Urgent action needed to help save the Ayoreo’s last forest (sign on here)

I visited and photographed the Ayoreo indigenous community of Campo Lorro (Parrot Field) in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay in early 2009. The photos in this essay document a community and people struggling for survival. I traveled with Dr. Miguel Lovera, part of the Ayoreo support group Iniciativa Amotocodie. The Chaco forest is one of the fastest disappearing forests on the planet. 

I was invited by the Ayoreo people who live in Campo Lorro to take photographs in a project called “Sharing the Eye.” An elder leader of the community walked with me through their lands, village, houses and workplaces–sharing his vision with me, which I recorded with my camera.

Today GJEP was contacted by our colleagues in Survival International about the serious situation that is happening: 

“Members of the tribe, the Ayoreo, who were forced out of the forest in recent decades, are now suffering repeated waves of disease. Many have died. They do not want their relatives still in the forest to suffer the same fate. 

The uncontacted Ayoreo – who avoid contact with outsiders – live in an island of forest, surrounded by vast cattle ranches and farmland where their forest once stood. 

Contacted Ayoreo, supported by local allies and Survival, submitted a formal land claim to the Paraguayan government in 1993. After thirty years, only some disconnected parts of the area have been returned to the Ayoreo: the authorities should have officially protected and titled all of it years ago. While they’ve delayed, huge areas have been destroyed.”

Please Sign on HERE and Stand with the Ayoreo – Save the Ayoreo’s Last Forest

To see my photo essay from Campo Lorro, please go to: “Sharing the Eye” A Day in an Ayoreo Displacement Camp in Paraguay’s Chaco Eye