October 7, 2008 Editors: Download hi-rez photos at:

http://www.churchworldservice.org/news/gallery/chaco07/page3.html and http://www.churchworldservice.org/news/gallery/chaco07/page1.html

VINALITO, ARGENTINA--Sometimes the good guys win. Sometimes it takes a long time and a little human and high tech help.

In the Gran Chaco region of Argentina, traditional Guarani people are winning back the lands they've lived on for centuries--by learning to assert their rights and by mastering high tech ways to substantiate those rights.

"After eight years of organizing, public education, awareness raising and legal advocacy, the Guarani community of Vinalito received title for their land from the Argentinean government on September 13," says Martin Coria, Church World Service Regional Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The September ruling, after generations of discrimination and exclusion, gave the Guarani people of Vinalito, in the northern Chaco area, collective title to 10,131 acres (about 16 square miles) of their traditional land.

Other parts of the Chaco region have been struggling for the past 20 years.

But the Guarani people in Vinalito pressed their case, using modern Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and other online mapping tools to measure and substantiate their claims, and assistance and training from global humanitarian agency Church World Service and its member denominations.

After three years of congressional debate, Argentina last month passed legislation that suspends all forced removal of indigenous peoples from disputed lands and gives government agencies four years to grant collective land tittles to these communities.

"This landmark legislation was the result of constant education, advocacy and efforts to raise public awareness by our Chaco region partners in Argentina and the indigenous groups themselves," says CWS' Coria.

The Gran Chaco, a 400 square miles-wide region spanning parts of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, is the second largest forested area in South America, after the Amazon. The region contains Bolivia's natural gas reserves and Paraguay's forest reserve. In Argentina, the rich land is being swallowed up by soy producers.

As with dozens of other indigenous groups in the region, the Guarani people have lived in the Chaco for centuries, but, since the Spanish conquest, have been discriminated against and denied their rights and have endured predatory extractive "development models."

Guarani people not alone in the struggle

Since 2005, Church World Service's Latin America Caribbean Regional Office has helped indigenous groups in Gran Chaco defend their rights, improve their lives, livelihoods and food supply.

In the community of Ex-Campo Flores, Argentina, Coria said 30 impoverished families also have received legal title to nearly four acres of land. Seven of the families have already moved to their land and are receiving support from Church World Service to improve access to water and build up small farming enterprises for food security.

CWS' Chaco partner helped raise enough local support to build three 5,000-gallon water cisterns for the families and plans to build three more.

In a new project, 87 Guarani families in the Argentinean Chaco communities of Dragones and Media Luna have received technical and legal assistance on the country's complex land title laws and assistance to organize and initiate a formal demand for their land rights.

Indigenous groups used Geographic Information Systems to ID their lands

"The Guarani communities in Argentina have had to gather extensive information on the history of the families in the region, to prove that they have been there for many years," said Mariela Shaw, development programs grants administrator in Church World Service's New York offices.

Anthropologists trained the local Guarani activists so they could lead their own data gathering effort. With training in the use of online Geographic Information Systems and other mapping systems, the community created a map of the territory they were claiming, depicting at-risk natural resources like water, hunting areas, forests and other resources at risk, and important indigenous sites such as burial grounds.

Shaw says morale was "very low" at one point. "Things were moving slowly and outsiders were trying to undermine the process, to a point that the initiative almost collapsed. But the leadership of the Guarani women and the close accompaniment of our local partner provided the glue to keep the communities united and focused."

The future and well-being of the Guarani and other indigenous people of Gran Chaco is more than just getting legal title to their lands. It is about empowering long marginalized people to improve their lives, establish their legal and social rights, strengthen community self-reliance and overcome poverty.

"The September land title in Argentina's portion of Gran Chaco wasn't the whole pie, but it's a good slice, it wasn't the first and it won't be the last." CWS' Coria said.

HOW TO HELP: Those who wish to support the rights and food security of Gran Chaco's indigenous communities may contribute to Church World Service online, by mail to Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515; or for more information call toll free (800) 297-1516.

To see how CWS is helping other communities in the Gran Chaco read "Paraguay and Bolivia indigenous people also get help with land rights".

Media Contact: Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net