Paraguay

On August 3, the government of Paraguay officially returned almost 9,000 hectares of ancestral lands to the Indigenous community Kelyenmagategma of the Enxet people in response to a petition the filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2004.

In South America's Gran Chaco, voluntarily isolated indigenous groups are still dodging the rampant development of the region, and with good reason: those that have already come out have found that even greater isolation awaits

During the first United Nations International Decade on the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004), there were a number of positive developments for the world’s indigenous peoples. Many countries adopted legislation concerning land, resources, culture, language, education, justice, intellectual property rights, and in some instances, legal pluralism, autonomy, and self-governance. In 1989, just before the decade began, the International Labor Organization adopted Convention #169 on indigenous and tribal peoples, and since 1996 the U.N.

Deep within the heart of South America lies the Paraguayan Chaco, a desolate, semi-arid region - similar topographically and climatically to the Australian Outback - that is home to nine different indigenous peoples with a total population of approximately 40,000. These groups include the Ayoreo, Chamacoco, Enxet, Nivakle, Manjuy, Maka'a, Toba Qom, Nandeva, and the Guarayo.

There are about 250,000 Indians in Brazil. This number is less than 0.2 percent of the national population (140 million people). It is fundamental to consider the low demographic proportion of Indians when discussing the situation of indigenous peoples in Brazil.

Both the popular press and scientific literature have documented the recent wave of forest clearing in South America's moist tropical forests.

In the past year Cultural Survival has worked with environmentalist organizations, notably the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund, in urging Congress to pay attention to the harmful social and environmental effects of many loans made by the large multilateral development banks (MDBs). In this connection I testified on September 18, 1985 before the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, chaired by Senator Kasten.

The situation of Eastern Paraguay's indigenous population improved from 1977 to 1982. Much of the improvement came in the critical areas of land acquisition and rights. Although less than a handful of communities have received formal title, considerable demarcation has taken place and a few communities have been recognized as National Indian Colonies, an essential step toward eventual titling. Prior to 1977, independent Indian communities lacked even access to this process.

Paraguayan law #904/81, the "Estatuto de las Comunidades Indigenas," was created in 1981 to provide land and land title to Paraguay's Indian communities.

FOR more than thirty years, the Amuesha Indian community of Miraflores (Oxapampa, Peru) has provided young girls as servants to neighboring haciendas and the homes of the region's lumber barons. During the past ten years, as the demand for servants in the urban areas has grown, more and more Amuesha girls have been taken to Lima to work in middle class homes.

INSECTICIDES

DDT - Banned for crop use in the U.S. since 1972, DDT is still used in many countries. DDT contamination has led to the rejection of beef shipments to the U.S. from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In 1976, 500,000 pounds of beef from El Salvador was rejected for DDT levels of 95 ppm (the acceptable U.S. level is 5 ppm). In Guatemala, the average level of DDT in cows' milk is 90 times that allowed in the U.S. Residents of Guatemala and Nicaragua carry 31 times more DDT in their blood than those of the U.S.