July, 6th 2012 

PARAGUAY

We reproduce below an interview to a Paraguayan woman worker

Not only the soybean and cereal MNCs eject the peasant masses from their land...
Mining octopuses are devouring everything along their path

How was Paso Yobai before the merciless establishment of the mining companies?

A: It was a very beautiful village. There was a river that crossed the entire village where all of us used to swim and in which our families relaxed. The surroundings were mainly full of plots with cassava and yerba plantations. In our homes, many had vegetable gardens, thanks to which our families were self-sufficient (in terms of healthy food rations).

What happened when the mining companies came?

A: upon arrival, the mining bosses gave a few pesos to the townspeople for renting or purchasing the land; even taking to the end their greed, they leased up to the backyards. 
Mining companies came with their retro excavator trucks and made huge holes in the ground to take all the gold. The river got poisoned. Our families became landless and without the possibility of being able to continue harvesting for food. Money began to dwindle more and more, while giant black holes invaded our soil.
It is terrible to go back and see that. The water is punished with waste mercury used for the extraction of valuable ore.

What was it that happened to your brother?

A: he went to work at a mine, like many in the village. my husband would have done as well if we had stayed in Paraguay. My brother was a mineworker, he performed gold mining.
When the miners finish their daily work, as my brother did, they keep a little amount of soil with them. They carry it home, where once again the brew it with mercury for a little bit of gold. They then sell it for a better life. But mercury and its vapor will little by little intoxicate you; you are hurting your inside. This happened to my brother. One day he fell ill and soon died… poisoned.
This has happened to many people; not only at home, but mainly in the mines, where accidents that damage the health of the workers are commonplace. The truth is that all this is a disaster, when they finish with everything there will not even a single plot of land on which to grow anything. They will leave thousands of families, thousands of peasants drowned in ruin and misery. Human life is worthless for mining companies, which are mostly Canadian. They are a bunch of bloody parasites.
  It makes me very sad to see what they are doing, these companies in my country, because all subservient rulers and politicians allow it. They guarantee this looting by killing us peasants, because they end keeping much monies in their pockets, while the ordinary people is increasingly worse, most enslaved that when they were those Jesuit assassins and their Church, some centuries ago, that killed and subjected to whipping and torture many thousands of natives of these lands.