Brazil & Southern Cone - 28 September 2004

President Nicanor Duarte is living up to his reputation as the most progressive head of state in Paraguay's history. On 25 September, Duarte's government signed an agreement with landless peasants promising 13,000 hectares of land in six departments in the west of Paraguay.

Land reform has always been a thorny issue in Paraguay to which successive governments have turned a blind eye. It has burst onto the political agenda anew over the course of the last three months with peasants invading landowners' properties and accusing Duarte of reneging on electoral promises to address agrarian reform. They invaded 18 farms on 21 September.

The government promised to provide 13,000 hectares of land in the departments of Alto Paraná, San Pedro, Caaguazú, Amambay, Misiones and Caazapá within a month. 'I know full well that if more Paraguayans have work and land of their own, the country will be better off. In our negotiations we have kept these issues in mind to find the best solution to an old problem,' Duarte told the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs days earlier. 

In return, peasants from the Frente Nacional por la Soberaní­a y la Vida promised to leave landowners' properties within two weeks and to conduct a peaceable dialogue with the government. Luis Aguayo, the leader of the coordinating table of national peasant organisations (MCNOC), which forms part of the Frente, said that the peasants would honour their agreements with the government to 'work together for the development of the country'. The government also acceded to another demand from the Frente, namely to supervise the law that prohibits the indiscriminate use of chemical products in farming. The MCNOC blames big soya producers for environmental damage and water pollution.

* Paraguay has put in an extradition request for former dictator Alfredo Stroessner from Brazil. A judge has called for Stroessner, who ruled from 1954 and 1989, to be sent back to Paraguay to face charges of collusion in Operation Condor - a covert intelligence-sharing network between military dictatorships in the Southern cone in the 1970s which targeted left-wing dissidents.