The peasants organized a peasant market outside the Congress, located in Argentina’s capital. The place was filled with red flags of the National Peasant and Indigenous Movement and the green logo of La Via Campesina.

That day was the last one of a week of activities organized by the MNCI in different Argentinean provinces to mark the International Day of Peasant Struggle. They arrived in the capital city to introduce the bill to the congress members. The bill aims to declare a moratorium on the eviction of peasant families.

The conservation of their products, knowledge and culture in the market is possible, says the MNCI, thanks to the uninterrupted resistance to the advance of agribusiness in peasant territories, including soy and forestry monoculture plantations, and mining projects.

“In this grassroots organization we resist and fight for a model based on Food Sovereignty and on an integral agrarian reform, not only for our territories but for the society as a whole”, the MNCI explains.

The bill to be introduced before the lawmakers is a shield against the rulings that usually benefit the business interests before the community rights.

“This does not mean that if the bill is not passed we will stop resisting. We will continue fighting as we have done for twenty years”, Cristina Loaiz from the Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE) told Real World Radio.

The coming elections in Argentina, whose government – which aims for reelection- has confronted big landowner corporations of GM soy monoculture plantations, seems to open up a space so that the forgotten peasant voices are finally heard.

Member of the Peasant Movement of Cordoba, Alberto Salas, highlights that the bill is based on the systematization of many years of resistance.

“We want the lawmakers to see that the Argentine future lies in peasant agriculture and in order to achieve that the evictions need stop”, he told Real World Radio. The cases of evictions give way to ’dirty business’ carried out by law firms and land speculators, and where judges enforce the law ignoring the fact that this is a political issue”.