Four companies plan to drill through a national park in search of gas and oil in the Gran Chaco, a rich and endangered forest, the second largest in South America, shared by Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. This Wednesday, the Paraguayan Congress rejected a law restricting the environmental protection of the park where the drilling is to be carried out, but lawmakers who are campaigning for it expect to try again in August.
The disputed area, the Médanos del Chaco, is one of the main areas of the Chaco Biosphere Reserve in Paraguay, recognized by UNESCO and has archaeological and historical sites that are also under protection. It is the ancestral home of the only indigenous people living in voluntary isolation in the Americas outside of the Amazon: the Chaco Ayoreo people. It is one of the few areas where contiguous forest remains, nearly 1,000 kilometers from the nearest capital and with no discernible border between Bolivia and Paraguay.
“I’m very worried because our people who are still living in the jungle live in this area. “It’s not just animals,” says Ayoreo documentary filmmaker Mateo Sobode Chiqueno, who lives in a village in the middle of the Chaco called Campo Loro. Sobode is a relative of those living in voluntary isolation in the forest, about 150 people who live without ever having been subjected to direct colonization. Although they have knowledge of the society around them, they live without any connection to the state, corporations or religious missions. He himself lived in the Chaco Forest until he was eight years old. Today, at around 70 years old, he continues to document and denounce the threats his people face.
Sobode explains that on the Bolivian side, the Ayoreo can walk hundreds of kilometers without risk of encountering illegal loggers, poachers or drug dealers. There they live by hunting peccaries, capybaras or tapirs; and from the honey and fruits of the cacti they gather in the forest of red quebrachos and centennial lapachos of Kaa Iya National Park. It is the largest in Bolivia and one of the largest in South America, stretching to the most pristine forests in Paraguay.
But on the Paraguayan side, the Ayoreo have fewer and fewer places to go because there is less and less wildlife to hunt. Their nomadic life, which respects the growing seasons of the species, is incompatible with widespread deforestation, which scares the animals away, according to indigenous leaders, the Organization of American States’ human rights reports, and anthropologists and environmentalists from NGOs Iniciativa Amotocodie and Survival.
Members of the Ayoreo tribe patrol their territory between Boquerón and Alto Paraguay departments in the Paraguayan Chaco. Saint Carneri
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“Our relatives who are still in the mountains go in and out of the Médanos del Chaco and Cerro León. It is a very useful room for the Ayoreo and as such they should leave it as it is. “It’s a very small park compared to the area we inhabited before,” explains Sobode. The controversial national park is key to their survival and that of endangered animals such as yurumíes (anteaters or vermilinguas), jaguars and others.
The Ayoreo are the only people in the Americas who can exercise their right to self-determination outside of the Amazon Basin — where the majority of indigenous groups are concentrated in voluntary isolation from the world. A right enshrined for indigenous peoples in Inter-American legislation, as well as Paraguayan and Bolivian law, as highlighted in their regular reports by the Paraguayan organization Iniciativa Amotocodie and the British organization Survival. However, neither they nor the Guarani Ñandeva people were consulted on the project, as required by law. “You have to consult us and that’s how we think together. The deputy has to see the indigenous people as human beings, but they don’t consult us on anything,” emphasizes Sobode.
The MP endorsing the lack of protection of Médanos del Chaco National Park for hydrocarbon extraction is Edwin Reimer of the right-wing Colorado party in government. “What is being sought now is to produce gas in a defined area where a significant amount of gas has been found, and that does not mean covering the entire reserve,” Reimer said. This deputy is a former director of the Federation of Production Cooperatives (Fecoprod Ltda), one of the largest ranching companies in Paraguay, made up of the country’s three largest Mennonite cooperative companies.
accelerated change
The Gran Chaco is a forest that also includes savannas, lagoons, cerrados and wetlands. It extends over 1.1 million km2, mainly in northern Argentina (682,000 km2), all of the western half of Paraguay, the southern third of Bolivia and a small part of the Brazilian Pantanal. Taken together, it is an area twice the size of France.
In Paraguay, this area is experiencing accelerated change. New asphalt roads give way to more livestock and new large-scale agricultural crops. New cities and gas stations, but less and less forest. The Chaco region lost 5 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2021, according to Global Forest Watch’s satellite map. An area larger than the whole of Switzerland. But there is no global debate about its importance as there is about the Amazon. According to the environmental portal Mongabay, 45,210 deforestation warnings were registered in the Chaco Biosphere Reserve between January and October 2022.
Mennonite companies, the Christian faith community of Russian and German origin that have been based here for almost 100 years, have a lot to do with the rapid deforestation. The nearly 67,000 Mennonites who, like Reimer, live in Paraguay own at least 1.8 million hectares of land in that country, and about 8 million if you include those purchased outside of their cooperatives, according to the Mennonite Survey. and deforestation in South America.
Aerial view of the forests of the Paraguayan Chaco. Saint Carneri
Of the total area of the Chaco in Paraguay, 6% are natural parks. The vast majority of forests are in private hands (80% nationally) or are unconserved state lands. But they want to do the perforations in the public and indigenous lands.
“The intended prospection only serves to create a precedent for national and international investors and has nothing to do with particular interests or a lobby to be installed,” said the MP recently. However, the opposition does not believe him. “There will be nothing left. “Absolutely nothing: according to the reports available to us, 600 hectares have been completely subdivided,” predicted opposition Senator Desirèe Masi Jara of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) when the issue was debated in the upper house.
The amendment, aimed at reducing protections for Médanos del Chaco National Park, was opposed even by current Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez, who is also a Colorado conservative but belongs to a different faction in the party. Abdo visited the site and vowed to protect it, but his term ends on August 15.
The bill was defeated in the House of Commons on June 21, but Reimer and his group continue to push the bill and have promised to bring it back to the Senate for discussion by the new lawmakers for the 2023-2028 period.
Senator Masi assured that four companies had concessions in the area and kept the pressure on this park. These are the Paraguayan Primo Cano Martínez SA, which received the license during the dictatorship; Zeus Oil SA, whose representative is Marco Pappalardo, son of Conrado Pappalardo, secretary of the former dictator Alfredo Stroessner who received stolen land in the area, according to the 2008 Truth and Justice Commission report, and a relative of Natalia Zuccolillo Pappalardo, director of local newspaper ABC Color; Riviera SA, insured by Royal Seguros SA, whose major shareholder is Juan Carlos López Moreira, former head of the Civil Cabinet of the Cartes presidency between 2013 and 2018. And finally Petropar, the Paraguayan state company.
Ayoreo indigenous leaders protest in downtown Asuncion, Paraguay. Saint Carneri
“Mennonites believe they are now ready to participate in the gold digger support investment. And later to the potential exploiters of hydrocarbons,” explains environmental engineer Miguel Lovera, one of the coordinators of the NGO Iniciativa Amotocodie, which has been working with the Ayoreo indigenous people for more than 20 years.
The Por los Bosques coalition launched the #LosMédanosNoSeTocan campaign to collect signatures and warn of the danger it poses to indigenous peoples, fauna and flora. They fear the law will set a precedent that will affect other parks as well.
“It’s not bad to look for hydrocarbons, but not on ancestral lands or places that are protected for environmental reasons,” said former Paraguay Vice Minister of Mines and Energy Mercedes Canese. The industrial engineer, teacher and advisor to the left-wing Frente Guasú (Broad Front in Guaraní) says she is not opposed to the search, but “it should not happen without prior, free and informed consultation with indigenous peoples.”
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