Aché Indian Genocide

The Aché Indians are an Indigenous tribe of Paraguay. From the 1950s to the early 1970s, an estimated 60 to 85 percent of the Aché died. The Paraguayan government promoted the development of the forests in which the Aché lived, and many Aché were killed, relocated to a privately owned reservation, or sold into slavery. The forests where they lived were developed and used for foresting, mining, ranching, and agriculture. Whether the government of Paraguay engaged in genocide during this time remains hotly debated. The importance of human rights emerged as an issue in the United States during the 1970s, with the question of whether the United States should continue providing aid to Paraguay contested.

Background

The Indigenous Aché traditionally lived within the hilly forests of eastern Paraguay in South America. They were nomadic, usually traveling in groups of about forty. They did not build permanent dwellings or grow crops. They hunted and gathered nuts and fruits for survival. The Aché were one of several Indigenous tribes in Paraguay.

Most people in Paraguay believed in the Western concept of individual ownership of land, but the Aché rejected this notion. Under their communal understanding, owning land was a foreign concept. While land could be used, it could not “belong” to an individual. As such, the Aché had no legal claims to the forest hills as hunter-gatherers. Thus, as the outside world pushed eastward into their territory, the Aché had no way to defend their rightful territory.

During the rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator of Paraguay from 1956 to 1989, agricultural expansion increased into the forests of eastern Paraguay. The colonists who moved in began forming raiding parties to kill the Aché men, often with a machete, and take captive the women and children. Manuel Jesús Pereira, a local landowner and employee of Paraguay’s Native Affairs Department, was notorious for his pursuit of the Aché. He used his farm as an Aché reservation, where beatings and rape were common and food was scarce. Pereira sold the Aché into slavery, and many others died due to a lack of necessities.

Overview

Several Paraguayan ethnologists attempted to call attention to the plight of the Aché. As a result, they lost their jobs or were deported. However, in 1973, German anthropologist Mark Münzel wrote the report, The Aché Indians: Genocide in Paraguay. The following year, he wrote a second report, The Aché: Genocide Continues in Paraguay, both of which were published by the Danish organization International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. The reports included photos of naked or ill-clothed and extremely malnourished captured Aché and were picked up by newspapers such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. His reports drew attention to the plight of the Aché and prompted the creation of the book Genocide in Paraguay, published in 1976 and edited by Richard Arens, a professor and lawyer who was considered an expert in international human rights. Genocide in Paraguay echoed Münzel’s findings and criticized the United States’ continued aid to Paraguay. In the midst of the Cold War, the United States supported Stroessner’s dictatorship because of his rejection of communism.

In 1978, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a government entity, enlisted David Maybury-Lewis and Jim Howe to examine the conditions for Indigenous people in Paraguay. Their report, The Indian People of Paraguay: Their Plight and Their Prospects, published by Cultural Survival, was controversial. Maybury-Lewis and Howe criticized the previous reports by Münzel and Arens as being sensationalist and being written without adequate proof. While they argued that the lack of government action to protect the Indigenous groups allowed for the destruction of native peoples and their way of life, they stopped short of naming it as genocide. They argued that the government had no explicit policy to eliminate the Aché or other tribes.

When Jimmy Carter began his presidential term in 1977, he emphasized human rights in US foreign policy. Carter cooled US relations with numerous South American dictators, including Stroessner. Although Ronald Reagan did not continue Carter’s focus on human rights, by the mid-1980s, Stroessner’s support was waning, and he was ousted from power in 1989. In 1992, Paraguay adopted a democratic constitution.

In the early 2020s, roughly two thousand Aché, divided into six groups, lived in Paraguay. In 1991, Paraguay created the Mbaracayú Forest Reserve, which leaders recognized as being traditional Aché territory, and gave the Northern Aché permanent rights to hunt and fish there. The Aché learned how to negotiate with the government and enlist support from nongovernmental organizations and the media. For years, they battled government red tape and the encroachment of illegal loggers and “landless peasants.” Margarita Mbywangi, a member of the Kuetuvy Aché, emerged as an important leader. Mbywangi was captured and enslaved when she was four years old. She was sold several times but was sent to school, where she learned to read and write, eventually graduating with a high school diploma. Having had experience among the Paraguayans, she became instrumental in returning her people to their ancestral home, known as Finca [Farm] #470, which was adjacent to the Mbaracayú Forest Reserve. In 2008, she was appointed as the minister of Indigenous affairs, the first Indigenous person to serve in a high-level government role in Paraguay.

Bibliography

Breslin, Patrick. “For Those Who Will Never Again Be Human.” Washington Post, 30 Jan. 1977, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1977/01/30/for-those-who-will-never-again-be-human/9eeeb8ef-224a-4532-adc4-786249b02c50/. Accessed 9 June 2023.

Münzel, Mark. “The Aché: Genocide Continues in Paraguay.” International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, August 1974, www.iwgia.org/images/publications/Aché‗Doc.pdf. Accessed 9 June 2023.

Münzel, Mark. “The Aché Indians: Genocide in Paraguay.” International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, January 1973, www.iwgia.org/images/publications/Aché‗Doc1.pdf. Accessed 9 June 2023.

Reed, Richard and John Renshaw, John (2012). “The Aché and Guaraní: Thirty Years after Maybury-Lewis and Howe’s Report on Genocide in Paraguay.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, 2010, vol. 1, no. 1, digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol10/iss1/1. 9 June 2023

“South American Tribe Sues over Historic Genocide.” Survival International, 1 July 2014, www.survivalinternational.org/news/10264. Accessed 9 June 2023.