Paraguay farmers' leader gets 35 years for massacre

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Paraguay farmers' leader gets 35 years for massacre
By AFP 3 hours ago .

The man behind the 2012 massacre of 17 police and farmers in Paraguay, in a crisis that helped bring down a president, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Farmers' leader Ruben Villalba was on Monday handed the stiffest possible sentence for the killings in Curuguaty, 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital.

The violence broke out when authorities ordered police in to remove landless farmers who were squatting on ranch land they did not own there. It helped lead to leftist then president Fernando Lugo's impeachment.

Three other suspects convicted along with Villalba were sentenced to terms between 18 and 20 years. Hundreds of Lugo supporters rallied outside the Justice Ministry against the sentences.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/paraguay-farmers-leader-gets-35-years-for-massacre/article/469788#ixzz4EAQbQGiQ

---

Rural Paraguayans Fight for Land Amid Corruption, Poverty and Violence

Written by Toby Hill
Monday, 16 May 2016 12:08

The closing down of a community-run radio in eastern rural Paraguay is the last example of repression in a country where 1,6% of its population controls 80% of its agricultural land.



For 14 years, Juan Aveiro broadcast Radio Mandu’arã to a cluster of communities in a remote corner of eastern Paraguay. He and his team of volunteer journalists worked from a makeshift studio painted pink. On one wall, a mural depicts Paraguayan peasant farmers or campesinos with their fists in the air, behind a banner proclaiming “peace and justice!”

Like many other community-run radios across Paraguay, Mandu’arã’s output reflected the quotidian ups and downs of local campesino life. Then, in November 2015, eight policemen and six public officials raided Mandu’arã’s studio. “They took everything,” Aveiro says. His experience is part of a pattern of suppression playing out across Paraguay, according to Francisco Benitez from CODEHUPY, an umbrella organisation of human rights groups. “This government is driving a process aimed at eradicating alternative voices of protest,” he says.

. . .

The most unequal land distribution in Latin America

This fight centres on land ownership. According to a 2008 census, 1.6% of Paraguay’s population controls 80% of its agricultural land. At the same time, 300,000 family ‘farmers’ live without access to any land at all. This shapes a situation in which a third of the rural population lives in extreme poverty. Such inequity is a legacy of the country’s long years of dictatorship.

During his 35-year rule, General Stroessner tortured his opponents in bathtubs, threw them out of planes, or parcelled them in barbed wire before dumping their bodies in the River Paraguay. As part of the clientilist networks through which he maintained power, Stroessner divided public land among the country’s military and political elite. 10 million hectares – 25% of all the land in Paraguay – were given away or sold at negligible prices.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/5632-rural-paraguayans-fight-for-land-amid-corruption-poverty-and-violence

[forest444]

1. Stroessner was fond of listening in on the torture over the phone - even while on official business.

It's good to see Paraguayans are seeing a little justice, even if it's in fits and starts.

Now if they could just bring themselves to prosecute those behind the 2012 coup against Father Lugo...

[Judi Lynn]

2. That's the first thing which came to mind, as in "WTF?"The land really did NOT belong to the Senator

Last edited Tue Jul 12, 2016, 05:54 PM - Edit history (1)

who set the hounds of hell upon them, as it had been given to them earlier by the government.

I just found a quick grab which refers to the land:

A Coup Over Land: The Resource War Behind Paraguay’s Crisis

Written by Benjamin Dangl
Monday, 16 July 2012 23:21

The issue that finally tipped the scales toward the June 22 Parliamentary coup against Lugo was a conflict over land. In April of this year, 60 landless campesinos occupied land in Curuguaty, in northeastern Paraguay. This land is owned by former Colorado Senator Blas N. Riquelme, one of the richest people and largest landowners in the country. In 1969, the Stroessner administration illegally gave Riquelme 50,000 hectares of land that was supposed to be destined to poor farmers as a part of land reform. Since the return to democracy in 1989, campesinos have been struggling to gain access to this land. The April occupation of land was one such attempt. On June 15, security forces arrived in Curuguaty to evict the landless settlement. The subsequent confrontation during the eviction (the specific details of which are still shrouded in confusion) led to the death of 17 people, including 11 campesinos and 6 police officers. Eighty people were wounded.

Managing the gargantuan agro-industry are transnational seed, agricultural and agro-chemical companies including Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta, Dupont, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Bunge. International financial institutions and development banks have promoted and bankrolled the agro-export business of monoculture crops—much of Paraguayan soy goes to feed animals in Europe. The profits have united political and corporate entities from Brazil, the US, and Paraguay, and increased the importance of Paraguay’s cooperation with international businesses.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/3758-a-coup-over-land-the-resource-war-behind-paraguays-crisis

[center]





Stroessner and Chile's monster dictator Pinochet, both dictators US-supported







Mariscal Estigarribia, built in Paraguay during Stroessner,
big enough to land the largest transport aircraft the US has.
Right out in the middle of the jungle. Built by Nixon.
Stroessner ruled for 35 years, we never heard one peep
concerning his lack of elections, his being a genocidal monster
who killed so many indigenous Paraguayans, and also sold
some of them, and their children into slavery. [/center]
Thank you for posting the information about Stroessner's torture preferences, forest444. So fiendish it almost seems impossible, doesn't it? What a nightmare from which many were never able to awaken.

I am certain almost no US Americans have ever either heard of this murderous ghoul, or the fact he gave haven to one of the most monstrous Nazis Germany ever saw, Dr. Josef Mengele, who notoriously conducted hellish experiments upon Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

[forest444]

3. Among Argentines, Paraguay has a Tijuana-like reputation: intriguing and fun-loving, but lawless.

My father helped design the Yacyretá Dam (which straddles the border between the two countries).

Once, he was in a sidewalk café in Asunción with a couple of colleagues, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to Stroessner, his corruption, pedophilia, despotism, etc. The waiter suddenly came to the table and, practically quaking in his boots, said: "Pardon me. I realize you're Argentine; but please stop talking about the general. We can't do that here."

This must have been in the early '80s. Stroessner, as you know, was deposed by his own Army in 1989.

[Judi Lynn]

4. That IS alarming, when public conversations have to be curtailed. He had it all nailed down shut.

That's something which doesn't happen in almost anyone's life. So creepy.

The fact that your father is Argentinian probably got him a little breathing room with the warning, otherwise he very easily could have taken away, wouldn't you think?

He was involved in that amazing dam? I heard about that years ago, had to tell my husband, and he already had learned about it earlier. You have to get as far away as a satellite, almost, to be able to get it all in one photo. One of the largest dams in the world, on the Paraná River. Astonishing feat.

[center]





[/center]

[forest444]

5. Great finds, Judi.

It took $11 billion and 12 years (1983-95) to build. Cristina Kirchner invested a few hundred million more during her first term to raise the water level by 23 ft in 2011 - which, although it may not sound like much, enabled an increase in electric generation by two-thirds.

Yacyretá thus generates 20 terawatt hours a year, about as much as FDR's Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State and around 13% of the total in Argentina (as well as nearly all of Paraguay's).

I'm proud to say as well that while he was on the design team in the early '80s, my father discovered a design flaw that could have critically damaged it should water levels on the Paraná River rise too quickly (as sometimes happens during the rainy season in the area, Argentina's most humid). He proved that a miscalculation had taken place, and it was duly corrected; but he was never credited with the discovery.

Qué será, right?

Thanks again for the research, Judi!

[Judi Lynn]

7. It absolutely IS the way it goes, and it's a shame. Very ungracious on their part, wow.

They should have thanked their lucky stars your father was thorough enough to keep searching on their behalf for future problems down the road, instead of just wanting to get the assignment behind him and move on. That's the difference between an ordinary person and someone to be treasured. People like that are rare.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Paraguay court sentences farmers for deaths of policemen

Paraguay court sentences farmers for deaths of policemen

12 July 2016

A judge in Paraguay has sentenced 11 subsistence farmers to up to 30 years in jail for the deaths of police officers during a land reform protest four years ago.

Six policemen died in a gunfight during an operation to evict the farmers from land they had been occupying. Eleven protesters were also killed. The deaths deepened political tensions in Paraguay and were used by congress to oust the left-wing President Fernando Lugo.

Four men received sentences of between 18 and 30 years in jail, while a further seven men and women were given sentences of between four and six years.

The court heard how the clashes occurred near the city of Curuguaty in Canindeyu province in the east of Paraguay when a group of around 250 riot police were sent to clear a group of around 70 subsistence farmers off a property belonging to an agricultural company called Campos Morumbi.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36771011