Ayoreos stripped of land sell to their hair to survive

Malkya Tudela / Santa Cruz

A month ago, 30 Ayorea families from the Yokidai-27 de Mayo community were violently evicted from the lands that the Guarani nation had ceded to them within the Alto y Bajo Isoso TCO. Now they are housed in a coliseum in the capital of Santa Cruz with the desire to return to their community, but without guarantees to do so.

On the outskirts of the coliseum, three hairdressers measure the hair of Ayorea women with the intention of buying their hair to make wigs and extensions for beauty salons. Everything is done on the go, right on the sidewalk, while a parked vehicle waits for the hairdressers.

Since they arrived at the coliseum, a space ceded by the Villa Primero de Mayo sub-mayor, the families sleep on the cement floor or in the stands, without mattresses or duvets to contain the low temperatures of dawn.

Some 35 families from the Yokidai-27 de Mayo community were violently evicted on December 22. Aida Chiqueno recalls the events: “That day we did not think anything of those countrymen (migrants). We went to the sale (store) that is two and a half kilometers away. At five we wanted to go back, we saw that there was smoke, the rocket was sounding. I cried, the other ladies cried, the boys cried."

They don't have documents and the older women haven't received their bonus in two months because they don't have those papers. Last Wednesday afternoon, they were the first to sell their long, gray hair to raise some money.

Families cook in a common pot, but only rice is guaranteed. They have potable water, but the toilets are in disrepair. Children start getting sick with infections and some older women suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure.

“They come to kill us”

The Yokidai eviction has remained a trauma in the memory of the women. Mariana Picaneray is moved by remembering: “They arrived at half past five in the afternoon. They didn't speak, we just heard the tractor, I ran to a tree because that's where we picked up the cell phone signal. When we saw the tractor, I went to look for my son, I wasn't thinking if they were coming to take us out with firearms. When they grabbed my aunt and uncle behind me, they shot into the air, I said "they're coming to kill us."

The oppressors took their identity documents, the minute book and seal of the community, and even the bachelor's degrees of the leader and his daughters. Mariana's grandmother has not been able to collect her bonus due to lack of papers. The affected families also cannot access medical services, they say, for the same reason.

“I found my son, but I didn't find my five-month-pregnant sister, says Mariana. I saw her later on the mountain. We know that those who do not want us on earth are to the north, but the other community that accepts us is on the other side. That's why I went south. I asked for water. I couldn't pick up some water because I had to run into the bush. I couldn't lift my son's slippers. Ahead we found a water well in the mountains, and we drank from there”.

In a report dated December 31, INRA technicians reported the result of their inspection: around 20 homes with tin roofs and brick walls (mud) destroyed and burned; in addition to "the total destruction of a light generator, kitchens, cots, mattresses, motorcycles, televisions and other dismantled and/or burned."

“They already disassembled everything”

A member of the Yokidai community and the authority of the TCO Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI), Gualberto Manuel Gamarra and Erwin Moreno, filed a lawsuit with the Prosecutor's Office for the crimes of aggravated robbery, assault, encroachment, trespassing, kidnapping and others.

Roy Gutiérrez explains that the big captain Gualberto Manuel took days to present the complaint for being affected by coronavirus. Added to this was the fact that the lawsuit bounced between the Pailón and Cabezas (Charagua-Gutiérrez) prosecutors, since those authorities denied having jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs provided photographs of people who acted in the eviction and the license plate of a truck they used, in addition to identifying members of the Guayacán II community as the possible perpetrators of the crimes.

The director of INRA Santa Cruz, Adalberto Rojas, explains that the inspection found no people occupying the place. “They don't live there, they are producers, they go, plant and nobody lives there. They already disassembled everything. They do not have clearing permission, they have already planted”, says Roy Gutiérrez, technical adviser of the TCO Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI), about the encroachers.

Since it is a TCO titled in favor of the Guarani people, that is, without pending titles or dispute over public lands, INRA declares that it has no competence in the case and that the inspection will be its only action.

Transhumant

The Ayoreos “move from one place to another, they don't delimit it (the land), they do the minimum agricultural work..., that's why that place is not only ceded by the Guarani, but the Ayoreos have years before I have been traveling through those lands”, explains Adalberto Rojas. At the same time, he admits that in the case of the Yokidai community “their way of life has been interrupted”.

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The Ayoreos housed in the coliseum of District 7 of Santa Cruz have more of a story of roots in their land. The women are worried about their crops of corn, beans, pumpkin, joco, and watermelon, and about their abandoned chickens, pigs, and dogs.

Martín Perez, born in Villazón, is a member of the community by marriage to an Ayorea. He was beaten and his hands were tied along with other community members, put in a vehicle and abandoned in the middle of a neighborhood road. He says that the Ayoreos of Yokidai seek to interact with non-Ayoreos because of the ideas of work and savings that they bring with them.

Whether sedentary or transhumant, the Yokidai community does not own land.

Miguel Vargas, director of Cejis, explains that there is "an outstanding debt from the State with the Ayoreo people, who are in a highly vulnerable situation." Despite this, the Ayoreo have several TCO titles in their favor: Santa Teresita, Sapocó, Rincón del Tigre and Tobité.

“The pressure in the Colony and in the last stage of the 20th century, with the presence of the evangelical church, has weakened the organic instances of the Ayoreo,” says Vargas.

Mariana continues to feel sorry for what could happen to her father, Daniel Picaneray: "They wanted to burn my father alive, my aunt told me 'they looked for your father to burn him alive because he is a leader here.'"

Daniel Picaneray spends his days with his community, in the coliseum of District 7. He explains that the Yokidai community had been in this place for a year, having broken away from another Ayorea community, Posa Verdes, which also has permission from the Guarani to occupy land temporarily in the Alto y Bajo Isoso TCO.

“There is a Guarani leader who sells land. They don't want us because we're not paying,” says Picaneray.

Parallel directions

The TCO Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI) has an internal organic problem. There are two leaders that claim to be represented, on the one hand is Gualberto Manuel and, on the other, is Hubert Ribero, who specifically calls himself the representative of Bajo Isoso. At the same time, both representatives also act in terms of disposing of the land.

“It was said that they were intercultural communities (the ones that overwhelmed Yokidai). Leaders of the Guarani communities come to our offices and tell us that they, too, on some occasion made agreements with peasant communities that were not intercultural,” says Adalberto Rojas.

For Miguel Vargas, from Cejis, this problem is linked to the presence of interculturals in the Ñembi Guasu conservation and ecological importance area, created on 1.2 million hectares by the indigenous autonomy of Charagua, where since 2018 -2019 INRA has authorized around 89 settlements of intercultural groups.

“This area is in dispute, it is part of the expansion of the agricultural frontier to the Chaco area. Everything that is Chiquitana, Santa Cruz del Este, is expanding, it is reaching the Chaco area and it is generating these tensions”, says Vargas.

How common is it to find indigenous communities without land? Adalberto Rojas explains that eight months after taking office he became aware of the problem: “At Ciidob we found out that many of the local communities in La Chiquitana were without land, because it is considered that having approved the TCO of the indigenous communities, many already They have a place to be, but that is not so.

Back to what

Adalberto Rojas also explains that he has suggested to the Ayoreos that they return to their community: "We advise them to return to their territory, but that would have to be done with public protection or with a project that can be developed in the place."

“Yesterday when we went to drop off groceries there were sick children that we had to take in the van to the health center. They wanted to be vaccinated against the covid by a brigade, but they could not because you know that a photocopy of the license is needed. They are not used to being in the city,” says Ayorea assemblywoman Gigliana Etacore, who has visited the community at the District 7 Coliseum, on the outskirts of the Santa Cruz capital.

She has obtained donations of clothing and shelter for women, children and the elderly, and managed the visit of the Ombudsman's Office to bring some humanitarian aid to the Ayorean families.

However, the needs of the people grow over time: physical and psychological discomforts begin to appear from being away from their land.

“There are some who are coughing, they have a fever. The neighbors are giving us clothes and food. Leaders came and we asked them to bring mattresses, but we don't want to be here anymore, we want to return to our land, to our house”, says Mariana, while the women nod.