By Mario E. Villalba Ferreira.*
We live in a country where cows fly in airplanes while cars float by in the streets due to the storm floods. Here, there is an inconvenient, vastly ignored, but highly urgent debate: the transition from a traditionally rural Paraguayan society to an integration into a categorically urban world. How do we go from milking cows to structuring cities? How do we transition from the cart to the bicycle?
According to the 1972 Census, that year 63% of the population lived in rural areas and 37% lived in urban areas. In contrast, projections for 2021 indicate that, of the 7,353,038 inhabitants, 63% today live in urban areas and only 37% live in rural areas. The numbers have been reversed and projections indicate that this trend will continue to increase.
Although the National Development Plan is aligned with that process and proposes a transition from an economy based on natural resources to one based on knowledge, there are power groups that maintain the rural for the country. For example, Fidel Zavala and Fernando Lugo differ on the agrarian reform, but while the former insists on defending the agro-export business model, the latter criticizes it. Despite their differences, they both agree that the future of their children depends mainly on how we manage rural policies. There are also the strongest colorado party members who benefited from ill-gotten lands, the construction of public infrastructure, tenders, and guaranteed impunity from the Judiciary. The heirs of the dictatorship today control large areas of agricultural land and their interest is to continue obtaining benefits for this sector.
In a country rich in hydroelectric energy, we cannot use our first Public-Private Partnerships in the expansion of routes to move trans-livestock. It would be smarter, although initially more expensive, to invest, for example, in a train system that allows people, grain and livestock to be moved. Today we only think about moving the last two and we forget about people.
In short, there is economic and political power both within the opposition (conservative or progressive) and the ruling party, that by inertia will tend to favor or promote public policies that direct resources from all taxpayers to the countryside.
In the bidding between rural interests, the agro-livestock export model proves to be stronger. This can be shown in how these power groups make the Paraguayan State focus on certain issues and avoid others, such as building infrastructure that allows them to move their products from their farms to ports of export. A clear example is the role of the MOPC (Ministry of Public Works and Communications) in the construction of roads, bridges and viaducts. Basically, rural elites want an MOPC that uses everyone’s tax to build a lot of asphalt. In contrast, when the Metrobús was paralyzed due to inefficiency, we did not see these elites organize “tractorazos” (a type of strike).
Another aspect that shows the state’s alignment with the agro-livestock power is in the reduced control over the sustainable use of natural resources. The lower the standards for the sustainable use of resources such as land, water and forests in the short term, the greater the return on rural investment. In this sense, large landowners have the incentive of a poorly qualified Ministry of the Environment, with little budget, minimal structure and aligned with the interests of the agro-export model. However, in the global context where the main agenda is climate change, being in denial of the impact of our development model on the environment and society is both ignorance and arrogance.
In a country with limited financial resources, having democratic criteria for the allocation of resources is a pending task. Today the rural economic power seems to lead the public policy agenda and not the urban socio-territorial reality of its inhabitants.
My grandmother Victoria is an illustrative example of what happened to many Paraguayan families that in the last 50 years moved from rural life to the urban context. She inherited one dairy cow and some chickens from my great-grandfather Sixto. That was their initial capital to move from Luque to Campo Grande, one of the areas that, due to its characteristics of humidity, precariousness of services and little urbanization, was offered to single mothers so that they could obtain a land of 20 × 50 m2 to 50,000 (approx $7) guaraníes at that time.
Like my grandmother, for several centuries Paraguayan families lived off the benefits of rural activity. In this rural-urban transition, milking cows and selling the milk it in the city allowed many families to at least provide food and basic education for their children. The historical value of the field, the cows and carts in the economy is undoubted, but it has an expiration date.
Most of the world’s population is urban. The important decisions, technologies and businesses relevant to the quality of life are defined in cities. Despite the challenges of cities, they allow diversifying opportunities for human development.
Having lived the last four years in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I learned that rural and urban development policies can and should be complementary. The Netherlands, with 9.8 times less territory than Paraguay, is the second largest food exporter in the world. At the same time, its cities are traveled by bicycle by millions of tourists and studied by the best urban planners as a model of sustainable urban development. Successful countries diversify their economies by focusing on the well-being of their entire population with a view on sustainable territorial planning and development.
In Paraguay we have to take urban policies seriously if we want long-term sustainable development. In a country rich in hydroelectric energy, we cannot use our first Public-Private Partnerships in the expansion of routes to move trans-livestock. It would be smarter, although initially more expensive, to invest, for example, in a train system that allows people, grain and livestock to be moved. Today we only think about moving the last two and we forget about people. We need the majority of the budget to be directed towards building better cities with infrastructure for basic services, inclusive housing, high-quality green spaces, educational and research centers, reactivation of the urban economy, mass transport and simple solutions such as, for example, many bike paths. Symbolically, we have to go from the cart to the bicycle.
The current context of municipal elections and the world pandemic is, without a doubt, a historic opportunity to make that transition.
*Political Scientist, Urban Planner, Researcher and University Professor in Political Science, Urban Governance and Public Administration. Master in City Management and PhD Candidate in Urban Governance and Development from Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Illustration: Lissette Salguero