Paraguay:
Ayoreo-Totobiegosode endangered by a cattle ranching company
Between 1959 and 1987, a great majority
of the Ayoreo from Paraguay (see WRM
Bulletin No. 96) were contacted by force and deported to places
outside their vast ancestral territories. They were also displaced
from their lands taken over for farming activities. This situation
has submitted them to a high degree of dependency on the religious
missions and the regional market.
At present, there are more than 2000
members of the Ayoreo ethnic group who live sedentarily in 13
settlements – ten communities in Bolivia and 3 in Paraguay. All
these settlements are located outside their traditional habitat.
Their culture is increasingly influenced and hindered by the model
of modern life, which has barely left them a marginal space, insufficient
to discern and to reshape their path towards the future.
There is only one local group, the Totobiegosode,
still living in the forest, without contact with other Ayoreos
or foreigners, in an area known as Amotocodie in the North of
the Paraguayan Chaco. They live nomadically, hunting, gathering
fruit and honey, fishing and cultivating small plots which they
plant “on the go,” during the rainy season. They constitute,
with their habitat – high and low forests, palm groves, open fields,
dry riverbeds, streams, and lagoons – an inseparable unit and
live communally. Although no one has any direct contact
with them, their existence can be felt and verified by signs of
presence such as footprints and holes in trees that show that
they have been harvesting honey. In some cases, they have even
been seen in the distance.
Most of the territory inhabited by groups
in voluntary isolation is in the hands of private owners: Paraguayans
and foreigners, large-scale farmers and investors, individuals
and companies. Less than 10% of the territory corresponds
to Parks or National Protected Areas. The clearcutting of
primary forests to install cattle ranches substantially depleted
territories inhabited by the indigenous groups, cutting them off
in isolated patches, divided by belts with no forest cover and
increasingly busy roads. The forest groups can no longer travel
along their annual migratory routes and access parts of the habitat
that are vital for their life and survival.
The accelerated expansion of the frontiers
of western civilization in the North of the Paraguayan Chaco is
a threat both to the Ayoreo groups in voluntary isolation and
to the still vast forests with which they co-exist.
At present, they are facing a serious
and imminent danger. The Paraguayan organization, Iniciativa Amotocodie
– which is endeavouring to accompany uncontacted groups from “outside”
and from a distance – has denounced that a company called Ganadera
UMBU S.A. purchased 40,000 hectares of pristine forests in the
centre of Amotocodie. Of these, 24,000 hectares will be deforested
to install cattle ranches. They already have the corresponding
permits and work could start at any time now. With clearcutting,
it is highly probable that there will be contact with groups in
isolation. This seriously violates human rights and the life of
these groups that have always lived there. – Furthermore,
according to the warning by Iniciativa Amotocodie, this could
lead to a bloodbath, as has already happened on other occasions.
Iniciativa Amotocodie has taken all
the pertinent legal measures, but has not managed to halt the
clearcutting project so far. For their part, the Ayoreo, through
UNAP (the Union of Paraguayan Native Ayoreo), have put pressure
on the authorities and have made this serious situation public.
A campaign has been organized to try
to halt what the Ayoreo define as an “attack” against the life
of their people in the forest and the future of their people.
Iniciativa Amotocodie’s web page contains an invitation to send
a letter to the appropriate Paraguayan authorities. To make it
easier, the letter has already been drafted (in English: http://www.iniciativa-amotocodie.org/actual/files/letter_grave_amenaza.pdf)
and all that has to be done is to return it to the names and addresses
that appear at the foot of the letter.
The Ayoreo are determined to fight for
the integrity of their brothers and sisters in the forest and
for the ancestral territory of the Ayoreo People, looking towards
a future where restoration of what is theirs - both lost territories
and their model of ancestral life - has started to take on a meaning.
The groups in voluntary isolation give testimony of a paradigm
of a relationship with nature that used to be practiced by all
the indigenous peoples, but which they have had to abandon. This
paradigm serves as a vital reflection on the history of these
ethnic groups and as a source of inspiration in the search for
alternatives for survival and for the future.
Article based on: “Grave Amenaza en
Amotocodie”, Iniciativa Amotocodie, http://www.iniciativa-amotocodie.org/actual/20070425_graveamenaza.html;
information sent by Guadalupe Rodríguez, Rettet den Regenwald
(Salva la Selva Tropical), e-mail: guadalupe@regenwald.org,
http://www.regenwald.org/international/spanisch/;
Atlas de las Comunidades Indígenas en el Paraguay, ttp://www.dgeec.gov.py/Publicaciones/Biblioteca/
Web%20Atlas%20Indigena/171%20Plantilla%20Ayoreo%20toto.pdf
