Background: 

Tekojoja is an agricultural colony that dates from the 1970s, and was established in accordance with Paraguayan agrarian reform laws: the land was deemed underexploited by its owner, and expropriated for redistributed to campesinos who requested title to the land. However, thirty years later, very few people in the colony have full legal title to the plots of 5-15 hectares that they cultivate. As they wait for title, the land remains state land, and as such cannot be bought or sold by anyone except the land agency, the INDERT (originally the IBR). Nonetheless, in the last five years, Brazilians living in the area around Toledo and Santa Clara (less than 10 kilometers east of Tekojoja) have been buying what are called "derecheras," or use rights to the land, from people moving out of the area. In violation of the Agrarian Statute, which sets a strict limit of 1 lot per family, Brazilians are accumulating many lots in the area to convert the land from smallholdings to extensive soy plantations. Although the practice is against the law, it was carried out with the tacit approval of the INDERT.

In the spring of 2003, Jorge and Antonio Galeano, leaders of a group called the Movimiento Agrario y Popular, decided to stop this practice by starting legal proceedings against the new owners, and retaking possession of several of the lots that had been sold. The recuperation focused on 9 lots scattered along the 2nd and 3rd lines of Tekojoja (a colony which is divided into 3 lines, or roads). Although the legal process is slow, the INDERT had already declared its intention to revert these lands to the campesinos, and decreed that until the appeals process was over, the Brazilians were not to work on the land where the campesinos were now living.

Nonetheless, in a highly irregular proceeding, the Brazilians, led by Mr. Ademir Opperman, convinced judge Gladys Escobar in Caaguazu to issue an order of "desalojo," and remove the squatters from the land on December 14th 2004. The operation, carried out by police and armed civilian employees of the Brazilians, removed 46 families from their homes and then proceeded to burn the houses down. The Brazilians then proceeded to destroy 20 hectares of subsistence crops with their tractors before being stopped by the families who had stayed in the area. The operation was widely condemned by the government, which provided the families with roofing material, food and seeds to help them start anew.

To everyone’s surprise, on June 24th of 2005, Opperman and his friends were able to convince a district attorney, Nelly Varela whose jurisdiction of Coronel Oviedo does not include Tekojoja, to carry out the December order again. Although Varela would later admit publically that they had no judicial order to carry out the arrests, one of he assistants told me during the operation that they were completing the order issued in December but which had not been properly carried out.

June 24th:

At 5 AM on June 24th, between 100 and 120 police officers, under the direction of district attorney Nelly Varela, and with the support of district attorney Pedro Torales from Yhu. They removed people from their beds (in violation of a law against such operations being carried out before dawn), and loaded approximately 130 people, including men, women and children, into trucks to be brought to jail in Coronel Oviedo. Many families stayed until 12:30 waiting for their turn to board the trucks. I arrived in Tekojoja from my home in Vaqueria at around 9:00 to take pictures of the operation.

While the police took care of detaining the family members, two crews led by Ademir Opperman set about stealing the campesinos’ belongings, destroying the houses with tractors, and setting them on fire. One crew worked on the third line, while Opperman himself, with about fifteen other people, worked on the second line. Despite her statements to the contrary, this was all done while Varela watched: pictures show the police watching the burning of the houses, and I spoke to Varela about the operation from a point on the road from which we could see at least six houses burning.

The police operation ended at around 12:30, and all retreated from the area, leaving the Brazilians to continue their work alone.

After I left Vaqueria for Tekojoja, Jorge Galeano stayed back to call everyone he could think of in positions of power to stop the operation. These included the office of the Vice President, who later told him that the president of the INDERT, Erico Ibanez, would arrive in Vaqueria that afternoon (he never arrived). He also gave constant reports on Radio Vaqueria, a local community radio, eventually telling people to meet at 3:00 beside the ruins of Carlos Fernandez’ house, in lot number 24 of the second line in Tekojoja. Sympathizers of those who had been arrested, were beginning to arrive at the meeting when we saw the group of Brazilians led by Opperman approaching along the 2nd line, presumably on their way to their homes in Santa Clara. The convoy consisted of Opperman’s white pickup truck, a small white car, a red cargo truck, and three or four tractors.

Jorge called for people to pick up sticks and close the road, which they proceeded to do. There were about 15 men standing in the road, while women and children (perhaps 20 in all) went to sit in the shade of an orange grove. The convoy stopped at 50-70 meters distance from the campesinos, and some people got out to talk to each other. They then climbed back into their vehicles and began driving rapidly towards us. Jorge immediately told everyone to get out of the road. Although several sticks remained in the road, the campesinos were all standing in the grass right beside the road, holding only sticks, when the trucks reached us. Jorge and others motioned for them to stop, but they continued at the same speed past us.

None of us had any idea that they were ready to use firearms against us, and people remained standing in a position of extreme vulnerability, completely unarmed, only meters from where the trucks were passing. It was at this moment, as the trucks passed, that I took a picture of the cargo truck, not even realizing at the time that someone was emerging from the top with a shotgun in hand. Seconds later, shooters opened fire on our small group.

I saw Nicolas Gonzalez fall in front of me, screaming in agony, before I realized that the shots were not only in the air, and ducked behind an orange tree. Others ran from the road or threw themselves on the ground. From there I saw two shooters in the back of the cargo truck, one firing into the air, while the other pointed the gun at us. Others say they saw a shotgun shooting from the cabin of the pickup truck. Whatever the case, there were many shots, perhaps 15 in all in a period of some 5-10 seconds, suggesting several shooters. It wasn’t until the trucks had passed and everyone began to emerge and stand up that we realized Angel Cristaldo and Leoncio Torres were severely wounded. They died moments later, although since Cristaldo was still twitching, he was loaded onto a pickup truck with Nicolas Gonzalez to try to find a doctor. By the time they made it to the head of the road, where his parents live, he was clearly dead.

Police showed up about an hour later, and proceeded on to Santa Clara, where they detained Opperman and 24 others involved in the operation. An assistant district attorney arrived around 8 PM to move Leoncio Torre’s body to his family’s home, and to take preliminary testimony from me and Antonio Galeano. The following morning, the Ministro del Interior showed up in Vaqueria, but did not visit Tekojoja. Senator Jose Nicolas Morinigo, several people from the Comite de Iglesias, and a reporter from Ultima Hora, did arrive at the site.

The following morning, the "official" version of events was printed in ABC Color and Ultima Hora, two national newspapers, suggesting that the campesinos had also fired on the Brazilians. They even implied that the shots that killed the campesinos might have come from their own companions’ weapons. In an interview on Radio Caritas in Asuncion on Friday afternoon (June 24th), Nelly Varela lied openly about her involvement and what she had seen, and suggested for the first time that she was working without a judicial order, but under the direction of the office of the attorney general (which has no power to lead this kind of operation). The attorney general has yet to refute this charge, but nobody has followed up on it. It wasn’t until Sunday, with the publication of my pictures and testimony in Ultima Hora, that the story began to change in the national media.

The investigation:

25 people remain in jail in Coronel Oviedo, among them Ademir Opperman and 5 other Brazilians. 3 of these Brazilians are in the country illegally. The other 19 are all Paraguayan citizens, many of them from Tekojoja, neighbours of the victims. They have been charged with homicide but not robbery or arson.

The senate has called for Nelly Varela to be investigated.

Nine people, including myself, have testified to Fiscala Lourdes de Soto in Coronel Oviedo as part of the state’s investigation of the events, and several more have been called to testify on Monday. None of this testimony contradicts any of what I said above.

The bodies were exhumed three days after their deaths. Both were killed by shot from a 12-gauge shotgun fired at a distance of 20 meters or more, probably from an elevated position. One shot passed through Cristaldo’s head, another pierced Torres’ thorax.

Nicolas Gonzalez remains in the regional hospital of Coronel Oviedo. He was not examined for 24 hours after he was dropped off there, and only the intervention of Vicente Antonio Castillo, lawyer with the Human Rights commission in Asuncion, did the doctor take an ex-ray. His right upper arm had been shattered by several pieces of shot. The same lawyer then paid out of his pocket for the brace needed to heal his arm. The Pastoral Social, run by father Ignacio Espinola in Coronel Oviedo, is providing him food three times a day.

Antonio Castillo, who has worked with Jorge Galeano in the past, is representing the families of the victims for free.

A huge camp of supporters has blossomed around the two crosses in Tekojoja, with hundreds people coming and going from as far away as neighbouring departments. Until now, feelings have been jubilant and of solidarity, but rain and dwindling food supplies threaten the camp.

For more information, contact:
Kregg Hetherington
Tel: 595-971-238-120