madmark.myfastforum.org

Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

Paraguay: Agreement with Rural Activists Puts End to Protest

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1570/68/

Excerpts:

Written by Natalia Ruiz Díaz
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
(IPS) - Rural and social activists ended three days of protests Friday in the Paraguayan capital after their leaders met with President Fernando Lugo and reached a preliminary agreement for addressing their demands.
...

After the meeting, the rural protesters left the capital and the traffic blockades that had been set up around the country, especially in the northern department (province) of San Pedro, were dismantled.

According to the organisers, some 15,000 people had taken part in the protests in Asunción since Wednesday, and 45,000 were participating nationwide.
...

Among their main demands were the impeachment of the members of the Supreme Court and the removal of the attorney general, all of whom were named by the government of former president Nicanor Duarte of the right-wing Colorado Party, which ruled the country for nearly the entire 20th century (including the 1954-1989 dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner).

They were also calling for the release of protesters arrested over the past few weeks, and plots of land for landless farmers.

The demonstration by the Social and Popular Front was joined by other organisations, like the homeless people and slumdwellers’ movement, which is demanding decent housing and the removal of the minister of social action, Pablino Cáceres, and the public transport workers union, which is calling for compliance with the country’s labour laws and the dismissal of a high-level transportation official in the capital.
...

Belarmino Balbuena, a leader of the Paraguayan Campesino Movement and the Social and Popular Front, told IPS that the mobilisation was the result of the need for a social assistance plan for rural areas.

He also said Paraguay’s judiciary must be overhauled, because the current Supreme Court magistrates only rule in favour of wealthy landowners and soybean agribusiness interests.

Balbuena pointed out that the campesinos under arrest include two town councilors from districts in San Pedro, who recently took part in demonstrations by landless peasants against violations of the country’s environmental protection laws by large soybean producers.

The Paraguayan Catholic bishops’ conference has also spoken out on the crisis in rural areas. In their 183rd ordinary assembly, the bishops urged Lugo to expedite the purchase by the state of a 17,000-hectare rural district in San Pedro known as Barbero, where thousands of small farmers have been living and working the land for decades, without legal title to their farms, which keeps them from being able to take out loans.
...