The Triple Alliance continues to be a great sucess: the regimes of control of the paraguayan territory (1870-2019)

Author(s)

Lorena Izá Pereira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2019-12-10.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2019-10-29
• Advisor: Bernardo Mançano Fernandes

Abstract

The debate about the land grabbing process, understood in this work, as land control - the power to control the territory and access to the territory through different direct and indirect relations - was intensified because of the 2007/2008 over accumulation crisis. Concomitant with the financial crisis, other crises emerge [or a fear or discourse of scarcity] such as food, environmental, climatic and energy. The major targets of this process are the countries of the global South, but the process of land control is beyond the North-Rich-Appropriator and South-Poor-Appropriate dichotomy. Latin America is one of the main targets of the process and presents different peculiarities, such as different forms of territorial appropriation and control, understood through multiscalarity and multidimensionality; strong presence of regional capital; striking understanding of outsourcing as synonymous with land grabbing and the history of the process. Paraguay, our territorial cut, is a nation that historically – since the end of the War of the Triple Alliance in 1870 – has been affected by the control and alienation of lands. The biggest controllers are the companies, investment funds and individuals from the Argentina, Brazil and, recently, Uruguay, which in each moment was territorialized in the country in a different way. Based on the study of the territorialization of Argentine, Brazilian and Uruguayan agribusiness in Paraguay, our objective is to analyze the new territorial dynamics created by the process of foreignization inserted in a broader territorial control process. Through the understanding of the control and foreignization of the territory as processes of general dynamics, particular and singular materialized in space and time, the thesis that we defend is that there are three regimes of control and foreignization of the Paraguayan territory of 1870 until the present moment. These regimes are the results of general [global], particular [regional] and singular [local, in this case Paraguay] dynamics in interaction. This means that in each regime the materialization of the control and foreignization of the territory takes place in a distinct way, with strategies, dynamics, territorialities, impacts and resistances odd. These processes have resulted in the deterritorialization of peasants directly and indirectly, affecting the security and food sovereignty of the country, creating dependency relations and different forms of peasant resistance against the advance of foreign agribusiness in the Paraguayan territory. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/21760-4 - Appropriation of Paraguayan territory by Argentines, Brazilians and Uruguayans: land control, foreignization and peasant resistance
• Grantee: Lorena Izá Pereira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)