EL COMIENZO DEL FIN DEL BOSQUE ATLÁNTICO

David vs. Goliath

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:12:27 +0000

From above, the image is eloquent. A stream is blocked to make way for two water channels to a huge soybean plantation. In the 8 de Diciembre community, indigenous residents and small farmers no longer know who to turn to in order to get the government to take action. Photo: Pánfilo Leguizamón

December 8 Committee: David vs. Goliath

The great swamp that provided water to the Stream of Gold is gone. In its place is a pile of sand and logs.

Until 2019, this remnant of water was vital for wild animals and the livestock raised by small farmers in the December 8 community in the state of Canindeyú. The surrounding area was covered with native trees that circled the swamp and the stream. The children of campesinos and indigenous people bathed in its waters. Their parents used its channel for fishing.

All of that has vanished.

The marshy terrain that once was the size of a professional soccer field has only two small water channels left, created by diverting the course of the Stream of Gold toward an immense soybean crop.

Neighbors claim that this devastating handiwork was done by the XT Paraguay company, owned by Ulises Rodriguez Teixeira, one of the biggest players in the lucrative soybean industry in Paraguay.

The blockage of the stream mobilized the December 8 Committee, a small group of farmers who in September 2020 filed a complaint with environmental authorities against XT Paraguay, alleging an “ecological crime.” In addition, the farmers claim the land where the canals of water were destroyed belongs to the government.

Elvio Cabrera, president of the committee, says the farmers filed a complaint against XT Paraguay for clearing almost 2,500 acres of forest in addition to the destruction of the swamp and what the committee considers the appropriation of the stream.

The complaint alleges that the intended use of the deforested land is soybean plantations — on property that is not even owned by the company.

The complaint was taken by Alcides Giménez, a legal representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but to date there has been no progress in the case. Giménez said he has received little cooperation from the Ministry of the Environment (MADES) as he attempts to proceed with his investigation. Representatives of MADES say the requested documentation is not necessary for Giménez’s investigation. The dispute between the two institutions underscores the lack of cooperation among Paraguay’s federal and local environmental officials to stop deforestation.

In October 2020, Paraguay’s Ministry of the Environment (MADES) intervened in the diversion of Arroyo De Oro. Officials verified the clogging of the stream and confirmed that the work was done without an environmental license. Photo: MADES archive. Photo: Archivo del MADES

Since October 2020, Cabrera and other members of the committee have traveled 180 miles at least once a month to the Institute for Rural and Land Development (INDERT) in Asunción to press their case on documentation of ownership of the land.

Cabrera shows a report given to him by INDERT, the government agency that establishes rural subdivisions in Paraguay. He holds up a government map of land ownership that he and members of the December 8 Committee say demonstrates that the property where XT Paraguay diverted the stream does not belong to Rodriguez Teixeira.

Cabrera has other complaints in which he maintains that employees of XT Paraguay are crop spraying with pesticides, an activity that is prohibited because agrochemicals can affect nearby residents of the plantations. Cabrera has photos, has documented complaints, and has videos, but cannot get a response from the government.

“We have a community farm in the area. There are 64 families that have their animals. Our cows drink water from that stream,” says Cabrera, one of the few people in the community willing to speak openly about the situation. “But now they cannot go because they surrounded everything, seized land that belongs to the government and on top of that they killed the stream.”

In the December 8 community, his neighbors are afraid to talk about the case.

“We know his guards. We don’t want to have problems with that man,” said a villager who lives in the area and requested that his name not be published. He has lived there for 60 years and remembers when the whole area was a thick forest where people could still spot jaguars on dirt roads.

Today, the only thing that remains are fields of soybeans. And most of those fields belong to Rodriguez Teixeira.

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Sea of deforestation

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:12:07 +0000

The deforestation in the Eastern region directly affects the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest. As a result, one of the most important forest reserves in Latin America is being completely lost. Foto: Pánfilo Leguizamón

Island in a sea of deforestation

Fatima Mereles, former president of the National Council of Science and Technology of Paraguay, considers that it is possible to have a soybean production with the necessary standards of environmental care. But radical changes are needed . Foto: Jessica Colmán

Fátima Mereles is a botanist, teacher, Paraguayan explorer, curator, and passionate about forest conservation. She is blunt about the situation in Paraguay.

“We did nothing to prevent the destruction of the Atlantic Forest,” says Mereles, former president of the National Council for Science and Technology in Paraguay. “Today, the entire Atlantic Forest is losing its resilience.”

If there had been a government policy in place decades ago that addressed environmental problems, she believes that Paraguay would now be a country of sustainable forest production. “But today we cannot even recover the amount of wood that we have lost,” Mereles says.

As Mereles speaks about the future of the Atlantic Forest, her work is spread on a table in the herbarium of the botany department on the National University of Asunción (UNA) campus in San Lorenzo.

The UNA herbarium, which is like a warehouse of dried plants used for the study of botany, has about 60,000 specimens. On the table are a couple of books, an open computer, a magnifying glass, two high chairs.

When Mereles talks about the Atlantic Forest, about the botanical wealth of Paraguay, she lights up. The country had everything it needed to sustain its majestic forests, she says, but now it has to fight to avoid losing what little is left.

She says it is impossible to quantify what Paraguay has lost in biodiversity due to large-scale deforestation in recent decades.

Thousands of species of insects are endemic to the
Atlantic Forest. Photo: Shutterstock

“Botany, the study of all that is forest in the country, arrived late. Only in the 70s, when deforestation was already occurring in a large part of the Eastern region, it was only then that we began to do a rigorous study, so it is impossible to determine the amount of species that were lost in those times of devastation,” Mereles says.

The Mbaracayú Forest Biosphere Reserve, one of the two natural biospheres recognized by UNESCO in Paraguay, is a reminder of the future of the Atlantic Forest.

“We are remaining like an island of forests in a sea of deforestation” says Hugo Mora, Territorial Development Manager of the Moisés Bertoni Foundation, an organization that has been working for 20 years in conservation programs within the Mbaracayú Reserve, in the state of Canindeyú.

As recently as the early 2000s, Mora recalls that the landscape of the Mbaracayú Forest Biosphere Reserve was lush and green. “Starting in 2005 or so, I saw the landscape change. It started with cattle ranching and then with extensive agriculture, a change that took place gradually, in principle, from the remnants of forests to fields and plantations.”

Plant life in the Mbaracayú Forest Biosphere Reserve. Courtesy of Fundación Moisés Bertoni

The advance of the agricultural frontier, with the accompanying change in land use, is taking place at a dizzying pace, without control and without any type of regulation. “If we don’t have auditors, if we don’t have serious controls, obviously we are not going to make things change,” Mora says.

In Mereles’ opinion, the only way out is to develop a strict policy of forest conservation, especially in the Atlantic Forest. She talks about the importance of having development projects or plans, and especially of forest conservation. “It is urgent to work on leaving remnants of forests that are seedbeds,” she says.

But she acknowledges that taking a tough approach to conservation will spark strong reactions from different groups — economic, social and even religious. She doesn’t believe that authorities have the political will to take the side of flora and fauna against those powerful groups.

Mereles isn’t optimistic about the future of Paraguay’s Atlantic Forest. She’s not convinced that forest conservation will become a priority for Paraguay. “In my view,” she says, “we have no solution.”

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Paso Kurusu

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:11:29 +0000

A historic photo. In October 2008, at the presidential house, Ulises Rodríguez Teixeira (center) is received together with Eulalio López, a peasant leader, (left) by Miguel Ángel López Perito, then Secretary General of the Presidency (right), to announce the sale of the Paso Kurusu stay to the Paraguayan government. Photo: ABC Color Archive.

The story of Paso Kurusu

In 2008, Paraguay was a country swept up in a feverish political environment.

Fernando Lugo, a Catholic bishop who turned in his cassock for a political career, was running for president of Paraguay. An opposition coalition candidate, Lugo would end 60 years of power of the ruling Colorado Party.

On April 20, 2008 when Lugo was elected president, almost no one had heard of Ulises Rodríguez Teixeira.

But six months later, a startling series of events made Rodríguez Teixeira the subject of national news coverage in the country of 7 million people.

On October 25, 2008, Rodríguez Teixeira arrived at the presidential residence accompanied by Miguel López Perito, then head of Lugo’s Cabinet, and Eulalio López, a peasant leader, to announce the purchase of the Paso Kurusu ranch by the Paraguayan government.

Government spokesmen said the land purchased from Rodríguez Teixiera would be used for agrarian reform, to benefit homeless peasant families, as well as for an assistance program for small producers. No one suspected what would be revealed a year later.

In October 2009, the newspaper ABC Color published a series of articles reporting the details of the deal that Rodríguez Teixeira had cut with the government for the sale of Paso Kurusu.

The agreement reached by Rodriguez Teixeira and Lugo’s government set a $30 million purchase price for the 53,593 acres of Paso Kurusu. ABC Color reported that just nine months earlier, Teixeira had purchased the property for $11 million.

Over the next three years, there were multiple revelations that caused the people of Paraguay to question the land purchase.

Paraguayans learned that when Lugo was a presidential candidate, he had traveled to Salto del Guairá in the state of Canindeyú on a private plane. It was a March 2008 campaign trip, but Lugo never arrived at the airport.

López Perito, who was Lugo’s campaign manager at the time, reported that the candidate’s plane had to make an emergency landing at a nearby ranch.

The owner of the ranch was Ulises Rodríguez Teixeira.

Then there was the “letter of intent” dated October 2008 and signed by the former bishop in his capacity as president of the republic in which the $30 million purchase price for the Paso Kurusu ranch had already been agreed on. The appraisal of the land didn’t come until almost a year later – and it coincided exactly with the price that had been agreed on in the October 2008 letter.

The coverage of the Paso Kurusu land deal was unrelenting and in July 2012, the government withdrew from the purchase. But the photo of that meeting with Rodríguez Teixeira at the presidential palace was never erased from the public’s memory.

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Q&A

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 02:44:22 +0000

The Atlantic Forest is being cleared by agribusiness companies to make way for lucrative soybean production that makes Paraguay one of the world’s largest soybean exporters. Photo: Shutterstock

“Paraguayan environmental policy has not undergone a transition to the 21st century”

Luis Recalde is a young agricultural engineer who works in Paraguay’s environmental sector and advises on environmental management. On social networks, he is known for his account “Drunken Forest”, where he shares information about conflicts or environmental projects in Paraguay and around the world. In this interview with Bajo la Lupa, Recalde talks about the segment of the agribusiness sector in Paraguay that is working on projects to mitigate the harmful effects of farming practices on natural resources.

Luis Recalde

-How would you describe the environmental situation in Paraguay?

Compared to the world and the region, we are lagging behind. Although there are good efforts and initiatives, we are three steps behind our immediate neighbors (Mercosur). In the region, the pressures are the same (climate change, pollution, loss of habitat, hunting and animal trafficking, etc.) but the response politically (from Paraguay) is the same as in the 70s. Paraguayan environmental policy not has transitioned into the 21st century. While our neighbors are in the conflict resolution stage (which in itself is long and complex), Paraguay continues in the first stage, which is the denial of the problems. Officially, state agencies say things like: “There are no environmental problems in Paraguay” or “Our production is sustainable” or “We have many reserves”.

– How has deforestation in recent decades affected fauna, flora, and life itself in Paraguay? Is there a way to measure that?

It is really very difficult to measure the precise effects of deforestation. We all want simple answers (that is human nature) but it is very difficult to quantify the effects of an activity in a complex system, and the environment is by definition everything that surrounds us. Still, we have some indicators, such as the disappearance of almost all species sensitive to deforestation in most of the Eastern region, coupled with dire poverty in the same communities, which indicates that the deforestation did not produce the economic miracle that was promised, or at least that the economic miracle did not reach a significant segment of Paraguayan society which has been left behind.

– Is sustainable agribusiness possible? Does it work in Paraguay?

I am convinced that it is possible, but it would be something with a very different look than we are used to today. This is not something that is unique to agribusiness. Paraguay does not have sustainable development in any sector. The social and political changes that would bring us a more sustainable agribusiness are changes that will also inevitably alter all the productive and political sectors. The transformations are more of a control of corruption than anything else.

– In terms of environmental crimes in Paraguay, which presents the greater challenge –impunity or lack of control?

Impunity, without a doubt. Environmental crimes are frequent and well known. There is no great difficulty in detecting them, but most are not subject to a legal process, and of those that are, the economic sanctions are set at a ridiculously low amount.

– Is the lack of government presence the best way for the government to collaborate with the destruction of the environment and impunity?

I do not know whether to say lack of government, because the Paraguayan government is often present in environmental processes, but in a negative way, for example, whitewashing judicial processes for environmental infractions. Having said that, although sometimes it is a problem that it is not present, the most common problem with the Paraguayan government and environmental processes is the enormous ease with which the process is corrupted. Practically all environmental offenses can go unpunished, when the person or company that commits them is linked to the power structure.

– Are there agro-industrial entrepreneurs who work in harmony with the environment?

Sustainability in the world today has not been completely by anyone. What we can say is that there are companies that work in a MORE sustainable way, and yes, there are excellent Paraguayan initiatives to improve the standard of social and environmental sustainability. Today, most of this effort consists of adapting to legal regulations (which in itself is not something instantaneous) but beyond the minimum legal requirements, there are companies that invest more than the state asks to improve their socio-environmental impacts. Collaborating with several of them has been a gratifying experience in my career.

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Documents

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 04 May 2021 16:51:28 +0000

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date
Denuncia contra Teixeira	Denuncias	Presentación de WWF de enero 2020 por deforestación	14/01/2020
Denuncia contra XT Paraguay	Hemeroteca / Notas de prensa	Denuncia contra XT / Comisión 8 de Diciembre	28/09/2020
Denuncia deforestación	Deforestación	Informe satelital de WWF sobre deforestación en tierras de UT	29/03/2019

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date	Document
Intervenciones del INFONA	Informes	Todas las intervenciones del INFONA en tierras de Teixeira	23/10/2020

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date	Document
Multas del MADES contra Teixeira	Multas	Todas las multas pagadas por Teixeira en el MADES	29/10/2020

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date	Document
Constatan masiva deforestación	Hemeroteca / Notas de prensa	Intervención de la Fiscalía en territorio de Teixeira – 2008	19/05/2008

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date
Investigación fiscal	Procesos Judiciales	Delitos contra el Medio Ambiente / causa finalizada	29/10/2020
Acción de Inconstitucionalidad	Procesos judiciales	La Corte Suprema rechaza acción promovida por Teixeira	02/05/2018
Causas en San Pedro	Procesos judiciales	Las causas por delito ambiental de Teixeira en San Pedro	29/10/2020

Document name	Classification	Brief description	Date	Document

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Photo Gallery

Luis Jimenez — Tue, 04 May 2021 16:39:06 +0000

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Our Team

Luis Jimenez — Mon, 03 May 2021 19:40:28 +0000

Our team

Aldo Benítez

Correspondent/Bajo la Lupa

Aldo Benítez has worked as a journalist for fifteen years, with his research and reporting focused mainly on environmental and social issues.

He is deputy editor of the Sunday special section of La Nación and previously worked for the ABC Color daily newspaper in Asunción.

Aldo has collaborated on cross-border projects with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and with Connectas — a network of investigative journalists from Latin America. He is a member of the Connectas Hub.

He currently works as a correspondent for Mongabay Latam and is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Communication and Journalism of Paraguay.

S. Lynne Walker

Executive Director of InquireFirst

S. Lynne Walker is president and executive director of InquireFirst and founder of Bajo la Lupa, a grant program established in 2020 to support investigative reporting in Latin America.

Lynne is a Pulitzer Prize finalist who spent much of her career reporting from Mexico, where she served as Mexico City Bureau Chief from 1992 to 2008 for San Diego, Calif.-based Copley News Service.

Her four-part series on a small Illinois town transformed by immigration, “Beardstown: Reflection of a Changing America,” was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. She was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2005 for her outstanding coverage of Latin America.

As executive director of InquireFirst, which she founded in 2016, Lynne continues to travel to Latin America to work with colleagues on new ways to produce in-depth reporting on science, health and the environment and conduct investigative reporting. She has instructed Spanish-language journalism workshops in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador.

Lynne is the founder of Voces Emergentes, an intensive, 6-week diploma program for early-career journalists and university journalism students.

She is also the co-founder of Historias sin Fronteras, which was established in 2020 to provide reporting grants to science, health and environment writers in Latin America and she is co-founder of En Común: Conocimiento en Voz Viva, a Spanish-language radio program that reports on science, health and the environment for rural and indigenous audiences in Latin America.

CREDITS

Pánfilo Leguizamón

Photographs/Paraguay

Rodrigo Pujol

Infographics

Fernando Mendoza / Voz: Mike Silvero

Video

Luis J. Jiménez

Web Design

Jessica X. Valenzuela

English translation

Jerusa Rodrigues

Portuguese translation

Anthony S. Da Vigo

Our thanks to Anthony S. Da Vigo, founding donor of Bajo la Lupa, for supporting this investigative journalism project

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