Paraguay's indigenous people invoke human rights to save their forest
by Agency Reporter | Oct 6, 2021 | Briefing
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LIVING IN A SOUTH AMERICAN FOREST with one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation have appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to save it from total destruction. Their uncontacted relatives are fleeing from one corner of the remaining forest to another, seeking refuge from ever-present bulldozers.
The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode of Paraguay’s Chaco forest have been trying since 1993 – when they submitted a formal land claim – to protect their forest in the face of a rapidly expanding agricultural frontier.
In 2013, given a total lack of political will in Paraguay to uphold the law and stop the destruction of their lands, they requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights intervene.
In 2016, at the government’s request, they agreed to enter formal negotiations with the government for their land titles, but for five years, and despite 42 meetings, the destruction of their forest has continued unabated. Satellite photos reveal that the Ayoreo now live in an island of forest surrounded by monocultures and beef production.
More:
https://www.ekklesia.co.uk/2021/10/06/paraguays-indigenous-people-invoke-human-rights-to-save-their-forest/
From The Guardian, 2016:
Disappearing world: Paraguay's Ayoreo people fight devastating land sales
Toby Stirling Hill
Mon 25 Jan 2016 06.35 EST
An Ayoreo group in the Chaco whose ancestral land was sold to international ranchers in 2012 is battling for its return – and to hang on to their way of life
Unine Cutamorajna steers his motorbike past the bulbous silhouettes of the samu’u trees. Filled with water and studded with thick thorns, they are fine examples of plant adaptation to the hot, arid climate of the Paraguayan Chaco. “This is all our territory,” he shouts over his shoulder. “The white men tried to take it from us, but we’re here again now.”
He stops beside a dirt track. The approach leads into forest undergrowth made raucous by chirping birds and shrieking insects. “When we first came back, I enjoyed exploring that part of the land,” he says. “But I don’t go any more. I don’t want to get shot!”
Now in his 50s, Cutamorajna was a young boy when he left the forest and went to live with missionaries. He was born into a group of indigenous Ayoreos, a semi-nomadic people from the Gran Chaco, a lowland plain encompassing parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay.
The evangelists told them that the end of the world was close, that the forest would soon be destroyed, and that they could survive only by moving to the missionary settlements. As the years passed, Ayoreo elders grew restless in the confined space of the settlements. They travelled to see what had become of their old territory. And they found that the missionaries had lied.
