Thursday, October 13, 2011

Paraguay: Aché Community Removes Brazilian Farmers From Ancestral Lands

Paraguay: Aché Community Removes Brazilian Farmers From Ancestral Lands

I'll be darned. I think I've become so accustomed to reading things that go the other way (i.e., farmers/military/whatever displacing indigenous community) that I couldn't read this headline properly at all.

On Tuesday, October 11th, members from the Aché community of Chupa Pou sent individuals armed with bows and arrows into a 2,000-hectare (nearly 5,000 acres) area to defend it from Brazilian farmers who were on the land. The Chupa Pou community not only claims the land as their traditional territory, but that in 2007 the Paraguayan government — after a struggle of many years — purchased the land for the Aché people, thus giving them legal title as well. Although there were no reports of bloodshed, the Community’s maneuver did successfully get 250 Brazilian farmers to leave the area, although they told the media that they would return.