# The end of the Ayoreo? The race to find proof that Paraguay’s uncontacted people exist

A vast ranch in the country’s Chaco region is quietly deforesting a huge swath of land. Indigenous people say this could be deadly for their isolated relatives but others say there is no evidence that anyone lives there.

 signs of human occupation been identified.”

He said any sighting of uncontacted people within Faro Moro “would be considered extraordinary and exceptional, and without doubt would have been reported to management and spread throughout the whole region”.

Citing client confidentiality, Cramer declined to confirm who owns Faro Moro. But he revealed that leadership positions within Hekopora are occupied by AgrInvest, an agricultural investment and management firm with offices in Hamburg, Germany and a portfolio of 13 ranches across Paraguay, adding to growing concerns over rich nations exporting biodiversity loss.

Dr Jeffrey Thompson, who studies jaguars and their prey with Conacyt, says he conducted research at Faro Moro for several years starting in 2017, including operating more than 200 camera traps for four months. He lamented the large-scale licensed deforestation “from the perspective of habitat loss”.

But Thompson says he had seen no evidence of isolated groups, and that neither the ranch’s then-owner, employees, nor neighbouring communities had mentioned them. “I don’t think there are uncontacted Indigenous people there,” he says.

Yet according to Iniciativa Amotocodie, Faro Moro is the central link in a  between the PNCAT, an Ayoreo reserve, and the dense forest along the border with Bolivia. If this fragile chain of tree cover is broken, Ayoreo groups that range widely in search of sustenance could perish, or be forced to leave the forest, says the NGO.

> We’re still in the era of feudalism, where the lord does what he wants with his property and whatever’s in it

Marilina Marichal, lawyer

Those that survive this process – the most recent contact was in 2004 – are “always kept on the margins” of modern society, left dependent on Mennonite, Paraguayan and Brazilian landlords for work, says Miguel Alarcón, the NGO’s coordinator. “So much is lost,” he adds. “It’s the annihilation of a culture and a way of life.”

In February, the International Working Group on Indigenous Peoples Living in Voluntary Isolation (GTI-PIACI), a coalition of native organisations from across South America, warned that uncontacted Ayoreo at Faro Moro face an “alarming risk of contact and genocide”.

Last May, Ayoreo communities went before a judge in the Mennonite colony of Filadelfia, about 80km (50 miles) south, in search of an urgent court order to halt the deforestation. The court ruled against them. Appeals have since been rejected. They are now preparing to take the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, says Marilina Marichal, a lawyer representing the Ayoreo.

International treaties legally bind Paraguay – and its own constitution – to protect , she argues. But in practice, “we’re still in the era of feudalism, where the lord does what he wants with his property and whatever’s in it”.

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The threats to the Ayoreo and their forest home are mounting. The , a new highway for agribusiness bisecting the Chaco, due to be completed in 2026, will ramp up road traffic and ranching activity – and .

, the mineral crucial for smartphones, datacentres and electric vehicles, also linked to , Bolivia and Chile.

Years of drought –  – have left the Chaco’s vegetation prone to raging wildfires. One such blaze, started on deforested ranch land in September, .

Yet Paraguay’s farming groups and many Mennonites dispute the scientific . They also defend the cattle industry as bringing growth to an isolated region of one of South America’s poorest countries. Top destinations for Paraguayan beef – with  – include Chile, Taiwan, Brazil, Israel, the US and Russia.

The Paraguayan Rural Association claims that reports of uncontacted people at Faro Moro . Werner Schroeder, 57, a Mennonite lawyer and the ranching lobby group’s regional president, assisted Faro Moro’s defence in the lawsuit. He has never visited the property, but he thinks it is “99.9% impossible” that uncontacted Ayoreo live there.

“We should exist somehow," says Schroeder. “They haven’t even shown us a photo.” He claims that witnesses who testified before the court that they had seen “wild people” had imagined it, or been coached.

“Who is behind this?” he asks. “Why do they want to put a brake on development?”

He complains that ranchers’ margins are being squeezed by Europe’s “extremist” environmental standards and punishing drought, although he maintains that humans contribute “little or nothing” to global heating.

Two-thirds of , three times the national average. Schroeder argues that they enjoy “excessive” privileges, suggesting they should have to choose between Indigenous status and the right to vote. “The Indigenous are our neighbours, and we’ll have to live with them,” he concedes. “They need us.”

Another Mennonite argues that the Chaco is at a crisis point but differs profoundly on the way forward. Riky Unger, 53, is the high school principal in the colony of Neuland.

The tall biologist and theologian in a tweed jacket and jeans is unpopular with his peers for several reasons: he’s divorced, believes in human-made climate change, encourages his students to question their elders and recently awarded a scholarship to an Indigenous Nivaclé girl.

Unger is also scathing about Mennonite claims to have brought Christian values such as humility and respect for God’s creation to the Chaco. His people, he argues, “are extremely hard working, they’re well-organised, but they’re also hypocrites”.

Hunting down and forcibly evangelising the Chaco’s pre-existing cultures “was the greatest error we ever made,” he continues. “We complain that the natives don’t want to work and can’t support themselves. But what did we do? We took their identity away.”

Unger says a century after the Mennonites arrived, they urgently needed to preserve what was left of the Chaco and reach a new understanding with those who were there first. “The first step,” he says, “is to ask for their forgiveness and admit that we’ve done wrong.”

Iquebi, the formerly enslaved Ayoreo elder, thinks the reckoning should extend more widely. “The Paraguayan government doesn’t protect the lives of Indigenous people in general, much less the Ayoreo,” he argues. “They should send an official, an authority, to see our needs and concerns.”

 and  were contacted for comment.

If deforestation continues, and the forced contacts that marked his childhood are repeated, Iquebi warns: “that will be the end of the Ayoreo.”
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