Paraguay

Parojnai was his name. He was from the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode indigenous people who inhabit the Chaco forest stretching from Paraguay to Bolivia and Argentina, south of the Amazon basin.

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.

The Ayoreo group (self denominated Ayoreode: “the true men or true people” comprising various clans, inhabit a region of the Paraguayan Chaco covering the Departments of Alto Paraguay and Boqueron,

Paraguay's Congress debated in April a bill meant to protect the territory that is home to an unknown number of Ayoreo-Totobiegosode indigenous people living in voluntary isolation.

On 13 December 2004, the Paraguayan Congress adopted Law No. 2524 “Prohibiting, in the Eastern Region, Activities Transforming and Converting Surfaces with Forest Cover.” This law was subsequently known as Deforestation Zero Law.

The Ayoreo live in a zone of their ancestral territory called Amotocodie. Modern maps show it as an extensive area of virgin forest with the geographic coordinates 21º 07’ S and 60º 08’W marking its centre, some 50 km to the south of Cerro Leon. They amount to some 50 people, subdivided into various groups. They approach but rarely, a watering place on some farm to drink water and perhaps a farm worker may have seen them from afar. Sometimes, white hunters find their trail in the forest or holes in trees where they have harvested honey.

Paraguay, an eminently agricultural country is facing the false dilemma of choosing between technology or “to continue being backwards.” The technology applied to agriculture over the past 40 years – as from the Green Revolution with its package of agro-toxic and now transgenic products –promised to overcome the obstacles that hinder agricultural production and to solve hunger.

The last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin are being squeezed from all sides. With their last refuge being gradually overrun, they have nowhere left to hide. But if the Paraguayan government acts, the Indians can keep hold of their land and avoid the diseases that threaten to decimate their population.

Paraguay covers an area of 406,752 km2 . The Paraguay river divides the country into two well differentiated bio-regions: the Eastern region and the Western region or Chaco. Both regions have a wide diversity of culture and ecosystems. Due to its greater population density and the constant expansion of the agricultural frontier, the Eastern region is suffering heavy pressure on its ecosystems. In this region, only 0.6% of the area is under some category of protection.

Given that both deforestation and the expansion of tree monocultures are negative processes affecting people and the environment in Paraguay, local NGOs are actively involved in the monitoring of such processes.