March 11, 2001. Buenos Aires

A group of 400 activists from indigenous communities, unemployed workers movements, popular assemblies, local, and international supporters marched on the Seaboard offices in Buenos Aires, demanding that the company return 5,000 hectares of land to its indigenous owners. The group blocked much of Avenida Alem, in the center of the Buenos Aires business district, as it marched towards the offices of the US-based corporation. Protesters with their faces painted as skulls lined the front of the office building, closing the entrance for three hours. Representatives from Argentine indigenous communities denounced Seaboard and other transnationals as a continuation of over 500 years of genocide. The protest had a festive atmosphere, filling the street with music and dance.

The protest was organized in solidarity with the Ava Guaraní indigenous community, struggling to reclaim their ancestral land in northern Argentina. During the 1970s, the Ava Guaraní were one of the many indegenous communities in Argentina displaced by, and then forced to work in, the plantations and sugar factories of San Martin del Tabacal. The Guaraní’s fertile forest was destroyed to plant cash crops of sugar cane and GMO soy, replacing the traditional community production of corn, manioc, and local vegetables. In 1996, Seaboard, a US corporation based in Kansas, bought the Tabacal sugar industry, which had originally displaced the Ava Guarani. Seaboard quickly laid off 6,000 employees because of new machines that required fewer workers.

On September 10, 2003, the Guaraní decided to return to their land, finding no hope in the desperate conditions of unemployment and poverty in the city. At the request of Seaboard, they were then forcefully displaced from their ancestral territory, known as “La Loma”. Police arrived in the middle of the night without presenting a judge's order, intimidating the 150 Ava Guaraní families present, aiming guns at people's heads--including pregnant women, children and elders--and discharging firearms into the air.

“The sugar company is stained with blood. Now is the time to return and fight for our land,” a fiery Silvia Cañanima of the Ava Guaraní explained to the crowd. Of the groups represented at the protest, many pledged to continue support and build links between movements. Unemployed workers movements at the protest announced a boycott of “Azucar Chango”, the sugar produced by the Seaboard Corporation. Many saw the protest as an important step in linking two Argentine struggles facing similar repression, indigenous struggles and unemployed workers movements. International activists simultaneously kicked off a campaign to pressure the Seaboard Corporation, noting that communities in the United States have also been struggling against the Corporation’s practices.

The Ava Guaraní promised to continue the struggle, “Our Guaraní brothers and sisters, though far away, are here with us, and our ancestors are here as well, giving us their blessings. We will continue this struggle tirelessly, until we can return to our ancestral land.”



FURTHER INFORMATION:


1. ARGENTINA SITUATION

For basic info about Seaboard's involved in the indigenous community's
struggle in Tabacal, Salta, ARGENTINA see:

www.autonomista.org/tabacal.htm


For more detailed info (in spanish):

www.Alerta-Salta.org.ar


For a good account of their abuse of corporate welfare, greed, and US
pork industry, see the Times article:

www.factoryfarming.org/empirepigs.htm




2. WHERE SEABOARD OFFICES ARE IN THE US:

Boston area:

Corporate Offices:

822 Boylston (Rt. 9, Brooklyne, MA)


Miami:

Mount Dora Farms Inc

1500 Port Boulevard, Miami, FL 33132

(305) 530-4700


New Jersey:

Seaboard Marine Limited

77 Brant Avenue, Clark, NJ 07066

(732) 574-1114/(732) 574-3555




Headquarters:

Seaboard Corporation

9000 West 67th Street

P.O. Box 2972

Shawnee Mission, Kansas 66201

Phone: 913-676-8800 Fax: 913-676-8872

Email: seaboard-AT-seaboardcorp.com





3. WHAT IS SEABOARD?

"Seaboard Corporation is a diversified international agribusiness and
transportation company primarily engaged domestically in pork
production and processing, and cargo shipping. Overseas, the Company is
primarily engaged in commodity merchandising, flour and feed milling,
sugar production and electric power generation."

From their website:

www.seaboardcorp.com


They own the Sugar Refinery that has displaced the Ava Guarani
community of Salta, Argentina: "Ingenio y Refineria San Martin
(Production & refining of sugar) del Tabacal S.A.:
Argentina


Their Pork brand name (as you'd see it in stores):

Prairie Fresh: www.prairiefresh.com/






4. MANY MORE THINGS WRONG WITH SEABOARD CORP:


Waterfowl in danger from pork processing plant:

www.stopseaboard.com/


"Seaboard Farms has used (Korean, Malaysian and especially Japanese)
soft money, corporate welfare money, and, I contend, tens of millions
of narcodollars to corrupt all four branches of government in an all
out effort to smooth the way for their $110 million dollar pork
processing plant in and associated confinement hog operations."

Dr. George Meredith, M.D. from kansas who made
www.stopseaboard.com/

and has a long history of legal battles with Seaboard.


Even the Sierra Club has issues with Seaboard:

Sierra Club assails state hog producers, Mike
Hinton, Daily Oklahoman. 09/18/99. The national president of the
Sierra Club says Oklahoma's largest hog producer is polluting the state
with manure from huge pig barns and getting tax breaks to do it.