Paraguay's Curuguaty Massacre: A Pretext for a Coup
Paraguay's Curuguaty Massacre: A Pretext for a Coup
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/new...0614-0036.html
Published 14 June 2016
Four years ago, a violent land conflict was used to unseat a left-wing president who shook up the country's political status quo.
Paraguay's largely right-wing Congress exploited a violent confrontation between police forces and landless campesinos in 2012 that resulted in 17 deaths in order to oust the first progressive president in the country's modern history, and immediately implement measures that favored the agribusiness industry that had long-ruled the South American nation.
Four years ago, 300 heavily-armed police officers stormed into Marina Kue in the Curuguaty district of Paraguay in an attempt to evict 70 rural farmworkers who had occupied the land. The landless workers asserted that the land belonged to the state after former dictator Alfredo Stroessner passed it to its new owner, Blas Riquelme.
The conflict, which swiftly turned violent, resulted in the deaths of 17 people, 11 campesinos and six policemen. The youngest of the campesinos was 18-year-old Luciano Ortega.
= new reply since forum marked as read
