By Eva Weiler
Courtesy IDN-InDepth NewsReport
LONDON (IDN) - Survival International, an organization working for tribal peoples' rights worldwide, is urging the President of Paraguay and head of the government’s Indian affairs department (INDI), to title the threatened Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indian tribe's remaining lands to them without delay.
At the same time, it has criticized the United Nations (UN) for not responding adequately to Indian tribe's complaint.
Survival is concerned that several of the Brazilian companies who own land within the ancestral territory of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians in the Chaco have been clearing it illegally. “This is in flagrant violation of injunctions which prohibit any such work in the area," says the movement for tribal people based in London.
The organization warns that the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode have been claiming a small part of their ancestral territory since 1993, but have still only recovered a fraction of it. Some members of the tribe are still uncontacted, and their survival is seriously at risk as more and more of the forest where they live is being destroyed.
"The deforestation is also in clear violation of Paraguay's laws and Constitution, which explicitly recognize the right of the indigenous population to the ownership of their traditional lands," Survival says
What appears to be worse is that Ayoreo Indians in Paraguay have been left amazed by the United Nations' reaction to a formal complaint they issued against a cattle ranching company Yaguarete Porá. The Brazilian company "owns a 78,000 hectare plot in the heart of their territory, very near where uncontacted Ayoreo were recently sighted," reports Survival.
Yaguarete plans to bulldoze most of it to create a cattle ranch – this will have a devastating effect on the Indians’ ability to continue living there, organization points out. Since 1969 many have been forced out of the forest, but some still avoid all contact with outsiders.
In May 2011, Ayoreo leaders issued a formal complaint against the Brazilian company's involvement in the UN Global Compact, an initiative allegedly designed to encourage businesses to comply with environmental and human rights principles.
The Ayoreo pointed out that the company has been found guilty of illegally clearing forest in their ancestral territory and withholding evidence proving that uncontacted Ayoreo Indians are living there.
According to Survival, the UN's response to the Indians' request that it remove the company from the initiative stated, "We have neither the resources nor the mandate to conduct investigations into any of our participants."
But the UN Global Compact has meanwhile written to Yaguarete. However, far from taking issue with its human rights abuses, the UN complained that Yaguarete was displaying its logo without having filled in the necessary form, and asked it to remove the logo from its website. The Global Compact logo immediately disappeared from the company's website.
Survival's Director Stephen Corry said: "This makes an utter mockery of the UN Global Compact. If the UN doesn't make sure companies displaying its logos abide by the rules, such initiatives become entirely meaningless. Yaguarete should be forced to leave the compact immediately."
Yaguarete Porá won Survival International's 'Greenwashing Award' in 2010 for "dressing up the wholesale destruction of a huge area of the Indians' forest as a noble gesture for conservation."
UNPRECEDENTED
In an unprecedented move, Paraguayan authorities have fined the Brazilian cattle-ranching firm accused of illegally clearing forest which is home to the last group of uncontacted Indians outside the Amazon basin.
"The company, Yaguarete Pora SA, concealed key information about the existence of indigenous people in the area where it had a licence to work," said Paraguay’s Environment Ministry (SEAM), which imposed the fine.
Yaguarete failed to acknowledge that the rich forest it is bulldozing in order to graze cattle is the ancestral territory of uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians, some of whom have recently been seen nearby.
SEAM's response is to fine the company approximately 75 million guaranies ($16,000 or £10,500) and order it to write a new report, an 'Environmental Impact Assessment', before considering whether to issue the company with a new licence.
SEAM made it clear that some Totobiegosode, who have already been contacted, have confirmed the existence of uncontacted relatives in the area where Yaguarete has been working.
Yaguarete recently accused Paraguay’s Environment Minister, Oscar Rivas, of working for Survival International after Survival’s exposé of the company's destruction of thousands of hectares of the Totobiegosode's forest, and the subsequent cancellation by SEAM of Yaguarete’s licence to work there.
Survival director, Stephen Corry, said: "Whilst this fine sends out a welcome message, SEAM shouldn’t only fine Yaguarete: it should ban the company from working there. That forest is the ancestral territory of the Totobiegosode, and the Indians have been trying to gain land title to the area since 1993. Destroying that forest is both immoral and unconstitutional."
Of the several different sub-groups of Ayoreo, the most isolated are the Totobiegosode ('people from the place of the wild pigs'). Since 1969 many have been forced out of the forest, but some still avoid all contact with outsiders.
Their first sustained contact with white people came in the 1940s and 1950s, when Mennonite farmers established colonies on their land. The Ayoreo resisted this invasion, and there were killings on both sides.
In 1979 and 1986 the American fundamentalist New Tribes Mission helped organize "manhunts" in which large groups of Totobiegosode were forcibly brought out of the forest. "While several Ayoreo died in these encounters, and others succumbed later to disease," states Survival.
