There are 19 indigenous peoples in Paraguay. Although Paraguay has adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the fundamental rights of the country’s indigenous peoples are continuously violated. They are especially challenged by structural discrimination and lack of economic, social, and cultural rights.
There are 19 Indigenous Peoples in Paraguay. Paraguay voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 and ratified ILO Convention 169. However, Indigenous Peoples are especially challenged by structural discrimination and lack of economic, social, and cultural rights and the state does not promote, interpret, or apply the declaration nor the convention sufficiently, and thus the fundamental rights of Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples are constantly violated. This deficiency is seen in all three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.
Indigenous Peoples of Paraguay
Five linguistic families and 19 Indigenous Peoples self-identify in Paraguay: Guaraní (Aché, Avá Guaraní, Mbya, Pai Tavytera, Guaraní Ñandeva, Guaraní Occidental), Maskoy (Toba Maskoy, Enlhet North, Enxet South, Sanapaná, Angaité, Guaná), Mataco Mataguayo (Nivaclé, Maká, Manjui), Zamuco (Ayoreo, Yvytoso, Tomáraho) and Guaicurú (Qom). According to 2017 statistics, the country’s Indigenous population numbers 122,461 individuals.
According to the National Indigenous Census on Population and Housing 2012, the largest portion of the indigenous population, that is 52.3%, inhabits in the Eastern region, while the Chaco region contains the greatest diversity of peoples.
Although Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples form a part of the country’s great diversity and cultural wealth, they are also victims of systematic, structural discrimination by the state and by non-indigenous society. In this regard, they represent the country’s poorest, most excluded, most marginalized population, and all human rights of the Indigenous Peoples —civil, cultural, economic, social, and political— are violated and undermined on a constant basis. This situation principally plays out through the invasion, destruction, and expulsion from their traditional lands and ancestral territories, where they live their lives and where their worldview, survival, and cultural practices are deeply rooted.
Main challenges for Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples
During 2016, the state intensified the structural discrimination faced by Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples, as was expressly observed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial (CERD), non-treaty bodies, and treaty bodies of the UN, as well as other international monitoring bodies. This discrimination translates into violations of the rights of the Indigenous Peoples both by acts and omissions of the state. An example is the forced removal of communities from their ancestral territories.
Another challenge of Paraguay’s Indigenous Peoples relates to structural discrimination. Factors such as corruption, the concentration of land ownership and environmental degradation combined with institutional weaknesses hinder progress in alleviating poverty and create obstacles for the indigenous population’s dignified access to fundamental rights, such as water, education, and health, among others.
The rates of poverty and extreme poverty among Indigenous Peoples are 75% and 60% respectively, which far exceeds the national average. As for the situation of children under the age of five, the rate of extreme poverty is 63%, compared to the 26% national average, and the rate of chronic malnutrition is 41.7%, compared to a 17.5% national average. These figures demonstrate the profound gap of inequality separating the Indigenous Peoples from the rest of the population.
The violation of these rights and the situation of discrimination are indeed due to the asymmetry of economic power of agro-business in comparison with the Indigenous Peoples. Yet another fundamental factor is that the state is absent in applying the control that ought to be provided by the Ministry of Justice and Labor.
Potential progress for the Indigenous Peoples in Paraguay
In the context of an Inter-institutional Cooperation Agreement with the Supreme Court of Electoral Justice (TSJE), the Civil Registry and Department for Identification, the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Leaders of the Lower Chaco (Clibch), Diakonia and the NGO Tierraviva in the context of a European Union project being conducted to document and record members of 70 indigenous communities on the electoral register, resulting in documents being issued to more than 21,000 people in a department inhabited by a total of 27,000.
According to the preliminary results of the National Population and Housing Census conducted in 2022, the Indigenous population comprises some 140,206 people who state that they belong to one of 19 Indigenous Peoples. This represents 2.29% of Paraguay’s total population.[1]
In his inaugural speech in April 2023, Santiago Peña, president-elect, did not devote a single word to Indigenous Peoples, nor to their ancestral land claims.
It was against this backdrop that, according to media reports, less than 1% of the eligible candidates running in the 2023 general elections were Indigenous.[2]
Five linguistic families and 19 Indigenous Peoples self-identify in Paraguay: the Guaraní (Aché, Avá Guaraní, Mbya, Pai Tavytera, Guaraní Ñandeva, Guaraní Occidental), Maskoy (Toba Maskoy, Enlhet North, Enxet South, Sanapaná, Angaité, Guaná), Mataco Mataguayo (Nivaclé, Maká, Manjui), Zamuco (Ayoreo, Yvytoso, Tomáraho) and Guaicurú (Qom). According to statistics from 2017, the country's Indigenous population stands at 122,461 people.
BY MIGUEL LOVERA , JIEUN KANG, MIGUEL ÁNGEL ALARCÓN, NORMA FLORES ALLENDE AND LEONARDO TAMBURINI
Close to 150 members of the Ayoreo people in voluntary isolation survive in the Chaco region in the border between Bolivia and Paraguay. Among the signs that evidence their presence are the wholes and marks on trees; tools and huts found; footprints near bodies of water; and abandoned objects. Today, they are threatened by deforestation, the construction of roads, megafires, and the advance of the farm and cattle ranching frontier. Both countries should take measures to guarantee the protection of these peoples’ territories as well as their survival.
The Aché people inhabited the vast eastern jungles of Paraguay for centuries. Their history is marked by bloodshed and dispossession. Kryýgi's life did not escape this dynamic: after her family was murdered, her name was changed to Damiana, she was forced to work as a maid and then was taken to Argentina. When she reached adolescence, she was admitted to a neuropsychiatric hospital where she died of tuberculosis. The condition of her remains was not the best. While her skeleton was lost in the La Plata Museum, her skull ended up in a German university. A century later, the Aché people managed to reconstruct her body and return it to the jungle from where it should never have left.
Five linguistic families and 19 Indigenous Peoples self-identify as such in Paraguay: the Guaraní (Aché, Avá Guaraní, Mbya, Paĩ Tavyterã, Guaraní Ñandeva, Guaraní Occidental), Maskoy (Toba Maskoy, Enlhet North, Enxet South, Sanapaná, Angaité, Guaná), Mataco Mataguayo (Nivaclé, Maká, Manjui), Zamuco (Ayoreo, Yvytoso, Tomáraho) and Guaicurú (Qom). According to 2017 statistics, the country's Indigenous population stands at 122,461 individuals.
Chapter V of the 1992 Constitution acknowledges Indigenous Peoples as cultural groups dating back to before the formation and organisation of the Paraguayan State, recognising them rights such as ethnic identity, communal property, participation and education, and taking into account their specific cultural features, among other things.
Five linguistic families and 19 Indigenous Peoples self-identify in Paraguay: Guaraní (Aché, Avá Guaraní, Mbya, Pai Tavytera, Guaraní Ñandeva, Guaraní Occidental), Maskoy (Toba Maskoy, Enlhet North, Enxet South, Sanapaná, Angaité, Guaná), Mataco Mataguayo (Nivaclé, Maká, Manjui), Zamuco (Ayoreo, Yvytoso, Tomáraho) and Guaicurú (Qom). According to 2017 statistics, the country's Indigenous population numbers 122,461 individuals.
Chapter V of the 1992 Constitution recognises Indigenous Peoples as groups with cultures that precede the formation and organisation of the Paraguayan state, recognising their rights to ethnic identity, communal property, participation and an education that takes into account their specific cultures, etc.
IWGIA - International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs - is a global human rights organisation dedicated to promoting and defending Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Read more.
