Article #2285

The Avá-Guarani community have received little recognition of the destruction of their land by the Itaipu dam on the Paraguay-Brazil border

When the Indigenous leader Teodoro Alves was a young child in his community of Ocoy-Jacutinga, on the border between Paraguay and Brazil, a river ran through it. The Paraná River, which rises in Brazil and flows south through Paraguay to the Río de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay, once structured the lives of Avá-Guarani people along its banks.

That continuity, Alves says, was broken in the 1970s with the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam, which submerged their lands and displaced hundreds of families. “I saw the Paraná River before the Itaipu dam was closed. Now I see an immense lake. The river died completely. It died with the Avá-Guarani people,” Alves says.