The last refuge

“It was the missionaries who made it impossible for us to continue living in our territory… They prohibited our songs and our vision of the world. They say that all we need is to believe in their God, and that we do not need our territory, but they do not realize that emptying out our territory means emptying out our very way of being”

- Mateo Sobode Chiquenoi ^_[4]

After establishing their first settlements, Mennonite preachers began pursuing indigenous groups living in the surrounding wilds. These early missionary efforts were sporadic: the Mennonites had their hands full eking out a living from their scorching, unforgiving new home, where temperatures frequently sailed above forty degrees. Many Ayoreo groups, often living in the remoter regions of northern Paraguay and southern Bolivia, were easily able to evade them.

This changed in the early 1960s, with the arrival of a notoriously aggressive evangelical organisation from Florida, named the New Tribes Mission. Intent on finding new souls to save, members targeted the most remote indigenous groups. Their contact with the Ayoreo began in 1966. They told them that the end of the world was close, that the forest would soon be destroyed, and that they could survive only by moving to their missionary settlements^[5].

Traditionally, the Ayoreo are divided into several sub-groups, each nomadizing a specific stretch of territory in the northern Chaco^[6]. Slowly, the competing missionary projects convinced most of them to abandon their lives in the forest - helped, of course, by the disease and ecological disruption brought by settlers since the late nineteenth century.

One sub-group, however, became known for their fierce resistance to the evangelical message. These were the Totobiegosode, whose territory encompassed the southernmost stretch of the Ayoreo’s ancestral land.

In the 1980s, the New Tribe Mission stepped up their efforts to convert the Totobiegosode. They sent members of neighbouring Ayoreo groups - mainly the Garaigosode and the Guidaigosode - to preach to them. They established a mission station, Campo Loro, close to the Totobiegosode territory, in which to house their newest converts.

But the missionaries were entirely ignorant of the political tensions and diplomatic traditions that defined relations between different Ayoreo groups. Unsurprisingly, this led to tragedy. In one instance, in 1986, having spotted a temporary Totobiegosode settlement from a small plane^[7], missionaries transported a group of 34 Ayoreo Guidaigosode to preach to the Totobiegosode. Within 15 minutes of encountering their fellow Ayoreo, five of the Guidaigosode were dead^[8].

Indifferent to such catastrophes, the missionaries persevered. By the early 1990s, many previously autonomous Ayoreo Totobiegosode were living sedentary lives of poverty and discrimination in stark missionary settlements such as Campo Loro.

From these settlements, the Ayoreo provided a convenient source of cheap labour for the rapidly multiplying Mennonite ranches that dotted the land to the south. Through the intervening decades, these close-knit religious communities had, with immense effort, established productive cattle ranching businesses in the wilderness of the Chaco. Today, the string of dusty Mennonite outposts founded through the 20s, 30s and 40s - Loma Plata, Filadelfia and Neuland - compose one of Paraguay’s richest economic centres. Together, the Mennonite ranching cooperatives account for around a third of Paraguay’s total beef exports, worth more than a billion dollars^[9].

“It was as if the missionaries used their evangelization to clear the territory that belonged to the Ayoreo people. That made it easy for the cattle ranchers to buy up almost all of our land, and a few powerful white men took over our territory just like that”

- Mateo Sobode Chiquenoi^[10]

But the Totobiegosode, were racing against time. Ranching firms were also chasing titles to the same land. In 2002, despite the protections granted to the area by the 1998 and 2001 resolutions, a Brazilian-owned ranching firm named Yaguarete Porá^[16] acquired 78,000 hectares of land within PNCAT. Immediately, the firm brought in bulldozers, clearing roadways and burning vegetation. That year, an investigation by Paraguay’s general attorney’s office found illegal logging for the protected species palo santo on the Yaguarete land, as well as “relentless incursions by bulldozers” - activities which were being carried out without any of the legally required permits^[17].

The apocalyptic impact of these clearances for isolated peoples was vividly demonstrated in March 2004, when an isolated Totobiegosode group emerged from the forest.

The group - consisting of seven men, five women, and five children - were first sighted by two settled Totobiegosode leaders. Together with technicians, the settled Totobiegosode were in the process of planning Chaidi, the second Ayoreo village to be established on their ancestral land. While scouting the area for a suitable site to sink a well, they looked up, and saw two of the uncontacted group watching from a distance of 150 metres. The settled Totobiegosode shouted their names, and the two sides - one having left the forest in the eighties, one forced to abandon it now - came together. The older members recognised each other and embraced for the first time in two decades^[18].

“They left the forest because their capacity to survive was diminishing every day: the forest, the Eami as the Ayoreo say, was shrinking, and when it's shrinking it's harder to find water or food, to find the fruit and animals which Ayoreo eat,” Picanerai explains.

The forest group decided to join the newly established settlement of Chaidi. A US anthropologist, Lucas Bessire, visited them through the following weeks, listening to their account of their last months in the forest. “They were often forced to camp in the fifteen-metre wide strips of brush left as windbreaks around vast cattle pastures,” he reported. “They went long periods communicating only with whistled sounds; even the children were whisper quiet. If they saw a boot print or heard a chainsaw, they would flee far and fast, leaving everything behind”^[19]. At the same time, their water sources were drying up, partly a consequence of deforestation, partly because cattle firms were redirecting streams to irrigate newly built ranches to the south.

A few months after making contact, one of the group’s leaders, Esoi Chiquenoi, issued a call to the Paraguayan authorities. “When we heard the bulldozers, we were very afraid,” he said. “We ran and changed our camping grounds to escape them. We ask the authorities not to touch the forest, to allow the forest to remain, and to stop the bulldozers, because the forest is what gives us life”^[20].

These clearances pose an existential threat to the Totobiegosode groups who evaded the missionaries and the bulldozers and continue to live in voluntary isolation in the forests of the Paraguayan Chaco. “Every few months we see signs of the presence of our brothers in the forest,” Picanerai says. “One of the signs is cuts in the trees: they cut holes in the trees to take out the honey. You can also see the signs of small fires, that's another way to note their presence.”

Since 2004, these signs have been documented by Iniciativa Amotocodie, an NGO advocating for the rights of Ayoreo groups living in voluntary isolation. The Ayoreo’s semi-nomadic lifestyle and traditionally light use of resources - predominantly based on hunting and gathering, with crops grown during the short rainy season - means only fragile remnants are found. But in the wilderness of the Chaco, these signs - abandoned huts, hunting lances, clan markings carved into bark, as well as small firepits and holes cut into trees - are unmistakeable.

“There are many signs that have a comparable age which, considering the distance between the signs, and the simultaneity of their creation, indicates the presence of not one but of various groups,” says Miguel Lovera, director at Iniciativa Amotocodie.

Iniciativa’s analysis shows that the signs consistently appear in areas exposed by the expansion of cattle ranches, Lovera adds.

“The extension of the agricultural frontier - which is supported by the state, by foreign investors, and by financial institutions - means the creation of roads, and the fragmentation of the last forested areas, the last areas of pristine vegetation, that exist in the Chaco. All this means that Ayoreo living in isolation are now facing a situation of extreme vulnerability.”

As indigenous people living in voluntary isolation, the rights of the Totobiegosode (and any other Ayoreo sub-groups that may be inhabiting the remote forests of the Paraguayan Chaco^[23]) are afforded extensive protections in international human rights law. A 2013 report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights emphasised that the choice to avoid contact is consciously exercised: “Peoples in voluntary isolation cannot be considered ‘uncontacted,’ strictly speaking, since many of them, or their ancestors, have had contact with persons from outside their peoples,” the report notes^[24]. “Most of these contacts have been violent and have had serious consequences” for the indigenous peoples, leading them to “reject contact and return to a situation of isolation”.

Furthermore, the United Nations (UN) has established that the act of withdrawing from contact should be interpreted as a withholding of consent for any activities on an indigenous people’s territory. In 2012, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued specific guidelines on the rights of isolated peoples in the Amazon and Gran Chaco. They recommended that: “the areas that states have delimited for peoples in voluntary isolation or initial stages of contact must be untouchable…. no rights to exploit natural resources should be granted”^[25].

It’s at this point that Earthsight enters the story. As our 18-month investigation Grand Theft Chaco revealed, even this blanket ban wasn’t enough to stop the bulldozers. By analysing satellite imagery and drawing on Paraguay’s land registry, Earthsight identified extensive deforestation on two ranches since INFONA suspended permits.

One is a Mennonite ranch, owned by the cooperative Chortitzer, which cleared 550 hectares between June and September 2019.

The second is Caucasian SA, a Brazilian ranching firm with a property in the east of PNCAT. Caucasian first cleared 2100 hectares between April and October 2018, then paused following legal objections brought by the Totobiegosode, only to restart its bulldozers less than a year later, destroying another 663 hectares of forest between September and November 2019.

We also documented the extent of the destruction wreaked by Yaguarete Porá. The Brazilian firm has destroyed almost 9000 hectares of Totobiegosode forest since the environment ministry first issued the controversial 2007 license, 10 per cent of which occurred after the IACHR granted the area protective measures.

Investigators then traced the onward supply chains linking these ranches to the corporate giants whose demand is ultimately fuelling the clearances. Drawing on trade data, field research and undercover meetings with key supply chain actors, they connected the illegal destruction of Totobiegosode forest to some of Europe’s biggest car firms, including BMW and Jaguar Land Rover.

In September 2020 we published our findings in a 50-page report, which we shared with the Paraguayan authorities. Though the report made headlines in Paraguay and featured in high-profile media elsewhere, the Paraguayan government failed to respond.

The dire consequences of failing to address impunity by agribusinesses in the country would be felt just a few weeks later, as vast forest fires ripped across Paraguay and a national emergency was announced. The fires had been started intentionally by cattle ranchers and soy farmers, often illegally. Paraguayan Ministers, under huge public pressure as haze and smoke choked the country’s capital city, promised tough action against those responsible.

A simple examination of satellite images suggested that the very same ranchers Earthsight had just exposed would be a good place to start. The shocking pictures revealed huge fires at the illegal Chortitzer and Caucasian ranches inside PNCAT, starting in recently bulldozed forest but extending well beyond. One of the fires inside Caucasian was so large the smoke trail extended 80 kilometres downwind.

REVEALED: In early October, Paraguay declared a national emergency as fires raged, with 50,000ha of Chaco destroyed...

Now, Earthsight has discovered around 300 fire hotspots at cattle ranches that feed into BMW & Jaguar Land Rover leather supply chains: https://t.co/4FycP8Bg2t

— Earthsight (@earthsight) October 21, 2020

Earthsight published its fresh evidence but again, nothing was done. Again the government did not respond, although it was quick to defend itself a few weeks later, when Earthsight shared the accounts of whistleblowers denouncing corruption within the environment ministry.

"The illegal clearances and fires by these ranches inside PNCAT are the very dirty tip of a much larger iceberg of impunity in the sector in Paraguay. But they provide a perfect test of the government’s real willingness to bring rule of law to its forests. So far it is a test which it is failing."

Instead of launching an investigation into Earthsight’s evidence of violations of its ban on clearances within PNCAT, INFONA has cosied up to those responsible. It recently signed an agreement with a ranching trade body whose biggest member is Chortitzer, the Mennonite firm which illegally destroyed more than 550 hectares of PNCAT forest. In this agreement, INFONA’s president describes the ranching firms as “faithful examples of sustainable development”.

Facing this inertia, Earthsight – together with a coalition of Paraguayan and international NGOs – wrote to a committee in Paraguay’s Congress which is empowered to investigate environmental crimes.

“Taken together, this represents 3,283 hectares of illegal clearance of some of the most sensitive forest in Paraguay,” the letter reads. “This is around a quarter of the total surface area of Asunción, and almost 10 per cent of the total annual illegal deforestation estimated by INFONA. These substantial criminal acts resulted in the destruction of forest that is essential for the livelihoods of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, as recognised by international human rights observers including the UN and the IACHR, as well as for the preservation of Totobiegosode history and culture, with roots that stretch back far beyond the Spanish conquest.”

The letter called on the committee to launch an investigation into this illegal deforestation. At the time of writing, no response had been received. Failure to act could implicate both the Paraguayan state -  and the multinational firms whose demand is driving the clearances - in the extermination of a culture that has thrived for centuries among the forests, swamplands and salt flats at the heart of South America. It would also indicate that the many promises Paraguay has been making on the global stage about tackling deforestation and playing its part in the battle to save the climate are just so much hot air.

“I think that when we mistreat our forests, we mistreat ourselves, human beings wherever they are in the world. Because by doing so we create a disequilibrium in nature. And the impacts generated by human beings are returned to us, in one form or another, by mother nature. Today we are facing major climatic changes, in many places people face drought, they face a lack of water, a lack of food, or great fires”

- Tagüide Picanerai