[R-G] ARGENTINA: Newspaper Brings to Light Abuses against Poor Farmers

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44644>
ARGENTINA:  Newspaper Brings to Light Abuses against Poor Farmers
By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 10 (IPS) - Small farmers in the northern Argentine
province of Santiago del Estero are publishing their own newspaper in
an attempt to raise awareness about the constant abuses they suffer at
the hands of wealthy landowners, who are encroaching on their small
plots of land.

The 4,000 copies of the first edition of El Ashpulitu, which means
"full of earth" in the Quechua indigenous language, were distributed
to local communities in the area in October.

The paper provides news coverage on questions of local interest such
as the struggle against water shortages, and reports abuses like
violent evictions from land and arbitrary arrests by the police and
private security guards working on behalf of agribusiness and
landowners.

Santiago del Estero, which is in the heart of the semi-arid Chaco
grasslands and subtropical forest region in northern Argentina, has a
population of just 800,000 people, 34 percent of whom live in rural
areas.

The Campesino (peasant) Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE),
which groups nearly 9,000 families who are defending their legal right
to the land they have worked for at least 20 years, and for several
generations in many cases, is producing the paper as part of a
Ministry of Social Development community newspaper programme called
"Contalo vos" (roughly, You Tell It).

The programme provides logistical and material support -- but not
funding -- to help community organisations produce their own
publications.

"Here (in the Santiago del Estero countryside), many people lack
electricity, so they have no TV or Internet, and don't have any idea
of the impact that what is happening to them can have in other
places," MOCASE member Diana Gagliano, the director of El Ashpulitu,
told IPS.

The main focus of the newspaper, which will come out every two months,
is the suffering of local farming communities that have come under
threat from the expansion of soybeans.

According to official statistics, between 2002 and 2006, more than
500,000 hectares were deforested to make way for genetically modified
soybeans, Argentina's main export crop.

The advance of monoculture, besides destroying the area's natural
biodiversity, is also undermining the very survival of campesinos who
have lived and farmed in the region for generations.

By law in Argentina, people can claim ownership of a plot of land if
they can prove that they have lived on and worked it for at least 20
years.

According to the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a local
human rights group that specialises in legal advocacy, 73 percent of
campesino families in Santiago del Estero have worked the land for
more than two decades.

CELS and other organisations of human rights lawyers provide
assistance to and represent the families grouped in MOCASE.

The newspaper, which will also be picked up by community radio
stations, is aimed at drawing attention to the problems faced by
campesino families in Santiago del Estero, both within local
communities -- through the print edition -- and around the world -- by
means of its on-line edition
(http://www.agenciaelnaciente.com.ar/inicio/).

The biggest concerns of local campesinos are the violations of their
rights by police, private security guards, landowners and even judges.

"Anything that helps reveal what is going on here is useful," MOCASE
activist Adolfo Farias told IPS from Santiago del Estero, referring to
the new publication.

"There is a great deal of censorship in the media; the only ones who
pay any attention to us are some alternative media outlets," he
complained.

"For years, but much more so in recent months, our resistance to an
agricultural production model that consists of vast monoculture
plantations of soybeans has met with repression by 'para-police'
groups and arrests ordered with the complicity of the local political
and judicial powers-that-be," said Faria.

He was referring to off-duty police officers and armed men in civilian
dress who burst into the humble dwellings of local campesinos by day
or night, hitting people and yelling insults and false accusations,
and dragging them off to jail, where sometimes they are held for
months.

According to MOCASE, the armed men are sent by landowners and
agribusiness interests who want to get their hands on the campesino
families' land.

In September, dozens of small farmers, men as well as women, were
hauled off to jail in this kind of illegal operation in the villages
of Atamisqui, Pinto, Monte Quemado, Qumilí, Tintitna and Termas de Rio
Hondo, while their homes were sacked and damaged, and some of their
belongings were stolen, the movement complains.

In a conversation with IPS, MOCASE leader Ángel Strapazzón said that
"a major offensive" carried out over the last few months led to more
than 50 arbitrary arrests of local campesinos.

But the detainees were released thanks to the pressure brought by the
movement, which held protests and filed legal complaints.

However, more than 150 members of the movement are facing legal
charges and arrest warrants. "The provincial government wants Santiago
del Estero to become the new pampas and produce forage for the world,"
said Strapazzón, referring to the GM soy grown in the province, much
of which ends up in animal feed in industrialised countries.

Small, medium and large farmers in Argentina held a series of lengthy
nationwide strikes and roadblocks between March and July, blocking the
transportation of agricultural products, to demand a reduction in the
government's tax on exports of soybeans and other farm products. The
conflict caused food shortages and triggered a major political crisis.

"After four months of inactivity and strikes, which enjoyed strong
support from the mainstream media, many agribusiness interests around
here felt a sense of triumph, and September was a really tough month
for campesinos, with raids, beatings and the arrests of 50 people,"
said the activist.

MOCASE now hopes that the newspaper will at least help bring to light
the abuses they have been suffering. (END/2008)