“Fuera Brasilero!” (“Out with the Brazilians!”) is the rallying cry of native Paraguayans against the 500,000 Brasiguayos (Brazilian-Paraguayans) who own and control modern and world-competitive agribusinesses in eastern Paraguay (Brasiguaya).
Inspired by President Fernando Lugo’s slogan, “Paraguay belongs to Paraguay,” Paraguay’s Landless Movement and members of agricultural cooperatives are pushing the Brasiguayos back to Brazil, after being in Paraguay since the 1960s. Lost in the confrontations and accusations is the fact the Brasiguayos contribute 30% of Paraguay’s GDP and own 80% of soy cultivation, Paraguay’s major agricultural export.
Brasiguaya
Brasiguayos own about 70% of all fertile land in the states of Concepción, San Pedro, Alto Paraná, Itapuá, and Canindeyú. Their advanced agricultural techniques and capital investment increased Paraguay’s grain production by 30%, and reduced poverty from 84% to 25% in Brasiguaya (www.veja.com.br). Brasiguayos’ agriculture also supports an estimated 20,000 Paraguayan business in the area.
Paraguayans claim the Brasiguayos are illegal landowners who must go back to Brazil, leaving their businesses to native Paraguayans. Brasiguayos claim they bought their lands legally. They also claim poor Paraguayan farmers are planting marijuana and trafficking in arms and drugs. International law enforcement recognizes the areas of Capitan Badó and Pedro Juan Caballero, in Brasiguaya, as centers of marijuana cultivation and cocaine and arms trafficking.
Tensions were common between Paraguayans and Brasiguayos in the past. However, few were violent, and land invasions were unknown until the presidential campaign and election of Bishop Fernando Lugo as president of Paraguay in 2008. Lugo came of political age in San Pedro, the poorest department in Paraguay, where he mobilized poor farmers and peasants for social justice and land reform.
Lugo’s projected land reform, still in the works, turned Brasiguaya into an armed camp. Brasiguayos have formed private paramilitary forces to protect and guard their lands, crops, installations, and equipment against invasions, attacks, and destruction by members of the Landless Movement and their followers. Consequently, Brasiguayos no longer cultivate 20% of their lands.
Brazil responded to the unrest in Brasiguaya by engaging in November of 2008 in military exercises known as Southern Border II. Southern Border included 10,000 soldiers, tanks, attack planes, and live munitions. It did not cross into Paraguay. No one was shot. But it showed Brazil’s overwhelming military superiority over Paraguay’s forces (not deployed for counter-exercises) and the Landless, many armed with knives, sticks, and stones.
Lessons from Colombia
While the standoff and violence continues, here are five lessons Brazil and Paraguay may wish to learn to prevent deeper damage in Brasiguaya and in Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná, Brazil’s bordering states with Paraguay.
- Private armies of paramilitaries are neither the most qualified nor the most capable to guarantee security, peaceful coexistence, and legal economic activities. Such guaranty is the obligation states relinquish at their own peril. The false security the Colombian paramilitaries gave to landowners in the departments of Antioquia, Bolívar, and Cesar came at a price: The paramilitaries became the power within the power, and put the back of the Colombian state to the wall.
- Paramilitaries are inept to solve land-right disputes, such as Brasiguaya’s. The paramilitaries’ pacification of Antioquia’s Urabá region led to massacres and displacement of innocent people, and illegal appropriation of lands by the paramilitaries. The Colombian state looked the other way, let the illegality in Urabá fester, and ended up with an irregular force that dictated, and continues to dictate, the conditions of their submission to justice.
- Colombia’s paramilitaries found that arms trafficking and cocaine production and trafficking were more profitable than legal agriculture, albeit in lands they seized from their legal owners. Brazil and Paraguay should not be surprised if, in time, the Brasiguayos’ paramilitaries find the same more profitable than soy.
- The displacement paramilitary forces create translates into a human catastrophe many ignore, but whose economic, political, and social consequences can’t be denied. Despite claims to the contrary, Colombia’s government can’t provide social services and a dependable safety net, least of all reintegration, to the 2 million internally displaced by the paramilitaries and guerrillas. Brazil’s states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná do not have the resources necessary to reintegrate 500,000 Brasiguayos back into their economies, particularly at a time of crisis in the soy sector in Brazil.
- Law enforcement is a police responsibility. Security belongs to the armed forces. Turning the military into law enforcement units opens the road for its corruption by, and collusion with, criminal elements of which Brazil and Paraguay have plenty, particularly in the Tri-Border Area (TBA), which is in Brasiguaya. Colombia shows weekly how successful irregular forces and common criminals are in corrupting law enforcement and the military. Neither Brazil nor Paraguay can claim a hold on incorruptible institutions.
Conclusion
Brasiguaya is central to the economy of Paraguay and its most important legal link to the global economy through exports of soy and agricultural products. President Lugo may not like globalization, but he can’t escape it. Native Paraguayans may not like the influence and wealth of the Brasiguayos, but their contributions to the progress of Paraguayan agriculture can’t be denied, either
Therefore, negotiation is the best way out of the situation. Attempts by Paraguay to negotiate with Brazil lacked success, so far. But both countries must continue trying, or both will lose because neither Brazil’s military might nor the sticks and stones of the Paraguayan Landless will solve the tensions in Brasiguaya. Negotiation will give both an opportunity for a peaceful and equitable solution. Hopefully.
Maria Velez de Berliner
President, mvelez@lat-intel.com