Displacement by fumigation: Agrochemicals, rural dispossession, and class struggle in Paraguay

• In Event: Neoliberalismo y transformaciones agroalimentarias en Latinoamérica El impacto de los transgénicos I

Abstract

The escalation in land-related conflicts in Paraguay is, on the one hand, a by-product of the clientelistic-statist legacy of the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989), and on the other hand, representative of broader shifts in the global food regime towards neoliberal restructuring and the deployment of transgenic corps since the mid-1990s; both of which seriously undermine small-scale producers and autonomous class-based peasant movements. Indeed, while the main demand of the peasants’ movements in Paraguay has historically been access to land, more recently they have added another demand: to stop the expansion of large-scale monoculture transgenic soybean production, due to the health and environmental damage associated with its excessive use of agro-chemicals.
This paper explores the ways in which Paraguay’s countryside has been affected by the country’s integration into the neoliberal food regime. It shows how the lax nature of the Paraguayan state and its insufficient enforcement of health regulations are central to an understanding of how the application of highly globalized, capital and chemical intensive agroindustrial practices has engendered a new regime of dispossession. More specially, this paper argues that the agro-industrial mode of production, particularly related to the heavy reliance on agro-chemical associated with the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) soybeans, has recast the dynamics of the historical process of accumulation by dispossession through a process I suggest might be termed ‘displacement by fumigation’ –the forced displacement from the intensive use of agro-toxins, when crops are planted next to population centers.

Author

• Arturo Ezquerro-Canete, Saint Mary's University