On July 12 some 5,000 landless families took over 20 large estates owned by Paraguayan and foreign absentee landlords in seven of the country’s 17 provinces, according to South American press agencies. “The occupation of private properties is a legitimate action,” said Luis Aguayo, general secretary of the National Coordinating Committee of Peasant Organizations (MCNOC), which organized the nationwide actions.

Aguayo said the owners’ claims to the 20 estates were “spurious” because the land had been given to individuals connected to the former dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989, and many of them lack legal title.

The date of the land takeovers marked the 20th anniversary of the murder of two peasants by the Stroessner regime.

Three thousand peasants blocked a highway in Capiibary in San Pedro province. They were reportedly attacked by 100 cops, who arrested two people and left nine injured.

In the same area, 500 landless peasants occupying El Progreso, an estate owned by a Brazilian landlord, were forced out by police, who burned down their makeshift housing and arrested six of their leaders.

Aguayo told the press that in Paraguay 80 percent of the land is in the hands of 10 percent of the population, and there are 300,000 landless rural families. He said that a year ago MCNOC proposed to the government a plan for expropriating large tracts of idle lands. Duarte promised action by June of this year, he said, but has done nothing, prompting the land occupations.  
 
 
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