The Senate postponed until next week its consideration of a bill submitted by the Executive in April that would amend the Agrarian Statute and the organic law of the Institute for Rural and Land Development (Indert), the agency responsible for granting title to rural land in Paraguay. The proposal was scheduled for Wednesday, September 16, when Indigenous, peasant and popular organizations held a demonstration at Plaza de Armas, in front of Congress, in Asunción.
The Indigenous, Peasant and Popular Unity Coalition says the text could allow Indert-owned properties to be sold to people who do not qualify as beneficiaries of agrarian reform. The group also criticizes the possibility that the institute’s president could authorize such transactions individually and that ineligible occupants could regularize public land.
The government presents the changes as a way to speed up the granting of title and reduce administrative obstacles for peasant families. The organizations, however, say the initiative could turn land intended for agrarian reform into tradable assets and make it easier for groups without rights to those properties to concentrate them.
Another disputed point is the removal of the 3% payment established in Article 59, together with the extension of deadlines without a replacement financing mechanism. In the movement’s view, this combination would reduce Indert’s ability to buy land, carry out expropriation proceedings and provide assistance to communities.
“It is the death by starvation of agrarian reform,” the coalition said in a statement, calling the bill a “political swindle” presented under the promise of “mass titling” and a “new rurality.” The entity brings together organizations such as Conamuri, ONAI, OLT, the Paraguayan Peasant Movement, Anivid and other Indigenous and rural groups.
The criticism also focuses on the risk of indebtedness. Eduardo Aguayo, a lawyer with the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinator (Codehupy), said the text could turn agrarian-reform beneficiaries into borrowers, leaving properties subject to mortgages and possible seizure if the owners are unable to pay.
Tomás Zayas, a representative of the coalition, said approval would begin a process of loss of peasant properties. Rosa Toledo, one of the coordinators, warned that concentrating powers to sell land could extend to Indigenous ancestral territories. The movement also maintains that affected peoples were not adequately consulted, contrary, in its interpretation, to constitutional guarantees and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization.
The group advocates implementing the Agrarian Statute, enacted 24 years ago and still lacking full regulations, before any legislative changes. If the Senate approves the bill next week, the organizations say they may call mobilizations to pressure the Chamber of Deputies to reject it.