Indigenous rights placed above private interests at long last

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0607/1224317439421.html

?ts=1339068567
Communities who have long been marginalised are finally being allowed to return to their native lands, write FIONUALA CREGAN and PAUL KELLY in Yakye Axa, Paraguay

ANÍBAL FLORES is smiling, standing barefoot in a tiny makeshift church, strumming a guitar. Outside, children play, sliding through enormous puddles, the product of recent rains which flooded what was meant only to be a temporary home.

This is a roadside camp called Yakye Axa in Paraguay, which features houses made of logs and plastic lining and a church which doubles up as a primary school and a meeting room. It is the site of resistance of 67 indigenous families who for 20 years have lived here demanding the return of their ancestral territory.

Earlier this year, they finally won their battle and recovered 11,000 hectares of land from the government. Now they are waiting for an access road to be built so they can move and begin to build a new life.

“We have lived through fear, desperation, hopelessness and exhaustion,” says Flores, one of the leaders of Yakye Axa. “Unable to work and without land to cultivate to produce food, we have sacrificed our health and that of our children – some people have died. But we never gave up, and now we have won.”