A short history of wild accusations
by David
Over the years, Survival has been accused of all kinds of wild and ridiculous things by those abusing indigenous peoples’ rights and cultures.
These include ‘inventing’ uncontacted tribes to keep companies out of the Amazon, fronting a terrorist organisation, publishing pornography, and being ‘communist excrement’ (article in Spanish) who want indigenous people to ‘remain in misery and ignorance.’
Ayoreo-Totobiegosode family shortly after first contact in 2004. © GAT
And the latest? That Paraguay’s Environment Minister, Oscar Rivas, is on our payroll (article in Spanish). This claim was made by a Brazilian cattle-ranching company, Yaguarete Pora S.A, after Survival exposed the company’s destruction of thousands of hectares of forest belonging to the indigenous Ayoreo-Totobiegosode in the Chaco forest, northern Paraguay.
Paraguay’s Environment Ministry, SEAM, later cancelled Yaguarete’s licence to work there.
Ayoreo-Totobiegosode men talk about the destruction of their land and concern for their relatives in the forest.
Yaguarete’s accusation was reported in the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color on 27 March 2010. The company accused ‘Minister Rivas of being a representative of the NGO Survival,’ ABC states.
‘In the opinion of Yaguarete’s Eduardo Livieres, the Environment minister, Rivas, owner of the NGO Sobrevivencia, is the Paraguayan representative of Survival International. ‘Survival has installed itself in the Environment Ministry,’ said Livieres.’
You can see why the company got its wires crossed: ‘Sobreviviencia’ is the Spanish word for ‘survival’.
However, the fact is that neither Rivas nor Sobrevivencia, a Paraguayan NGO, have anything to do with Survival International.
Indeed, we have never met or even spoken with Mr Rivas, although we have written to him, along with other Paraguayan officials like president Lugo and the head of the government’s indigenous affairs department, about the Totobiegsode.
An Ayoreo-Totobiegosode communal house discovered when a road was bulldozed through their land. © Survival
Rather than trying to tarnish Survival’s reputation, Yaguarete should worry more about its own.
In recent months its destruction of the Totobiegosode’s territory has been covered by media in India, the US, the UK, Spain, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Cuba, France, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Paraguay.
Indeed, it is now the biggest international news story concerning Paraguay.