Enxet

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Enxet people in an engraving of 1861 published in Le Tour du Monde. Le Tour du monde-04-p109.jpg
Enxet people in an engraving of 1861 published in Le Tour du Monde.

The Enxet are an indigenous people of about 17,000 living in the Gran Chaco region of western Paraguay. Originally hunter-gatherers, many are now forced to supplement their livelihood as laborers on the cattle ranches that have encroached upon their dwindling natural forest habitat. [1] Nevertheless, the Enxet are engaged in an ongoing conflict with the government and ranchers, [1] who want to destroy what remains of the forest to open the land for massive settlement. Today,[ when? ] only a handful of Enxet are still maintain their traditional way of life, while the majority live in small settlements sponsored by various missionary organizations. [1] The Enxet and Enlhet languages are still vigorous.

Contents

Land ownership

In 2006, 90 Enxet families, the Sawhoyamaxa, won a legal battle to 14,404 hectares of their traditional lands, bought up by Heribert Roedel. [2] The land was signed over in 2011. [3]

Lingering Effects of the Chaco War on the Enxet People

The Enxet tribe suffered devastating blows during the Chaco War period (1932-1935). The Chaco War was fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over control of natural resources in the Chaco region of South America. The front of this war stretched directly through Chaco territory, ravaging ancestral lands and severely disrupting cultural way of life. [4]

During the military colonization of Chaco, the Enxet verbal history was damaged, as members of the tribe were killed before sharing their history. [5] To make matters worse, they were struck with a brutal smallpox epidemic in 1932, which resulted in the deaths of nearly half of the Enxet population. [5] The Paraguayans also abused the Enxet natives, with a first hand Enxet report stating: "They {Paraguayans} wanted the women. If a man refused they would kill him, even if he was a leader. The Paraguayans had no qualms about shooting an Enxet." [5] Though no conscription is overly reported, the Enxet population was targeted by both Bolivia and Paraguay due to fears revolving around the Natives being spies. [6] This would lead to further devastation among the populace of the Chaco region.

In the aftermath of Paraguay's victory in the Chaco War, the government became more committed to settling and developing the Chaco. [7] Subsequently, much of Enxet land would be divided, deforested, and given to cattle farmers. [8] The deforestation coupled with the overgrazing of cattle left the land forever scarred. [8] Today, the Enxet hold title to approximately 2.8 percent of the area they occupied before the start of the Chaco War. [9] Their population has yet to recover, and is currently only about 8,200 strong. [9]

Court case, water and other rights

The right to water was considered in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights case of the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay. [10] The issues involved the states failure to acknowledge indigenous communities' property rights over ancestral lands.[ citation needed ] In 1991, the state removed the indigenous Sawhoyamaxa community from the land resulting in their loss of access to water, food, schooling and health services. [10] This fell within the scope of the American Convention on Human Rights; article 4, encroaching the right to life. [11] Water is included in this right, as part of access to land. The courts required the lands to be returned, compensation provided, and basic goods and services to be implemented, while the community was in the process of having their lands returned. [12]

Re-occupation

In 2013, the land still not being vacated, the Sawhoyamaxa re-occupied the land. [13]

Supreme court ruling

In 2014 the Paraguay Supreme Court rejected a claim that government expropriation of the land (in order to transfer it to the Sawhoyamaxa), was unconstitutional. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paraguay</span> Country in South America

Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of around 6.1 million, nearly 2.3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous peoples in Brazil</span> Ethnic group

The Indigenous peoples in Brazil are the peoples who lived in Brazil before European contact around 1500 and their descendants. Indigenous peoples once comprised an estimated 2,000 district tribes and nations inhabiting what is now Brazil. The 2010 Brazil census recorded 305 ethnic groups of Indigenous people who spoke 274 Indigenous languages; however, almost 77% speak Portuguese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Concepción department, Paraguay</span> Department of Paraguay

Concepción is a department of Paraguay. The capital is the city of Concepción.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gran Chaco</span> Region of south-central Southern America

The Gran Chaco or Dry Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland tropical dry broadleaf forest natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, where it is connected with the Pantanal region. This land is sometimes called the Chaco Plain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paraguayan Chaco</span> Region in Paraguay

The Paraguayan Chaco or Región Occidental is a semi-arid region in Paraguay, with a very low population density. It is the Paraguayan part of the Gran Chaco. The area is being rapidly deforested, with the highest deforestation rate in the Gran Chaco and 50% of the forest projected to be lost by 2030. Consisting of 61% of Paraguay's land area, but with very little of the population, the Chaco is one of the most sparsely inhabited areas in South America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uncontacted peoples</span> Peoples living without sustained contact to the world community

Uncontacted peoples are groups of Indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Groups who decide to remain uncontacted are referred to as indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Legal protections make estimating the total number of uncontacted peoples challenging, but estimates from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the UN and the nonprofit group Survival International point to between 100 and 200 uncontacted tribes numbering up to 10,000 individuals total. A majority of uncontacted peoples live in South America, particularly northern Brazil, where the Brazilian government and National Geographic estimate between 77 and 84 tribes reside.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wichí</span> South American indigenous group of mataco-mataguaya origin

The Wichí are an indigenous people of South America. They are a large group of tribes inhabiting the headwaters of the Bermejo River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and Bolivia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toba people</span> Guaycuru ethnic group of northern Argentina

The Toba people, also known as the Qom people, are one of the largest indigenous groups in Argentina who historically inhabited the region known today as the Pampas of the Central Chaco. During the 16th century, the Qom inhabited a large part of what is today northern Argentina, in the current provinces of Salta, Chaco, Santiago del Estero, Formosa and the province of Gran Chaco in the southeast of the Department of Tarija in Bolivia. Currently, many Toba, due to persecution in their rural ancestral regions, live in the suburbs of San Ramón de la Nueva Orán, Salta, Tartagal, Resistencia, Charata, Formosa, Rosario and Santa Fe and in Greater Buenos Aires. Nearly 130,000 people currently identify themselves as Toba or Qom. With more than 120,000 Qom living in Argentina, the Qom community is one of the largest indigenous communities in the country.

The Mbayá or Mbyá are an indigenous people of South America which formerly ranged on both sides of the Paraguay River, on the north and northwestern Paraguay frontier, eastern Bolivia, and in the adjacent province of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. They have also been called Caduveo. In the 16th century the Mbayá were called Guaycuru, a name later used generically for all the nomadic and semi-nomadic indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco. The Kadiwéu people of Brazil are the surviving branch of the Mbayá.

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The Mascoian languages, also known as Enlhet–Enenlhet, Lengua–Mascoy, or Chaco languages, are a small, closely related language family of Paraguay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ayoreo</span> Indigenous people of Bolivia and Paraguay

The Ayoreo are an indigenous people of the Gran Chaco. They live in an area surrounded by the Paraguay, Pilcomayo, Parapetí, and Grande Rivers, spanning both Bolivia and Paraguay. There are approximately 5,600 Ayoreo people in total. Around 3,000 live in Bolivia, and 2,600 live in Paraguay. Traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers, the majority of the population was sedentarized by missionaries in the twentieth century. The few remaining uncontacted Ayoreo are threatened by deforestation and loss of territory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mennonites in Paraguay</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous peoples in Paraguay</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ava Guaraní people</span> Indigenous people in Bolivia

The Ava Guaraní are an Indigenous peoples formerly known as Chiriguanos or Chiriguano Indians who speak the Ava Guarani and Eastern Bolivian Guaraní languages. Noted for their warlike character, the Chiriguanos retained their lands in the Andes foothills of southeastern Bolivia from the 16th to the 19th centuries by fending off, first, the Inca Empire, later, the Spanish Empire, and, still later, independent Bolivia. The Chiriguanos were finally subjugated in 1892.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 International, Survival. "Enxet". www.survivalinternational.org. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  2. ↑ "Land at last for Indians evicted by fraudster".
  3. ↑ "Two decades of legal battles, but land at last".
  4. ↑ Kalisch, Hannes; Unruh, Ernesto (2022). Don't cry! the Enlhet history of the Chaco War. Montreal Kingston London Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN   978-0-2280-1173-6.
  5. 1 2 3 Kalisch, Hannes; Unruh, Ernesto (2022). Don't cry! the Enlhet history of the Chaco War. Montreal Kingston London Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN   978-0-2280-1173-6.
  6. ↑ Ehrinpreis, Andrew (April 2020). "Green Gold, Green Hell:Coca, Caste, and Class in the Chaco War, 1932–1935". The Americas. 77 (2): 217–245. doi:10.1017/tam.2019.110. ISSN   0003-1615.
  7. ↑ Kidd, Stephen W. (February 1995). "Land, Politics and Benevolent Shamanism: The Enxet Indians in a Democratic Paraguay". Journal of Latin American Studies. 27 (1): 43–75. doi:10.1017/s0022216x00010166. ISSN   0022-216X.
  8. 1 2 Correia, Joel E. (4 April 2023), "Chapter 3: Biopolitics of Neglect", Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco, University of California Press, pp. 80–100, ISBN   978-0-520-39310-3 , retrieved 15 November 2024
  9. 1 2 Kalisch, Hannes; Unruh, Ernesto (2022). Don't cry! the Enlhet history of the Chaco War. Montreal Kingston London Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN   978-0-2280-1173-6.
  10. 1 2 Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 29 March 2006).
  11. ↑ "American Convention on Human Rights". Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 22 November 1969. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  12. ↑ , International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, Case of Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay.
  13. 1 2 Hill, David (7 October 2014). "Paraguay's Supreme Court issues 'historic' land ruling". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 28 June 2024.


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