“Our main task is to fight to recover the land we have in Paraguay. There are lots of lands concentrated in few hands and many people who are landless. Besides many land owners are foreigners”, said Luis Ruiz member of the Organizacion de Lucha por la Tierra of Paraguay (Organization to Fight for Land), a member of La Via Campesina. He participated on behalf of the civil society in the annual session of the Food Security Committee in Rome, Italy.

“As an organization, if we are to talk about Food Sovereignty the first thing is to talk about land. All the food we eat on a daily basis come from the land, how is this land being used and distributed in the countries?”, questions Luis.

Only after addressing the land issue, we are able to talk about food price volatility “although we don’t want to get into that subject because it implies considering food as a commodity, when it is actually a right”.

Luis also points out that in his country, the organizations demanding an agrarian reform are subject to persecution and stigmatization.
There have been violent incidents against land owners without further investigation in which peasant organizations have not been involved.

An example of this, says Luis, is the declaration of the state of emergency that has been in place since the end of September in the northern departments of Concepcion and San Pedro. The official argument for this declaration has been the death of two police officers purportedly by an insurgent group. However, the peasant representative provides other clues: in Concepcion days before the death of the officers, an official body had announced that a large rural estate that has been illegally acquired, even though it was state property, was being used by politicians and lawmakers.

After the state of emergency was declared there was nothing to do and the investigation was stalled.

The prospect for Paraguayan organizations is delicate because of the ruthless dispute over the control of the country’s natural resources and a weak administration with no Parliamentary majority.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real