The genocide of the Ache Guayaki in Paraguayi

D.Antón

The Ache indigenous nation  (they do not accept the term Guayaki) consists of several communities in the eastern region of Paraguay living there since immemorial time. It is older than the Guarani because the. Guarani settled in Paraguay and hinterlands some 2,000 years ago. Ache were there already for a long time. They had their own language but gradually they developed a mixed Guarani dialectt. Although they were expelled from their ancestral lands they survived the Spanish conquest and colonization hiding into the forests, particularly the forests of Canindeyú. Their drama was heightened in the late '60s, during the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, the policy of road expansion and advancement of the agricultural and livestock sector to the east cornered the last "uncontacted" Aché in the forests of Canindeyú . The Ache were a "problem" for the occupants of the new lands (which were ancestrally Ache territory). In the late '60s the settlers organized hunts of Ache.

The dictatorial regime, then, began a campaign of forced settlement of the community in order to expel them from the region and concentrate them in the National Guayakí Cologne, under military command in the Department of Indian Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense. Those who refused to transfer to the colony were captured by force in "raids" organized by the military commanders of the colony, with many victims of killings, mass arrests, forced displacement, etc. running a real ethnic cleansing of the new farming and cattle raising area with the transfer of the community to the National Guayaki Cologne.

Once in the Colony many were given to the colonists, practically as slave labor, especially in the case of men. Particularly painful was the case of the sale of many of these children to Paraguayan families, suppressing their identity, ending in most cases as domestic servants.Ache population declined rapidly. In pre-colonial times there were maybe 20,000 or 30,000 people. In the last census of 2012 they are just over 1,000 acculturated, discriminated and subjected to extreme poverty.