Contact means death
Since 1993, the Ayoreo have wanted to use legal means to reclaim their land and protect their relatives who remained in the forest. In 2014, before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, they asked for a halt to the logging of their last remaining forests and for their contribution to the sustainable development of the entire region to be recognised. According to observers, however, this is not very promising – the influence of those who want to have the forest cleared is too strong.
Members of the Bolivian and Paraguayan governments know that Ayoreo still live in the borderlands between the countries, out of touch with modern Paraguayan society. About ten family groups, i.e. around 150 people, live there in voluntary isolation and follow their old hiking routes. They are the last known indigenous groups – outside of the Amazon region – who want no contact with the outside world. Their routes are increasingly disrupted and interrupted by fences, roads and extractive industry facilities.
In Paraguay, members of Glauser’s Initiativa Amotocodie are keeping an eye on how the isolated are doing. “Around the year 2000, new farms had sprung up on Ayoreo territory, exactly where we knew a group lived without contact,” says Benno Glauser. »We saw their tracks on trees, found their tools and footprints at waterholes and abandoned huts.« For the sedentary Ayoreo it is clear: Contact would mean death for their free-living relatives.
To protect them, the organization claims the land they originally occupied: 10 million hectares. A small part of it, about 1.6 million hectares, is already protected as national parks. The rest, however, is now considered the private property of various owners. In purely formal terms, the state would have to buy back these areas for the indigenous people. However, it is extremely unlikely that this will happen.
A highway could mean the end
In the near future, the Ruta Nacional PY15, a transport corridor between the Atlantic and the Pacific, is to connect Brazil’s Atlantic port of Santos with the two Chilean ports of Antofagasta and Iquique via Paraguayan territory. Not only is it intended to strengthen trade links between Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile and Bolivia, but it will also connect cattle and soybean farmers to Asian markets. The first 275 kilometers of the Paraguayan government’s flagship project were inaugurated in February 2022. The remaining 256 kilometers are to follow by 2023.
The corridor not only threatens rare animals like the giant anteater, which is slow to cross the expressway, but also poses a threat to the original inhabitants of these territories, Miguel Lovera, director of the Amotocodie initiative, told the Guardian. He is increasing the deadly pressure on the Ayoreo groups who are still living without contact. “This is the last nail in the coffin for the Chaco and all of its people.” Lovera fears that this will make it impossible for the last indigenous people living in voluntary isolation to survive.