 |
| Poster circulating on social media |
This article was written a few hours before the overthrow of Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Idilio Méndez explains the keys behind the political conspiracy in a country besieged by agribusiness and with a political class at the service of its interests.
Who is behind this sinister plot? The proponents of an ideology that promotes maximum economic benefit at any price and the more the better, now and in the future.
The article is relevant in Ecuador, since after the expulsion of transgenic products in 9 European countries, the lobby in our country to allow their entry has increased and President Correa himself has already declared that this prohibition was "a mistake of the Constitution." Monsanto is the largest producer of transgenic products in the world.
BY: Idilio Méndez Grimaldi.
On Friday, June 15, 2012, a group of police officers who were going to carry out an eviction order in the department of Canindeyú on the border with Brazil, were ambushed by snipers, mixed with peasants who were demanding land to survive. The order was given by a judge and a prosecutor to protect a landowner. The result was 17 deaths, 6 police officers and 11 peasants, and dozens of people were seriously injured.
The consequences: Fernando Lugo's lax and timid government became increasingly weak and extremely right-wing, on the verge of being impeached by a Congress dominated by the right; a hard blow to the left, to social and peasant organizations, accused by the landowning oligarchy of instigating the peasants; the advance of extractive agribusiness at the hands of transnationals such as Monsanto, through the persecution of peasants and the seizure of their lands and, finally, the installation of a comfortable platform for the oligarchs and right-wing parties for their triumphant return to the Executive Branch in the 2013 elections.
On October 21, 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, headed by the liberal Enzo Cardozo, illegally released the transgenic cotton seed Bollgard BT from the North American biotechnology company Monsanto for commercial planting in Paraguay. Protests by farmers and environmental organizations were not long in coming. The gene of this cotton is mixed with the gene of Bacillus Thurigensis, a toxic bacteria that kills some cotton pests, such as the larvae of the boll weevil, a beetle that lays eggs in the cotton cocoon.
The National Service for Quality and Health of Plants and Seeds, SENAVE, another Paraguayan State institution, headed by Miguel Lovera, did not register the transgenic seed in the cultivar register, due to the lack of opinions from the Ministry of Health and the Secretariat of the Environment, as required by law.
Media campaign
During the following months, Monsanto, through the Union of Production Guilds, UGP, closely linked to the Zuccolillo Group, which publishes the newspaper ABC Color, attacked SENAVE and its president for not registering Monsanto's transgenic seed for commercial use. throughout the country.
The decisive countdown seemed to have started with a new complaint by a pseudo-unionist from SENAVE, named Silvia Martínez, who accused Lovera of corruption and nepotism in the institution she heads on June 7, through ABC Color. Martínez is the wife of Roberto Cáceres, technical representative of several agricultural companies, including Agrosán, recently acquired for 120 million dollars by Syngenta, another transnational, all partners of the UGP.
The next day, Friday June 8, the UGP published a six-column article in ABC: “The 12 arguments for removing Lovera” (1). These alleged arguments were presented to the Vice President of the Republic, a coreligionist of the Minister of Agriculture, the liberal Federico Franco, who at that time was serving as President of Paraguay in the absence of Lugo, who was traveling through Asia.
On Friday the 15th of this month, during an annual exhibition organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Minister Enzo Cardozo let slip a comment to the press that an alleged group of Indian investors from the agrochemical sector had cancelled an investment project in Paraguay due to alleged corruption in SENAVE. He never clarified which group it was. At that time of that day, the tragic events in Curuguaty were taking place.
In the framework of this exhibition prepared by the aforementioned ministry, the multinational Monsanto presented another variety of cotton, doubly transgenic: BT and RR or Resistant to Roundup, a herbicide manufactured and patented by Monsanto. The intention of the North American multinational is the registration in Paraguay of this transgenic seed, as has already occurred in Argentina and other countries of the world.
Prior to these events, the newspaper ABC Color systematically denounced alleged acts of corruption by the Minister of Health, Esperanza Martínez, and the Minister of the Environment, Oscar Rivas, two officials who did not give their opinion in favor of Monsanto.
Last year, Monsanto earned 30 million dollars, tax-free (because it does not declare this part of its income), solely in royalties for the use of transgenic soybean seeds in Paraguay. Independently, Monsanto earns revenue from the sale of transgenic seeds. All the soybeans grown are transgenic on an area of nearly three million hectares, with a production of around 7 million tons in 2010.
On the other hand, the Chamber of Deputies has already approved in general the draft Law on Biosecurity, which contemplates the creation of a biosecurity department under the Ministry of Agriculture, with broad authority to approve the commercial cultivation of all transgenic seeds, whether soybeans, corn, rice, cotton and some vegetables. This draft law contemplates the elimination of the current Biosecurity Commission, which is a collegiate body of technical officials of the Paraguayan State.
While all these events were taking place, the UGP has been preparing a national protest against the government of Fernando Lugo for June 25. It is a demonstration with agricultural machinery, closing half of the roads in different parts of the country. One of the demands of the so-called “tractorazo” is the dismissal of Miguel Lovera from SENAVE, as well as the liberalization of all transgenic seeds for commercial cultivation.
The connections
The UGP is led by Héctor Cristaldo, supported by other apostles such as Ramón Sánchez – who has business dealings with the agrochemical sector – among other agents of the agribusiness transnationals. Cristaldo is a member of the staff of several companies of the Zuccolillo Group, whose main shareholder is Aldo Zuccolillo, owner and director of the newspaper ABC Color since its foundation under the Stroessner regime in 1967.
Zuccolillo is a leader of the Inter-American Press Association, IAPA.
The Zuccolillo Group is the main partner in Paraguay of Cargill, one of the largest agribusiness transnationals in the world. The company built one of the most important bulk ports in Paraguay, called Puerto Unión, 500 meters from the water intake of the Paraguayan State water company, on the Paraguay River, without any restrictions.
The agribusiness transnationals in Paraguay pay practically no taxes, thanks to the ironclad protection they have in Congress, which is dominated by the right. The tax burden in Paraguay is barely 13% of GDP. 60% of the tax collected by the Paraguayan State is the Value Added Tax, VAT. The landowners do not pay taxes. The Real Estate Tax represents barely 0.04% of the tax burden, about 5 million dollars, according to a study by the World Bank (2) even though agribusiness produces incomes of around 30% of GDP, which represent about 6,000 million dollars annually.
Paraguay is one of the most unequal countries in the world. 85 percent of the land, some 30 million hectares, is in the hands of 2 percent of the owners (3) who are engaged in purely extractive production or, in the worst cases, in land speculation.
Most of these oligarchs own mansions in Punta del Este or Miami and have close relations with the transnationals of the financial sector, which keep their ill-gotten assets in tax havens or facilitate investments abroad. All of them, in one way or another, are linked to agribusiness and dominate the national political spectrum, with broad influence in the three branches of the State. The UGP reigns there, supported by the transnationals of the financial sector and agribusiness.
The facts of Curuguaty
Curuguaty is a city located in the eastern part of Paraguay's Oriental Region, about 200 km from Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. A few kilometers from Curuguaty is the Morombí ranch, owned by landowner Blas Riquelme, with more than 70 thousand hectares in that place. Riquelme comes from the heart of the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989) under whose regime he amassed an immense fortune, allied with General Andrés Rodríguez, who carried out the coup d'état that overthrew the dictator Stroessner. Riquelme, who was president of the Colorado Party for many years and a senator of the Republic, owner of several supermarkets and cattle farms, appropriated through legal subterfuges approximately 2,000 hectares, which belong to the Paraguayan State.
This plot of land was occupied by landless peasants who had been requesting the government of Fernando Lugo to distribute it. A judge and a prosecutor ordered the eviction of the peasants, through the Special Operations Group, GEO, of the National Police, whose elite members were mostly trained in Colombia, under the Uribe government, for counterinsurgency fighting.
Only internal sabotage within the police intelligence cadres, with the complicity of the Attorney General's Office, explains the ambush, in which six policemen died. It is incomprehensible how highly trained policemen, within the framework of Plan Colombia, could easily fall into a supposed trap set by peasants, as the press dominated by the oligarchs would have us believe. Their comrades reacted and riddled the peasants, killing 11, and leaving some 50 wounded. Among the dead policemen was the head of the GEO, Commissioner Erven Lovera, brother of Lieutenant Colonel Alcides Lovera, head of security for President Lugo.
The plan consists of criminalizing, bringing to extreme hatred, all peasant organizations, to push peasants to abandon the countryside for the exclusive use of agribusiness. It is a slow, painful process of depeasantization of the Paraguayan countryside, which directly threatens food sovereignty, the food culture of the Paraguayan people, because peasants are ancestral producers and recreators of the entire Guaraní culture.
The Attorney General's Office, the Judiciary, the National Police, and various Paraguayan state agencies are controlled through cooperation agreements by USAID, the United States cooperation agency.
The assassination of the brother of the head of security of the President of the Republic is obviously a direct message to Fernando Lugo, whose head would be the next target, probably through impeachment, who further shifted his government to the right in an attempt to calm the oligarchs. What happened in Curuguaty brought down Carlos Filizzola from the Ministry of the Interior and Rubén Candia Amarilla was appointed in his place, from the opposition Colorado Party, which Lugo defeated at the polls in 2008, after 60 years of Colorado dictatorship, including the tyranny of Alfredo Stroessner.
Candia was Minister of Justice in the Colorado government of Nicanor Duarte (2003-2008) and served as Attorney General for one term, until last year, when he was replaced by another Colorado, Javier Díaz Verón, at the request of Lugo himself. Candia is accused of having promoted the repression of leaders of peasant organizations and popular movements. His nomination as Attorney General in 2005 was approved by the then United States ambassador, John F. Keen. Candia was responsible for greater control by USAID of the Public Ministry and was accused at the beginning of his government by Fernando Lugo of conspiring against him to remove him from office.
After taking over as Lugo's political minister, the first thing Candia announced was the elimination of the dialogue protocol with peasants who invade properties. The message is that there will be no conversation, but simply the application of the law, which means using repressive police force without consideration.
Two days after Candia Amarilla took office, members of the UGP, headed by Héctor Cristaldo, already visited the new Minister of the Interior, from whom they requested guarantees for the so-called tractorazo. However, Cristaldo said that the strike could be suspended in case of new favorable signals for the UGP (read: the release of Monsanto's genetically modified seeds, the dismissal of Lovera and other ministers, among other advantages for big capital and the oligarchs) further shifting the government to the right.
Cristaldo is a candidate for deputy in the 2013 elections through an internal movement of the Colorado Party, led by Horacio Cartes, a businessman investigated in the recent past by the United States for money laundering and drug trafficking, according to the newspaper ABC Color, which echoed several cables from the US State Department, published by WikiLeaks, including one that directly alluded to Cartes, on November 15, 2011.
Lugo's impeachment
In the last few hours, while this chronicle was being written, the UGP, (4) some members of the Colorado Party and the members of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, PLRA, led by Senator Blas Llano and an ally of the government, threaten Fernando Lugo with a political trial to remove him as president of the Republic of Paraguay.
Lugo depends on the mood of the Colorados to remain president of the Republic, as well as on his liberal allies, who now threaten him with impeachment, surely seeking more spaces of power (money) as a pledge of peace. The Colorado Party, allied with other minority opposition parties, has the necessary majority to remove the president from office.
Perhaps they are waiting for the “favorable signals” from Lugo that the UGP – on behalf of Monsanto, the financial homeland and the oligarchs – is demanding from the government. Otherwise, we would be moving on to the next phase of the plans to take over this government that was born as progressive and is slowly ending up as conservative, controlled by the powers that be.
Among his many responsibilities, Lugo is responsible for the approval of the Anti-Terrorist Law, promoted by the United States throughout the world after 9/11. In 2010, he authorized the implementation of the Northern Zone Initiative, consisting of the installation and deployment of American troops and civilians in the north of the Eastern Region – right under the nose of Brazil – supposedly to develop activities in favor of peasant communities.
The Guazú Front, a coalition of leftists that supports Lugo, is unable to unify its discourse, and its members lose perspective in the analysis of real power, falling into immediate electoral games. Infiltrated by USAID, many members of the Guazú Front who participate in the administration of the State succumb to the siren song of rampant neoliberal consumerism. They become corrupt to the core and in practice become vain emulators of the conceited rich people who were part of the recent governments of the right-wing Colorado Party.
Curuguaty also carries a message for the region, especially for Brazil, on whose border these bloody events are taking place, clearly directed by the masters of war, whose theatres of operations can be seen in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria. Brazil is building world hegemony together with Russia, India and China, called BRIC. However, the United States does not relent in its power of persuasion to the South American giant. The new commercial axis made up of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile is already underway. It is a retaining wall to Brazil's expansionist desires towards the Pacific.
Meanwhile, Washington continues its diplomatic offensive in Brasilia, trying to convince the government of Dilma Rousseff to strengthen commercial, technological and military ties. Meanwhile, the United States' Fourth Fleet, reactivated a few years ago after being decommissioned at the end of World War II, is watching the entire South Atlantic, acting as another encirclement of Brazil in case it does not understand diplomatic persuasion.
And Paraguay is a country in dispute between the two hegemonic countries, still largely dominated by the USA. That is why Curuguaty is also a small signal for Brazil, in the sense that Paraguay could become a powder keg that will undermine the development of southwestern Brazil.
But above all, the deaths of Curuguaty are a sign of capital, of big capital, of extractive plunder, which ravages the planet and crushes life in every corner of the Earth in the name of civilization and development. Fortunately, the peoples of the world are also responding to these signs of death, with signs of resistance, with signs of dignity and respect for all forms of life on the planet.
SOURCES:
MENDOZA ONLINE
1- http://www.abc.com.py/edicion-impresa/economia/presentan-12-argumentos-para–destituir-a–lovera-411495.html
2- World Bank Document. Paraguay. Real Estate Tax: Key Tool for Fiscal Decentralization and Better Land Use. Volume I: Main Report. 2007.
3- National Agricultural Census 2008.
ES_ES 
EN