Paraguay: Campesino Leader Charged For Confronting Crop Spraying

[Judi Lynn]

Paraguay: Campesino Leader Charged For Confronting Crop Spraying
Written by Marco Castillo, Regina Kretschmer, Javiera Rulli, Gaby Schwartzmann.
Translated by April Howard.
Thursday, 27 March 2008


The criminalization of social movements in Paraguay has worsened with the recent order to detain political and social leader Tomás Zayas, a municipal councilor and three campesinos, charged for “Homicidal intent and criminal association.” These accusations are due to the conflict that has developed over the last three years over intense crop spraying with pesticides suffered by the Leopoldo Perrier community of San Cristóbal Municipality in the department of Alto Paraná, Paraguay. Tomas Zayas, the leader of the Association of Alto Paraná Farmers (ASAGRAPA) <1>, and the National Center of Peasant, Indigenous and Popular Organizations (CNOCIP) <2>, is moreover a senatorial candidate for the Workers’ Party <3> in the April 20th elections.

ASAGRAPA is a campesino organization that works in one of the principle zones of production of genetically modified soy in Paraguay. The campesino communities in these zones live surrounded by immense soy fields and are highly exposed to the intense crop spraying with toxic pesticides, which are applied to the large-scale monoculture crops. ASAGRAPA is one of the principle organizations in the region that accompanies the struggle for the land, the re-vindication of integral agrarian reform and the rights of campesino communities. In this context, it started the “Stop the fumigation: In defense of Communities and Life” campaign in December of 2007.

In the campesino community of Leopoldo Perrier, the community became so contaminated with toxic pesticides in August of 2007 that a three-year-old child, Jesús Jiménez, died after intense crop spraying. The community and the parents of the child denounced the lack of diagnosis in the moment of death. <4> As the diagnosis of ‘poison with pesticides’ was negated by the soy producers, the organizations were able to push a judicial order for the exhumation of the cadaver for its necropsy and the execution of a socio-environmental diagnostic of the community by three national institutions. The necropsy demonstrated that there were high levels of toxic pesticides in the body.

In February of this year, during the cycle of cultivation and crop spraying, the affected community resisted the crop spraying via peaceful protest. Due to this protest, the Public Prosecutor recently accused four people, three of whom were parents of young children and members of ASAGRAPA, and the leader, Tomas Zayas. The Public Prosecutor alleged that the accused composed a criminal association and that they carried out an attempted homicide by supposedly firing a gun into the air. The community indicated that Zayas was not present during the protest, nor were guns fired.

What happened to the child Jesús Jiménez is not an isolated incident; on reiterated occasions the grave problems that toxic pesticides cause in communities has been denounced. Local press reports indicate that in the Leopoldo Perrier community, the soy producers “do not respect the crop borders established by law, with relation to human settlements, educational institutions and water ways.” <5> Other press reports point out that “classes are often cancelled on days of crop spraying on the field twenty meters away because the children faint from the smell. It also causes spontaneous abortions, the death of fish, pigs and other animals.” <6>

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1198/1/

[Peace Patriot]

1. I read this article and found myself staggered with both sadness and

admiration for the courage of these campesinos. Sadness at the evil that people do out of greed. Admiration for the courage--but more than this, for the morality, the ethics, the high standard of human behavior--that these poor suffering people possess, who want only what is best for all of us--a pesticide-free environment, with healthy soils and plants and people--and a just society, a society without masters and slaves, a society in which everyone is valued and everyone has a say. Considering the grief they've seen, the horrors inflicted upon them, they could be boiling with rage, they could be murderous, they could be filled with hatred. And they are not. They have what in times past was called "virtue"--a combination of intelligence and heart. It takes intelligence to understand soils and plants and animals, to understand the complexity of nature. MIT-educated chemists making big salaries for Monsanto are stupid by comparison to these peasant farmers. Stupid, ignorant scientific thugs. And it takes heart not to be insanely angry at the people who would do this--who fill homes and children's playgrounds with poison, and are poisoning our world and killing our planet. But violence cannot--and never will--save the human race. We must give that up. We must evolve. These campesinos--and many others I've read about--seem highly evolved to me. Our society would call them poor and "backward" and "uneducated." But WE are the ones who are poor and backward and uneducated--us urban types, or us "northerners." We have so much to learn about what intelligence really is, and how to restore courage in ourselves, and how to bring heart back into our relations with others and with the soils, plants, animals and weathers that sustain us.