Background information on the MAP

waving the flag of the MAPMOVIMIENTO AGRARIO Y POPULAR

The MAP is an autonomous organisation of small scale and landless peasants. It has a popular character and is organised and directed by small scale and landless peasants who struggle to redeem their identity as well as campesino territority in Paraguay. The MAP wants to claim back integral land reform, social justice, sovereignty and life. The movement consists of small scale producers and has as such as one of its objectives to grow food crops for self subsistance and the local market based on agroecological practices. Since the MAPs founding in 2003 it has spread and consolidated rapidly thanks to struggle which resulted in recoveries of campesino communities that form part of the organisation. The MAP has bases in 5 districts in Paraguay's central department Caaguazú: Mariscal López, Yhú, Raúl Arsenio Oviedo, Vaquería y 3 de Febrero.

The objectives of the MAP
1. Integral Land Reform
2. Territorial and Food Sovereignty for Indigeneous and Campesino Communities.
3. Reversion of illegally alienated lands to give back to the true subjects of the land reform.
4. Reconquest of the Campesina and Indigeneous Cultural Identity and Conscience.
5. Recuperation of the control of Natural Resources

ACTIVITIES OF THE MAP

1) Defense of the communities resisting the agroexport soy model.
2) Juridical support of the settlements
3) Political formation and communitarian organisation to strenghten peasant rootedness.
4) Strenghtening of voice and political presence of campesinos on national and international level.
5) Integral Formation with emphasis on alternative agricultural production (agroecological self-subsistance crops).
6) Collective Comercialisation of agricultural products on a local level.

HISTORY OF THE MAP

The Movimiento Agrario y Popular formed in august 2002. In this same year they started a campaign denouncing to the congress the massive selling of campesino parcels, the destruction of the environment and dissapearance of communities caused by soy expansion. The MAP was legally formed on february 19th, 2003 when it helt its first departmental congress, in which its own structure and character got concretised.

To halt the advancing of soy monocultures, in may 2003, they initiated encampments of landless peasants in five different communities: Yatay II, Arroyo Guasu, Adri Cué, Tekojoja Segunda and Tercera Línea. After the conflicts and continuing resistance that soy expansion invoces, this incites campesinos to participate in many more communities in the majority of the districts where the MAP is active, being Mariscal López, Yhú, Raúl Arsenio Oviedo, Vaquería and 3 de Febrero.

In the year 2004 the MAP joins the Frente Nacional de Lucha por la Soberanía y la Vida and takes on an active role in the Civil Strike. In this period a lot of communities, like Mbokaja´i and Santa Elena resist expansion and defend themselves from fumigations on soy plots in their communities preventing the machines from spraying by blocking them. A lot of members got arrested, but in a lot of communities they reach a slowing down of soy expansion. The community Toro Kangue suffers 3 evicitons and in one of them more than 63 members got arrested. Over all these years the community of Mil Palos [se destaca] for its resistance and collective work/organising work.

The members that rewon land in the community Tekojojo suffered 3 violent evictions between 2003 and 2005. In june 24th during police repression, Ángel Cristaldo and Leoncio Torres, son acribillados by a soy producer named OPPERMAN. Despite the violence suffered by the MAP's members they persist in their camps and reach a important victory when the Supreme Court sentenced the legitimacy of the recuperation of the campesino lands arrebatadas.

In april 2006, 4 members of the MAP (Roque Rodríguez, Agustín Acosta, Basiliano Cardozo y Arístides Vera) are arrested in Argentina for a pedido de extradición al Paraguay. Currently they are still in prison, are in big risk of de ser extraditados and undergoing an unjust trial, full of irregulariteis. There is a broad solidarity network active on the international level.

During 2006 and 2007 the MAP consolidates a broad work of contacts with interantional organisations and members participate in various meetings abroad. In 2006, Jorge Galeano travels to Europe and participates in a Popular Trial against soy in Spain. In 2007 Gilda Roa was given a grant to participate in an International Militant Course organised by de Movimiento Sin Tierra, de landless movement or MST in Brazil. Thanks to the support of the Movimiento Apostólico Seglar in Spain 3 young people from the organisation get grants to be able to start universitary studies in Law, Sociology and Human Ecology with the objective that the MAP will be able to count on professional grassroots leaders.