LOCATION: Misiones region, San Ignacio municipality, Martin Rolon settlement
COUNTY: Diocese of San Juan Bautista de las Misiones.

The settlement of Martin Rolon, named after a “desaparecido” martyr of the military dictatorship that ended 15 years ago, is inhabited by peasant families who survived the terrible repression put in place against those who wanted to achieve a more equitable division of land. A few years ago, a hundred or so of these landless peasant families received plots of land in the municipality of San Ignacio from the Agrarian Reform Institute, which in Paraguay is called Instituto de Bienestar Rural. Unfortunately, farmers have been given bare land and so far have been unable to take advantage of it due to lack of means of production and funding.

Before the project, families lived in precarious huts, unable to cultivate the land and consequently, swelling the ranks of the wretched who flock around the towns and cities. Through the Bishop, ASeS learned about the problem and developed a two-and-a-half-year project with the following objectives:

  • provide farming families with the means of production, land cultivation and seeds so that they can produce for their own consumption and later, for the regional market;

  • Provide each family with some animals such as dairy cows, pigs, chickens, geese, etc.

  • improving housing;

  • Create an agricultural cooperative.