Argentine forestry sector in the spotlight at the
World Forestry Congress
The World Forestry
Congress taking place in Buenos Aires is viewed as an excellent
business opportunity by the Argentine forestry sector.
The industry’s
high expectations have been reflected for several months through
growing coverage in the local and national media. One example is
a recent article in a publication from the province of Corrientes
(www.momarandu.com), which
reports: “After the forestry exposition in Misiones, companies
in Corrientes are placing their sights on the 13th World Forestry
Congress, looking to reach agreements in negotiating rounds in which
some 200 business representatives from 26 different countries will
participate.” Local forestry companies “see the Congress
as a ‘gateway to the world’ where they can demonstrate
the province’s potential in raw materials and attract investment
that will help the industry lift off.”
The World Forestry
Congress, organized by the Argentine government in collaboration
with the FAO, will include a series of tours for the participants.
As could only be expected, one of them will take in the provinces
of Corrientes and Misiones, where foreign business representatives
will be able to see the “planted forests” of a number
of different companies (Las Marías, Agro Alba, Grupo Tapebicuá,
Garruchos, Lipsia).
Naturally, the
visiting business representatives will see what the local companies
want them to see and hear what they want to tell them.
Given that Misiones
is known as “the country’s main forestry province”,
it will undoubtedly be held up to both the visitors and the general
public as a model of forestry development.
In these circumstances,
it is particularly important to disseminate the following article,
based on a recent tour through the province, in which the testimonials
of local inhabitants expose the harsh realities and the lies behind
this so-called forestry development.
Argentina:
Misiones – pines, pulp mills and lies
The province of
Misiones was born beautiful, with its breathtaking rainforest, but
was seemingly destined to suffer in life. The history of its plunder
began with the Spanish conquistadors, who crushed the native Guaraní
people into subordination, stripping them of their freedom and tearing
apart their way of life.
In more recent
times, the plunder of Misiones has been suffered primarily by its
rainforest, indiscriminately chopped down in inhumane working conditions
for the logging industry. Rafts laden with precious lapachos, timbós,
ybira-pitás and peteribís carried off these and many
other tree species down the Paraná River to the national
and international market. In a little over a century the Misiones
rainforest was reduced to one third of its original size.
This deforestation
was accompanied by the growth of the agricultural sector. Yerba
mate (llex paraguariensis), which was originally harvested in the
wild, began to be cultivated on a large scale, alongside tea, citrus
fruits and tobacco. While there was a certain amount of concentration
of land ownership in large plantations, there was also a government-promoted
agricultural colonization programme, based on small- and medium-scale
family farming on plots of land between 25 and 50 hectares, with
annual crops and centralized yerba mate cultivation.
This structure
led to the development of a rural population that was devoted primarily
to such agricultural tasks as preparing the land for planting, sowing
and harvesting crops. Farm labourers were also provided with small
plots of land where they could live with their families, which provided
them with a certain degree of food sovereignty.
This situation
started to change in the 1940s, with the installation in Puerto
Piray, a municipality in the department of Montecarlo, of a pulp
and paper mill by the nationally owned company Celulosa Argentina,
which gave rise to the establishment of monoculture plantations
of pine trees. This pulp mill, created under the import substitution
model, faced major resistance from its workers in 1968 over denunciations
of hazardous working conditions.
During the years
of the dictatorship and consequent repression of social movements,
an economic reconversion took place. This included a project for
the construction of mega pulp mills with the majority of shares
held by Celulosa Argentina: the former Celulosa Puerto Piray S.A.
(currently shut down) and Alto Paraná S.A.
The expansion of
monoculture tree plantations was given a major boost in 1998 with
the passage of Law 25080, known as the forestry promotion law, which
granted a series of benefits: subsidies for planting trees, subsidies
through the reimbursement of value-added tax, tax exemptions on
revenues and property, and elimination of transport permit fees,
with this favourable tax regime guaranteed for a period of 30 years,
which can be extended to 50 by the provincial government.
All of this, on
top of the deregulation of the consignee market for yerba mate (which
guaranteed producers a price higher than their costs and negotiated
the sale of their crops to large processing plants), signed the
death warrant for the family farming system.
Small farmers and
their crops of citrus fruits, tea, yerba mate and tobacco were displaced
by the advance of monoculture plantations, mainly of slash pine
(Pinus elliottii) – whose resin burns the leaves of yerba
mate plants, which therefore cannot grow beneath them – but
also loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) and eucalyptus trees. Small farms
were bought up for the establishment of tree plantations, or in
some cases used by the owners themselves to plant pine trees, under
the belief that this would be a lucrative business for them, although
it eventually proved not to be.
The small farmers
who lost their farms moved to urbanized areas, leading to a decline
in the formerly predominant system of rural employers and thus the
sources of work that they provided. The result was the dismantling
of the rural population. In the department of Montecarlo, for example,
there were formerly settlements inhabited by over 150 families on
average, and these have disappeared or suffered notable losses in
population. As the rural population declined, numerous urban and
suburban settlements emerged in the region.
This old system
of land ownership, which provided employment but was based on the
exploitation of workers, was not replaced by a more equitable system.
Ownership of the land became increasingly concentrated and then
passed into foreign hands. Alto Paraná was purchased in 1996
by the Chilean company Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (Celarauco),
owned by the Angelini group, which later also purchased Celulosa
Puerto Piray. The latter transaction has been denounced as outrageously
fraudulent, because the sale was only made possible through the
cancellation of the pulp mill’s debts to the municipal government.
Of the 10 million dollars that the mill owed to the municipality,
it ended up paying 200,000 Argentine pesos (around 50,000 dollars),
plus 300 hectares of land, two trucks and one Caterpillar bulldozer.
The arrival of this foreign investment came at a heavy cost to the
public coffers.
The installation
of Alto Paraná led to a heavy concentration of land ownership
in the province of Misiones. For example, in the municipality of
Piray alone, the company owns 62.5% of the land, and when combined
with another three companies they control 83%. Province-wide, the
233,000 hectares of land owned by Alto Paraná represent 10%
of the province’s total land area. (1).
This concentration
of ownership and control is not limited to the land, but also extends
to the raw materials it produces: small sawmills in the area have
been cut off from supplies of wood and access to new technology,
leading to their closure and a subsequent rise in unemployment.
At the same time, the workers who have lost their jobs have not
necessarily been absorbed by the new pulp mill project, since growing
automation means that tasks on tree plantations that formerly generated
employment, such as planting, weeding and harvesting, have gradually
been taken over by machinery and toxic agrochemicals.
Today, under this
new model, 53% of the region’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and of the 47% who do have an income, 86% earn less than the minimum
wage.
Added to this is
the loss of water in the province. Initially, deforestation through
over-logging was the main factor behind the decline in the water
supply, since the disappearance of the rainforest altered the hydrological
cycle. Later, the establishment of large-scale plantations of exotic
fast-growing tree species, with their highly “efficient”
ability to access water through roots that reach deep into the ground,
served to further exacerbate the problem.
Tree plantations
have destroyed the Misiones rainforest, led to the concentration
of ownership and foreign ownership of the land (leading in turn
to social inequity and loss of sovereignty), displaced the family
farming system, and caused countless impacts on the environment
and people’s health. (2) The plantations also brought with
them, in the words of a native son of Misiones, “the big lie”
– “The big lie that they have made us the country’s
most important forestry industry region, which came at a cost of
millions of dollars, plus the destruction of the rainforest and
of trade union and social organizations.”
It is important
to expose the reality behind this big lie of “forestry development”
in Misiones, at a time when the monoculture tree plantation industry
is attempting to portray its activity as “environmentally
friendly” at the World Forestry Congress. For the people of
Misiones, the so-called “forestry development” promoted
through tree plantations is a far cry from the “vital balance”
proclaimed by the Congress’ slogan.
By Raquel Núñez
(raquelnu@wrm.org.uy), based on a tour taken with Elizabeth Díaz
through the northern region of the province of Misiones, with the
generous accompaniment and valuable information and testimonials
contributed by Ruben Ortiz, Juan Yahdjian and numerous inhabitants
of the community of Piray 18 and the rest of the region.
(1) “La invasión
forestal”, Darío Aranda, published 26 July 2009 in
Página 12, available at http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Argentina/invasion_forestal.html
(2) “Misiones: la selva de Quiroga convertida en pinos para
celulosa”, Ricardo Carrere, July 2005, http://www.guayubira.org.uy/celulosa/informeMisiones.html
