Last Uncontacted South American Indians Flee Forest Destruction in Paraguay : Kim MacQuarrie’s Peru & South America Blog

Last Uncontacted South American Indians Flee Forest Destruction in Paraguay

Filed Under Paraguay, Uncontacted Tribes

Four Ayoreo men making contact with the outside world in 2004. The same men have uncontacted relatives who continue to live in their rapdily disappearing forest.

(Note: The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode are thought to be the last group of uncontacted South American Indians living south of the Amazon Basin. Roughly 300 Totobiegosode have not yet been contacted…

and belong to the Ayoreo ethnicity, which numbers around 2,000. In 1979 and 1986, the U.S.-based, evangelical “New Tribes Mission” was accused of assisting in the forcible contact of nomadic Ayoreo Indians, whose unsuccessful attempts to remain in the forest led to several deaths. Others died soon after being brought out of the forest