Paraguayan farmers question probe into killings
Paraguayan farmers question probe into killings
PEDRO SERVIN | December 5, 2012 05:31 PM EST
ASUNCION, Paraguay — Lucia Aguero stood with the other farmers in the standoff. About 300 of them had occupied the rich politician's land that they insisted wasn't legally his. On the other side of the clearing were some 200 riot police. She watched as the two negotiators walked up to each other and began talking.
And then the shooting started.
The negotiators were both hit. The young woman threw herself to the ground, shielding a friend's 4-year-old boy beneath her as she felt a bullet's sting in her thigh. In the end, 17 were dead, including the men who were trying to resolve the six-week-old occupation.
Politicians opposed to President Fernando Lugo seized on the "Massacre of Curuguaty" on June 15 to vote the sandal-wearing leftist out of office for "mismanaging" the property dispute. Paraguayans' hopes that Lugo would make good on his promises of land reform died.
Six months after the shootout, there has been no official accounting of how a peaceful negotiation ended with a barrage of bullets that killed 11 farmers and six police officers. Farmers and their supporters say the official investigation is a one-sided effort to make an example of the farmers, so nobody will dare challenge the interests of powerful landowners ever again.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20121205/lt-paraguay-land-killings/?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=green
