www.lasojamata.org22 May 2007: The MAP (Agrarian and Popular Movement), a Paraguayan campesino organization, is in a state of alert and requires international solidarity. Recently occupied land in the community of Pariri, central Paraguay, is being threatened with eviction. There is also an attempt to criminalise the organisation's initiator, Jorge Galeano.
The situation reflects the corruption and violence that accompanies the Paraguay's model of soybean production. Social movements are being criminalised while defending campesino and indigenous communities.
In February of 2007, young landless men and women peacefully recuperated a 14 hectare soybean field, a plot in the community of Parirí whose owner did not have proper title to the land. The community is situated in the district of Vaqueria, department of Caaguazu, in the middle of eastern Paraguay.
An urgent call for solidarity action is now published on a new site: www.lasojamata.org
Here you will find information about the case, guidelines for writing letters and fax numbers to which to send them.
More about La Soja Mata:
La Soja Mata provides information about the direct impacts of large scale monocultures, specifically soy, on people's lives and the environment.
The public in 'consumer countries' have by now been extensively informed that the advance of soy plantations causes massive destruction of ecosystems, such as rainforests and savannahs, in countries like Argentina and Brazil. However, the scale and speed with which land is taken over by the production of these crops, driven by a growing demand, is making many more victims: local communities are driven out, farmers loose their crops because of intensive use of the herbicide Roundup on RoundupReady soy, and this also causes health problems on a scale that many do not realise.
In addition, soils degrade and water levels go down, deforestation changes regional climate patterns. Soy plantations do not generate jobs, so there is a continuous flow of people migrating to the city slums or abroad. If people disappear, so does the market for many other small scale economic activities. Small scale agriculture harbours both agricultural and natural biodiversity - moncultures don't.
Resistance in producer countries is growing. La Soja Mata provides information in English, and hopefully other languages, about campaigns carried by farmers, landless people, rural and urban communities, against the take over of their surroundings by (RoundupReady) soy plantations.
La Soja Mata aims to support campaigns against the soy model, like the one of Silvino Talavera and the Movimiento Agrario y Popular (MAP) in Paraguay, by making information about them available and accessible.
For more information, please contact:
an
aseed.net
ninacorporateeurope.org