ARGENTINA:
Defenders of Small
Farmers Harassed and
Threatened
By
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS)
- A group of hooded men
armed with shotguns
threatened the leader of
a small farmers’
organisation and the
delegate of an
international human
rights organisation in a
northern Argentine
province after they
reported an incident of
corruption involving
both Argentina and
Spain.
"It’s basically the same
old story: they harass
small farmers because
they want their land,
they kill their animals
and poison their water,
and they wage a war of
attrition," Ángel
Strappazzón of the
Santiago del Estero
Small Farmers’ Movement
(MOCASE) told IPS.
On Aug. 2, Strappazzón
appeared in a local
television programme
with Xavier Álvarez, a
professor at the
University of Catalunya
and a member of the Olof
Palme International
Foundation, based in
Barcelona, Spain. They
spoke on air about
alleged acts of
corruption that resulted
in abuses against small
farmers in the province.
That same day,
Strappazzón and Álvarez
were accosted by eight
armed men driving a van
without licence plates,
who claimed they were
guards working for the
Afagro agribusiness
company. Later, the two
men were intercepted by
police, and that night
they were ambushed while
driving along a highway,
they said.
They were trailed for
several kilometres by a
van just like the first
vehicle, and when they
were far away from the
city the van blocked the
road ahead of them. The
armed and hooded
occupants of the van
threatened to shoot them
in the head. "It was as
though we were back in
times of dictatorship
again," Álvarez said.
According to the
complaint filed with the
prosecutor’s office in
Santiago del Estero and
the office of the
national ombudsman,
Antonio Fernández, the
former mayor of the
Spanish town of Pinto,
south of Madrid, signed
an international
cooperation agreement
with the town of Pinto
in Santiago del Estero,
for more than 1.8
million euros (2.4
million dollars), for
building low-cost
housing between 2004 and
2006.
Eighteen houses were
built, but they were not
allocated to poor
families in Pinto, a
town of 4,000 people,
the complaint said.
The cooperation
agreement was reached
when Emilio Rached,
currently the
vice-governor of the
province of Santiago del
Estero, was mayor of
Pinto. According to the
complainants, the 18
houses were handed over
to middle-class
recipients, including
one of Rached’s
daughters.
Another benificiary was
a lawyer who acts for
the Salvia Group, the
main shareholder of
which is the former
Spanish mayor Fernández,
who now owns "a
veritable mansion" in
Pinto, Argentina,
presumably built with
the aid funds,
Strappazzón said.
Amid this and other
allegations, Fernández
resigned as mayor of
Pinto in 2005, after 10
years in office. But the
investigations initiated
by a Madrid prosecutor
were shelved by the
justice system the
following year, for lack
of evidence.
Fernández, a member of
the governing Spanish
Socialist Workers Party
(PSOE), travels
frequently to Santiago
del Estero.
Meanwhile, his accuser
Álvarez says he has been
the victim of a number
of threats in Spain. He
says Fernández and
Rached created the
Pinares Foundation,
which administers the
aid funds and may be
linked to the Afagro
company, which is
accused of hiring thugs
to harass small farmers,
to get them to leave the
lands they occupy.
Afagro went bankrupt in
the late 1980s, but "was
revived" when the
Spanish aid money
started to flow in,
Strappazzón told IPS. "Fernández
and Rached wiped their
prints off that company,
but they are linked by
front persons, and
obviously Rached pays no
attention to our
denunciations," he said.
Afagro denied employing
armed personnel and,
also, any links with
Fernández.
MOCASE "is made up of 30
activists linked to
groups like (the
dismantled Peruvian
Maoist guerrilla)
Sendero Luminoso
(Shining Path), anti-globalisation
movements and ETA (the
illegal Basque
separatist group)," the
former mayor said at a
press conference in
Madrid in late March.
Meanwhile, vice-governor
Rached did not answer
IPS’s repeated requests
for information.
Santiago del Estero is a
poor northern province
with a population of
over 800,000. According
to MOCASE, 20 percent of
the people are small
farmers, living and
working on land to which
they do not have title
deeds.
However, the law
protects the farmers’
rights to their land,
because they have lived
on it for much longer
than the requisite 20
years, MOCASE said.
"There are 29,700
families in this
province who earn more
than half their income
from farming the land,
and the vast majority do
not have title, which is
why they are being
harassed," said
Strappazzón, whose
organisation has
registered more than 530
cases of people who have
been arrested and
prosecuted in land
disputes and after
reporting abuses by big
landowners.
Santiago del Estero was
ruled by the Juárez
family for over 50
years. Former strongman
Carlos Juárez had
himself reelected on
many occasions, and his
wife Nina Aragonés has
also served as governor
of the province. But the
murders of two women in
2003 led to federal
intervention and the
calling of provincial
elections.
The intervention was
justified by "a serious
institutional
impairment" that
included the existence
of armed groups linked
to landowners, which
committed all kinds of
abuses, kidnapping,
torturing and even
murdering small farmers,
burning down their
houses and killing their
animals.
Today the governor is
Gerardo Zamora and
Rached is vice-governor,
both of whom belong to
the Radical Civic Union
(UCR) party.
"Nothing has changed
here since Juárez’s
time, in relation to the
land problem and
corruption," said
Strappazzón. The Zamora
administration offered
to legalise the small
farmers’ land tenure,
but none have accepted
the terms. "They had
around 2,000 hectares
each, and they were
being offered 300 or 500
hectares," the activist
said.
Several companies in
different parts of the
province are continuing
to spread terror among
small farmers with armed
gangs, to make them hand
over plots of land, he
said. The agribusiness
interests want more land
to grow soybeans, which
is now the country’s
main export crop.
Afrago is laying claim
to 117,000 hectares in
the south of the
province, on the border
with Córdoba province.
"They can only prove
they own 2,000 hectares,
but they are hoping to
get the rest by
harassing the small
farmers," Strappazzón
said.
"Five families in the
area that Afagro wants
agreed to accept smaller
plots, but they were
threatened at gunpoint,"
and the company points
to them as an example to
legitimise their
actions. "The rest, more
than 100 families, won’t
leave, and they are
being constantly
bullied," he said. |
