Indigenous people blockade highway to protest the destruction of their territory
March 12, 2026
More than 100 Indigenous Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people, most of whom were forcibly contacted between 1979 and 2004, are blockading a major Paraguayan highway in the heart of South America — trying to stop the destruction of the forest where their uncontacted relatives still live.
Porai Picanerai, one of the Ayoreo leaders, said today: “After forced contact, we have been abandoned by our government, which ignores our rights while allowing big companies to destroy our forest. Our uncontacted relatives depend on the forest. We also depend on the forest. But it's being destroyed by bulldozers and fires. Others make money from our forest while we are left with nothing, and our needs and rights are ignored.”
The uncontacted Ayoreo, who live in a rapidly shrinking island of forest surrounded by devastation, are the last uncontacted Indigenous people in South America outside the Amazon. Their forest is being chopped down, stolen and occupied by farms — destroyed at one of the fastest rates in the world, leaving the Indigenous owners of the land facing drought and famine.
The contacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, having been forced out of the forest in recent decades, live in two communities on the forest edge. They are blockading one of the area’s major highways in protest at:
- The continuing destruction of their ancestral territory – which legally is entitled to protection – by cattle ranchers and agribusiness.
- Neglect by the state that forced them out of their nomadic and self-sufficient life in the forest: it’s left them stranded in two inaccessible, remote communities without proper healthcare or access to water or food.
- The government’s continuing refusal to title the land to them despite being ordered to do so by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights.
Survival International’s Director Caroline Pearce said today: “The satellite photos of western Paraguay paint a harrowing picture: just a few decades ago this was a vast area of Indigenous forest – now it’s a wasteland of destruction. The uncontacted Ayoreo are trapped in a forest island that’s being destroyed by the day.
“All this destruction is illegal: this is the Ayoreo’s home, which should have been recognized as Indigenous territory and titled to them. The Ayoreo who were forced out of the forest are deeply worried for their uncontacted relatives who are somehow managing to survive, but must be fleeing from one corner of the forest to another.
“As Survival’s recent report on uncontacted peoples made clear, they are resisting this brutal colonization but their survival absolutely depends on their land being protected. Paraguay’s authorities must finally do the right thing, by expelling the ranchers and upholding the Ayoreo’s rights to their land.”
Note to Editors:
Pasubio, one of Europe’s leading leather manufacturers, announced in 2023 that it will refuse to buy leather from suppliers whose activities directly or indirectly threaten the forests inhabited by the uncontacted Ayoreo people in Paraguay. Many cattle ranches operate inside the traditional territory of the Ayoreo people.
Pasubio’s decision followed intensive dialogue with the Italian office of Indigenous rights organization Survival International, which filed a formal complaint against the company under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, assisted by the lawyers Veronica Dini and Luca Saltalamacchia.
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