LIMA, Peru — For Raúl Marín, Jan. 13, 2016 , was just another day at work as a human rights lawyer representing some of Paraguay’s most vulnerable citizens.
He was advising 300 impoverished families being forcibly evicted from a vacant plot of government land on the outskirts of the capital Asunción, where they had been living for the previous two years. Yet despite his status as a well-known lawyer — one who had previously worked as Paraguay’s official deputy human rights ombudsman — Marín was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and obstruction.
That arrest marked a journey that has seen Marín taken into pretrial detention for one month, then placed under house arrest for two years. In May, his remand conditions were finally relaxed but he must still report to the court every month and is not allowed to leave the country.
“I was just doing my job as a lawyer representing my clients,” Marín says. “They are extremely vulnerable and have a right under the Paraguayan Constitution to a home with dignity as well as a legal defense. Why am I being persecuted for representing them?”
The answer to that question remains complex. Rights activists say Marín’s prosecution is likely rooted in the powerful vested interests that seek to maintain the status quo of massively unequal land ownership in Paraguay and elsewhere across the region.
In countries across Latin America, well-heeled landowners — sometimes with the complicity of public officials — often use all means necessary to prevent challenges to their power and sources of wealth. That can run from publicly smearing critics and abusing the legal system to, in extreme cases, murder. One recent prominent example is that of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres, who had opposed a local dam on indigenous land and was gunned down in 2016.
“In many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean there is a pattern of persecuting those who defend the human rights of anyone challenging the unfair concentration of land ownership,” says Marianne Bertrand, Latin America coordinator for Amnesty International’s program defending human rights activists. Amnesty is defending Marín.
Marín says one of the various alleged violations of due process in his case is the prosecution’s failure to share its files with him. The prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Poorly conducted investigations compound the problems for human rights defenders, Bertrand says. “It’s an issue of recognition,” she adds. “The authorities in general don’t recognize human rights defenders as legitimate actors.”
Amnesty has seen no evidence that Marín has committed a crime, Bertrand says. “The prosecutor said he was detained because he was near the site during the eviction. But he needed to be. That was his job, as a lawyer representing the communities.”
Marín is now likely to stand trial in the next 12 months and faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail. Even if he is given a suspended sentence, any conviction would result in him being disbarred, thus ending his legal career in Paraguay.
Various studies indicate that Latin America has the most uneven land ownership in the world, including a report released earlier this year from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Another report, from the British charity confederation Oxfam, found that across the region , just 1 percent of farms held more land than the remaining 99 percent.
That concentration means that a handful of families make huge profits from producing beef, soy or other commodities on vast ranches. The Oxfam report found that in Paraguay, for example, 1 percent of the farms occupy more than 70 percent of the land. Meanwhile, millions of the most deprived Latin Americans, particularly those in rural areas who rely on small-scale or subsistence agriculture to survive, often end up landless and mired in poverty.
The issue has long shaped Latin American history and led to numerous brutal conflicts. The most deadly recent example is Colombia’s long-running civil war, whose roots in the 1950s come directly from demands by the landless poor. Plans to redistribute some land is a central plank of the peace deal that has just brought more than half-a-century of bloodshed to an end — but which now faces revision from President-elect Iván Duque.
Land inequality dates back to the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of what is now Latin America, with the Iberian interlopers explicitly looking to make their fortunes by seizing gold, silver and land from the indigenous population. It is also rooted in the colonial era and, after that, Latin America’s clientelistic approach to electoral politics, in particular from the rural elite.
“This extreme concentration of land has to be seen in the context of electoral dependence,” says Mauricio Velásquez, a professor of government at Colombia’s University of the Andes. “You don’t elect someone for what they will do for you but rather to return the political favor that has already been done (by a powerful landowner running for office).”
In Brazil, there is even a term for the tradition of artificially aging fake land titles — “grilagem” — from the word “grilo,” meaning cricket, with counterfeiters leaving the documents in a cage full of the insects. The process is often carried out in parallel with the violent evictions of the land’s existing owners or occupants.
In Paraguay’s case, much of the concentration of land ownership dates to the 1954-1989 right-wing dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner. He gifted vast tracts of land in return for political favors, in the process creating ranches that stretch for hundreds of thousands of acres — and new generations of the landless rural working class.
Oxfam and other groups say the problem is now getting worse, often with corporations — whether they are mining or agricultural — occupying ever larger areas of the region.
Reversing the trend is one of the key targets identified in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by more than 150 heads of state at the 2015 United Nations summit. The agenda states that more equitable land ownership will be necessary to end poverty, hunger and gender inequality in the coming years, although there has been criticism at the supposed lack of specifics on how to implement the agenda.
But 2030 will be too late for Marín’s clients. “These families now have no legal defense,” he says. “I believe that even more than intimidating me that was the real intention here. Even if my case is dismissed, my clients have been evicted and will have had no legal recourse.”
More from U.S. News
Economic Inequality and Happiness
Increasing Number of People in Central America Say Their Lives are Thriving
The 10 Most Corrupt Countries in the World, Ranked By Perception
Paraguay Court Case Underscores Unequal Land Ownership Across Latin America originally appeared on usnews.com
