Indigenous people blockade highway to protest destruction of their territory

More than 100 Indigenous Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people, most of whom were forcibly contacted between 1979 and 2004, have blockaded a major Paraguayan highway in the heart of South America. They’re trying to stop the destruction of the forest where their uncontacted relatives still live.

Porai Picanerai, one of the Ayoreo leaders, said:

After forced contact, we have been abandoned by our government, which ignores our rights while allowing big companies to destroy our forest. Our uncontacted relatives depend on the forest. We also depend on the forest. But it’s being destroyed by bulldozers and fires. Others make money from our forest while we are left with nothing, and our needs and rights are ignored.

The uncontacted Ayoreo live in a rapidly shrinking island of forest surrounded by devastation. They’re the last uncontacted Indigenous people in South America outside the Amazon. Their forest is being chopped down, stolen and occupied by farms. The rate of destruction is one of the fastest in the world. And it’s leaving the Indigenous owners of the land facing drought and famine.

The contacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, having been forced out of the forest in recent decades, live in two communities on the forest edge. They are blockading one of the area’s major highways in protest at:

• The continuing destruction of their ancestral territory by cattle ranchers and agribusiness. Legally, the forest should have protection.
• Neglect by the state that forced them out of their nomadic and self-sufficient life in the forest. It’s left them stranded in two inaccessible, remote communities without proper healthcare or access to water or food.
• The government continuing to refuse to title the land to them. This is despite the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights ordering it to do so.

Survival International’s Director Caroline Pearce said:

The satellite photos of western Paraguay paint a harrowing picture: just a few decades ago this was a vast area of Indigenous forest – now it’s a wasteland of destruction. The uncontacted Ayoreo are trapped in a forest island that’s being destroyed by the day.

All this destruction is illegal: this is the Ayoreo’s home, which should have been recognized as Indigenous territory and titled to them. The Ayoreo who were forced out of the forest are deeply worried for their uncontacted relatives who are somehow managing to survive, but must be fleeing from one corner of the forest to another.

As Survival’s recent report on uncontacted peoples made clear, they are resisting this brutal colonization but their survival absolutely depends on their land being protected. Paraguay’s authorities must finally do the right thing, by expelling the ranchers and upholding the Ayoreo’s rights to their land.

Featured image via Survival International