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ARGENTINA: Rural Activists Arrested in Land Rights Dispute

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 22 2004 (IPS) - Rural activists involved in a struggle over land rights in an impoverished province in northern Argentina were arrested and accused of resisting an eviction attempt staged by a group of armed men in civilian clothes.

In an interview with IPS, Hernán Prego, the lawyer representing the Campesino Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE), confirmed that activists Angel Strapazzón and Gustavo Carrizo were arrested Thursday on their way to the city of Santiago del Estero, the capital of the province of the same name.

They are accused of taking part in resistance to an attempt to evict local campesinos (peasant farmers) from the land that the families live on and farm.

But Prego said that on Tuesday, when the campesino families resisted eviction by armed men, Strapazzón – the top leader of MOCASE – “was in the province of Santa Fe.”

The lawyer said an arrest warrant was also issued for another of the movement’s leaders, Fabián De Bueno, and that the police carried out three unsuccessful searches “for weapons” in MOCASE’s central offices, Strapazzón’s home in the department (county) of Quimilí, and on the plot of land whose ownership is in dispute.

The eviction attempt was prompted by a complaint filed by Jorge Orlando, who claims to be the legal owner of the 1,262 hectares in dispute.

The land is located in a rural area of the province of Santiago del Estero known as Pampa Pozo, and is home to around 15 campesino families who have lived there for 70 years.

Prego said the armed men were sent in to evict the families even though Orlando had never even filed a lawsuit to recuperate the property.

As in many countries of Latin America, poor campesinos in Argentina frequently lack title deeds to the land their families have lived on for decades.

However, Argentina has a law, the “Ley de Prescripción Veinteañal”, which allows those who have peacefully occupied unproductive land and lived there continuously for at least 20 years, making some improvements, to claim it as their own property.

The problem is that most campesino families cannot afford the costly land surveys and complicated legal procedures that are required to win title deeds under the law.

A member of MOCASE who asked not to be identified told IPS by telephone that since Tuesday “around 15 armed men in civilian dress” have been staked out on the land claimed by Orlando.

“They killed around 30 farm animals and destroyed farm implements belonging to the campesino families, besides evicting one of the 15 families who live there,” said the source, who lives near Pampa Pozo and is in contact with the local families involved.

The armed men “answer to” Miguel Angel Zurita, who is accused of an attempt on Strapazzón’s life, said the source.

On Mar. 17, Zurita allegedly fired eight bullets at the MOCASE leader outside of his home. Strapazzón was not injured.

Since then, Zurita, who is wanted in connection with the failed attempt on the activist’s life, has continued to appear in public, speaking in the name of local landowners and “appearing in the local newspapers and on TV, while the justice system does nothing.”

“Even the police obey him”, according to the anonymous member of MOCASE.

Strapazzón, meanwhile, was arrested for “usurpation, damages, threats, theft and extremely serious injuries” – all of which are “fabricated charges,” according to Prego.

The conflict in Pampa Pozo echoes a similar incident that occurred in Villa María, in the nearby department of Quimilí.

In mid-September, a group of unidentified individuals set fire to a 6,000-hectare field where cattle and goats were grazing. A few days later, justice of the peace Julio Elías Saad showed up in the area with police officers and men in civilian dress wearing hoods who said they were representatives of a company named Batzen.

A local court had handed down a ruling in favour of the company, recognising it as the legitimate owner of the land in question and ordering the eviction of the local campesino families who live there.

The armed group of police and “para-police” threatened the families, trying to force them off the land by firing shots into the air, MOCASE said in a complaint that it filed in court.

The threats continued over the next few days. The “para-police” forces warned the campesinos that “they wanted the heads of” three MOCASE activists, including De Bueno and Strapazzón.

According to a report by the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, an Argentine human rights group, of the roughly 15,000 families of small farmers in the province of Santiago del Estero, 10,000 have been unable to gain title deeds “to the land that they have lived on and worked, for generations in some cases, because they cannot afford to initiate lawsuits based on the ‘prescripción veinteañal’ law.”

Santiago del Estero is one of the poorest provinces in this South American country of 37 million. Fifty-eight percent of the provincial population of 720,000 lives below the poverty line, and the illiteracy rate stands at 8.6 percent, three times the national level.

The federal government assumed direct rule over the province seven months ago to dismantle a corruption-riddled feudal-style regime accused of brutal persecution of opponents, including murder, and numerous human rights violations.

The couple that ruled the province for over 50 years – Governor Nina Aragonés and her husband, 88-year-old local strongman Carlos Juárez – are both under arrest on a number of charges.

In an October 2003 visit to the province, a mission of central government officials documented hundreds of complaints of torture, forced disappearance, murder, corruption and censorship.

The resulting report by Human Rights Secretary Eduardo Luis Duhalde and then Deputy Minister of Justice Juan Pablo Lanusse, who is now caretaker governor of the province, stated that armed groups in Santiago del Estero acted like the anti-Bolshevik “white guards” in Russia who harassed and intimidated local peasants after the revolution of 1917.

“Many campesinos fully entitled to their land are unjustly evicted from their legitimate property by supposed owners or buyers,” said the report, which denounced the existence of “bands of paramilitaries or armed labourers” – hired goons who do the dirty work for business interests or landowners that want the families evicted.

The Justice Ministry report, produced before the administration of centre-left President Néstor Kirchner took over the provincial government, also mentioned “periodic meetings of business people whose objective was to organise and finance armed groups to carry out the extrajudicial eviction of campesinos and harass MOCASE and other organisations.”