Update of the stigmatization and criminalization framework of local populations in northern Paraguay

Abstract

The development model of Latin American countries turns them into suppliers of raw materials for the international market, whose growing requirements promote the expansion of extractive activities on the rural territories in which peasant and indigenous communities settle. This integration into the world market generates socio-environmental conflicts. The resistance and opposition of the communities to the expansion of extractivism over their area of residence activates mechanisms of criminalization and repression by State security institutions and de facto powers. The present work carries out a historical recovery of the mechanisms of stigmatization, criminalization, and state repression in response to the organization and struggle for land by residents of northern Paraguay who were part of the first land occupation after the fall of the dictatorship. This historical episode clarifies the criminalizing and repressive process installed since the second half of the first decade of the 21st century.