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Do you know where the leather on the seats and steering wheels of the most expensive cars comes from? Brands such as BMW, Citroen, Jaguar, Land Rover, Peugeot and Porsche buy it from the Italian company Pasubio, the largest importer of leather in Paraguay, where the Ayoreo indigenous people have been fighting for decades to stop the deforestation of their lands by ranchers.
The work of guarding the Ayoreo territory and its dialogue with political actors from Paraguay and abroad has borne new fruit: the Pasubio company has announced that it will stop buying Paraguayan leather from suppliers that invade and deforest their lands, where their relatives live in isolation. voluntary within the Gran Chaco, the second largest continuous forest in South America.
The political and judicial struggle of this indigenous people made up of some 7,000 people between Paraguay and Bolivia has managed to preserve hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests in recent decades. But its leaders, lawyers and dozens of Paraguayan and international organizations denounce that the illegal invasion by ranchers continues with impunity before the rampant corruption of local authorities.
Last Monday, the Italian tannery Pasubio, one of the leading companies in its sector, advertisement the decision to refrain from purchasing leather “from suppliers whose activities directly or indirectly threaten the forests inhabited by uncontacted indigenous people of the Ayoreo People in Paraguay.”
Pasubio's decision comes after 20 years of demands from the Ayoreo people, who obtained a precautionary measure in 2016 from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which requires the Paraguayan State to protect its forests and its territory, and after a year ago , the NGO Survival will report this company and another called Gruppo Mastrotto to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Survival then sent notices to both Italian companies urging them to stop these imports. Gruppo Mastrotto responded, starting a dialogue with the NGO that is still ongoing. However, Pasubio at the time limited himself to sending a brief disclaimer, so Survival, with the support of the Ayoreo who live outside the forest, filed a formal complaint with the National Contact Point (PNC) of Italy to the OECD, the body that promotes the implementation of the organization's guidelines for multinational companies.
“It seems to me to be a timely decision so that it can have an impact at the local level,” Tagüide Picanerai, one of the affected Ayoreo leaders, told América Futura after learning of Pasubio's statement.
The unknown second largest forest in South America
The Chaco is so large that it extends through Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil: it has dry forests of ancient trees, savannahs and wetlands inhabited by 15 different indigenous peoples, also jaguars and other animals in danger of extinction.
The Ayoreo people are a unique case in America. All other indigenous communities in voluntary isolation are found in the other large continuous area of forest on the continent, the Amazon Basin.
The Ayoreo were practically the last natives to come into direct contact with colonization in this region of South America. This is attributed to the thorny and harsh Chaco nature, and the bravery and ferocity of its inhabitants, which prevented most European expeditions from entering these forests until well into the 18th century.
The point is that some Ayoreo groups have not yet made that contact voluntarily. Paraguayan and international legislation ensures the prevalence of the right to self-determination of the original peoples of the territory. If they do not want or need to contact, the surrounding society must respect their decision. And, not only that, it must work to preserve its territory. Some of them are relatives of Tagüide, whose parents were forced to leave the forest in the 1980s.
The Pasubio Group statement assures that they will suspend all commercial relations “with Paraguayan suppliers that cannot offer adequate guarantees regarding the absence of any relationship, direct or indirect, with existing livestock farms within the Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage (PNCAT)” . However, it does not indicate which producers it refers to.
But Tagüide, a school teacher and almost a lawyer, wonders how they are going to verify that their suppliers do not invade their territory or that of other indigenous peoples. “This question makes me wonder a little,” he says.
The link between leather used in the automobile industry and the illegal destruction of the Ayoreo forest was demonstrated in an investigation by the NGO Earthsight. In two reports, Grand Theft Chaco I and Grand Theft Chaco IIEarthsight revealed that almost two-thirds of the skins exported from Paraguay go to Italian companies, mainly Pasubio, whose annual income of 313 million euros depends 90% on the automobile industry.
According to these reports, a farm belonging to the company Caucasian SA and another belonging to an associate of the Chortitzer Cooperative illegally deforested 2,700 and 500 hectares respectively between 2018 and 2019 of the Ayoreo people's reserve in violation of government resolutions. A third farm, owned by the Yaguareté Porã company, has also been logging and invading this territory with livestock for about 20 years.
Earthsight detailed how a widespread culture of corruption and inaction had taken root in Paraguay's Environment Ministry, allowing farms to receive irregular deforestation permits that were often granted once forests had already been cleared.
“We are glad that Pasubio has committed to boycotting leather from suppliers that threaten the lives and territories of the Ayoreo People in Paraguay, and we hope that other companies follow their example,” said Survival director Caroline Pearce.
In 2001, the Government of Paraguay formally recognized a territory of 550,000 hectares as “Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage (PNCAT )”. However, to date the authorities have only transferred about a fifth of the promised lands.
According to the testimonies of the Ayoreo who left the forest and the available anthropological studies, those who are in voluntary isolation live by hunting wild boars, collecting fruit and making carob flour. They have a predilection for wild honey and turtle soup. They are nomads and regularly cross the border with Bolivia using wooden clogs, clay pots and caraguatá textiles, some so useful for sitting on the ground that some European company has already copied them.
The last major contact occurred in 2004, when several of them left frightened by the noise of electric saws cutting logs and chased by hunters' shots. In 2021, some of them approached one of the villages where those already settled live, spoke to them and left. They asked them to continue in the forest. “The ranchers know perfectly well that this territory has a precautionary measure, but they still present projects to the Ministry of the Environment to produce meat here and the ministry authorizes it, violating the law,” denounces Picanerai.
The leather of the cows that invade the Ayoreo lands is the hide tanned and prepared for industrial use that later ends up in the shape of a steering wheel or seat of a European car. And if Paraguay has something, it is cows. Twice as many people. Also a lot of space, as much as France, but for 6.1 million inhabitants. It is not even necessary to invade the few remaining forest reserves in an area that is among those with the highest deforestation rate in the world.
But it is an activity that moves about 1.7 billion dollars a year. And who has the land where the cows graze? Approximately 2.5% of Paraguay's population has 85% of the country's arable surface and, in the Chaco, this inequality is made explicit. The majority of these Paraguayan landowners are officials and soldiers of the longest dictatorship in South America, that of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), who stole and distributed between 8 and 22 million hectares at that time (3 times the size of Panama) that belonged to indigenous peoples, peasant cooperatives and opponents.
“The powerful behind the leather industry in Paraguay must know that the world will not stand idly by in the face of the illegal destruction of the Chaco forest and its people for profit. […] “The Paraguayan authorities must once and for all respect national and international law, expel all haciendas from Ayoreo territory and return the land to this indigenous people,” added Pearce of Survival.
Until the 90s, the Stroessner dictatorship denied the existence of the Ayoreo and persecuted them. He had them killed in human hunts. Already well into the 2000s, livestock breeders' union groups and even some public officials of the Government still denied the existence of this centuries-old town.
Today, thanks to the bravery of their leaders, the work of social researchers, journalists and even filmmakers, the message of the Ayoreo for the preservation of the Chaco forests travels around the world. Today no one can deny its existence and Pasubio's decision is a step to respect the rights of this people and that whoever violates them is held responsible.
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