This is a CTP of initiative: La Via Campesina/MNCI (Argentina)
This CTP refers to a strategic action initiated by the MNCI to gain national visibility and lobbying capacity to install on the state agenda the problem of the evictions suffered by peasants.
On April 17, 2011, the National Coordinator group of Peasant Organizations, Family Farmers and indigenous Peoples, was formed to prepare a law proposal to stop rural evictions and the immediate cessation of repression of indigenous peoples to strip them of their lands. The project was born on the initiative of the organizations that contributed their technical staff in matters of agrarian legislation. In the following years, progress was made in a series of governmental actions and laws in favor of small farmers, but the problem of substance was not resolved in some provinces. For example, in November 2011, a member of the MOCASE peasant organization was killed by a hired assassin hired by an agricultural entrepreneur in the province of Santiago del Estero.
Face this situation, peasant organizations such as the MNCI renewed their negotiations to promote their to stop the evictions:
"The creation of the Subsecretariat of family agriculture is a step, a conquest of this people and this government." "But there is still the need to democratize the land, Water, Production, commercialization, infrastructure." "If almost 90% of the land is in the hands of the world market and not the people." A great contradiction persists, Food Sovereignty can not be carried forward with a Careful Environment and to continue thinking in order to maximize the profits of transnational corporations. That is why we demand that the law be taken, a brake against the abuse of agro-businessmen who continue to evict peasant indigenous families with impunity."
Finally, part of these claims were partially incorporated into the family agriculture law sanctioned in 2014 generating new difficulties at the time of its effective application.
The drafting of the project marked a significant leap in the lobbying capacity of the peasant movement. In the process they obtained the support and technical advice of deputies of different political parties.
On the other hand, the initiative was supported by the Central of argentinian workers (In spanish, Central de Trabajadores Argentinos), human rights organizations such as the Argentine League for the Rights of man and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS in it spanish initials).
The process of articulation of interests and contributions of different social and political sectors was generated while the situation of the evictions was deepening. The search for support at the national level was a strategy aimed at forming a system of alliances that could counteract the existing alliance between large agricultural entrepreneurs and local governments. The complicity of the political system of some provinces and the judicial power with the entrepreneurs, closed all possibility of solution at local level.
The peasant organizations interpreted that there were two facts that could allow to form an alliance with some sectors of the national state. On the one hand, the open confrontation between the national government and the organizations of the big producers of commercial agriculture, especially from the conflict generated by the attempt to implement mobile retentions in 2008. On the other hand, the Human rights policy that the national government had been developing since 2003 and which had strengthened the link of human rights organizations with different sectors of public administration.
The law never got dealt with by the national congress. However, it operated as a trigger for new political relations between the peasant movement and the state. The process of drafting the bill generated a process of co-production in which organizations of the peasant movement became valid interlocutors for national political power. In this way, this lobbying capacity at the national level strengthened its capacity to lobby with provincial and local governments.
This CTP was developed as of 2011. At the political level, 2011 was a year in which the power of the national government was consolidated, which recovered from two hard setbacks. On the one hand, the political defeat that meant the rejection of the project of mobile retentions in the congress in July 2008, and on the other, the electoral defeat suffered in the midterm elections in 2009.
However, the popularity of the government headed by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner began to grow thanks to a recovery of the economy after the negative effects of the financial crisis of 2008. But there was another unexpected fact that influenced to the country's political future From the end of 2010. In October, former President Nestor Kirchner died, the husband of the president and who had initiated that political cycle with his government.
On the other hand, the conflict that led the national government with the agro-export sector at the beginning of 2008 generated a greater rapprochement with different peasant organizations. In the presidential elections of 2011, the ruling party swept and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner won with 54% of the votes and more than 20% difference with the second. This categorical victory was accompanied by a discourse of deepening reforms in favor of the popular sectors and against concentrated economic power.
During the three or four years in which the law to curb the evictions was insisted, conflicts over land tenure in many provinces were deepened. On some occasions, these conflicts ended in serious acts of violence such as the assassination of MOCASE's member Cristian Ferreyra in November 2011.
As part of this process, in December 2012, the appointment of the MNCI referent Ramiro Fresneda was made official as head of the Directorate of Support for Family Agriculture Organizations. In this way, the MNCI was committed to public management directly.
All this CTP is considered as the great challenge for MNCI organizations to achieve political influence. These positions generated deep internal debates in the movement as many believed that it was necessary to maintain a position independent of any state structure. For this reason, the MNCI referents acknowledge that they had to rethink some things:
"Self-criticism in terms of which our whole process had a very strong axis in the autonomy and almost in total disbelief of the role of the State."
To the extent that the alliance with some sectors of the national government was consolidating, the contradiction centered on the fact that the same national state had strong ties with agribusiness:
"We are not critical because it supports the productive matrix to have resources to distribute... What we say is that they have political cadres who do not understand that while you are feeding and sleeping with the enemy why they do not feed those who are not at all enemies, that is, the peasantry. I mean, do not stop to relate to soybeans but I put a lot of money on the peasantry, in family farming, I put it there."
It was also necessary to define what role the state had played in the violent conflicts that were experienced throughout this CTP. The MNCI referents clearly differentiated the provincial governments from the national state:
"The head of all this is the governor [Gerardo] Zamora. And we go for him.Until a little while ago, until several minutes ago, several comrades and companions were like a freezer for the peasant uprising. But we are not going to be that Freezer, has already overflowed the glass. We are here to announce that in Santiago del Estero returns the ‘Santiagueñazo’.”
The quest to stop the evictions was part of a clear and planned strategy to generate visibility and political influence. For this reason, this CTP shows concrete elements of anticipation.
It is probably that MNCI members would not expected that concrete results to be achieved so quickly. From the beginning of the negotiations at the beginning of 2011 and the sanction of the Family Agriculture law at the end of 2014, 4 years passed. However, there were successive milestones achieved during that period that met the original strategic objectives.
The construction of the bill was itself a learning process. Thus the MNCI and other peasant organizations learned to negotiate with different estates of the state and political forces.
They also had to learn to deal with the contradictions generated by this new relationship with political power. These contradictions were within their own organizations and within the state as well.
It was also necessary to learn how to sustain the delicate balance brought about by the fact that some MNCI leaders were at the same time public officials.
Stay informed. Subscribe for project updates by e-mail.
