By Don Anque
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

Asunción, Paraguay – Indigenous families living in a squatter settlement on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital of Asunción have organized themselves. Now, they have a community soup kitchen and are producing handicrafts to sell. Many of the families say they do not want to return to panhandling on the streets of Asunción, far away from their home villages.

Cerro Poty soup kitchen located on the outskirts of Asunción pictured here.  Photo by Reuters.

“We used to go out on the street and ask for money, with our children, at the stoplights,” Petrona Ruiz, one of the women running the Cerro Poty soup kitchen. “But we haven’t gone out to beg on the streets in three months.”

Earlier this year, Amnesty International claimed that the government of Paraguay is failing to adequately protect the rights of its indigenous peoples. Amnesty International’s March 2009 report on Paraguay stated that many of its indigenous peoples were forced to live in misery and effectively condemning some to death.

Many years ago, the Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous communities were displaced from their traditional lands and were promised by the Paraguayan government that their lands would be returned to them.  For more than 10 years of living at the side of the Pozo Colorado-Concepción highway, these communities lived without access to their land they live in precarious conditions, unable to source water and food for themselves and with inadequate provision of health and education.

After a breakthrough court decision, the Paraguayan government was ordered to a return the ancestral lands to the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous People in a span of three years as well as to undertake a series of measures to ensure their survival in the interim.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International  – PARAGUAY’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN PERIL – 31 March 2009

IPS News  – Indigenous Squatter Communities Organise Self-Help – 02 August 2009

Amnesty International- Indigenous Peoples’ Rights – Solidarity across borders – 16 July 2009