The pressure is very great, the press is on the side of the soy farmers, and there is real risk that they will act with violence against the landless campesinos. The landlords have already organized armed groups and have threatened to act on their own. Meanwhile, a political problem is emerging because the soy farmers have threatened to influence the 2013 elections.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo hasn’t delivered on promises to the farmers who brought him to power, while transgenic soy farms expand. […]
“Our America is on the march,” Paraguay president Fernando Lugo proclaimed at the close of the Fourth Americas Social Forum (ASF) that met in Asunción, Paraguay from August 11-15, 2010. America is on the march, Lugo repeated, but we have not yet arrived at our desired destination. We have a lot of work left to do, and the Americas Social Forum is one of the torches that lights our path forward.
Thousands of Paraguayan farmers raised their clubs, fists and placards into the air while marching through the streets of Asunción, the capital city, on Thursday, March 25. The farmers demanded that President Fernando Lugo follow through on his campaign promises for agrarian reform. After a year and a half in office, Lugo’s failures to meet such demands have led various farmer organizations to directly oppose his administration.
Workers and activists gathered in the central
Despite brutal police violence, on November 6, campesinos celebrated the victorious ending of a three day long mass mobilization. Some five thousands campesinos from all over Paraguay gathered in the capital city of Asuncion to celebrate what constitutes a first victory for the campesino and landless movement in Paraguay.
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In his inaugural speech this past August, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo clearly positioned himself on the side of the socially weak and excluded. However, there is a high risk of rapid, far-reaching social change failing, not just because of the united rejection by the traditional oligarchy, which is made up of large land owners, the mafia and smugglers, but also as because of the lack of an organized social basis for such changes.
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