On Wednesday, June 22, 2022, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously approved the Protected Wildlife Area / Ecological Reserve project for the Guasu Metropolitan Park, and the only thing missing is the promulgation of the Executive Power for it to become law. 9 years and 9 months have passed since its foundation, since that September 21, 2012. The different attempts to intervene, dismember it, fragment it, carry out real estate works and/or parcel it out, from that date will be part of the unfortunate anecdote of the numerous “ assaults” public and private, which never ceased in their predatory efforts of one of the last public green spaces that metropolitan Asunción has.
The most dislocated ideas of public officials, who tried to destroy what was built and working, were part of projects, consultancies and other perks very well rewarded in the name of wonderful proposals, from which private sector companies benefited, professionals who “sold their knowledge to the highest bidder” regardless of the environmental and health damage that this could generate. Ambassadors, former presidents, ministers, former ministers, mayors, former mayors, businessmen and former businessmen, politicians and former politicians, councilors, journalists, columnists, rectors, deans and influencers, did not leave a medium or a microphone where they could expose the benefits of ventures that had something in common: preying on an extremely desirable location at any cost, without paying anything in return.
I have tried not to forget anyone in this long list, excuse any serious omission, but there are so many that sometimes memory falters in the long enumeration of satraps and opportunists who live fishing for how to use their own country.
The Guasu Park is just a sample of what was tried to be damaged in multiple ways and could not. Perhaps the 125 hectares are a timid reflection of what happens daily, where citizens are punished in different areas and peacefully endure the anticipated misfortune, according to Roa Bastos, with an increasingly deteriorated quality of life and without a promising future in the future. horizon. History generally does not remember the name of the predators, nor their functions or positions, especially in a country where impunity is commonplace, the public is an asset of little importance and a long tradition of things wrong done by sight and patience. of the people who, resigned, have ended up believing that what is public is “badly done”.
No political friends, relatives or money
Many people say and repeat ad nauseam that nothing can be done in Paraguay without political contact. To tell the truth, the citizen organization Save Guasu Park was never made up of professional politicians or upstarts with electoral ambitions. Its composition has always reflected the heterogeneity of civil society as sectors of different incomes, creeds and party affiliations, articulated with the common denominator of the defense of a public green space.
There is no doubt that male and female users have relatives, contacts, and links, as occurs in any urban conglomerate. It was not necessary to resort to those ancestral arts to get an appointment, from the exalted Ambassador to the most modest official. There were not a few failed occasions and the doors that did not open in the face of the agreed appointment or the unanswered note. Persistence brought us back to the same place after a week, a month or a year.
Nor was the gestation of this movement the result of landing a magnificent project, with highly paid experts, profuse preparation of papers, graphs, maps and other colorful images, with uncertain or unexecuted results, which are part of a prolific inventory of frustrations and failures. From its beginnings, the resources were very modest, and the vast majority came from voluntary contributions and a great display of energy at the time of concentrating efforts and publicly demonstrating for a right in expectation, from which no good outcome was assured.
triumph of citizenship
It is not the first nor will it be the last feat, where citizens will be able to demonstrate that power is born from organized people. For a long time, disqualifications were the order of the day, as happens in the face of any citizen mobilization, and even the disqualification of “environmentalists” made us put great effort into being seen and reflected as a citizen organization. Very few times, in these 9 years, environmental organizations joined this cause. Some did not consider that there was an ecosystem of low Chaco forest there, others affirmed that it was nothing more than a yuyal grown on rubble; the truth is that they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, those that decisively supported this process of struggle.
What no one could hide was the evidence that day by day users and some professionals were revealing at the level of flora and fauna. These voiceless little animals and the silent vegetation began to take on social networks, where they showed themselves in all their splendor as living beings that suffered serious damage in the 34-hectare fire, which burned everything in its path.
It can be said that there is a before and after the incident that caused the presence of the President and a former minister who is still trying to recover his yacht of dubious origin. The living beings renaturalized the property and even improved the green space. Multiple meetings in different ministries to prevent a similar incident, only ended in meetings to discuss the agenda of the next meeting and thus the fears were diluted. Only in 2021, with scarce resources, have a few concrete measures been taken to counteract the possibility of forest fires, at the insistence of users and the general public, who are still aware of those tragic events.
Environmental management plan
In a few more weeks, the project will be Law and the Guasu Metropolitan Park will have the protection it never had. It will therefore be necessary to establish, with the different actors – Ministry of Defense, MOPC, MADES, Municipality and citizens – the Environmental Management Plan determined by law within a period of 180 days.
The image of the aurora that accompanies this note is one of the many recorded in a multicolored and diverse archive. This process requires transparency, intellectual honesty from each of the participants and recognition of the knowledge of the technicians and professionals who are willing to generously make their contributions.
This law gives us a great opportunity to build the public in a different way. The open participation of citizens and enforcement agencies forces us to respect the rules of coexistence in the 125 hectares. We have too many samples in Asunción of the consequences of laziness, abandonment and lack of commitment to the development of our capital.
After all, the opportunity to engage in politics with capital letters, politics without pettiness or subordinate interests, which, to be very synthetic and clear, can be summed up in the search for the common good, cannot be missed.
