Paraguay activists ensure government's oil ambitions will be no walk in the park
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Version 0 of 1. Paraguay’s Chaco region, the northern part of an arid 650,000 sq km plain stretching from Argentina to Brazil and Bolivia, is no stranger to fighting over land and the wealth it contains. The latest threat of conflict is in a corner of the Chaco, where President Horacio Cartes is considering oil exploration in the Defensores del Chaco national park. It is estimated that 4bn barrels of oil lie beneath the 7,000 sq km park, in which thorny scrub is home to big cats, monkeys and tapir. The site also contains the emblematic Cerro León: a unique ring of forested hills 40km in diameter. Critics fear that potential drilling could wipe out one of the region’s few remaining bastions of biodiversity, and that contamination of the area’s vital river systems will hurt not only local residents – including the Ayoreo, a semi-nomadic people who have lived in the region for millennia – but the entire country. Others allege that the government is trying to push through a deal with foreign investors to benefit the wealthy few. A small but vocal crowd aired their complaints at an evening protest in the capital, Asunción, on Tuesday. A group of about 100 gathered on the steps of the National Pantheon of Heroes, holding placards and chanting, “Cerro León, no se toca!” (Don’t touch Cerro León) and “Cartes fuera!” (Cartes out). “I came here to defend my country. I’m defending what my father did as a soldier in the war of the Chaco,” said Margarita López, outside the historic building dedicated to the memory of Paraguay’s military heroes. “In the name of him and of all my family, I come to defend this little piece of the patria that’s now being sold down the river, by the same governors who should be defending it,” she added as her teenage daughter nodded in agreement. The group blamed the destruction of the countryside on Cartes’s commitment to the “agro-export model,” far-reaching marijuana trafficking networks, and foreign-owned soybean estates. Paraguayans have reason to be wary of the government’s aims, explained Diego Mereles, one of the young founders of the Defenders of the Chaco group. The state is already carving out rocks from Cerro León, reportedly for roadworks, despite ministry of public works (MOPC) documents previously claiming to be extracting minerals “nearby”. “We don’t buy this story that they’re taking out rocks to build roads,” said Mereles. “In reality, we think that at the bottom of the Cerro León issue is something else … companies are coming from other countries to destroy our land. I come to defend this little piece of the patria being sold down the river by governors who should be defending it “It’s not the first time; they’re always looking to find petroleum, but we think they’re looking to sell off the whole Paraguayan Chaco. We don’t believe anything that Cartes says.” When the group reached the MOPC’s glass facade, activists aimed fiery rhetoric at two police officers. The officers were backed by a group of armed colleagues a few metres away, at the end of the street – a necessary precaution in a country facing a low-level insurgency from armed peasant groups near the eastern border with Brazil. Late on Friday, the MOPC announced an environmental review of whether to grant exploration rights at Cerro León to the interested Peruvian firm. A meeting was scheduled on Tuesday. But the review process is plagued with duplicity, protesters claimed. The Cartes administration denies having any plans to authorise exploration in the national park itself, and says that a provisional licence from the MOPC to operate nearby is dependent on approval from the environment ministry. Yet the economic rationale behind moves to embrace oil is clear. Paraguay’s 6.8 million residents used 27,000 barrels of crude a day in 2013, all of which had to be imported from Argentina and Bolivia. It’s an expensive but necessary operation, after Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez cancelled a cheap oil deal in 2012 following the impeachment of Fernando Lugo, Paraguay’s radical former president, a decision that saddled the state oil firm Petropar with a $260m debt. An estimated 4bn barrels are thought to lie under the Chaco, and previous government claims that it holds 14bn cubic litres – “the largest reserves of oil and natural gas that humanity has ever known” according to one former minister – would rank Paraguay above Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in the fossil fuel stakes. The government, meanwhile, claims that the profits from hydrocarbon exports could help to eliminate the poverty that’s dogged Paraguay since it declared independence in 1811. But Sarah Bracho, an activist, cited the example of Paraguay’s showpiece hydroelectric projects – including the colossal Itaipu dam shared with Brazil – as evidence that such trickle-down economics rarely works. “Right now we ourselves are an exporter of electrical energy, and we’re yet to benefit from that, so what’s to make us think that these petrol reserves will benefit us in any way?” she said. |