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Vol. 78/No. 14      April 14, 2014

 
Workers, peasants join one-day
strike in Paraguay


Reuters/Jorge Adorno
Tens of thousands of workers, peasants and students joined a 24-hour protest strike in Paraguay March 26. Among the demands: a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage; a reduction in bus fares; the repeal of plans to privatize public utilities and allow multinational corporations to plunder the country’s natural resources; price controls on basic necessities; and land reform.

“The strike took place because of the actions of President Horacio Cartes,” Mirtha Maldonado, a leader of the Recoleta Front, a neighborhood organization in Asunción, said by phone March 28. “The bus fare hike hits hard at the already degraded economy, the price of products in the family basket has increased, and peasant leaders that are resisting the soy landlords have been murdered.”

Paraguay, with a population of 6.5 million, is the world’s sixth largest soy producer. About 77 percent of arable land is owned by 1 percent of landowners.

“The strike brought together all the different union federations, peasant groups, community groups and opposition parties,” Fabricio Arnella, general secretary of the Communist Youth, said by phone from Asunción.

— SETH GALINSKY

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