevei argued that governments in the region are under the obligation to defend the rights of indigenous peoples, who at the same time are becoming increasingly organised.

Lugo concurred, and said the study is “a tool for dialogue, with a view to coordinating actions by governments, international donors and civil society” aimed at allowing the Guaraní to “freely move around the cross-border areas of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, and to be integrated in society, respecting their cultural identities.”

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Dec 3 2009 (IPS)

Freddy Garcete, a 50-year-old painter who works in the construction industry, travelled to Spain in search of better wages two years ago, becoming one of the 500,000 Paraguayans forced to seek work abroad because of the conditions at home.

But the impact of migration was double in the case of the Garcete family. Freddy’s wife Rosa María had already left for Spain before her husband. Their aim was to pay off a mortgage that was a heavy burden for the family, and pay for the education of their two daughters.

But the early effects in Spain of the global economic crisis made it impossible for Garcete to land a steady job in the construction industry. “Just after I left, my dad died, and I had to come home,” he told IPS. “But the fact that I had no steady work in Spain made me decide to stay in my country, mainly to be close to my daughters.”

The impact of migration in this landlocked South American country of 6.3 million people was the focus of a report released this week by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), produced in conjunction with the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), with support from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

The human development 2009 report, titled “Ampliando Horizontes” (Broadening Horizons), says that of the 500,000 Paraguayans living abroad, more than 250,000 left the country in the last five years.

Argentina to the south is still the main destination, accounting for six out of 10 Paraguayan migrants, with Spain in second place – three out of 10 – while the United States and Brazil received fewer Paraguayan migrants in the last few years.

The study says that more than half of those who leave are between the ages of 15 and 24, countering the widespread impression here that most of those seeking work abroad are heads of households, generally over 30 years old.

More than three-quarters – 77 percent – of Paraguayans in Spain are undocumented migrants, which makes them especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

“We’re talking about more than 50,000 people in that situation (in Spain) as of January 2008: 18,000 men and over 35,000 women,” Jorge Méndez, the coordinator of the study, told IPS.

The report also says that at the time they left the country, 70 percent of the migrants only spoke Guaraní, which along with Spanish is an official language in Paraguay, and is spoken by 94 percent of the population.

Méndez pointed out that the language barrier is a major hurdle when it comes to finding work abroad.

With regard to educational level, Paraguayans who migrate to the United States or Spain have more years of schooling, generally up to secondary or tertiary studies. By contrast, most Paraguayans who seek work in Argentina or Brazil have just a primary school education.

The study also found that more than 182,000 of Paraguay’s 1.4 million households have at least one family member living abroad.

The provinces with the highest levels of migration are Central (the most populous) and San Pedro (the poorest), both of which are in the central part of the country, Alto Paraná in the southeast, which borders both Brazil and Argentina, and Caaguazú in the south.

Households in the capital, Asunción, receive the largest monthly cash transfers, although the income is not steady. In provinces like San Pedro, on the other hand, the amounts are smaller but more reliable.

“The largest amounts of remittances come from the United States and Spain,” said Méndez. On average, the cash transfers received per household in Asunción are around 460 dollars, compared to just over 120 dollars in San Pedro and about 200 dollars nationwide.

Annual remittances to Paraguay increased fourfold between 2004 and 2008, says the report, which also notes that once the migrant’s travel expenses are paid off, cash sent home from abroad helps reduce extreme poverty – defined as an inability to meet basic needs – which affects 37 percent of people in this country, according to the latest official statistics, released this year.

In Méndez’s view, the data shows that while the money sent home by migrants reduces poverty in the short term, the fact that so many of Paraguay’s workers are forced to go abroad to seek employment will inexorably lead to further deterioration of social and economic conditions in the country.

Remittances grew from 6.3 million dollars to 21 million dollars between 2001 and 2008.

Licensed nurses, who go overseas with legal work contracts, differ from most migrants, who are undocumented.

Over the last three years, many Paraguayan nurses have been recruited to work in Europe, mainly Italy.

More than 300 nurses have travelled overseas so far with three-year contracts and salaries of up to 3,000 euros (4,520 dollars) a month. And another 150 are packing their bags, according to the Paraguayan nursing association.

The report’s recommendations include the design of a national policy on migration that would provide guarantees for those who are interested in working abroad, as well as for those who want to return home.

But above all, said Méndez, the efforts should be aimed at ensuring that many of those who have left return to work in Paraguay, to create a stronger country.

However, there is no denial that remittances are a lifeline for many families like the Garcetes, who are now completely dependent on the monthly remittances sent home by Rosa María, because Freddy has still not found steady work in Paraguay.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Nov 12 2009 (IPS)

More and more indigenous women in Paraguay are overcoming sexist resistance in their communities and emerging as leaders within and outside of their villages, fighting for the rights of their people and against discrimination.

Estela Maris Álvarez, one of Paraguay's emergent indigenous women leaders. Credit: Courtesy of Tierraviva

Álvarez is a member of the Enxet people, an indigenous group in Paraguay’s Chaco region, an area of semi-arid grasslands and thorny forests. She lives in La Herencia, a community in the western part of the country, located 340 km from Asunción.

La Herencia is made up of six villages comprising a total of 610 families and around 1,800 people, of which a third are women who are for the most part the heads of their households.

Álvarez, who at 40 is raising two kids on her own, has been practising natural medicine for a decade. She’s a nursing assistant and treats people in her community.

“It’s not easy for an indigenous woman to access a decision-making position in her community,” she said, recalling how when she started taking on a leadership role, she was never invited by the tribal chiefs to the important meetings. “But that didn’t stop me from going,” she added.

For social worker Livia Ruiz, who has conducted studies in Chaco communities like La Herencia, indigenous women leaders have gained visibility mainly from their increased involvement in activities outside their own communities.

“Within the communities, women have a significant involvement as leaders in activities that have to do with their people, but most tribal chiefs are still men,” said Ruiz, a member of the non-governmental organisation Tierraviva, which promotes the rights of Paraguay’s indigenous peoples, focusing on the Chaco region.

Even the governmental National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INDI) discriminates against women, as it only recognises men as leaders, “when it should actually be helping to strengthen women’s participation,” Álvarez said.

“If a group of indigenous women turns to INDI to protest about a specific problem that affects us or to demand respect for our rights, they tell us that we’re not tribal chiefs, and just ignore us,” she said.

According to Álvarez, the underlying reality in the indigenous communities of Chaco is that they’re governed by tribal chiefs with authoritarian and even violent attitudes. “They think that just because they’re chiefs they have the right to decide over the life of the community,” she said.

Violence against women is a chronic problem in the patriarchal culture that prevails in indigenous communities, where it is considered acceptable behaviour. “These are practices that breed discrimination, and which must be eradicated, even if they are part of the culture of our communities,” she added.

As a community leader, her position is clear. “The rights of indigenous women must be defended even over the interests of the communities,” because, moreover, it’s not true that you have to choose one or the other, she said.

Álvarez recalled the case of two native Mbya Guarani girls who were murdered in mid-October in a settlement in the northern province of San Pedro, which has the highest poverty rate in the country. They were tortured to death by people in their community who accused them of witchcraft. The local chief and three other people have been arrested in connection with the murders.

“Women need to come together to stand up for themselves, because individually we will never be able to wipe out these practices in our communities and prevent cases like this one from happening again,” the Enxet leader said.

Only through great effort and perseverance was Álvarez able to secure the right for women in her community to organise and hold meetings, and to participate and voice their opinions at the tribal assemblies in La Herencia. The local women are now also coming out of their community to share experiences and to network with women from other indigenous groups facing similar challenges.

Like in most indigenous communities in Paraguay, people in La Herencia live off subsistence farming and wage-earning work on farms and estates in the region, where men earn about 100 dollars a month as farmhands and women earn less than half that as domestics.

Many women also take in a little extra cash with the crafts they make when they’re not taking care of the house, children and family plot, or working as domestics.

Indigenous people in this land-locked South American country of 6.7 million number just over 108,000, or two percent of the population. Besides tiny white, black and Asian minorities, the rest of the population is of mixed European and indigenous descent. Both Spanish and Guaraní are official languages and are equally widely spoken.

From bad to worse

But while they often face machismo and gender violence at home, things don’t get any better for indigenous women when they leave their communities. In fact, in mainstream Paraguayan society, the discrimination only gets worse.

“Outside our communities we suffer rejection and discrimination. Even the State discriminates against us,” Álvarez said.

The 2008 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on human development in Paraguay, entitled “Equity for Development”, states that indigenous people suffer inequality and segregation in areas such as health, education, employment and access to decent housing.

That is borne out by the 2008 Indigenous Households Survey, which shows that only 1.4 percent of native households have access to drinking water, 39 percent of indigenous people over 15 years of age are illiterate, and only four in 10 have completed second grade, compared to an average of eight years of formal schooling for the population at large.

In Álvarez’s case, even though she’s worked for 11 years as a volunteer in the field of community health, her work is not recognised by government health institutions. “This is not just a cliché. As indigenous women we face double discrimination on a daily basis,” she said.

“I want to make our voices heard; I want the State and society to respect us for what we are; I want us to be given the place we’re entitled to,” said Álvarez, who is a member of the Commission of Indigenous Peoples and Communities of the Paraguayan Chaco (CPI – Chaco Py).

Ruiz noted that indigenous women are organising more and more in local associations or networks, where they are playing an increasingly influential role.

One example is the National Coordinating Committee of Organisations of Rural and Indigenous Women Workers. A national meeting in April served as a springboard to achieve recognition and respect for this network of associations that have emerged to defend indigenous women’s rights.

“Indigenous women are still struggling to survive, and their demands are focused on solving basic aspects of survival,” said Ruiz, who admitted that the struggle for gender equality is still in diapers.

In the activities that she carries out in her community, Álvarez focuses on women and young people, and is encouraged because “I’m finally seeing the fruits of six years of sacrifices.”

These fruits include the change in the way other members of the community treat her, as well as the community’s recognition of the fundamental rights of women. According to Álvarez, La Herencia has taken steps that are not very common in other communities.

“I can say that men respect us now. But it wasn’t easy to gain that respect, and it’s very difficult to hold onto it,” she underlined.

In her opinion it is essential for efforts to be focused on supporting and training indigenous women, for example, through family planning and alternative employment workshops, so that they can address the needs that affect their communities.

For Álvarez, “hope has arrived,” even if there’s still a long way to go. “I feel very proud when I see that the women in my community no longer have to go through what I suffered.”

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Oct 9 2009 (IPS)

After 20 years of fighting for their ancestral lands in Paraguay's northwestern Chaco region, the Xákmok Kásek indigenous community's case has reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The impoverished community made up of 65 families of the Sanapaná people – one of 20 indigenous groups in this land-locked South American country – live in harsh conditions on 1,000 hectares of land granted by the state.

The authorities promised to restore to them the 10,700 hectares they claim in the province of Presidente Hayes, which has one of the highest concentrations of Amerindians in the country.

But in the face of the non-fulfilment of that promise, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) brought the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Jul. 3.

The IACHR, which received the first complaint filed in the case in 2001, asked the Inter-American Court to order the state to grant land to the Xákmok Kásek indigenous community, and to provide them with healthcare and nutritional and educational services.

The Commission also asked the Court to order the state to pay the community reparations "for material and immaterial damages," and to pay the legal costs and expenses incurred by the victims in bringing the case to court in Paraguay and in the inter-American human rights system.

The IACHR argued that the lack of a satisfactory resolution of the community's claim affects their access to their land and aggravates their vulnerability in terms of food security and healthcare, while threatening their very survival.

Amerindians comprise two percent of Paraguay's 6.1 million people. Besides tiny white, black and Asian minorities, the rest of the country's population is of mixed Spanish and Guaraní (the main indigenous group) descent.

"Our living conditions are precarious, and water is a big problem that we face year after year," Gerardo Larrosa, the leader of the Xákmok Kásek community, told IPS by cellphone.

The families live in huts, without access to drinking water or healthcare. Their children are undernourished, and there are cases of tuberculosis, diarrhoea and Chagas disease (a tropical parasitic disease), as well as occasional outbreaks of other illnesses.

The IACHR submission states that 28 people died between 1991 and 2007, including 19 children – deaths that could have been prevented by basic medical care.

"We have a small school in the community, donated by a private institution, but we have no support from the state," Larrosa said.

The Xákmok Kásek community first filed a formal claim to their land in 1986, but the lack of response from the authorities prompted them to bring legal action in 1990.

Since then the land claimed by the indigenous people has been in the hands of several different landowners, and part of it has been cleared to make way for various cattle ranching establishments.

"The indigenous people were stripped of their land, so access to their traditional means of subsistence (hunting and fishing) was restricted, and members of the community were obliged to work in slave-like conditions on the cattle ranches," activist Ricardo Morínigo of the non-governmental organisation Tierraviva, which sponsored the land claim, told IPS.

For over a decade, the owner of the Salazar ranch has refused to sell the portion of his land claimed by the Xákmok Kásek. Today, nearly 40 percent of the territory they claim is in the hands of a new owner who is also refusing to sell.

"On top of the landowners' refusals, successive governments have shown little interest in expropriating the land (in exchange for payment)," said Morínigo.

The government wants "a friendly settlement, an agreement under which the land the community claims is bought and expropriated," Abraham Franco, of the Attorney-General's Office and a member of the inter-institutional commission dealing with the IACHR and the Inter-American Court in this case, told IPS.

An even greater obstacle, according to Franco, is that part of the claimed territory has been declared a private reserve by government decree.

In January 2008, the state declared the Salazar ranch a protected wilderness area under private ownership for a five-year period. Some of the reserve overlaps with the land claimed by the Xákmok Kásek community.

Under Law 352/94, private wilderness areas cannot be expropriated while their status as protected areas is in effect. Cattle ranchers in the Chaco frequently take advantage of these provisions to avoid expropriation.

Xákmok Kásek is one of the few Sanapaná communities remaining in the Chaco. One of its salient features is its music and dance, which differ from those of other indigenous groups within the Maskoy linguistic family, to which it belongs.

Contact with non-indigenous groups that settled in the Chaco in the late 18th century invigorated this musical tradition. The Sanapaná people today continue to make their own instruments: drums, flutes, and violins, adapted from European culture.

The community has shrunk considerably in little more than a decade. In 1995 it comprised 113 families with a total of 449 people, while in 2009 there are 65 families with 268 people.

Larrosa said the fall in numbers is due to several families having left the community, because of the tough living conditions and the lack of response to their demands.

The Xákmok Kásek community's claim is the third indigenous suit against the Paraguayan state to be presented by the IACHR to the Inter-American Court.

The highest human rights court in the Americas has already convicted Paraguay in two other cases involving indigenous communities: the Yakye Axa community in 2005 and the Sawhoyamaxa community in 2006 – both of which belong to the Enxet people of the Chaco region – for violating their rights to life, property and protection under the law.

The time periods set by the Court for the restitution of territories have expired in both cases. For the Yakye Axa community, the government of President Fernando Lugo requested expropriation of the land in November 2008, but the request is still being considered in the Senate.

In the case of the Sawhoyamaxa community, the Court held a follow-up hearing in July to review compliance with its verdict. At the hearing, the state admitted that the legal owner of the land had refused to reach a friendly settlement, and promised to press again for expropriation.

In Morínigo's view, the new suit shows that the state has no interest in guaranteeing the survival of indigenous peoples.

"At this time of supposed 'change,' the Xákmok Kásek case has come before the Court because of the government's inaction," Larrosa told IPS as he headed back to his community.

He was referring to the platform of change on which centre-left President Lugo was elected last year.

Excerpt:

By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCION, Sep 17 2009 (IPS)

It took 42 years for social security health care coverage for domestics to extend beyond the limits of the Paraguayan capital.

The measure adopted by the social security institute, the Instituto de Previsión Social, could potentially benefit some 290,000 people – mainly women – working in domestic service throughout this impoverished landlocked South American country of 6.1 million, as well as their families.

“This is a huge stride forward which will help improve the living conditions of domestics in Paraguay,” the president of the Association of Domestic Service Workers (AESD), Solana Meza, told IPS.

The challenge now is to get employers to register their domestics with the social security system, which very few have done.

Although health care coverage is obligatory for formal sector workers under Paraguay’s labour code, only as of this week do all domestic workers have a right to health insurance – 42 years after the inclusion of that stipulation in the social security institute’s charter in 1967.

Domestic workers were not covered when the Instituto de Previsión Social was established in 1943. That situation began to change when a special system for health insurance for domestics went into effect in Asunción in 1967. The aim was to gradually expand it to the whole country. But that never happened.

The social security institute’s health care insurance covers maternity, non work-related illness, work-related illness and accidents, surgery, dental care, medication, hospitalisation and a disability subsidy.

A 1987 law expanded health coverage to the worker’s family for maternity, illness and accidents.

“But although this was already in force in Asunción, people didn’t know about it – especially not women from rural areas, who make up a majority of domestics here,” said Meza. Most employers do not register their domestics with the social security institute and pay the monthly contribution of around 10 dollars, and the domestics, for their part, are largely unaware of their rights.

Domestics account for roughly 10 percent of the economically active population of 2.9 million in Paraguay, and 93 percent of them – 213,000 – are women. (Male domestic workers are mainly gardeners and drivers.)

But only three percent – 6,000 – are registered with the social security institute, and only 2,500 actually make use of its services.

Domestic work is the leading occupation of women in Paraguay, accounting for one out of five women who are employed. Fifty-seven percent of domestics are between the ages of 15 and 29, while 70 percent have only partial primary school education or no formal schooling at all, according to the General Statistics, Surveys and Census Office.

Most domestics are young, impoverished Guaraní-speaking women from rural areas with little to no education.

In Paraguay, around 95 percent of the population is of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent, and both Spanish and Guaraní are official languages. But Guaraní-speakers with a limited education often suffer discrimination.

Carmen Frutos, the director of the Instituto de Previsión Social, said the expansion of health insurance to all domestics is a major step towards reducing inequalities in this country.

“Paraguay has the lowest rate of health and social security coverage in the Americas, but we mean to start changing that with measures like the ones we have adopted for domestic workers,” she told IPS. That is one of the aims of the government of centre-left President Fernando Lugo, who took office in August 2008.

“With the expansion of the system, a large part of the health care for domestics will be subsidised, and they will have access to medical attention above and beyond the bare minimum. But they will not have access to a retirement pension or to coverage for complex medical cases,” she explained.

Complete social security coverage for domestics would require a modification of the current legislation, because domestic employment is deemed to have special characteristics, and is thus regulated differently than other kinds of jobs.

The minimum monthly salary for domestics – most of whom are live-in, and thus receive room and board – is set at 40 percent of the minimum wage for other workers, which stands at around 285 dollars today.

And although they have the right to the “aguinaldo” – a month’s bonus salary paid to all workers – they do not receive the family allowances that the governments pays to the rest of the country’s registered workers.

The family allowance is five percent of the minimum monthly salary for each dependent child under the age of 17 living with the beneficiary.

Meza said that achieving the same minimum wage as other workers is one of the AESD’s main goals, along with paid vacation time and maternity leave for the women who do much of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing for so many middle-class and wealthy Paraguayan families.

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By Natalia Ruiz Diaz
ASUNCIÓN, Aug 25 2009 (IPS)

Five years after the tragic fire that destroyed the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket in the Paraguayan capital, leaving a death toll of 400 people, the courts at last confirmed the prison sentences of the four principal defendants, although compensation for survivors and victims’ families has still not been decided.

Early this month, the Supreme Court upheld the sentences of 12 years in prison for the supermarket’s owner, Juan Pío Paiva, 10 years for his son, Víctor Daniel Paiva, five years for security guard Daniel Areco and two-and-a-half years for Humberto Casaccia, a shareholder in the supermarket company.

Given that the maximum penalty under Paraguayan law for the crimes committed is 25 years in prison, hundreds of relatives of the dead and survivors who were directly affected by the worst civilian tragedy in Paraguayan history regarded the sentences as overly lax.

The Supreme Court confirmed, without modifications, the sentences handed down in February 2008 by a lower court, which convicted the accused of second-degree murder and endangering people in the workplace.

The fire in the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket in Asunción started at 11:25 local time on Sunday Aug.1, 2004, when it was crowded with over 800 people. A gas explosion in the kitchen spread to the food court and to both floors of the building, including the built-in car park.

Survivors of the tragedy testified in court that the supermarket owners ordered the exit doors locked when the fire broke out, to make sure nobody left without paying for their purchases. Unable to get out, customers died of smoke inhalation.

“The favourable Supreme Court ruling early this month means that we can begin to believe that the justice system can change,” Carmen Rivarola of the Ycuá Bolaños Victims’ Coordinating Committee told IPS.

In Rivarola’s view, the justice system dealt with the case inefficiently, and “the sentence was obtained through the resistance struggle mounted by the victims,” who demanded that the Supreme Court rule on the matter in time to prevent it from lapsing under the statute of limitations.

During the series of trials, 79 judges and four Supreme Court justices recused themselves, saying they were disqualified because their impartiality could be questioned. The Ycuá Bolaños fire left 401 people dead, of whom 327 died in the fire itself, while the death toll grew over time as others died of their injuries.

There are 361 survivors who were injured to varying degrees; 22 are severely affected, with mutilation or serious disfigurement, as well as diminished physical or mental capacity. Seven persons are missing, believed killed, and 206 children were orphaned.

Studies by the Victims’ Coordinating Committee say that 5,000 families were directly affected, and 69,000 people indirectly. Paraguay has a population of 6.1 million.

After the final ruling on the sentences, the next issue is reparations for damages. Valuations will be carried out on the assets of those convicted.

“Given the number of victims involved, and the cost of treatments, it will really be impossible to provide fair indemnity without active participation by the state,” Ricardo Lataza, a lawyer representing 137 victims, told IPS.

He argued that there is shared responsibility for reparations in this case between the owners, the builder and also the state, represented by the Asunción municipal government.

When the investigation into the causes and those responsible for the supermarket fire was opened in 2004, the Attorney-General’s Office ordered four separate lines of enquiry.

One case was opened against the owners, shareholders and security guards; another against the builder; a third against the municipal authorities and mayors of Asunción; and a fourth against municipal employees.

The case against the authorities was dismissed in February 2006.

“From that point on, the litigation that was intended to define the overarching responsibility of the public sector shifted gear, and was aimed merely at punishing the private individuals concerned,” said Ade Galeano of POJOAJU, an association of Paraguayan non-governmental organisations, in the latest annual report of the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinating Committee (CODEHUPY).

Galeano said “this is by no means a minor issue in a society in which the state is generally absent and there is no oversight or regulation of key sectors of the economy, which gives rise to tragedies.”

The Ycuá Bolaños case continued in three parts: the owners and security guards, the builder and the municipal employees. Appeals have been filed in the last two cases.

At present there are different groups of people who should be indemnified. The criminal case presents 320 claims, and when civil actions are included the number is over 400.

“We have no idea how many people are to be indemnified, or how much they will collect. It’s a very complicated and thorny issue,” said Rivarola.

The burned-out supermarket building, located in a densely populated Asunción neighbourhood, remains untouched since the fire. It was a branch of the chain of supermarkets owned by the Ycúa Bolaños company, and its future has yet to be determined.

According to Lataza, the indemnification process will absorb all the assets of those convicted and of the Ycúa Bolaños company.

The Banco Nacional de Fomento, the state development bank, is holding 18 billion guaranís (3.5 million dollars) to compensate survivors and victims’ families for pain and suffering. These funds were raised by the attachment of owners’ assets during the trial.

But in Lataza’s view, “no amount of money will be enough, because every plaintiff has specific expenses.”

In spite of the uncertainty about reparations, the victims’ organisation is carrying on its struggle.

“We have managed to bring about a change: now the Paraguayan justice system will have to look on ordinary people differently and realise that justice is not only for one sector of society, but for every citizen of this country whose rights have been infringed,” said Rivarola, repeating the slogan of the movement: “Ycuá Bolaños, never again!”

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