Students bear witness to tragedy

Val Vita – Collegio Reporter

Paraguay, the South American country of 6 million habitants, became world news on Friday, June 15, after a fight between peasants and police resulted in 17 deaths. Paraguay is also the country of several PSU students, a big part of them is at home for the Summer.

Pedro Lopes says he first found out what was going on when his Paraguayan friends started posting news on Facebook.

“Then when I turned on the TV it was in all the channels,” said Lopes, a student of master in international business.

The news showed that about 100 farmers were camping illegally in a land that belongs to a businessman and politician named Blas Riquelme. On Friday, about 300 police officers were designated to take them out, and the farmers opened fire against them. There were farmers and police officers among the 17 people who died. About 80 more police and civilians were wounded.

The conflict happened in the country zone, but Lopes, who lives in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, could heard the helicopters flying over his city, bringing the wounded to receive treatment at the hospital.

Lopes says fights for lands are common in Paraguay, because back to the dictatorship in the country (which last 30 years, ended in 1989) the government obtained lands and gave them to some specific people.

“The lands that were supposed to be donated to the landless, ended up on the hands of business men and multimillionaires politicians,” said Lopes. “Now the landless are trying to get these lands back, but they are property of these rich people.”

According to Lopes, the population was afraid that the incident started a retaliation by the landless of other parts of Paraguay.

“There was even a rumor of a coup d’état one day later,” Lopes said. “The situation is still complicated and several groups of landless are asking that President  Fernando Lugo resigns.”

The number of 80 people wounded given by the official sources could even be bigger, according to Adriana Garmacea, graduate student in news editorial.

“There are still people in the confrontation area and not all of them have been accounted for,” said Garmacea, who graduated from PSU last year and now works in a local newspaper in Asuncion.

Garmacea says this event had a huge impact in the Paraguayan population, not just because of its level of tragedy, but because it involves numerous political issues.

“It’s hard to get back to your country and witness a tragedy of this magnitude,” said Garmcvea. “Everybody involved had a family who would probably be scared for life because of one single event.”

She says she really hope that something like this would never occur again in her country.

“People in Paraguay felt very angry, touched and sorry for the victims and their families, because most of them had kids who lost a parent in the week of Father’s Day,” Garmacea said.      

Natalia Makucheff believes that this problems are getting more serious because of the president.

“People believed Lugo would change something (about the land issue), but he didn’t,” said Makucheff, graduated in international business and marketing.

According to Mavi Goydy, sophomore in music, in Paraguay, only a few people are benefit from the lands.

 “The president is a disaster,” Goydy said. “Here, everything is injustice. We are really tired of this.”