'We've come to recover our land,' said Vicente Montanía, 'Life is much better there. We had the forest, we had natural meat, fish. We had everything there'. The young indigenous leader was sat in the shade of one of the twenty or so improvised tents fashioned from black tarpaulin and rope that dotted the Plaza de Armas—a large public square in the heart of Asunción, Paraguay's capital.
The scene playing out around him—open fires being tended, barefooted children at play on the paving slabs—had been a constant in this part of the city since an estimated 290 members of the Tacuara'i community, who belong to the Ava Guaraní Chiripá people, had set up camp in the square six months earlier. They had made the 400-kilometre journey to the capital after a violent eviction from what they claim to be their ancestral territory in the east of the country in October 2018. They had come in hope authorities would restore their land to them.
Tacuara'i—a community without a home
'My grandmother died there. So did my mother. And I was born there'.
