Cultural Survival requires solidarity with the Yvy Pyte neighborhood of the Paĩ Tavyterã Indigenous Peoples within the division of Amambay, Paraguay, who’ve been threatened and attacked by unlawful invaders of their territories since 2021.
As a corporation that promotes the rights of Indigenous Peoples all over the world, Cultural Survival respects and helps Indigenous Peoples being the directors and caretakers of their territories based on their very own cosmovisions. Indigenous Peoples usually face threats to their bodily, psychological and social integrity because of exercising this proper, as is at present occurring with the Yvy Pyte Indigenous neighborhood of the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks. Since 2021, they’ve been attacked by armed strangers who come to Yvy Pyte, a spot of nice significance for the Paĩ Tavyterã for being one of many final remaining tekoha guasu (affiliation amongst a number of communities in the identical territory) within the area, in addition to for the basic shut relationship this neighborhood has with the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks’s fatherland, Jasuka Venda. Given this severe scenario, Cultural Survival declares:
- That, since time immemorial, the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks have taken care of their territories and have protected the world often called Jasuka Venda with the only goal of preserving it as a sacred place with cultural worth and, furthermore, which holds essential biodiversity together with many species of timber, animals, and different assets.
- That, because the starting of 2021, Cultural Survival has been following the intense scenario the Paĩ Tavyterã face because of the invasion and deforestation of their territory, which worsened in October 2022 when two neighborhood leaders, Alcides Morilla Romero and Rodrigo Gómez González, were assassinated throughout a confrontation between Paraguayan state safety forces and the EPP (Paraguayan Folks’s Military), a non-state armed group.
- That, of the 550 households comprising Yvy Pyte, 64 households–together with kids and aged folks–are being straight affected as victims of assaults together with compelled displacement, partial or complete destruction of Yvy Pyte’s gateway and bounds, constructing of homes and bounds by outsiders of their land, and assaults towards neighborhood members’ homes, placing in danger their skill to stay within the land they’ve inhabited since time immemorial.
- That, on July 31, 2023, the Yvy Pyte neighborhood suffered an assault by which unknown people invaded and fenced a part of the land of the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks. Invaders additionally fired photographs into the air to threaten the neighborhood. Since then, different invasion makes an attempt have adopted.
- That the neighborhood has filed the suitable official complaints, up to now receiving no favorable reply from the accountable authorities.
Cultural Survival calls on the worldwide neighborhood for solidarity with the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks to assist them in defending and defending their land towards the abuses they’re struggling. Furthermore, we condemn any kind of violence towards the Paĩ Tavyterã households because it represents a complete disrespect to their Indigenous and human rights.
Likewise, we name on the related authorities in Paraguay, particularly the Paraguayan Indigenous Institute (INDI), the Prosecutor’s Workplace, and the police, to take motion to cease the assaults, that are conflicts completely unrelated to the Paĩ Tavyterã Folks however which satirically have an effect on them essentially the most, placing their lives in peril and threatening their tradition as Indigenous Peoples.
Pictures by Christian Kent, Ary Ojasojavo – Grupo de Estudio Ancestrales.
