| Carlos Castillos |
ASUNCION (dpa) – Two young Paraguayan girls, Adelaida Alvarez Cabrera, 3, and her sister Adela, 3 months, seemed to have no developmental problems until one day in 2014 when they were struck with fever, nausea and vomiting. They died on July 20 that year.
The deaths in the small community of Huber Dure, some 250 kilometres north of Asuncion, are being linked by the girls’ parents and the National Farmers Federation to pesticides sprayed thereabouts on soybean and maize crops.
As far as the Paraguayan Public Prose-cutor’s Investigative Agency’s forensic service is concerned, the girls died “from asphyxia caused by acute respiratory failure due to pneumo-bronchitic illness”. The cause of that is not given in the official report.
Industrial-scale soy and corn plantations are plentiful in the region.
Another 18 children and 15 adults suffered from respiratory and gastro-intestinal problems at around the same time, but the issue was closed following the official report from physicians.
However several farm-worker, indi-genous and urban civic groups continue to protest. Those were not the only cases in recent years.
Farmers and indigenous labourers hold a protest in Asuncion, Paraguay against vast soybean plantations and call for ‘agricultural reform’
In this undated photo, Paraguayan peasants and supporters carry a banner that says ‘We are not criminals. We are fighters’ at a protest in Asuncion, Paraguay against vast soybean plantations. PHOTOS: DPA
The area where the deaths and illnesses occurred is surrounded by soybean fields. Soy is a crop that has burgeoned in the last decade and currently takes up 3.3 million hectares out of 24 million hectares of available farmland in Paraguay.
Soy is one of the main export products, on a par with and even surpassing cotton and meat, and has made Paraguay into the fourth largest soybean exporter in the world following Argentina, the United States and Brazil, according to the Paraguayan Chamber of Cereal and Oilseed Exporters and Traders.
Farm owners and the Paraguayan government say the buoyant soybean market is creating jobs and bringing in foreign currency.
President Horacio Cartes rejected the criticism, saying that “there are people who only see the negative side” in Paraguay but the country “has clear rules” about pesticides and other environmental issues.
Peasant and indigenous organisations see that differently and assert the soybean farmers have embraced the use of machines and the indiscriminate use of agri-toxic substances that can lead to mass poisonings, allergies, miscarriages and pollution in rivers.
The problem is partly linked to the use of genetically engineered crops. From 2004 to 2012, Paraguay had only authorised the use of RR Soy, a genetically engineered plant that is resistant to glyphosate, a herbicide ingredient.
Herbicides are used to clear weeds and other plants that can invade the plantations. If the crop itself is resistant to the herbicide, the liquid can be sprayed generously without harming the desirable plants.
Local groups and international environmental organisations say that the herbicides are dangerous to humans and animals.
Researcher Ines Franceschelli, with the BASE-I Centre for Research in Social Sciences, charged that starting in 2012 with the removal of then president Fernando Lugo, “an unfettered race to illegally allow the use of genetically modified varieties of crops began without following the proper procedures, and 19 varieties of soybean, maize and cotton were authorised.”
The BASE-I Centre for Research in Social Sciences monitors the farming sector in Paraguay as well as the production methods that have been applied in the country.
It recently published a report, ‘With the Soybean Noose Around Their Neck’, gathering the views of 17 experts including Franceschelli, who described the situation of agribusinesses in Paraguay in the last two years.
Peasant and indigenous protesters show the kind of spray canisters used to apply pesticide to Paraguayan soybean crops
Soybeans from a Paraguayan plantation
“The peasant and indigenous population living in areas used to grow soybean and other crops is living through hell as a result of the application of this method of production with absolute impunity,” Franceschelli told dpa.
“It’s happening regardless of harm, even the loss of human lives and the transgression of all national rules and international treaties,” she said.
The plantation method aggravates another problem as well: peasants being expelled from their lands.
“It is peasant and indigenous women who are the ones who suffer the most,” Bernarda Pesoa, an indigenous leader of the Toba Qom People and head of the National Organization of Conamuri Peasant and Indigenous Women, told dpa.
“The system does not acknowledge their role as food producers and denies them benefits and elementary rights, such as access to credit and having a piece of land on which to live,” he said.
“It is farming women who undergo the most negative effects from the advent of agrarian capitalism, because they realise that their children are being consumed by illnesses that the town doctor has no way of explaining, or are being born with defects, or are not born at all, because the foetus cannot withstand exposure to glysophate,” she added.
The expansion of genetically engineered crops appears to be unstoppable in Paraguay. Each day, 1,200 hectares of forest are felled and authorities are not addressing the issue.
Civic groups who have studied the situation are sceptical about the Cartes administration.
They want to push back against the large corporations and bring about government policy changes. Their strategy involves demonstrations, accusations and spreading information.
They are demanding an end to the use of toxic agribusiness products, limitations on the spread of large plantations and clear guidelines for importing, selling, using and discarding herbicides.
The authorities should develop policies to oversee farmland use, they say.
The aim is to avoid new tragedies such as the deaths of Adelaida and Adela Alvarez Cabrera, the two little girls.
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