CIA in Paraguay, or How to Get Rid of a President

[Magda Hassan]

A googlish translation from Spanish

Monsanto strikes in Paraguay: The dead of Curuguaty and the impeachment of Lugo

Saturday June 23 2012 This article written a few hours before the overthrow of Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Idyll Mendez explains the keys behind the political plot in a country beset by agribusiness and a political class to serve their interests.

For Idyll Mendez Grimaldi *
Who are behind this plot so sinister? The proponents of an ideology that promotes the maximum economic profit at any cost and the more the better, now and in the future.
On Friday June 15, 2012, a group of policemen who went to meet an eviction order in the department of Canindeyú on the border with Brazil, was ambushed by snipers, mixed with peasants demanding land to survive. The order was given by a judge and a district attorney to protect a landowner. As a result, had 17 killed, 6 officers and 11 farmers and dozens of serious injuries. Consequences: The lax and timid government of Fernando Lugo kept rising and extreme weakness, increasingly derechizado, about to be impeached by a Congress dominated by the right, blow to the left, social organizations and peasant, accused by the oligarchy of inciting the peasants to advance agribusiness extractive hands of transnationals like Monsanto, through the persecution of the peasants and the fit of their land and eventually installing a comfortable audience for the oligarchs and rightwing parties for their triumphant return in the 2013 elections to the Executive.
On October 21, 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture, led by Liberal Enzo Cardozo, illegally released GM Bollgard cotton seed BT U.S. biotech company Monsanto, for commercial planting in Paraguay. Peasant protests and environmental organizations are not left waiting. The gene of this cotton is mixed with the gene of Bacillus thurigensis, a toxic bacterium that kills certain pests of cotton, as the larvae of the weevil, a beetle that lays its eggs in the cocoon of fabric.
National Service Quality and Plant Health and Seed, SENAVE, another institution of the Paraguayan State, led by Miguel Lovera, not enrolled in such transgenic seed cultivars records, lacking the opinions of the Ministry of Health and the Environment Secretariat, as required by law.
media campaign
during the following months, Monsanto, through the Trades Union of Production, PMU, closely linked to Zuccolillo Group, which publishes the newspaper ABC Color, attacked SENAVE and its president for failing to register the GM seed from Monsanto for commercial use throughout the country.
The critical countdown appeared to have hit upon a new complaint by a seudosindicalista SENAVE, named Silvia Martinez, who accused the June 7 Lovera of corruption and nepotism in the institution he leads, on ABC Color. Martinez is the wife of Roberto Caceres, technical representative for various agricultural enterprises, including Agrosán, recently acquired by $ 120 million by Syngenta, another crime, all members of the PMU.
The next day, Friday June 8, published in the PMU ABC to six columns: "The 12 arguments to dismiss Lovera" (1). These alleged arguments were presented to the Vice President, Minister of Agriculture colleague, the liberal Federico Franco, who at the time was president of Paraguay in the absence of Lugo, traveling in Asia.
On Friday 15 of this month, in occasion for an annual exhibition organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Minister Enzo Cardozo let out a comment to the press that an alleged group of investors from India, the agrochemical sector, has canceled an investment project in Paraguay for the SENAVE alleged corruption.Never clarified what group it was. In that hour of that day were recorded Curuguaty tragic events.
As part of this exhibition prepared by the said ministry, Monsanto filed another cotton variety, doubly transgenic BT and RR or resistant to Roundup, a herbicide manufactured and patented by Monsanto. The claim of the U.S. transnational in Paraguay is the inscription of the transgenic seed, such as happened in Argentina and other countries.
Prior to these events, the newspaper ABC Color systematically denounced alleged corruption to the Minister of Health Esperanza Martinez and Environment Minister, Oscar Rivas, two officials did not give their opinion in favor of Monsanto.
Monsanto turnover last year $ 30 million, tax free (because it declares this part of your income) only in respect of royalties for the use of genetically modified soy in Paraguay. Independent, Monsanto bill for the sale of GM seeds. All transgenic soy is grown in an area of almost three million hectares, producing about 7 million tons in 2010.
On the other hand, in the House of Representatives and is generally approved the bill Biosafety, which includes creating a biosecurity direction provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, with broad authority for approval for commercial cultivation of all GM seeds, whether soy, corn, rice, cotton and some vegetables. This bill provides for the abolition of the current Biosafety Commission, a collegial body of technical staff in Paraguay.
While these events passed, the PMU is preparing a national protest against the government of Fernando Lugo for June 25th. This is a farm-related event, closing roads middle of the routes across the country.One of the claims of so-called "tractorazo" is the removal of Miguel Lovera SENAVE and liberalization of all GM seeds for commercial cultivation.
Connections
The PMU is headed by Hector Cristaldo, supported by other apostles as Ramon Sanchez - who does business with the agrochemical sector - among other agents of transnational agribusiness. Cristaldo integrates the staff of several Group companies Zuccolillo, whose main shareholder is Aldo Zuccolillo, chief owner of the newspaper ABC Color from its foundation under the Stroessner regime in 1967. Zuccolillo is leader of the Inter American Press Association, IAPA.
Zuccolillo Group Paraguay is a principal partner in Cargill, one of the biggest multinational agribusiness in the world. The company built one of the largest bulk ports of Paraguay, called Port Union, 500 meters from the water supply company aguatera the Paraguayan State, on the Paraguay River, without any restrictions.
Agribusiness corporations in virtually Paraguay taxes paid by the railway protection they have in Congress, dominated by the right. Tax pressure in Paraguay is only 13% of GDP. 60% of the tax collected by the Paraguayan State is the Value Added Tax, VAT. The landowners do not pay taxes. Property tax accounts for only 0.04% of the tax burden, about 5 million, according to a World Bank study (2) even if the income agribusiness produces around 30% of GDP, representing about 6,000 million dollars annually.
Paraguay is one of the most unequal countries in the world. 85 percent of the land, some 30 million hectares, it is up 2 percent of homeowners (3) engaged in the production merely extractive or in the worst cases of land speculation.
Most of these oligarchs have mansions in Punta del Este or Miami and have close relations with transnational financial sector to keep their ill-gotten assets in tax havens or would facilitate foreign investments. All of them, one way or another, are linked to agribusiness and dominate the national political scene, with wide influences on the three branches of government. Here reigns the PMU, supported by the financial sector and transnational agribusiness.
The facts of Curuguaty
Curuguaty is a town located east of the Eastern Region of Paraguay, about 200 km from Asuncion, capital of Paraguay. A few miles Curuguaty stay Morombí is owned by the landowner Blas Riquelme, with over 70 000 hectares there. Riquelme comes from the heart of the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989) under whose regime amassed an immense fortune, allied to General Andres Rodriguez, who executed the coup that overthrew the dictator Stroessner. Riquelme, who was president of the Colorado Party for many years and senator, who owns several supermarkets and farmers, appropriated by legal subterfuges of some 2,000 hectares, roughly, that belong to the Paraguayan State.
This parcel was occupied by farmers landless who came calling on the government of Fernando Lugo distribution. A judge and a district attorney ordered the eviction of the peasants, through the Special Operations Group, GEO, National Police, whose members mostly elite were trained in Colombia under the Uribe administration, for counter-insurgency.
Only internal sabotage within the frames of police intelligence, with the complicity of the prosecutor, said the ambush, which killed six policemen. Not understand how highly trained police officers as part of Plan Colombia, could easily fall into a trap set by farmers alleged, as led to believe the press is dominated by the oligarchs. His comrades reacted and gunned down the peasants, killing 11, leaving about 50 wounded. Among those killed was police chief GEO, Erven Commissioner Lovera, brother of Lt. Col. Alcides Lovera, security chief of President Lugo.
The plan is to criminalize, lead to extreme hatred to all farmers' organizations, to push peasants off the land for the exclusive use of agribusiness. It's a slow, painful, depeasantization the Paraguayan countryside, directly undermines food sovereignty, food culture of the Paraguayan people, being farmers and producers of all reenactors ancestral Guaraní culture.
Both the Attorney or Attorney General, as the Judiciary and the National Police, and various agencies of the Paraguayan State, are controlled through cooperation agreements by USAID, the aid agency of the United States.
The murder of the brother of the security chief of President of the Republic is obviously a direct message to Fernando Lugo, whose head would be the next target, probably through an impeachment, who derechizó over his government trying to calm the oligarchs. What happened in Curuguaty overthrew Carlos Filizzola Interior Ministry and was appointed as his replacement Ruben Candia Amarilla, from the opposition Colorado Party, which Lugo was defeated at the polls in 2008, after 60 years of dictatorship red, including the tyranny of Alfredo Stroessner.
Candia was Minister of Justice of the Colorado government of Nicanor Duarte (2003-2008) and served as state attorney general for a period, until last year when it was replaced by a red, Javier Diaz Veron at the request of the Lugo itself. Candia is accused of having promoted the repression of peasant organization leaders and grassroots movements.His nomination for Attorney General in 2005 was approved by the then U.S. ambassador, John F. Keen. Candia was responsible for greater control by the Public Ministry and USAID was charged in the beginning of his government by Fernando Lugo of conspiring against him to remove the government.
After taking over as the political minister for Lugo, the first thing announced Candia protocol was the elimination of dialogue with the farmers who invade properties. The message is that there will be no conversation, but simply the application of the law, which means employing repressive police force without contemplation.
Two days after taking Candia Amarilla, members of the PMU, headed by Hector Cristaldo, and visited the newly Interior Minister who requested guarantees for the realization of tractorazo called. However, Cristaldo said that the strike can be suspended in case of new hopeful signs for the PMU (read release of Monsanto's GM seeds, removal of Lovera and other ministers, among other benefits for big business and oligarchs) derechizando even the government.
Cristaldo is candidate for deputy to the 2013 elections by a movement within the Colorado Party, led by Horacio Cartes, a businessman investigated in the recent past by the United States for money laundering and drug trafficking, according to the newspaper itself ABC Color, which echoed several cables the State Department of USA, published by WikiLeaks, including one that referred directly to Cartes, the November 15, 2011.
Impeach Lugo
In the last hours, as of writing this chronic, the PMU, (4) some members of the Colorado Party and individual members of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, PLRA, led by Senator Blas Llano and ally of the government, threatened with impeachment to remove him Fernando Lugo as President of Paraguay.
Lugo depends on the mood of the Colorado to continue as President, and their liberal allies, who now threaten impeachment, surely looking for more areas of power (money) as a pledge of peace. The Colorado Party, allied with other minority parties of the opposition has the majority needed to impeach the president of their duties.
may be expected "positive signals" from Lugo that the PMU - on behalf of Monsanto, parental financial and the oligarchs - is urging the government. Otherwise, we would go to the next stage of the takeover plans of this government that was born as progressive and slowly dies off as conservative, controlled by the powers that be.
Among some of its assets, Lugo is responsible for the adoption of the Law Terrorism, favored by the United States around the world after the 11 S. In 2010 authorized the implementation of the Northern Zone Initiative, consisting of the installation and deployment of troops and American civilians in the North Eastern Region - in the face of Brazil - supposedly to develop activities for rural communities.
Front Guazú coalition of the Left supporting Lugo, can not speak with one voice, and its members lose perspective in the analysis of real power, falling in games inmediatistas electioneering. Infiltrated by USAID, many members of the front Guazú involved in the administration of the State, succumbing to the siren song of consumerism rampant neoliberalism. It is corrupt to the core and in practice become conceited rich vain of imitators that made ​​the recent right-wing governments in Colorado.
Curuguaty also includes a message for the region, especially Brazil, whose border is producing these bloody events, clearly led by the warlords, whose theaters of operations can be seen in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria. Brazil is building global hegemony with Russia, India and China, known as BRIC. However, the United States does not relinquish its power to persuade the giant of South America. It is running the new commercial hub includes Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile. It is a retaining wall to the expansionist desires of Brazil to the Pacific.
Meanwhile, Washington continues its diplomatic offensive in Brasilia, trying to convince the government to strengthen ties Rousseff commercial, technological and military. Meanwhile, the Fourth Fleet of the United States revived a few years ago after being out of
service just ended World War II, monitors the entire South Atlantic characteristics of another siege to Brazil if he did not understand diplomatic persuasion.
Y Paraguay is a country in dispute between the two foreign powers, even widely dominated by USA. So what of Curuguaty is also a small sign for Brazil, in the sense that Paraguay can become a powder keg that will break the development of southwestern Brazil.
But above all, the dead of Curuguaty is a sign of capital, the great capital, from extraction of plundering that plagues the planet and crushing the life in all corners of the Earth in the name of civilization and development. Fortunately, the world's peoples are also providing answers to these signs of death, signs of resistance, with signs of dignity and respect for all life forms on the planet. 1 - World Bank paper. Paraguay. Property Tax: Key tool for fiscal decentralization and better land use. Volume I: Main Report. 2007. 3 - National Agricultural Census 2008. 4 -






(*) Journalist, researcher and analyst. Member of the Society for Economic Policy Paraguay, Seppy. Author of Heirs of Stroessner.
http://otramerica.com/radar/monsanto-gol...-lugo/2082