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ARGENTINA:
Indigenous
Villages on the Auction Block
Marcela
Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - The
Argentine government has taken
legal action to stop the
imminent auction of a parcel of
land in the northern province of
Santiago del Estero that is home
to 4,000 people, most of them of
indigenous descent.
A church, cemetery and other
public use areas are excluded
from the auction.
The federal and provincial
Ombudsmen's Offices have filed
an appeal with the courts in a
last-minute effort to keep the
auction, scheduled for this
Thursday, from going ahead.
Within the 10,000-hectare parcel
to be auctioned off, there are
six villages inhabited by
thousands of people with rights
to the land, they maintain.
The six villages - San José de
Boquerón, El Ceibal, Tres
Varones, Santa Luisa, Nueva
Simbolar and Villa San Juan -
are located close together along
the border with the neighbouring
northern province of Salta, some
900 kilometres from Buenos
Aires.
The Ombudsmen's Offices have
presented documents which prove
that the land has been inhabited
for at least 100 years.
The villages ended up on the
auction block because the parcel
of land they occupy was put down
as collateral for a large loan
taken out - and subsequently
defaulted on - at the Banco
Platense, a financial
institution based far away in La
Plata, the capital of the
province of Buenos Aires.
The bank, owned by a Santiago de
Estero political leader, went
bankrupt itself several years
ago, leading to the liquidation
of its assets to compensate the
2,000 former account holders
demanding their deposits back.
The courts ordered the
auctioning off of the land
despite being fully aware that
it was inhabited. The property
is worth an estimated one
million dollars.
A potential buyer has already
come forward and attempted to
convince the campesinos (peasant
farmers) living in the villages
to remain there and work for
him.
But the villagers refuse to give
up the rights they have earned
to this land through long-time
occupation. In accordance with
the law, people can claim
ownership of a plot of land if
they can prove that they have
lived on and worked it for over
20 years.
”They always come around with
these promises about providing
work, but the campesinos are the
true owners of these lands, and
they mustn't let anyone else set
foot on them,” Nelly Veliz,
president of the Campesino
Movement of Santiago del Estero
(MOCASE), told IPS.
In an effort to stop the
auction, MOCASE has organised a
series of demonstrations over
the last few weeks with the
support of other civil society
organisations in the province.
They are demanding a definitive
solution to an ongoing problem:
threats of eviction, police
harassment and political
persecution targeting indigenous
people and campesinos.
In 2003, the federal government
sent a Human Rights Secretariat
delegation to Santiago del
Estero to investigate reports
that paramilitary groups had
been created to intimidate the
local population with weapons
and attack dogs, with the aim of
coercing them into leaving the
land they were living on.
Numerous irregularities were
documented by the delegation.
Two years ago, Veliz noted, a
parcel of land in another part
of the province owned by the
same bank was auctioned off and
dozens of families were evicted
as a result. ”This is a
never-ending problem. The
campesinos don't have money to
pay for lawyers and surveyors,
but the land truly belongs to
them,” she said.
The problem stems from the fact
that large real estate holdings
are often purchased sight
unseen, and it is only when the
buyers take possession of the
property that they discover
there are thousands of people
living on it.
Most of the families living on
the land to be auctioned later
this week are of indigenous
descent.
The municipal commissioner of El
Boquerón, one of the villages
involved, is named Juan Cuellar,
which was also the name of the
military commander designated by
the Spanish crown in 1753 to
establish a ”reducción” or
settlement of indigenous people
converted to Christianity in
this area. The surname Cuellar
is common in all six villages.
In one of the villages there is
a small church built by the
Jesuits in the 16th century. It
was reportedly after the Jesuits
were expelled from the Spanish
colonies that Commander Cuellar
was put in charge of organising
the indigenous inhabitants of
the region into communities.
”The good thing about this case
is that it is creating public
awareness of an issue that has
gone unresolved for years now
throughout northwest Argentina,
Bolivia and Paraguay - the
problem of land use and
ownership,” commented lawyer
Pablo Muratore from the
non-governmental group El Ceibal,
which works with campesinos in
the province.
Muratore joined the organisation
as an advisor for a project
aimed at providing training on
the issues of land use and
ownership and the rights of
rural citizens.
The first point stressed to the
campesinos involved in the
project was the need to legally
establish ownership of the land
they occupy and farm, given the
increasing encroachment of
large-scale soy farming.
Through the project, the
campesinos were able to share
the cost of having their lands
surveyed. But the legal
procedures involved in
officially establishing their
ownership of land they have
occupied and farmed for over 20
years have met with significant
delays.
”This is a problem with a long
history and no definitive
solution,” Muratore told IPS,
noting that various economic
interests have led to land
ownership conflicts in the
region over the decades.
”Many years ago, the big
business was hardwood forestry,
then came drilling for oil, and
later, in the 1990s, these lands
were used as collateral for
large loans. Today it's soy
farming,” he said.
Given the growing number of
evictions in Santiago del Estero
and other provinces, El Ceibal
and other campesino advocacy
groups have stressed the threat
being posed to the traditional
way of life practised in these
settlements.
”The auctioneers think these
people are worried about their
houses and fields being sold
off, but in fact they are
following a way of life that is
the complete opposite of the
latifundium (large landed
estate) model used in the Pampas
region (in central Argentina),
characterised by fenced fields,
cattle concentrated in pens and
a single owner as the boss,”
explained Muratore.
”Here there is no
infrastructure, and everything
is used collectively: the small
reservoirs, the wells, the
pastureland, everything is
shared,” he said. The livestock
from the six villages graze
freely across the entire area,
which is much more extensive
than in the case of intensive
cattle farming.
The civil society organisations
working with the campesinos are
striving to defend this way of
life, and are demanding the
intervention of the federal and
provincial government, not only
through legal action to stop the
scheduled land auction, but also
with efforts to ensure legal
recognition of the campesinos'
rights to this land.
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