The World’s Forgotten and Continuing Nightmare

by Bill Zoda

When I arrived in Paraguay I did not expect in the least to become drawn into the situation of the present day. Arriving from Uruguay I was to continue conducting further research into the human rights violations of the region in the decades past, most notably the late 60s and 1970s. In the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion lies one of the largest collections of detailed files on state repression available from the post World War Two era.

These documents, including secret police and military files, were found unprotected and rotting away in a police building outside of the capital thanks to the vigilant crusade of human rights activists, who uncovered them by pure luck in 1992. The discovery of these files marked a stark contrast to other authoritarian torture regimes of the era, whose files were either destroyed or remain concealed.

In Uruguay, the best documented cases and files from the time period were compiled into a report “Uruguay Never Again: Human Rights Violations 1972-1985”, by the human rights organization SERPAJ (service for peace and justice). Beginning in Uruguay SERPAJ has now turned into a hemispheric wide movement in the search for truth and justice through the documentation of the regions darkest periods.

My first realization that something remained awry in Paraguay came over lunch with Paraguayan human rights icon Dr. Joel Filartiga who lost his 17-year-old son to torture at the hands of the Stroessner regime in 1976. Filartiga describes the current Colorado Party regime as a “Democradura”(Democratatorship). The Colorados were the prime political face to the military regime of General Alfredo Stroessner who ran Paraguay with an iron first for 35 years until 1989. As the military gradually began to step back their civilian face in the Colorado party stepped up and hence the “democradura” was born.

Although the human rights situation has improved within the city, the countryside remains ripe with repression. The Dr. told me that in the last few days over 100 people from the rural regions of the country had been forced off their land by large landowners who contract private security forces for use as paramilitary muscle to acquire and maintain control of the countryside.

I later paid a visit to SERPAJ Paraguay only to find that this SERPAJ office was overwhelmingly centered in the present day. It was here that I left the world of the past for a moment and began to take in the present day situation and decided to partake in some deeper investigation.

Tomas Palau of BASE (the Paraguayan organization of sociological research and statistical documentation) explained the situation during an interview at their headquarters in the capital that some 15,000 families (upwards of 100,000people) are currently being displaced per year at the hands of landlords and their security forces and the situation is only getting worse. In July of last year two rural community leaders were attacked by these state and landowner sponsored paramilitaries. The first, Luis Martínez, was shot more than 30 times and was killed; the second, Zacarías Vega was wounded and survived. According to an Amnesty International report, their “campaigning for peasant rights and their opposition to the use of firearms by civilian patrols in the area as well as against the excessive use of agricultural pesticides is what triggered the attack. Luis Martínez's family and Daniel Romero, another community leader, and his family received death threats after they pressed for an investigation into the shooting.”

Aside from targeted political killings and the misery of forced displacement, the overall militarization of the region is taking its toll. On August 18th of this year, two rural peasants from the San Vicente region were out hunting when they strayed onto “private” land. After crossing an invisible “boundary” it was they who became the animals. They were shot dead without warning by paramilitary security forces. Cristiano Gonzalez, aged 48, was shot in the back while Pedro Vazquez, 39, was shot in the head and died instantly. Not counting this recent tragedy human rights lawyer Juan Martens already has 12 cases from the San Vicente region alone including five political assassinations and seven injuries, with all the perpetrators being private paramilitary forces.

The driving factor for this increased displacement, militarization, and violence is the growing demand for soybeans. This booming demand for soy in the past few years has fueled the growth of large farms whose landlords are predatorily gobbling up large swatches of land on the border regions with Brazil in the south of the country and now have their eyes set on land deeper in the interior where current displacement and violence has been reaching record levels. Previously, sugar cane and soy were farmed by an estimated 43,000 separate farms, however the current drive toward a soy monopoly has cut that number to an estimated eight to nine thousand much larger farms where fewer people control much larger swatches of land. Furthermore, according Orlando Castillo of SERPAJ an estimated 600,000 people living in the countryside currently remain landless.

This massive internal displacement in a country of nearly 6million people is putting tremendous train on the already poor urban regions that lack proper water, sewage, education, and medical services. In contrast an estimated 22,000 private paramilitaries (the entire Paraguayan armed forces consists of 15,000 men) mostly consisting of ex Paraguayan but also Brazilian policemen and members of the armed forces are now on a landlord’s payroll. These forces main role is clearly to murder, intimidate, and expel poorer peasants from the countryside in order to fuel the profits of large landlords and international agribusiness, namely the US Agra giant Cargill.

According to SERPAJ, as well as the researchers at BASE, the links between the private paramilitaries and the official state are strong. They are given arms, transportation, intelligence information, and most important of all impunity from their actions.

Aside from Colombia, Paraguay is one of the last holdouts in South America in maintaining strong military ties with the US. Throughout the Stroessner regime and during the dirty wars of the 60s and 70s, Paraguay remained a base of operations for US covert activity and the US embassy in Asuncion remains one of the largest in the world. As recently as 2005 US troops arrived in Paraguay, after receiving exemption from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the Paraguayan government, to conduct “counter terrorism” training. Furthermore there are rumors that the US is planning to purchase a large military base in Paraguay to further cement itself in a region that seems to slowly be falling out of its control due to recent elections, but this purchase has officially been denied.

This coming year Paraguayans will also elect a new government and barring interference a populist ex priest, Fernando Lugo, according to the polls, is set for an easy victory that could end over 60 years of Colorado Party rule. Even if genuine democratic reforms are instituted, their ability to counteract the troubles in the countryside in needed time remains unlikely, although it would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Bill Zoda is an anarchist, activist and historian who can be reached at: wzoda@camden.rutgers.edu