Dust, red soil, and soybean, an ocean of soybean. This is the landscape that Ña Tola observes from San Juan Nepomuceno to her Ypeti de Caazapá community. There is 80 kilometers of dirt road in the middle of soybean fields that the leader of the Association of Indigenous Communities Mbya Guaraní “Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pavë” […]
Dust, red soil, and soybean, an ocean of soybean. This is the landscape that Ña Tola observes from San Juan Nepomuceno to her Ypeti de Caazapá community. There is 80 kilometers of dirt road in the middle of soybean fields that the leader of the Association of Indigenous Communities Mbya Guaraní “Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pavë” [Asociación de Comunidades Indígenas Mbya Guaraní “Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pavë”] often travels while fighting in defense of the forests.
Doña Antolina González, affectionately called “Ña Tola”, is a recognized indigenous leader, member of the directive commission of the FAPI, Federación por la Autodeterminación de los Pueblos Indígenas [Federation for the Self-Determination of Indigenous People]. Her testimony of life would not fit in a report, but even so, she does not mince words to describe a summary of the objective of the association to which she belongs, to tell snippets of her struggle, and to insist on her main concern: the conservation of native forests.
Gonzalez begins speaking in her Guaraní language; with each word she seems to convey facts and feelings: “The struggle of the Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pave Association is for the defense of our forests. We are protective of our environment. That is the goal of the Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pave Association. What I don’t know is how those soybean producers have so much power because the soybean producers, thanks to the power they have, have already deforested all of the trees. We only have forest in the nine member communities of the Tekoa Yma Jehe’a Pave Association. The rest is all soybean,” is the translation of what Ña Tola spoke for this report during her stay in Asunción where she was at the end of November 2020, participating in workshops for indigenous communicators organized by FAPI, points out.
She describes how the soybean spraying floods her community, killing the few animals they try to raise, as well as the fish in the streams, but it’s not the only thing that kills. The water sources that they used to have no longer exist today because the soybean plantations removed the forests, and wiped out everything in their path. That is why there are still native forests only where indigenous communities live, but surrounded by the green of soybean which for about three decades began to be the main problem of communities, and about which complaints of indigenous people have no effect.
The leader says (for 28 years, there has been a presence of soybean in the area. That is what hurts us the most. At least, we want to defend our forests, our springs for which we are so protective. We make the complaints, but nothing happens. We go to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to tell what we know, what we hear, what we feel. We do not go with rumors to the Prosecutor’s Office. There are no answers because it seems that they have an understanding with soybean producers, with the wood traffickers. The soybean producer, and the wood traffickers destroy our forests in the same way destroy our lives).
And that defense of the forests is not just about words. A small, but brave woman, Ña Tola, even threatens her physical integrity by defending the habitat where she lives, a gift that she gives not only to her loved ones, but to the entire Paraguayan society. She was even beaten in a conflict over a judicial measure in another indigenous community. She recounts how her head was beaten on occasion, her belongings were stolen, and great financial damage was inflicted on her, she adds.
We took all this to the Prosecutor’s Office, and they still ignored us. It was seen; everything that happened is known. That episode was 8 years ago. We still have people there in the “Tekoha Guasu” as they call the San Rafael Nature Reserve.
Listening to the story of Ña Tola allows us to imagine a situation, but only by visiting her Ypeti community can we assess what she describes. Ypeti is located in the Aba’i district, 80 km from San Juan Nepomuceno and in this case, it has title to its 1,526 hectares where 160 families reside.
César Centurión, Ña Tola´s son and communicator of the Ypeti Community of Caazapá, accompanies us on a journey to get closer to this reality. From San Juan to Ypeti, a two-hour trip by truck, and muddy ground from recent rains are enough to understand part of this story. Soybean is on both sides of the road, flooding the entire landscape without any type of protection barrier for passersby as required by law 3,742/09 “On the control of phytosanitary products for agricultural use” in its chapter XV, article 71, subsection “c” (It states there must be live protection barriers of a minimum width of five meters, and a minimum height of two meters, or else the crops must be at least 50 meters away from the road for the application of pesticides) not so confirmed through observation.
Every so often, a truck passes us. There is no housing. There are practically no trees, only soybean. In a part of the journey, we pass in by a peasant community, then everything is the same, only soybean.
We finally reached Ypeti, in a place where the indigenous community starts, and the forest begins to be visible again. There is no protection barrier dividing the private property of the indigenous people from the private lands of the agricultural company, a reality which verifies that the subsection “a” of Article 71, Chapter XV of the aforementioned Law 3,742/09 is not observed. A fumigation in the area would clearly enter the precarious homes.
César speaks in Spanish in addition to his native Guaraní. He tells how life is in fumigation days. Headache is the least symptom that it causes them since the population suffers from respiratory diseases as a result of it, and they call them “colds”, a word with which they simplify lung conditions and allergic reactions. He also says that they fear pollution of the Ypeti stream, but that neither the MADES, Ministerio del Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible [Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development], has gone there to verify the condition of the channel despite the complaints, nor the SENAVE, Servicio Nacional de Calidad y Sanidad
Vegetal y de Semillas [National Service for Plant and Seed Quality and Health], the body that enforces Law 3,742/09, neither has intervened in the transgressions by soybean firms, not one time.
Not far from Ypeti, although in another department, the “Arasa Poty” community suffers identical situations. Marcelino Ferreira, a communicator for the ACIDI, Asociación de Comunidades Indígenas de Itapúa [Association of Indigenous Communities of Itapúa], lives in the “Arasa Poty” community in the Carlos Antonio López district with 30 families where he is the leader. This district is located 188 kilometers from Encarnación, the capital of the Itapúa department in the south.
Don Marcelino says that the indigenous people lived in peace in the past. They had everything they needed: water, food, land, forests. Today, the reality is different. “From the forest we took food, traditional medicine, any kind of remedy; it was our supermarket. We lived happily then,” the communicator describes. He is accompanied by Rodrigo Vera, also an ACIDI communicator, and a member of the “Paraiso ” community from the Pirapó district; he nodded while Don Marcelito recounted, as if he were confirming that the same thing also happens in his community. He describes that indigenous families from his area began to migrate 15 years ago. He describes the exodus to the cities, forced by the advance of soybean. “Foreigners come, and cut down woods to plant soybeans. Drought, and fires complicate everything even more, and we do not know if the fires are intentional, but the surrounding properties have been burning up until today,” he says.
He explains that his community Arasa Poty dedicates itself to self-consumption agriculture such as cassava, corn, beans, and sweet potatoes in order to survive, but that the drought in 2020 was very aggressive, and many had lost their crops. There are even those who had no choice, but to work for Brazilians in the face of “the dry season”, as they call the climate phenomenon and out of the need to get food.
In this community, they do not have the problem of occupation of land by their neighbors, but there are other indigenous communities that do, communities where soybean producers come onto the lands, especially those that do not have property rights, Don Marcelino reveals. In their case, the community has the document on the property of 230 hectares.
ACIDI brings together 24 Mbya Guaraní communities who live similar realities, and in that comparison of the past versus the present, communicators from the AAGAC, Asociación de Comunidades Indígenas Ava Guaraní de Alto Canindeyú [Association of Indigenous Communities Ava Guaraní of Alto Canindeyú], which
brings the communities Arroyo Mokoi, Tatukue, Y’apo 3, Y’apo 1, Colonia Cerro Candia, and San Juan together, also testify and agree with the fact that, as time passed, all their habitats and lives that they knew were lost. Ismael López and Mr. Sindulfo Acosta live in the “Arroyo Mokói” community in the Ybyrarovaná district of Canindeyú where 43 families live on a 1,986 hectare property with property title. This district is 86 kilometers from the departmental capital that is Salto del Guairá.
They are dedicated to self-consumption agriculture, but the reality was different in the 70s. “We had everything we needed from the forest then. Food, remedies. We got everything naturally. The forest was large, and there was no need to divide the
community. We were in a large group. Later, the forests were sold; the lands were divided, and the damages came; the natural food was finished (hunting, fishing, gathering), and we had to start buying food,” he describes how they were forced to look for their food in other way with the loss of their ancestral territories.
He points out that soybean is completely around his community today. He characterizes it as “poison” that harms them. Mechanized production develops around their territory polluting the land and air plus the two streams that flow through the property. It affects natural resources in general.
Spraying damages plantations as well as homes and causes physical ailments such as allergic reactions, constant coughing, and sneezing to many humans and animals. This testimony is common among the communities. Although not natural, it painfully became part of their “normal” reality. Some indigenous people who consume the water from the stream get other types of conditions according to the testimony.
“We cannot stop the pollution because some cultivate the place too much, but the damage exists. Many of our crops do not grow because the poison from the fumigation (of soybean) dries them up,” he exemplifies.
He adds that they filed complaints, but no one listens to them, neither the Ministry of the Environment, nor INDI, Instituto Nacional del Indígena [National Institute of the Indigenous People]. Is there a sector in Paraguay that is discriminated against more, and neglected by the governmental bodies as is the case with indigenous communities? This is the question we ask ourselves. Seeing themselves homeless, some indigenous people are working for the Brazilians to do certain maintenance on the farms because generally, they work with tractors there, Don Sildulfo says. “Some who have a driver’s license drive there to support themselves, but they are only a few,” he says.
This pandemic year, it is not the coronavirus that harmed indigenous communities, but mainly the drought and fires which added to the aftermath, and the damages produced by the soybean plantations and spraying. Ramón López, leader of the
Arroyo Mokói Community and father of Ismael López, came to file a tax complaint in 2014 for illegal logging by workers from a company within the indigenous community. Six years have passed, and unsurprisingly there have been no repercussions.
Soybean plantations became a threat to nature. This was announced from the pulpit by an authority of the Catholic Church at the end of November 2020 in the homily of the second day of the novena of the Feast of Caacupé. “It is a sin that a plant as nutritious, and valuable as soybean is, has become a danger to the earth, water, air, animals, and even human beings,” the priest said, and several national media outlets echoed this message.
It is the same thing that the indigenous people have been condemning without being heard while they protect their forests, defending them even with their lives because Justice, and the Paraguayan State outright fail to defend them. All the testimonies collected agree on this.