NGO: Corporate Land Invasion Puts Paraguay's Indigenous at Risk

The cattle company Itapoti is invading Indigenous ancestral land and seriously threatening their survival, denounced an environmental organization Thursday.

“It has become urgent to implement effective measures that would totally and immediately paralyze the building of fences inside the Indigenous estate,” said the organization Gente, Ambiente y Territorio (People, Environment and Territory) in a statement, blaming the inaction of the country's justice.

The communique explains the invaded lands are in part property of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, an Indigenous community living in the Chaco, a vast expanse of dense, scrub forest located in over Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina, and part owned by the current government.

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The Ayoreo territory is part of the last virgin woods remaining in the Paraguayan Chaco, which represents a unique ecosystem in America; deforestation is threatening this, reaching dramatic levels in this region close to the Brazilian border.

Next week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who will be visiting Washington, is expected to release a joint statement with U.S. President Barack Obama expressing both countries' commitment to the success of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris later this year. Brazil has managed to reduce deforestation sharply in the past 10 years; nevertheless, almost 5,000 square kilo​meters of forests are still lost every year.