Paraguay: Indigenous squatter communities organise self-help

Indigenous families living in a squatter settlement on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital are organising themselves, and now have a community soup kitchen and are producing and selling handicrafts. They don't want to return to panhandling on the streets of Asunción, so far from their home villages. In the last few decades, the number of poor indigenous people on the streets of Greater Asunción has increased, as the exodus of native families from rural areas has grown. "Anteve rosêva'ekue la cállepe, semaforope rojerure moneda mitâkuéra ha mba'e. Ko'âga tres meses la ndorojuvei la cállepe" ("We used to go out on the street and ask for money, with our children, at the stoplights. But we haven't gone out to beg on the streets in three months"), Petrona Ruiz, one of the women running the Cerro Poty soup kitchen, told IPS in Guaraní, an official language in Paraguay along with Spanish. The settlement of Cerro Poty, where the families live in makeshift dwellings, is located at the foot of Lambaré hill on the outskirts of Asunción, near both the Paraguay river and the city dump.