THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM AND SETTLEMENT OF THE BORDER EAST OF PARAGUAY: “LA MARCHA PARA EL ESTE”

Abstract

The colonization of Paraguay eastern region carried out in the early 1970s by Stroessner's government took place largely on the urgent need that time to contain the severe agrarian problems that generated numerous land conflicts between smallholders and landowners in the central part of the country. The creation of the Rural Welfare Institute (IBR), was one of the ways sought to ease such conflicts, removing both occupants as the other poor farmers that of surrounding the capital region, inducing them and resettling them in new agricultural colonies in North and east of the country. His main instrument was the creation of colonies program with the official aim of expanding the agricultural frontier through the creation and expansion of economic units. Deficiencies of the RBI's actions to achieve the first objective enabled the massive entry of Brazilian settlers in the eastern border region, whose resource availability and familiarity with the cash crops were more attractive to government interests and real estate agents who have come to act in those regions. Such a situation would take a short playback time interval new scale of such speculative and exclusionary mechanisms that characterized the exploitation of natural resources of the country, widening the wounds and vicissitudes of the land historically unresolved problem. This article is an integral part and an offshoot of the reflections in the book titled the same author authoring Fronteireiros.