The dead of Curuguaty and the impeachment of Lugo. Monsanto strikes in Paraguay.
By Por Idilio Méndez Grimaldi: Journalist, researcher and analyst. Member of the Paraguayan Society of Political Economy, SEPPY. Author of the Los Herederos de Stroessner. (Stroessner’s heirs) Source:
June 23rd, 2012
Translation, Lilian Joensen, Grupo de Reflexión Rural, and Jordan Bishop
The Paraguayan Production Guild Union (Unión de Gremios de la Producción (UGP), closely linked to the Zuccolillo Group, owner of the ABC Color newspaper and senior partner of Cargill, was preparing a national protest against the government of Fernando Lugo on 25 June. One of the claims of the so-called "tractorazo" (tractor protest) was the approval of all GM seeds for commercial growth in Paraguay.
On Friday June 15th 2012, a group of policemen who were going to enforce a search warrant (not an eviction order*) in the department of Canindeyú, on the border with Brazil, was ambushed by snipers, mixed with peasants reclaiming land for subsistence. The order had been given by a judge and a district prosecutor to protect a latifundist. As a result, seventeen were killed: six officers and eleven peasants and tens were seriously injured.
As a consequences, the lax and timid government of Fernando Lugo was left in growing and extreme weakness, turning increasingly to the right and finally impeached by a Congress dominated by the right wing. This was a hard reversal to the left, the social and peasant organizations that were accused by the oligarchy of inciting the peasants. This was also a step forward for the extractive agribusiness which goes hand in hand with transnationals like Monsanto, through the persecution of the peasants and the grab of their land. Finally, they were able to ensure comfortable seats in the Congress for the oligarchs and the parties of the right looking forward to their triumphal come back in the 2013 elections for the Executive Power.
Background
On October 21st 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, headed by Liberal Enzo Cardozo, illegally released Monsanto's Bollgard Bt cotton seed. Peasant and environmental organizations protests started soon after. The National Service of Vegetable Health and Quality and of Seeds, SENAVE, another institution of the Paraguayan State, headed by Miguel Lovera, had not listed this transgenic seed in the records of cultivars since it had not been approved by the Ministry of Health and the Secretariat of Environment, as the legislation required.
Media Campaign
During the following months, Monsanto, through the Production Guild Union (UGP) closely tied to the Zuccolillo Group, which publishes the daily ABC Color, campaigned against SENAVE and its president for failing to register Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) seed for commercial use throughout the country.
The critical countdown appeared to have been given upon a new denunciation by a false SENAVE syndicalist, named Silvia Martinez, who accused Lovera, through the ABC Color newspaper on June 7th, of corruption and nepotism in the agency he directed. Martinez is the wife of Roberto Caceres, a technical representative for various agricultural enterprises, including Agrosán, recently acquired by $ 120 million by Syngenta. All these are members of the UGP.
The next day, Friday June 8th, the UGP published a six column article on ABC Color: "Twelve arguments for dismissing Lovera" (1). These alleged arguments were presented to the Vice President and colleague of the Minister of Agriculture, the neoliberal Federico Franco, who at that time was president of Paraguay in the absence of Lugo, who was travelling in Asia.
On Friday June 15th, on the occasion of an annual exposition organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Minister Enzo Cardozo loosed a commentary to the press that an alleged group of investors from India, belonging to the agrochemical sector, cancelled an investment project in Paraguay due to the presumed corruption in SENAVE. He never clarified which group it was. In those hours, that day, the tragic events of Curuguaty were being recorded.
As part of this exposition prepared by the aforementioned Ministry, Monsanto presented another BT and Roundup Reistant (RR) transgenic cotton variety. Roundup is a herbicide manufactured and patented by Monsanto. The intention of Monsanto in Paraguay is the approval of its GM seed, as it has been able to in Argentina and other countries.
Prior to these events, the newspaper ABC Color systematically denounced of alleged corruption both the Health Minister, Esperanza Martinez, and Environment Minister, Oscar Rivas, two officials who had refused to pronounce in favour of Monsanto.
Monsanto, last year, billed U$S 30 million, tax free (because the company does not declares this part of its income) only for royalties for the use of GM soybeans in Paraguay. Independently, Monsanto bills for the sale of GM seeds. All cultivated soy grown in an area of almost three million hectares is GM, producing about seven million tons in 2010.
On the other hand, in the Chamber of Deputies the proposal for a Law on Biosafety had already been approved in general. The proposal included the creation a biosecurity direction provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, with broad authority for approval of all GM seeds for commercial growth, whether from soybean, corn, rice, cotton and certain vegetables. This proposal contemplated the abolition of the current Biosafety Commission, which is a collegial institution staffed by technical personnel of the Paraguayan State.
While these events happened, the UGP was mounting a national protest against the government of Fernando Lugo for June 25th. This would be a demonstration with agricultural machinery, closing half roads across the country. One of the claims of this so-called "tractorazo" was the removal of Miguel Lovera from the SENAVE and the approval of all GM seeds for commercial growth.
The connections
The UGP is headed by Hector Cristaldo, supported by other apostles such as Ramon Sanchez, who does business with the agrochemical sector, among other agents of the transnational agribusinesses. Cristaldo integrates the staff of several companies of the Zuccolillo Group, whose main shareholder is Aldo Zuccolillo, chief owner of the daily ABC Color, since its foundation under the Stroessner regime in 1967. Zuccolillo is leader of the Inter American Press Association, IAPA.
The Zuccolillo Group is lead partner in Paraguay of Cargill, one of the world’s biggest transnational agribusiness. The society built one of the largest bulk ports of Paraguay, called Port Union, 500 meters from the aquaduct of the Paraguayan State, on the Paraguay River, with no restrictions.
Agribusiness corporations in Paraguay hardly pay any taxes, due to the strong protection they have from the Congress, which is dominated by the right. The government of Paraguay receives only 13% of the GDP, while 60% of the tax collected by the Paraguayan State is the Value Added Tax, or VAT. The big landowners do not pay taxes. Real Estates taxes represents only 0.04% of taxes received by the state, about 5 million dollars, according to a World Bank study (2) even though the income of agribusiness produces around 30% of the GDP, representing some 6,000 million dollars annually.
Paraguay is one of the countries in the world with greatest inequalities. 85% of the land, some 30 million hectares, are in the hands of 2% of landowners (3) who are engaged in the merely extractive production or, in the worst cases, in land speculation.
Most of these oligarchs have mansions in Punta del Este (Uruguay) or in Miami and have close relations with the transnational financial sector which keeps their ill-gotten assets in tax havens or facilitates foreign investments. All of them, one way or another, are linked to agribusiness and dominate the national political scene, with wide influences on the three branches of government. Here reigns the UGP, supported by the financial sector and transnational agribusiness.
The events of Curuguaty
Curuguaty is a city located east of the Oriental Region of Paraguay, about 200 km from Asunción, capital of Paraguay. A few miles away from Curuguaty is the Morombí Estate, property of the landowner Blas Riquelme, with over 70 000 hectares there. Riquelme comes from the heart of the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989) under whose regime he amassed an immense fortune, while allied to General Andres Rodriguez, who executed the coup that overthrew the dictator Stroessner.
Riquelme, who was president of the Colorado Party for many years and a senator, and who owns several supermarkets and cattle ranches, appropriated by legal subterfuges some 2,000 hectares that belong to the Paraguayan State.
This land was occupied by landless peasants who were claiming their redistribution from the government of Fernando Lugo. A judge (José Benítez from Curuguaty) signed a search warrant (not an eviction order* ( , through the Special Operations Group, GEO, of the National Police, an elite whose members were mostly trained in Colombia under the Uribe administration for counter-insurgency.
Only internal sabotage within the police intelligence, with the complicity of the prosecutor, can explain the ambush, which killed six policemen. One cannot understand how highly trained police officers as part of Plan Colombia, could easily fall into a trap allegedly set by peasants, as the press, dominated by the oligarchs, would have us believe. Their comrades reacted and gunned down the peasants, killing 11 and leaving some 50 wounded. Among those killed was GEO police chief, Comisario Erven Lovera, brother of Lt. Col. Alcides Lovera, security chief of President Lugo.
The plan involves criminalizing, to a point of extreme hatred of all peasant organizations, to push the peasants off the land for the exclusive use of agribusiness. It's a slow, painful process of “decampesinization” of the Paraguayan countryside that directly undermines food sovereignty, food growing culture of the Paraguayan people, since the peasants are the producers and the re-creators of the ancestral Guaraní culture.
Both the prosecutors or public ministers, such as the Judicial Sector and the National Police, as well as divers organisms of the State of Paraguay, are controlled through cooperation agreements by USAID, the aid agency of the United States. The assasination of the brother of the head of security of the President is obviously a direct message to Fernando Lugo, whose head would be the next target, probably through an impeachment. Lugo had moved his government to the right, trying to calm the oligarchs.
What happened in Curuguaty resulted in the removal of Carlos Filizzola as Interior Minister who was replaced by Ruben Candia Amarilla, from the opposition Colorado Party. Lugo had defeated the Partido Colorado at the polls in 2008, after 60 years of dictatorship, including the tyranny of Alfredo Stroessner.
Candia was Minister of Justice of the Colorado government of Nicanor Duarte (2003-2008) and acted as a General Prosecutor of the State for a period, until last year when he was replaced by another colorado, Javier Diaz Veron, at the request of Lugo himself. Candia is accused of having promoted the repression of peasant organization leaders and popular movement leaders. His nomination for General Prosecutor in 2005 was approved by the then U.S. ambassador, John F. Keen.
Candia was responsible for a greater degree of control of the Paraguayan Public Ministry by USAID and was accused, in the beginning of his government by Fernando Lugo, of conspiring against this President, in order to remove him from government. After taking office as the political minister for Lugo, the first thing Candia announced was the elimination of the dialog protocol with the peasants who take over property. The message is that there will be no negotiation, but simply the application of the law, meaning the use of repressive police force without contemplation.
Two days after the nomination of Candia Amarilla, members of the UGP, headed by Hector Cristaldo, visited already the new Interior Minister, from whome they requested guarantees for the aforementioned “tractorazo”. However, Cristaldo said that the disruptive action could be suspended in case of new favourable signs to the UGP (understood as release of Monsanto's GM seeds and removal of Lovera and other ministers among other benefits for big business and oligarchs), moving the government even further to the right.
Cristaldo is candidate for deputy for the 2013 elections by a movement within the Colorado Party, led by Horacio Cartes, a businessman recently investigated by the United States for money laundering and drug trafficking, according to the ABC Color daily itself, echoing several cables from the State Department of USA, published by WikiLeaks, including one that referred directly to Cartes, on November 15th, 2011.
POLITICAL TRIAL OF LUGO
In the last hours, while this chronicle was being written, the UGP (4), some members of the Colorado Party and individual members of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, PLRA, led by Senator Blas Llano and ally of the government, threatened the political impeachment of Fernando Lugo to remove him as president of the Republic of Paraguay.
To continue as President, Lugo depends on the mood of the Colorados and their liberal allies, who now threaten him with impeachment, surely looking for more areas of power (money) as a pledge of peace. The Colorado Party, allied with other minority parties of the opposition has the majority needed to impeach the president of their duties.
Perhaps they hope for the "favorable signs" from Lugo that the UGP - on behalf of Monsanto, the financial power and the oligarchs - is urging the government. Otherwise, they would go to the next stage of the plans to takeover the government that was born as progressive and is slowly dying as conservative, controlled by the de facto powers.
Among some of its assets, Lugo is responsible for signing the Antiterrorist Law, promoted by the United States around the world after the events of 9/11. In 2010 he authorized the implementation of the North Zone Initiative, consisting of the installation and deployment of troops and North American civilians in the North Eastern Region – under the noses of Brazil - supposedly to develop activities in favour of the peasant communities.
The Frente Guazú, a coalition of the Left in support of Lugo, can not speak with one voice, and its members lose perspective in the analysis of real power, falling into electoral games. Infiltrated by USAID, many members of the Guazú Front, involved in the administration of the State, succumb to the siren song of the rampant consumerism of neoliberlism. They get corrupted to the core and in practice become vain emulators of the conceited wealthy that integrated the recent right-wing governments of the Colorados.
Curuguaty also sends a message for the region, especially Brazil, on the border of which these bloody events happened, clearly led by the warlords, whose theatres of operations can be seen in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria. Brazil is building global hegemony with Russia, India and China, the so called BRIC. However, the United States does not relinquish its power to persuade the giant of South America. The new commercial hub that includes Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile is already running. It is a retaining wall to the expansionist desires of Brazil to the Pacific.
Meanwhile, Washington continues its diplomatic offensive in Brasilia, trying to convince the government to strengthen commercial, technological and military ties with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. Meanwhile, the Fourth Fleet of the United States, revived a few years ago after being out of service just after ended World War II, monitors the entire South Atlantic as of another siege to Brazil, in case this country does not understand the diplomatic persuasion.
Paraguay is in a dispute between the two foreign powers, still widely dominated by USA. Therefore, Curuguaty is also a small sign for Brazil, in the sense that Paraguay can become a powder keg that will break the development of southeast of Brazil.
But above all, the dead of Curuguaty is a sign from capital, the big capital of pillaging extractivism that plagues the planet and crushes life in all corners of the Earth in the name of civilization and development. Fortunately, the world's peoples are also responding to these signs of death with signs of resistance, with signs of dignity and respect for all life forms on the planet.
References
1.
2. Documento del Banco Mundial. Paraguay. Impuesto Inmobiliario: Herramienta clave para la descentralización fiscal y el mejor uso de la tierra. Volumen I: Informe principal. 2007.
3. Censo Agropecuario Nacional 2008. 4-
* Note from the translator.
On June 25th, Lugo was impeached, according to plan.