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Question: Environmental Destruction, Guaraní Refugees, and Indigenous Identity in Urban Paraguay

Answer: Drivers on the streets of Asunción, Paraguay, were disturbed in the late 1990s when indigenous Mbyá-Guaraní began showing up on corners to beg. Young mothers with sad eyes and babies on their hips walked among the halted vehicles imploring the drivers with outstretched hands. Children in rags and dirty faces scampered between the lanes, impishly tapping on the windows of the surprised drivers. Under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, Asunción had been as a city of considerable decorum. Poverty was kept out of sight and middle-class norms of propriety were enforced with military effectiveness. Indigenous peoples were relegated to a carefully circumscribed corner of the national consciousness: primitives in the forest, living the humble and time-honored lives of farming and foraging. Native peoples on Asunción’s streets attracted considerable attention. The daily papers ran pictures of Mbyá families asleep on the sidewalks and television news covered stories of the young men sniffing glue and young women and boys selling sex.

The reason for the Mbyá presence on the streets of Asunción is both obvious and undeniable. Until recently, they occupied the dense, high forests of eastern Paraguay and adjacent border regions of Brazil and Argentina. Then, in an unprecedented wave of ecological destruction, the forests used by the Mbyá were felled for cattle ranches and soybean fields. Between 1980 and 2009, of Paraguay’s forests were cut for agriculture, propelling the country to being the fourth largest soybean producer in the world. This was a remarkable feat for a country the size of California (Huang et al., 2009). Mbyá lands were among those hardest hit by the development. Between 2000 and 2010 alone, 15 Mbyá communities disappeared in the area of greatest soy production (DGEEC, 2012) One Mbyá put it succinctly, “We came here because there was nothing left there.” “Ndaipori mba’eve upepe,” – absolutely nothing.
The migration of forest peoples to urban areas is happening throughout lowland of South America. For decades, displaced indigenous peoples have appeared on the edges of frontier towns as itinerant laborers. As forests are felled and transport improves between isolated sectors and urban centers, these indigenous peoples find their way onto the busy streets of large cities and national capitals.

Urban life appears chaotic and confusing for all rural peoples, but the movement from forest to cities is a profound disrupture for indigenous peoples. Mbyá define themselves and are defined by others (anthropologists and the state) in terms of their relationship with the forest. They call themselves “Ca’aguygua,” literally “people of the forest.” Anthropology has a strong literature exploring the importance of place as a social construct in creating meaning and defining cultural identity (e.g., Basso, 1996). Others (e.g., Gupta & Ferguson, 1997) extended this discussion of place and identity to include questions of power, embedding the study of landscape and society in a web of political relations. The process of deterritorialization of a social group, then, is more than a spatial process of dislocation, it is a rending of the fabric of identities, social ties, and power relations (DeLeuze & Guatari, 1983). Thus, to be displaced to the cities is more than a geographical dislocation, it is a social and cultural disarticulation.
Recent work in Latin America attends to this process of urbanization among lowland indigenous groups. McSweeney and Jokisch (2007) argue that the movement of native peoples from their traditional lands to the cities is more than a process of deterritorialization, not simply chaotic and confusing, but a reterritorialization of native peoples in the new urban landscape. Indigenous peoples assert new modes of being in the new environment. Gordillo (2011) shows how Guaraní in Argentina struggle to define themselves and their relation with the state. This calls attention to the process by which Mbyá refugees establish themselves in the city. Do they, or how do they, make the city their own? And in doing so, how does that process shape Mbyá identity?
The Mbyá are only one of the indigenous groups finding their way into Asuncion. The 2012 national census counted almost 2,500 native people in Asunción and the surrounding suburbs (DGEEC, 2012), with some estimates suggesting more than 3,500 individuals (Grupo Sunu de Acción Intercultural, 2012), and additional populations in Encarnación and Ciudad de Este (Velázquez, 2013). An urban survey in 2009 identified eight indigenous ethnic groups: two closely related Guaraní groups (Mbyá and Avá) from eastern Paraguay and a variety non-Guaraní groups from Chaco regions, scattered in various enclaves throughout the city (United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 2010, p. 34).
These indigenous peoples differ greatly in their process of situating themselves in the urban context. All confront problems of urban poverty, disease and social conflicts in the new settings, but some groups fall into a state of “hypermarginality” (Bessire, 2014) on the fringes of the urban social world, often invisible to the state and nation. The attention garnered by the Mbyá is not simply a product of their being indigenous. Mbyá tend to stand out as a disenfranchised minority. Small family groups squat on abandoned parcels, live in cheap rooming houses, and beg on street corners to subsist. Without recourse to an urban network, indigenous, or state, they find themselves relegated to the very lowest rungs of the urban environment.
Other native people often step down from rural buses and meld into the fabric of the city, hardly noticed as they go about their business in town. The Maká were driven from the Chaco to the banks of the river near Asunción and in 1985 established themselves as a cohesive group in an urban neighborhood. More to the point, other Guaraní from eastern Paraguay move much more easily into the city. Avá-Guaraní find shelter and day labor or scavenge for recyclables in the refuse, garnering a daily wage (if not prosperity). In one notable example, Avá have banded together, elected a leader, petitioned for urban land, and won government recognition as a Comunidad Indígenas. Despite that they suffer grave injustices, they establish organized relations with city social services and indigenous affairs offices, acquiring state recognition, health care, and schools.

Surveys accomplished among indigenous peoples in Asuncion show a striking disparity between Mbyá and Avá. While most Avá come together at a few well established sites, Mbyá tend to remain dispersed in small family groups in a variety of informal and often illegal settlements. One non-governmental organization found the four established Guaraní communities in Asunción (Cerro Potý, Kenkuket, Tarumandy-mi, and Nueva Esperanza), to be almost exclusively Avá. The Mbyá avoid all but one (Tarumandy-mi), where they have established a small settlement. In addition, there were 11 places where indigenous groups tended to gather, often occupying abandoned buildings, renting houses, and camping in empty lots. Of these six are exclusively Mbyá, two include both Mbyá and Avá families and only two are exclusively Avá (Grupo Sunu de Acción Intercultural, 2012).
How can we understand the process by which some groups establish themselves in the urban environment, while others fail to find stable relations with the state and city institutions? McSweeney and Jokisch (2007, p. 161) point to the ways in which lowland indigenous people’s experience of urbanization can be tied to the very process of dislocation and state integration. They suggest that the experience of the migrants in the rural areas shapes the mode of engagement with the state in the old and new landscape alike. The following suggests that the environmental destruction of rural forests is the immediate cause of the flight of indigenous peoples to Asunción, but to understand the Mbyá mode of engagement with the urban system, one must look closely at the history of relations with the state long before they arrive at the city boundaries.
The following explores three aspects of this process. First, it highlights the history by which the state inserted itself into the forest, and the powers by which Guarani resources were destroyed. Second, this work describes indigenous peoples’ differing reaction to state encroachment. Unlike Avá-Guaraní, the Mbyá in the forest maintained a historic and steady resistance to the state. Mbyá refused to participate in efforts to facilitate their assimilation into the state and national society, and were forced to take refuge in the city only at last recourse. Third, the following explores the differing experiences of the urban Guaraní, contrasting the plight of Mbyá refugees with Avá-Guaraní who reside in the settlement called “Cerro Potý.” Mbyá resistance, this argues, has become a mode of existence in the urban environment, serving as the means to assert a new urban identity in relation to the state.

(Source: , 24 Sep 2021)

Source Link: https://doi-org.onlinedatabase.librarynet.com.my/10.1108/S0190-128120150000035011