Paraguay Rejects Plan to Protect Last Untouched Tribe
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by Reuters April 8, 2005
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ASUNCION, Paraguay — Paraguay's Congress rejected Thursday a proposal to protect the last
Indian tribe in South America not in the Amazon region to have
avoided contact with outsiders.
Indian rights organizations
warned that the nomadic Ayoreos are doomed to die or be run off
their land by ranchers unless their territory is turned into a
reserve.
The group lives deep in the untouched forest of
northwest Paraguay known as the Chaco, hunting wild pigs and
anteaters with spears and growing subsistence crops.
But the
land they roam is owned by businessmen who have been encroaching
steadily to log its valuable hardwood forests or raise cattle.
After a year of debate, lawmakers rejected a bill that
sought to expropriate 114,000 hectares of the privately owned land
and turn it into a reserve for the Ayoreo.
"It's very bad
news for the the Ayoreo and for Paraguay. Their survival is now
seriously at risk," said Jonathan Mazower, research coordinator at
the London-based group Survival International, which campaigns to
protect tribal peoples.
Mazower called the bill the "first
serious attempt" to protect the tribe, which has an estimated 5,000
members.
Since the 1960s, some of the Ayoreos have been
coaxed out of their seclusion by Mennonite missionaries who settled
the area or forced by bulldozers to flee their small gardens.
Many died in violent clashes with settlers or from disease.
But an unknown number has resisted all contact with the
outside world and their existence was confirmed last year when 17 of
them appeared at the edge of the scrub in search of water.
They told outsiders that their relatives in the forest did
not want to come out but needed help to resist encroachers.
"A very rapid and violent cultural change will be forced on
these people," said Jose Zanardini, an Italian anthropologist who
has worked with the Ayoreo for several years.
Nobody knows
exactly how many Ayoreos there are but Zanardini estimates six or
seven extended families with no history of outside contact remain.
"They will be forced to undo thousand of years of history in
one or two years and go from being hunters and gatherers to working
as day laborers," he said.
The Ayoreo is the last tribe of
its kind in South America outside the Amazon basin, where there are
some 50 Indian groups that have avoided outside contact.
Paraguay's constitution recognizes the right of its
estimated 90,000 Indians, or 2 percent of the population, to
preserve their land but in practice little is done. Activists say
the center-right government has always sided with the powerful
landowners who bought the land at bargain prices.
Deputy
Francisco Rivas, who voted against the bill, said the landowners
could commit to protecting the Ayoreo lifestyle, but critics were
skeptical.
"They feel they've lost the war against the white
man," Zandarini said.
(Additional reporting by Louise Egan in Buenos Aires)
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Source: Reuters
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