"Rocky road: Paraguay’s new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people", 05 January 2022

...[I]ndigenous peoples across the Chaco, a tapestry of swamp, savanna and thorny forest across four countries that is South America’s largest ecosystem after the Amazon – are confronting a dramatic new change.

On 13 December, Paraguay’s president, Mario Abdo Benítez, visited Carmelo Peralta to launch construction work on a $103m (£76m) bridge that will cross the Paraguay River to Brazil. On the Paraguayan side, the bridge joins a $445m highway – already half-finished – carving a strip of asphalt for 340 miles (550km) east to west through the Chaco.

In 2024, when both are completed, the massive infrastructure project across the Chaco, the Bioceanic Corridor, will connect cattle ranchers and soya-bean farmers in Brazil and Paraguay with their lucrative Asian markets, via northern Argentina and Chile. Space is also being left for a parallel freight railway...

But campaigners say the Bioceanic Corridor is a nightmare, accelerating destruction of the Chaco – the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth – and piling deadly pressure on its native inhabitants, including some who shun the outside world...

Paraguay’s Chaco is home to more than a dozen indigenous peoples. But the Ayoreo are particularly exposed to the changes brought by the highway: many live along its path, and already face severe poverty and social marginalisation.

Leaders from the 11 Ayoreo communities near Carmelo Peralta say the highway poses many threats: from deadly road accidents and rapid social changes to increased illegal deforestation of traditional hunting and foraging grounds.

Yet they felt forced to approve the project, says Juan de la Cruz, an Ayoreo local government official. “Even if we said no, they would still build it,” he says...

Recent traffic accidents and drownings in roadside drainage pools killed several of their community, including three Ayoreo girls, they say.

Local consultations with indigenous communities were rushed, argues Lovera...