The Avá Guaraní have a right to their land!
Chief Ramón López: “Where should we Avá go? This is our land.” Photo: CONAPI (© Conapi)
The Avá Guaraní have been driven from their ancestral land twice in recent weeks by the juggernaut of intensive livestock farming and industrial soy cultivation. Please support the Y’apo community and call on the Paraguayan government to stop the deforestation of their homeland.
Call to actionTo: President of the Republic of Paraguay, Horacio Cartes; Interior Minister Francisco José De Vargas
“Curb the expansion of soy cultivation and livestock farming to protect the rainforest and secure the rights of indigenous communities.”
Throughout Paraguay, no less than 900,000 people have been driven from their homes by the expansion of industrial agriculture. Around a hundred Avá Guaraní families belonging to the Y’apo indigenous community in Corpus Christi district are among the most recently affected. The expansion of soybean monocultures and livestock farming is the main reason behind their eviction.
On the 20th of May, 300 police officers raided the Y’apo community, torching their houses and destroying their temple. With no chance to resist, the stunned inhabitants fled into the surrounding forests. Another incident occurred in June, when 50 armed security guards again intruded on their land, leaving several members of the community seriously injured.
“Their ultimate goal is to drive all indigenous peoples off the land to make way for yet more soy crops and cows,” explains Sister Raquel Peralta of the National Coordination Unit of Pastoral Indigenous Communities (CONAPI).
The force behind the deforestation is Laguna S.A., a corporation that has acquired 5,000 hectares of populated land in the Yvrarovana Zone near the Mbaracayaú Nature Reserve with the intention of clearing it for industrial-scale soybean cultivation.
The ongoing conflict over land and resources is illustrated by the following figures: 85% of Paraguay’s land is in the hands of an elite amounting to a mere 2.5% of the population. The confrontation of these two social classes – the landowners with their mafia-like structures versus the small farmers – is particularly evident in the commemoration of the massacre of Curuguaty two years ago.
Please sign our petition and help put an end to this injustice!
Background“The economic model being pursued by the Paraguayan state – and the current government in particular – promotes the exploitation and plundering of indigenous territories,” Sister Raquel Peralta notes. Many indigenous people that have been evicted from their land end up in the cities, jobless and on the street.
Paraguay’s economy is increasingly focused on agricultural exports. To promote the complete industrialization of the agricultural sector, Paraguayan policymakers seek to increase land use to 6 million hectares – twice that currently earmarked for agriculture – and massively expand livestock farming. The annual production of 9 million tons of soybeans for export has profound consequences. It exhausts arable land that could be used for other crops, while water pollution from massive pesticide use in industrial farming endangers the lives and health of humans, animals and plants. Thousands of hectares of old-growth forest are cleared every year despite legislation to curb deforestation put in place in 2013. According to the WWF, Paraguay’s forest areas have been reduced from 9 million to a mere 1.5 million hectares between 1950 and 2004. The industrial monocultures are also displacing a diversity of cultivation for personal consumption by small farmers.
Soy is one of the world’s most important commodities
Worldwide production of soy increased nearly tenfold over the past 50 years, and around 80% of the total is used as inexpensive feed for intensive livestock farming. People all over the world are thus consuming beef, pork and chicken that was raised on genetically modified soy. In addition to livestock feed, soy accounts for a huge share of global vegetable oil consumption, spurred on by growing demand for biofuels. Raising genetically modified soy is a hugely profitable business that accounts for 46 million hectares of agricultural land use in Latin America.
In Paraguay, soy production has doubled in the last decade and now occupies 3.1 million hectares, generating annual profits of $2 billion (2011) and making the country the world’s fourth largest soy exporter.
How do they do it?
When it comes to soy, Paraguay’s government is truly generous: multinational corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus Commodities and Noble are not held liable for destroying the rainforest or polluting the environment with pesticides, and pay next to nothing in taxes.
At 20% of GDP, soy and meat are Paraguay’s primary exports, yet they only account for 2% of the country’s tax revenues.
The facts:
In Paraguay:
- More than three million hectares of land are dedicated to soy production, yielding between 2.7 and 3 tons of soy per hectare.
- In the case of genetically modified soy, an average of eight liters of Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide is applied to every hectare, for a total consumption of 24 million liters. 98% of the cultivation in Paraguay follows this model.
In Europe:
- The EU imports about 34 million tons of soy – most of it from Latin America – as livestock feed. Producing this amount of soy requires an estimated 15 million hectares of land, which equals the combined area of England and Wales.
Worldwide:
- Soy production has increased tenfold since 1960 to meet steadily increasing demand, and is now 260 million tons annually. Genetically modified soy plants account for more than three quarters of this amount.
To: President of the Republic of Paraguay, Horacio Cartes; Interior Minister Francisco José De Vargas
Mr. President,
Mr. Interior Minister,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Commission on Human Rights,
I hereby join the members of the National Coordination Unit of Pastoral Indigenous Communities in expressing my outrage at the repeated injustices and human rights violations suffered by the Avá Guaraní community in Y’apo, Corpus Christi district. Hundreds of families were driven from their land by the police and Laguna S.A. security guards. Numerous people were injured and one killed during the violent eviction.
I therefore call on your government to:
- stop the deforestation driven by soy cultivation and the expansion of livestock farming that is destroying human livelihoods and wildlife habitats
- take measures to compensate the affected Avá Guaraní community
- honor the constitution and abide by national and international laws for the protection of indigenous peoples and their territories.
I support the affected community and call on all people of good will to speak out for human rights, protect the environment on which we all depend, and fight for a better life.
Sincerely,
Recent successes