PARAGUAY
Clean Water Out of Reach
for Native Peoples
By Natalia Ruiz Díaz
ASUNCION (IPS) - Of the many things that
are not within the reach of everyone in
Paraguay, safe drinking water is the one
the indigenous population longs for
most.
"The water we get from the reservoir is
not fit to drink, but we drink it
anyway. We have no other option; it's
not clean water, but it is water," Neira
Esquivel, a Sanapaná indigenous woman
from the village of Karanda'y Puku, in
the vast Paraguayan Chaco region, told
IPS.
Esquivel travelled to Asunción with
leaders of her community to demand
water, food and formal recognition of
their land rights from the National
Indigenous Institute.
These journeys to the capital, more than
400 kilometres away, are a permanent
feature of their lives. They go
especially to voice their water needs.
Communities in the Chaco region, a
semi-arid expanse of dense thorn
scrubland in northern and western
Paraguay, suffer most because in
addition to the lack of infrastructure
for water supply, droughts are common.
In the area around Karanda'y Puku, which
is home to 70 families, "it hasn't
rained for seven months; our reservoir
is dry and the reserve tank is empty,"
said Esquivel.
Average rainfall in the Chaco -- an area
of over 247,000 square kilometres,
covering 61 percent of the national
territory -- is 400 millimetres a year,
and there is little surface water, while
the groundwater is salty.
The sparsely populated Chaco is home to
half of Paraguay's 108,000 indigenous
people, who represent just over 1.7
percent of the country's population of
6.2 million, 75 percent of which is made
up of people of mixed European and
indigenous descent.
Water supply is a longstanding problem
in the Chaco. Every year, there are
shortages in the dry season and an
emergency has to be declared to cope
with the crisis, Santiago Bobadilla, an
expert with the non-governmental
Tierraviva organisation which works for
the rights of native peoples, told IPS.
Most indigenous villages have reservoirs
for rainwater catchment, created by
digging hollows in the earth, but they
dry out when the rains fail.
"The indigenous people are constantly
asking for help. Water supplies sent by
truck are only palliative, and the water
is not of drinking quality," Bobadilla
said.
The Ministry of National Emergency sends
the trucks, but responsibility for water
distribution falls largely on local
governments. According to indigenous
leaders, the aid does not reach the
remotest communities.
Sixty percent of indigenous households,
comprising some 65,000 people, use
surface water or rainwater as their
sources of supply because they are not
connected to piped water.
These figures are from the report "Actualización
y Análisis Sectorial de Agua Potable y
Saneamiento de Paraguay" (Update and
Analysis of Drinking Water and Sewerage
in Paraguay), published early this year
by government bodies and financed by the
Spain-UNDP (United Nations Development
Programme) Trust Fund.
Fifty percent of the rural population
has little to no access to piped water,
the report says. Nineteen percent of
Paraguayans live in extreme poverty.
According to the Indigenous Household
Survey 2008, nearly 38 percent of native
families get their water from reservoirs
and rivers, 21 percent from wells, 34
percent from groundwater and only six
percent from piped supplies.
When there is drought in the Chaco,
women have the task of trudging long
distances in search of water. "We walk
many kilometres, and we often have to
fill our containers from other people's
properties," said Esquivel, referring to
farms belonging to Mennonite
communities.
In this inhospitable region as
elsewhere, development makes all the
difference. The Mennonites who settled
here in the late 1920s now number 30,000
people, organised in large cooperatives
which control 75 percent of the national
dairy industry.
They are equipped with the
infrastructure needed for rainwater
catchment and storage, deep-well
extraction of groundwater, and
desalination.
In contrast, the lack of clean water
causes unending health problems among
the indigenous people, especially the
children, who also lack proper
healthcare.
In the view of Celso Zavala, a leader of
the Enxet indigenous people, one of the
main problems is that health centres are
so far away.
"On the one hand, we take water directly
from the streams, which causes problems,
especially among the children; and on
the other hand, we have no access to
healthcare," Zavala told IPS.
The document analysing drinking water
and sewerage in Paraguay stresses that
health care provision must be urgently
improved to raise indigenous people's
quality of life, and recommends that it
be provided free, and in a way suitable
to the customs and traditions of native
people.
It also highlights the need to promote
environmental and health education, to
reduce the risks of contamination and
water-borne diseases, like diarrhoea.
"We come to Asunción because we have
needs: we have no food, we have no
water," Esquivel repeated before
returning to her village. |
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