This morning we drove out from Caaguazu down a very red dirt road for about 2 hrs past rolling fields of corn, sorghum, sugar cane, and cattle.

We arrived at Segunda Linea where Antonio Galeano was leading a meeting of the Movimiento Agrario y Popular (MAP). They are planning a congress for June, and were talking about facing the alternatives of the advancement of socialism or dealing with the collapse of the capitalist crisis. He said that agrobusiness commercializes food which leads to hunger and protest. It is necessary to build a political consciousness in order to confront this situation.



Antonio noted that they just started a new community radio station this past week called Radio Tekojoja (Guarani for Equality). They had a simple room as their broadcast booth with an old rusty sound board, a dvd/cd player, a boombox, and a single mike. A kid sat at a table running the equipment. One person apologized because they did not have a computer yet. A wire rather thru a hole in the wall and out to a tower set up outside their building. Halfway up the tower was a box that houses their transmitter. And with this simple equipment they can broadcast their message of sustainable agriculture and a better future for more than 50 kilometers around.



We were supposed to have lunch with the community, but signals were crossed and that didn't happen. Instead, we got back in the bus for the trip back up the bumpy, dusty red dirt road to Caaguazu were we had lunch, and then back to Asuncion (where we are in a hotel w/ very flaky Internet). It feels like we spent most of the day in the bus and now I have a cold, but it was nice being out in a rural area w/ these folks. I wish we could have spent more time with them.