Suchergebnisse

This article examines the different forms of structural, everyday, and symbolic violence brought about by the sweeping expansion of agribusiness in Paraguay over the past few decades. This discussion is framed around the protest slogan of the organized campesino movement: "Soja = Glifosato + Paramilitares" ["Soy = Glyphosate + Paramilitary"]. The banner encapsulates the twin forces of environmental violence and toxic dispossession faced by the peasant and Indigenous communities who live near soybean fields. On the one hand, the quotidian violence caused by agrochemical drifts – accumulation by fumigation – that leads to various forms of toxification, slow death and corporeal attrition that reduce populations through ill health, infertility, and furtive modes of displacement. On the other hand, the more open, direct, and deadly violence involving the assassination of peasant activists and local leaders along with the criminalization of social protests. The adamant and visceral dismissals by agribusiness elites of the grievances of campesinos represents another form of symbolic violence, highlighting the obstacles that rural communities and peasant social movements face in addressing toxic landscapes and environmental violence of the agro-extractivism. 

This book investigates how extractive capitalism has developed over the past three decades, what dynamics of resistance have been deployed to combat it, and whether extractivism can ever be transformed into being a part of a progressive development path.

"This book investigates how extractive capitalism has developed over the past three decades, what dynamics of resistance have been deployed to combat it, and whether extractivism can ever be transformed into being a part of a progressive development path. It was not until the 21st century that the extraction of natural resources and raw materials took on a decidedly capitalist form, with the global north extracting primary commodities from the global south as a means of capital accumulation. This book investigates whether extractivism, despite its well-documented negative and destructive socioenvironmental impacts and the powerful forces of resistance that it has generated, could ever be transformed into a sustainable post-development strategy. Drawing on diverse sectoral forms of extractivism (mining, fossil fuels, agriculture), this book analyses the dynamics of both the forces of resistance generated by the advance of extractive capital and alternate scenarios for a more sustainable and liveable future. The book draws particularly on the Latin American experience, where both the propensity of capitalism towards crisis and the development of resistance dynamics to 'extractive' capital have had their greatest impact in the neoliberal era. This book will be of interest to researchers and students across development studies, economics, political economy, environmental studies, indigenous studies, and Latin American affairs"--

"This book investigates the many ways in which industrial capitalist agriculture has penetrated and transformed contemporary Latin America. Using a range of case studies from across the region, the book considers the socio-economic, political and ecological implications of the agro-industrial model when compared to alternative, less intensive models based on cooperative, smallholder or peasant agriculture and with agroecological farming methods. The concept of agrarian extractivism challenges the idea that industrial agriculture is bringing lasting local benefits, instead arguing that it is characterized by a few multinational corporations controlling both ends of the value chain, and extracting natural and surplus value, whilst exploiting labour and contaminating the ecological material base. At a time when most influential development institutions are promoting the agro-industrial model for combatting rural poverty and feeding the world, this book provides a nuanced assessment of the social, economic and environmental implications of intensification. Highlighting the importance of adopting a critical engagement with the dominant model of agricultural development, this book provides a timely contribution to debates regarding agrarian and environmental change and rural transformations. It will be of interest to scholars across critical development studies, rural studies, environmental studies, and Latin American studies."

El artículo explora el reciente cambio en la economía agraria de Paraguay hacia el agroextractivismo y sus efectos en la reconfiguración de la estructura de clases. Se analiza cómo dicha estructura de clase ha contribuido a las formas cambiantes que la lucha de clases (desde arriba y desde abajo) ha adquirido en Paraguay en el curso de la prolongada transición del país a la democracia (1989-2008). Se centra en «el ascenso y la caída» del presidente Fernando Lugo (2008-2012) y estudia los procesos históricos específicos de formación de clases y del Estado en Paraguay que explican el golpe constitucional instigado por la clase terrateniente contra Lugo en 2012. Además, se argumenta que la burguesía terrateniente paraguaya ejerce un control oligárquico sobre el Estado, de tal forma que las posibilidades de una reforma agraria redistributiva continúan siendo muy complicadas en tanto no se produzcan cambios profundos, estructurales e institucionales en la sociedad y el Estado.

En este trabajo se cuestiona la reciente reivindicación de la biotecnología agrícola como panacea para combatir la inseguridad alimentaria y la pobreza rural en los países del Sur global. Con base en una investigación empírica del régimen sojero neoliberal en Paraguay, se expone cómo la profunda transformación del modo agrícola de producción en ese país en las últimas dos décadas, impulsada por una «biorevolución» y la reestructuración neoliberal de la agricultura, ha puesto en peligro los medios de subsistencia rurales. En particular, se demuestra cómo la «sojización transgénica» de la agricultura paraguaya ha llevado a un aumento de la concentración de tierras productoras, así como al desplazamiento y debilitamiento de los campesinos y trabajadores rurales, quienes han quedado prescindibles por las exigencias del capital del agronegocio. Al mismo tiempo, la consolidación de ese nuevo modelo agroindustrial ha fomentado una creciente dependencia de productos agroquímicos que dañan la calidad del medio ambiente y la salud humana. Se concluye que una política de desarrollo cimentada en el monocultivo industrial de soja genéticamente modificada (GM) es inadecuada, insostenible e inmoral.