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Indigenous Woman on Course for Senate (Paraguay)
The following is from the article written by David Vargas, published by the Inter Press Service News Agency:
An indigenous woman has an excellent chance of winning a seat in Congress for the first time in the history of Paraguay, in Sunday’s general elections.
Margarita Mbyvângi, a "cacique" or tribal chief of the Aché people, is second on the list of Senate candidates for Tekojoja (Equality), a leftwing movement belonging to the opposition alliance backing former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, the presidential candidate who is leading the polls.
According to the latest opinion polls, 7.8 percent of interviewees in different parts of the country plan to vote for Tekojoja’s senate list, which would secure at least two of the 45 seats in the upper house for the movement.
More than 2.8 million Paraguayans are registered to vote on Sunday, to elect the country’s president and vice president, 45 senators, 80 members of the lower house, 17 governors, 214 provincial lawmakers, and 18 members of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) Parliament.
The presidential candidates are Lugo of the centre-left Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), Blanca Ovelar of the governing Colorado Party, former general and coup leader Lino Oviedo, conservative businessman Pedro Fadul and several candidates representing smaller parties.
The aspiring indigenous senator is preceded on her party list by small farmer Sixto Pereira, one of the founders of the movement that first promoted Lugo’s candidacy, and the alternate would be Catalino Sosa, of the Mbya Guaraní people.
Mbyvângi is a leader of the Kuêtuvy community, 157 kilometres into the jungle from the capital of the northern province of Canindeyú, and she is president of the Aché Association of Paraguay, made up of seven indigenous villages with 1,200 residents.
"The government has forgotten about us, we are dying off, and they are killing our forests," Mbyvângi told IPS. She said her candidacy "is a very important opportunity" to help not only her own people, but all the indigenous communities in the country. "It’s a very big responsibility, and it will also be a challenge to go into politics for the first time," she added.
Mbyvângi said she has an in-depth understanding of the needs of indigenous people, and of the deprivation and needs of other poor Paraguayans. Official estimates say 35 percent of the country’s more than six million people are living below the poverty line.
Hit hardest by poverty and marginalisation are indigenous people, who are divided into 17 ethnic groups and make up 1.6 percent of the Paraguayan population, according to the last official census in 2002.
The candidate, who is trained as a nurse, said that one of her major tasks will be to promote health in the native communities, which are highly vulnerable to diseases spread by the non-indigenous population.
The Aché community was one of the last indigenous groups in Paraguay to establish contact with the rest of Paraguayan society.
Read the entire article here.
