14 January 2022 The Guardian Weekly27
Lovera. Dozens of lorries carrying
quarried material for the highway are
now hurtling through Ayoreo land
every day, he says. “They’ve never
seen this kind of traffi c before. They
were duped,” he adds.
A host of damaging cultural
upheavals are likely to follow. Leaders
fear the coming tide of passing truck-
ers and ranchers will spread drug use,
prostitution and petty crime. These
eff ects have already been seen else-
where in the Chaco among other indig-
enous communities since the building
of the 770km north-south Trans-Chaco
highway in the 1970s , which Paraguay
is also widening and re surfacing.
The corridor also threatens wildlife
vital to the Ayoreo. More endangered
animals will be fl attened by speeding
lorries, including slow-moving giant
ant eaters and the aguará guazú – a
wolf-like canine.
Illegal hunting on Ayoreo territory
has also intensifi ed, says Enrique
Pebi , president of the Union of Native
Ayoreo of Paraguay. He contrast s the
mass slaughter of giant armadillos,
marsh deer , peccaries and jaguars
by outsiders with the Ayoreo’s trad-
itional consumption of some animals
for subsistence. “They just use them
for target practice,” he says.
Most concerning , local people say , is
evidence that the highway is speeding
up deforestation. This makes it even
harder for the Ayoreo to hunt, forage
for honey, fruit and roots, and gather
medicinal plants; practices that are
key to their survival and culture.A
yoreo villages near Carmelo
Peralta accepted fish-
ing boats and tractors in
exchange for allowing a
50km road through their territory, says
Pebi. “The things they’ve given us will
wear out in fi ve or six years,” he says. “I
don’t know how many hectares we’ve
lost for ever.”
Meanwhile, Brazilian ranchers have
bulldozed a track into Ayoreo land
f urther along the corridor, and started
felling trees , leaders say, showing
photos of clearances to the Guardian.
The Ayoreo are now too afraid of being
shot by foreign “invaders” – armed
security guards on expanding nearby
ranches – to forage alone, says Pebi.
More than 140,000 sq km , a fi fth of
the entire Chaco, has been felled since- This accelerating deforestation
has global consequences. The Chaco
holds 14 times more carbon-dense
biomass than previously thought, one
recent study found. Smoke-blackened
palms line the highway – testament to
the uncontrolled blazes to clear land
for cattle that have swept the Chaco.
Greater deforestation spurred by the
new highway also threatens about 150
Ayoreo , in at least 10 small groups, living
in voluntary isolation in the Chaco’s for-
ests, say the leaders of settled Ayoreo
communities. Excluding the Amazon,
they are the only documented indig-
enous people in the Americas seeking
to avoid contact with modern society.
For 100km, the highway passes
near the Patrimonio Natural y Cul-
tural Ayoreo Totobiegosode (PNCAT) ,
a 5,500 sq km Ayoreo refuge. Reports
circulate that Ayoreo people choosing
to live in isolation have been killed by
interlopers, but are hard to confi rm
because Paraguay’s authorities do
not monitor their numbers, location
or wellbeing, says Lovera.
A 2020 Earthsight report found that
Brazilian ranching fi rms were illegally
deforesting chunks of the PNCAT
reserve and that leather sourced from
the area has been used in luxury cars
made by European companies such
as BMW. Earthsight also singled out a
supplier of the Chortitzer Co- operative- a huge cattle, grains and dairy
company owned by the Mennonite
community of Loma Plata , where the
corridor’s fi rst stage ends.
Florian Reimer , Chortitzer’s
manager, told the Guardian that its
associate had obtained environ-
mental permits to raze parts of the
forest. “We’re totally against illegal
deforestation,” he insisted.
Loma Plata – and the nearby
Mennonite colony of Filadelfi a – off er
a vision of what the rest of the Chaco
may soon look like. An orderly grid
of roads encloses thin lines of trees.
Indigenous peoples, uprooted by
deforestation and forced conversion
elsewhere in the Chaco, live marginal
existences on the outskirts of town.
Enlhet -speaking men, formerly
nomads, cluster on street corners
waiting for a day’s labour. The women
often engage in sex work. This carries
no stigma in traditional Ayoreo cul-
ture, but violent assaults and murders
of Ayoreo women by non-indigenous
men have increased in recent years.
“The Bioceanic road brings a lot of
danger for the Ayoreo,” says Mateo
Sobode Chiqueno , an Ayoreo historian
who has spent 40 years recording his
people’s memories.
Lovera urges Paraguay to give indig-
enous communities land far from the
road’s impact zone – or risk “genocide,
willing or unwilling”.
A Paraguay public works ministry
spokesperson says the road project
was diverted south to avoid several
Ayoreo villages and the proposed
bridge at Carmelo Peralta re routed
3km north to avoid Ayoreo land.
Near Loma Plata, the corridor links
with the Trans-Chaco highway, and
will plunge deeper into the western
Chaco in 2022. “The Chaco connects
us to the world,” a billboard proclaims.
The new highway “connects all the
suff erings of many, and the good of a
few, the businessmen,” counters Juan
de la Cruz, an Ayoreo offi cial from Car-
melo Peralta. “And us, we’ll be left at
the roadside watching them pass by.”
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▲ Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay’s
president, and Reinaldo Azambuja
Silva (blue shirt), a Brazilian state
governor, at the site of a new bridge▼ The Chortitzer Co-operative will be
among the beneficiaries of the road▲ A n Ayoreo man
looks at land
cleared through
his territory An unfinished
section of
Paraguay’s
Bioceanic
Corridor