Paraguayan indigenous leader Maria Luisa Duarte. Photo: Wikicommons.
By Alejandra GarcĂa – Apr 10, 2023
On April 30, Paraguay will go to the polls to elect the country’s new president in a process marked by a lack of debate and the absence of urgent proposals such as free access to education, and more rights for the indigenous peoples, such as their right to land.
Little is expected to change in Paraguay with this election. The ruling right-wing Colorado Party’s candidate is former Finance Minister Santiago Peña, who is in a close race with opposition coalition candidate EfraĂn Alegre of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) whose program is not much different from Peña’s, and who too will continue to steer Paraguay in a neoliberal direction away from the real issues. This is the situation although in a June 2022 poll, 70% of the population had said that the country needed profound changes, such as the inclusion of indigenous rights.
“The interests of indigenous peoples do not usually appear in the election campaigns, nor are their claims and demands ever heard,” AchĂ© indigenous leader MarĂa Luisa Duarte, mother of six, said in a recent interview for the Paraguayan news agency Presentes.
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In the upcoming elections, the country will elect its presidential, parliamentary, and local government officials to serve for the next five years. However, according to Duarte, this has been a distressing process. Paraguay urgently needs to rebuild itself, develop in a balanced way, be inclusive, and become a more just and fairer country. Yet, these issues are absent from this election campaign. Paraguayans are questioning the future of the country.
Daniela BenĂtez, a leader of the the NivaclĂ© people, who is also a mother of six and was a candidate for the senate in 2018, added, “We cannot talk about future development without talking about the right to land. That is our main demand.”
According to official data, Paraguay has 7 million inhabitants; of them, 122,000 are indigenous people, who belong to 19 indigenous groups, distributed in more than 600 communities. However, 85% of the country’s lands belong to just 2% of Paraguay’s total population.
On October 12, 2022, for the second time, the country’s indigenous movement presented to the Paraguayan State institutions a work plan with 34 points, demanding a dignified life for the 19 indigenous groups.
These included the cessation of forced evictions, respect for ancestral lands, and an increase in the budget for land purchases. However, although almost six months have passed, the current government has not shown the political will to continue with the working group to which it had committed itself.
“The land sustains us; it is our priority and our strength,” BenĂtez emphasized. “For us, it is fundamental to sow, to eat healthy food harvested on our farms. That is how we feel fulfilled.”
Both the women leaders agree that public policies in education and the creation of a market and a fair price for healthy food are other urgent demands of the country’s indigenous communities.
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“We also need greater access to job opportunities and decent housing,” Duarte added. “Education, vocational training, and access to university studies are also human rights. We all have the right to study the career we like, even if we are poor peasants or indigenous.”
“We demand that we be guaranteed the quality of life we desire and deserve as the National Constitution of the Republic supports,” she concluded.
Regarding rights for Paraguayan women, especially indigenous women, both commented that “there is a lot of struggles ahead.”
“We women leaders continue believing, proposing, and fighting,” BenĂtez said. “We believe that we can reverse this lack of rights and the marginalization we face. We, women, can wake up. Indigenous women in Paraguay are fighters, and we have hope for tomorrow. Women will be the catalyst for real change. We will restore our people’s dignity, always by doing good.”
