{"id":4545,"date":"2023-11-22T12:55:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T19:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/?page_id=4545"},"modified":"2023-11-22T12:57:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T19:57:06","slug":"chaco","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/chaco\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting for the Chaco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Indigenous and women lead the battle to defend endangered South American forest<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Paul Jeffrey<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in <\/em>response magazine in May 2015<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chaco is under assault. With growing international worry about deforestation in the larger Amazon basin to the north, foreign corporations seeking land to feed China\u2019s hunger for soybeans and the world\u2019s thirst for oil and gas have invaded the Chaco, a vast and biologically diverse expanse of grasslands and dry forest that spreads across parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. Yet people who have long called the Chaco their home are fighting back, with indigenous communities and women leading the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe buzzards are circling, wanting to seize the land from those to whom it belongs,\u201d said Father Jose Auletta, a Catholic priest who works in the Argentinian Chaco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe buzzards are arriving with their agricultural projects, and they\u2019re taking over thousands of hectares of indigenous land. They have a piece of paper granting them title, so they say they can do what they want. They\u2019re doing away with the trees in the last part of Argentina that still has forest. They\u2019re destroying the lungs of Argentina\u2019s north,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Griselda Arias at her home in Lote 75, an indigenous neighborhood of Embarcacion, Argentina. She is a leader of the Wichi, who in this area were largely traditional hunters and gatherers, but they have struggled for decades to recover land that has been systematically stolen from them by cattleraisers and large agricultural plantations.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Father Auletta says anyone who stands up to the corporate intruders is labeled a subversive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA poor person who stands up for their land and their rights, instead of being protected by the law, is criminalized, is declared guilty without a legal process. Those who stand up with firmness for their rights are considered \u2018invaders,\u2019 but they are invaders of their own land,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar Villalba is a Mocovi indigenous activist in El Tabacal, Argentina, where residents have struggled for land for decades. He\u2019s been arrested several times for occupying land to which others claim legal title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not asking the government to give us land, we\u2019re asking for the return of our own land, the land which belonged to our grandparents but which the government stole from them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe white people can have all the pieces of paper they want, but that doesn\u2019t give them the right to our land. We\u2019ve been here since the beginning, but today they call us invaders. It\u2019s our land. And if we can\u2019t possess it, we\u2019ll disappear. Our young will emigrate and we\u2019ll die as a people,\u201d Mr. Villalba said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Soli Marita, a 3-year old Wichi indigenous girl, looks through the fence that separates a giant soy bean plantation from Lote 75, an indigenous neighborhood of Embarcacion, Argentina. The Wichi in this area, largely traditional hunters and gatherers, have struggled for decades to recover land that has been systematically stolen from them by cattleraisers and large agricultural plantations.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since Argentina emerged from dictatorship in the 1980s, activists have pushed hard for a variety of legal measures to guarantee indigenous land rights, but Father Auletta says they have battled a public perception that the indigenous in Argentina had all died off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been told for a long time that there were no indigenous in Argentina, and so we had to discover them anew. We\u2019ve discovered them among the poor, or, more exactly, among those who have been made poor by the rich. As a church we\u2019ve moved from protecting them to accompanying them, an important step for us because it means developing a respect for both their culture and their spirituality,\u201d said Father Auletta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dividing the land<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accompaniment by faith groups can contribute to change. That\u2019s what happened with the recent resolution of a huge land dispute in Santa Victoria Este, where three decades of conflict between indigenous communities and lighter-skinned cattle ranchers often turned violent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Known locally as criollos<\/em>, the ranchers were pushed to the region by a central government wanting to better populate its border region with Paraguay and Bolivia. The ranchers often displaced Wichi, Toba, Tapiete, Chulupi and Chorote indigenous families, many of whom are traditional hunter-gatherers. As the criollos\u2019<\/em> cattle roamed the landscape, they ate wild foods on which the indigenous had long survived. As sharing the land become increasingly difficult, violence increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Tomas Rivero casts a net as he fishes on the Pilcomayo River outside of Villamontes, Bolivia. He is a leader of the Union of Pilcomayo River Fishers, and an advocate for cleaning up the river, which has been plagued by contamination from upstream mining and road construction. This portion of the river is inside the protected Aguarag\u00fce National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The conflict ended last year when the provincial government agreed to a deal dividing the land. The indigenous got 400,000 hectares of land and the criollos<\/em> 243,000 hectares. Although some final details remain to be ironed out, many ranchers are moving their animals and barbed wire off of land that will return to indigenous control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal was brokered with accompaniment from several church organizations. The indigenous had help from an Anglican organization, and the ranchers from Fundapaz, a group founded by Catholics and supported by Church World Service. The church groups provided legal advice, logistical support, and pastoral accompaniment, even though their staff had to occasionally leave the region for their own safety as sporadic violence broke out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final deal came after the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights threatened to take the Argentinian government to court for failure to honor its obligations to indigenous groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Juan Luis Diaz, the executive director of Fundapaz, the agreement is a victory for both groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBoth sides are poor, and there are more things that unite them than divide them. Only by overcoming their differences and working together did they discover that their individual struggles for justice became easier,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church groups had to step in and work with the two groups because the government failed to do so. Indeed, according to Mr. Diaz, \u201cThe government\u2019s strategy for many years was to generate conflicts so that the two sides would fight each other. That slowed down considerably the search for a just solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Edulia Vaquera and Gregorio Galarza display potatoes they have harvested from their garden in the Guarani indigenous village of Kapiguasuti, Bolivia. They and their neighbors started the gardens with assistance from Church World Service, supplementing their corn-based diet with nutritious vegetables and fruits.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rogelio Segundo is an indigenous leader in Santa Victoria Este, and he says the church accompaniment helped bring people to the negotiating table who otherwise had no interest in talking to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the old days we wouldn\u2019t even talk to each other, we\u2019d just fight. And not everyone agrees with the settlement. There are some criollos<\/em> who say they\u2019ll only leave their land if they\u2019re dead. That\u2019s just fine with some of the indigenous. So there\u2019s still work to be done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe women are in charge here\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many indigenous communities in the Chaco are matrilineal. So when a couple marries, for example, the man goes to live with the woman\u2019s family. Yet decision-making power in the home has seldom translated into political power outside, where indigenous men\u2013more likely to speak Spanish, the dominant language\u2013will often control transactions in the marketplace. Even if they run things in the house, it nonetheless takes real courage for women at the margins to speak up in political debate. Yet of courage there is no shortage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s we women who are struggling to change things, and because our men are busy working we have to take leadership. So when we have confrontations with the politicians, whether in their offices or in the streets when we protest, it\u2019s we women who are at the front. And it\u2019s gotten to the point where they\u2019re afraid of us. When some provincial officials came to our community recently to respond to our protests about lack of schools, we had to chase after them. They tried to hide from us. They told people they were afraid to face the women of this community,\u201d said Nelida Alpiri, leader of a women\u2019s group in El Bananal, a dusty Guarani village in Argentina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sonia Jimenez (left), Nelida Alpiri, and Noemi Ortega are Wichi indigenous leaders in Bananal, a small village in the Chaco region of Argentina where residents have struggled to defend their land and their rights against giant agro-export plantations and cattle raisers.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Argentina has a legacy of strong women political figures\u2013think Eva Peron\u2013and the election of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in 2007 encouraged women to take leadership at all levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe women are in charge here. If we\u2019ve got a woman as president, then we women have the right to rule everywhere in the country,\u201d said Sonia Jimenez, another member of the El Bananal women\u2019s group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Noemi Ortega, also a member of the group, sounds a note of caution. \u201cThe problem will come when we someday elect a man as president. We won\u2019t ever be able to serve dinner late again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to a question about domestic violence in the village, Ms. Jimenez said, \u201cWe don’t hit our men. If they misbehave, we just throw them out of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if the men ever hit the women, Ms. Ortega responded, \u201cWhy would they do that? If my husband hit me I’d never let him back in the house. And our lot was given to me by my mother, so he\u2019d just be out of luck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real value of labor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the issues faced by indigenous women in the Chaco is that their work isn\u2019t always valued correctly. Alba Rostan is working to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Rostan is a founder of the United Mission Board, which was started in the Chaco by Argentinian Methodists and Disciples of Christ in the 1960s. Today she accompanies several indigenous communities around Juan Jose Castelli, a town in the Argentinian Chaco. In addition to supporting the communities\u2019 efforts to recover their land, Ms. Rostan is working to help women value appropriately the work they do in crafting traditional jewelry and baskets which they sell to support their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Modesta Roca, Alba Canabi, and Catarin Seron–three generations of Guarani indigenous women in the village of Mberirenda, Bolivia. Church World Service works with families in the village to strengthen the leadership of women and youth.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With training in business administration, Ms. Rostan says the women artisans have to live with the rules of the market. \u201cThat means we have to put a real cost on a basket that they make. So I ask them. \u2018What does a palm frond cost you?\u2019 They have no idea. \u2018How many hours did it take you to weave this?\u2019 They have no idea. \u2018How much time did it take you to find the material for this button in the forest?\u2019 They have no idea. So we get out paper and pencils and we calculate and draw diagrams and they end up being surprised at how much goes into producing something like a basket. We draw up the whole process. When they learn the real cost of what they\u2019ve created, they\u2019re shocked, because all their lives they\u2019ve given away their labor to people who have ten thousand times what they have,\u201d Ms. Rostan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a kind of slavery of the mind. So we talk about self-esteem and gender, and they come to accept that their time is worth as much as anyone else\u2019s time. And in pricing something we have to take into consideration that some natural resources are getting harder to find, and that has an effect on the price. We finally come up with a real price, but they often think that simply because they\u2019re indigenous women, and often illiterate, they don\u2019t have a right to charge that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a quest to break out of the church and solidarity market ghettoes and find other, more lucrative markets for the women\u2019s products, Ms. Rostan has brought some design students from Buenos Aires, the nation\u2019s capital, to the remote town. It\u2019s a shock, she says, for the young urban women to be exposed to poverty they didn\u2019t know existed in their country. But they have quickly developed a creative partnership with the indigenous women, tweaking some original designs in small ways that make them appeal to a larger group of buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Roberta Noku is a 4-year old Weenhayek indigenous girl in a community called Quebracho 2 near Villamontes, Bolivia. Earlier this year she and her parents and several other Weenhayek families participated in an “invasion” of the land, believing it is their traditional land. They were impatient with a government-run legal process that is likely to eventually give them the land anyway as part of resolving a long-standing conflict between indigenous families and cattle raisers. She said her doll, which has a dress made from a black plastic bag, is named “Barbi.”<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Rostan acknowledges there\u2019s tension at times between keeping the designs authentic and making them sellable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome anthropologists may argue with me, but at the end of the day the women need to figure out how to get food into their house. If they don\u2019t have bread on their table, what does the argument of anthropologists matter? It\u2019s very easy for anthropologists to say what they want when they\u2019re sitting there with their coffee and air conditioning. For them to insist that others continue living purely as indigenous in the forest with their traditional customs, that\u2019s all well and good. But they should go live like them and then tell me if things need to change or not. We want to preserve identity at the same time we adjust to the market of today. That\u2019s what will help them live. If we don\u2019t figure out how to do this, there won\u2019t be any identity for the anthropologists to study, because people will have moved to the city or stayed home and died of starvation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New role for youth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basket styles aren\u2019t the only thing that\u2019s changing in the Chaco. In the village of Mberirenda, Bolivia, Catarin Seron has participated in some workshops on leadership for young people sponsored by Church World Service, and the 24-year old Guarani woman is not wasting time putting what she has learned into practice. She\u2019s leading her village in a fight for land they believe is rightfully theirs, but which was \u201cbought\u201d decades ago and converted into a plantation. Ms. Seron\u2019s struggle isn\u2019t just with outside usurpers, however. It\u2019s also a battle with other generations within her own community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Johnny Antesano, a 4-year old Guarani indigenous boy in Choroquepiao, a small village in the Chaco region of Bolivia, helps his mother, Yela Vilera, in their family garden. They and their neighbors started their gardens with assistance from Church World Service, supplementing their corn-based diet with nutritious vegetables and fruits.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis land was taken from our grandparents. We want it back for a place to live and for our children to grow up. The little piece of land we have left is a misery compared to what the rich owners have amassed with the labor of our grandparents,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to occupy the land but the old people are afraid. Most of them work for the old patron <\/em>and they\u2019re still scared of him. They\u2019re afraid they\u2019ll lose their jobs, and there are no other jobs around here. It\u2019s a trick, a deception,\u201d Ms. Seron said. \u201cThe owners claim our grandparents signed the land over to them, but how could they do that if they couldn\u2019t read or write? We young people are raising these questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new protagonism of young people is matched by the increasingly public role of women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe women were once timid, but now we participate more and we\u2019re now in spaces where before there were only men. In this village the first and second capitanes<\/em> [community leaders] are both women,\u201d she said. \u201cBefore it was very machista<\/em>, but things are better now as both men and women participate in decision making. My mother didn\u2019t go to meetings before, but now she does and now she\u2019s a community leader.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Seron says part of what drives her and other young people to get involved in community life is the realization that their culture was slipping away from them. That frightens her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandparents encouraged me to speak only Spanish. It was a way to protect me from the discrimination that they had experienced as indigenous people,\u201d she said. \u201cSo many of my generation have lost a lot of our language and culture. We want to recover it. We want to say we are Guarani, and do so proudly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is senior correspondent for <\/em>response.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Six-year old Sara Torrijo, a Wichi indigenous girl in Santa Victoria Este, Argentina, sits in a play house she made of chairs and blankets in front of her family’s home in the San Luis neighborhood. The Wichi in this area have struggled for decades to recover land that has been systematically stolen from them by cattleraisers and large agricultural plantations.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indigenous and women lead the battle to defend endangered South American forest By Paul Jeffrey Published in response magazine in May 2015 The Chaco is under assault. With growing international worry about deforestation in the larger Amazon basin to the north, foreign corporations seeking land to feed China\u2019s hunger for soybeans and the world\u2019s thirst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4559,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4545\/revisions\/4559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}