The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

282 the world according to monsantotime. Starting in 1954, the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner further intensifiedthe concentration of land ownership to the detriment of small farmers:25 million acres fell into the hands of allies of the bloodthirsty general, theson of a Bavarian brewer, who distributed them to local political bosses orforeign companies in return for large bribes. In the 1970s, during the firstexpansion of (non-transgenic) soybeans, another deviation of the agrarianreform that was always being postponed led to the sale of huge territoriesin the public domain to Brazilian producers from Rio Grande do Sul andParaná, the “Braziguayans” who organized the smuggling of RR seeds twentyyears later. It is now estimated that sixty thousand producers share the transgenicbounty, 24 percent of them Paraguayan and the rest foreigners fromBrazil, Germany, and Japan, or “international investors who have placed theirmoney in the new green gold,” to adopt the expression of Deputy AgricultureMinister Roberto Franco.* Putting it bluntly, they are foreign companies thatbuy huge properties to plant GMOs and have no qualms about driving off, byany means possible, the small farmers in their way.“Look,” said Galeano, “this is where the soy frontier has reached today.”The view was startling. We were now going down a straight path running forseveral miles. To our left, toward the east, were soybeans as far as the eyecould see, from which tiny clumps of trees infrequently emerged. To ourright lay the wooded landscape rich in biodiversity that we had been goingthrough for the past two hours. “Less than two years ago, these huge areaswere populated by peasant and indigenous communities, all of whom finallyleft,” Galeano explained. “The technique of the sojeros is always the same.First they contact the families and offer them food and toys for the children’sbirthdays. Then they come back and offer to rent their plots of landwith a three-year contract. The families keep living there, keeping a smallspace for food crops. But they are very soon affected by the spraying, so thesojeros offer to buy their land outright. Since title deeds usually don’t existfor these properties, because they are supposed to be part of the agrarian reformthat never happened, the producers bribe well-placed government officialsin Asunción and they become the legal owners of these ‘liberated’plots, as they call them. Then the bulldozers come and destroy the entirenatural habitat of these very fertile lands, and the next year monoculturetakes over. That’s why I say it’s a new conquest, because the expansion of*The Japanese Agency for International Cooperation has encouraged the emigration of Japanesesettlers.