The Ayoreo are one of around 18 different tribes living in Paraguay. The Ayoreo's home is in the Chaco, a huge region of dry scrub forest, rivers and swampland which encompasses the whole of the western half of Paraguay and extends into other countries.

How do they live? The Ayoreo live in the north-west of Paraguay and part of eastern Bolivia. There are different sub-groups of Ayoreo, including the Totobiegosode (whose name means 'people from the place of the wild pigs'). The Ayoreo are a nomadic, hunter-gatherer people, who once inhabited a vast area of scrub forest. Their first sustained contact with white people came in the 1940s and 1950s, when Mennonite farmers established colonies on their land. Subsequently missionaries attempted to contact and settle them. Although the Ayoreo resisted contact and largely rejected the missionaries, they did begin to come out of the forest; there is now only a small group of nomadic Totobiegosode living uncontacted in the forest. Most Ayoreo land is now owned by private landowners, who hire work-teams to clear the forest of valuable timber and then introduce cattle. Some is still owned by the Mennonites and another religious group, the US-based New Tribes Mission (NTM).

What problems do they face? During the 1970s and 1980s, the Ayoreo experienced intensive missionary activity, as the NTM pursued a policy of aggressive attempts to convert them. They would encourage groups of missionised Ayoreo to go into the forest to capture the uncontacted, nomadic Ayoreo, their traditional enemies, and bring them back to the NTM base. This resulted in violent clashes and several deaths as the Indians were exposed to diseases to which they had no immunity at the mission camp. The Ayoreo also suffer greatly from the theft of their land - although the Paraguayan constitution guarantees Indian land ownership, the Ayoreo's land has almost all been taken over by ranchers, forcing them out of their forest and making it very difficult for them to support themselves.

Source: http://www.survival-international.org/tribes.php?tribe_id=16