Six Injured as Peasants Clash with Police in Rural Paraguay

A clash between police and rural peasants in Paraguay has resulted in six injuries, including a man who was hit by a rubber bullet in the eye according to reports coming out of Paraguay in the Latin American Herald Tribune.

The clash came when police were deployed to protect a tractor that the residents say was spraying toxic pesticides only 66 feet away from residential homes. The farming interest is owned by a Brazilian national.

"The peasants' motive is the lack of respect for environmental laws," the town's Mayor Eugenio Rodas Riquelme told reporters. "Here in front we clearly note there is no protective barrier, as the law says. The use of agro-toxins seriously harms the health of the population, the environment and the traditional production of peasant families"

The peasants, armed with sticks, tried to get past roughly 250 police who were guarding the tractor on the plantation of more than 40,000 hectares. The residents of the settlement say that the pesticides used are poisoning their own crops.

The mayor also noted that there are restrictions against spraying pesticides in winds greater than six miles per hour or in heat above 32 C (90 Fahrenheit). Rodas said the thermometer was at 36 C when fumigation began.

The incident took place in the isolated farming settlement of Cresencio Gonzalez in the district of General Resquin. The rural district has a total population of approximately 24,000 located in the southeast central region of the country. There are no numbers available for the population of the Crescencio settlement. The area has no paved roads. Telephone communications are sparse and the area population receives only very early education.

According to the district's entry in Wikipedia, the area is so remote that 80 percent of the population speaks the indigenous language of Guarani, with only 20 percent of the population speaking a mixture of the language infused with Spanish.