On July 5, 2024, three peasant families were violently evicted in Paraje San Lorenzo 2, in the municipality of Wanda, in the Argentine province of Misiones. The provincial police carried out the eviction, in collaboration with the multinational company, Arauco. During the operation, the police destroyed the ten-hectare farm which had been the families' livelihood for a decade. They demolished and burned their houses, their crops, their chicken coops and their pig pens. The families lost everything, and some of them were detained for up to three days. Peasant and indigenous organizations have organized together in the “Group in defense of the right to land,” and they have presented a request to the government of Misiones to urgently return these lands to the evicted families, or give them other lands. As of the end of August, they had received no response.
Arauco, which operates in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, arrived in Misiones in 1996, when it bought the Alto Paraná pulp mill. Since then, the multinational company has expanded onto more than 200,000 hectares of peasant and indigenous lands. Their pine and eucalyptus plantations have displaced communities and caused serious impacts on health, the environment and food sovereignty. In response, the communities have been carrying out a historic resistance struggle.