Guaraní Inferno

Seen from the air the inroads made by forest fires in Paraguay’s Mbaracayu Nature Reserve look like the trails of some ravenous insect, smoke plumes betraying its movement. In fact the flames are devouring the insects and the thousands of other species that live in the unique subtropical forest. 24 of the Paraguay’s 48 most endangered animal species make their home in the Mbaracayu reserve.


The daunting images I saw of the fire were sent to me by Danilo Salas, a biologist and project coordinator for the Moises Bertoni Foundation that administer for the reserve. He told me that of the park’s 64 thousand hectares, 3000 had already been destroyed in the fires. “The pastures and crops of the indigenous communities have been lost already. That means that the will either have to leave or starve,” he said.

Neighbouring Paraguay, in case you hadn’t been told, is ablaze. Some 1.2 million hectares have gone up in flames – that’s more than half of Tucuman province. Or almost half of Belgium. 15 thousand families have lost their homes and are forced to look for shelter elsewhere. The most recent casualty is a farmer, Wilder Smith Kennedy, who died while trying to douse the fire on his ranch. As for the damages done to crops, live stock and the economy in general, that won’t be clear until the fires are put out, but it’s safe to say that the impact won’t be easily absorbed by the already impoverished country.

All of this would be bearable for Paraguayans if it were clear that their government was making every effort to combat the fires and relieve it’s victims. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. “I’ll give you an idea of how little the government know or care about the fires,” Salas fumed over the phone from Asunción. “The minister responsible said on Friday that things were going very well because instead of 1500 separate fires, we were down to 1200.” If that’s the good news...

The forest fires, commentators argue, have brought to light the complete incompetence of President Nicanor Duarte’s administration. Short on everything from personnel to equipment, the blaze was beyond the government’s control almost as soon as it started. After finally managing to muster a few hundred troops to help put out the flames, no one could deliver the 400 machetes needed to cut the brush. As the daily ABC Color wrote in its editorial on Saturday; “The Paraguayan air force has many generals, yet only with great effort did it manage to find one single helicopter to fight the fires.”

If the government seems incapable of fighting the fires, it has an uncanny knack for pinpointing the culprits. According to a cabinet minister, it wasn’t the burning of pastures by farmers or attempts to open up the virgin forest or even the unusually dry season, which were to blame. It was the opposition. Trade minister José Maria Ibáñez just knew that the man behind this Guarani inferno was ex-bishop and presidential candidate Fernando Lugo. Why? “Do you think it’s just a coincidence that the largest fires started in San Pedro?” was the rhetorical question Ibáñez put to journalists over the weekend. San Pedro is the home province of Lugo, who spent 11 years as a bishop there. It’s also the poorest region in Paraguay, neglected by the consecutive Colorado governments over the past 60 years.

So now Paraguay waits patiently for foreigners to arrive and the heavens to break with rain. Hugo Chávez, always eager to display his generosity in the region, promised to deliver the Russian fire-fighting mammoth Ilyushin-76. Unfortunately the aircraft was called back because of forest fires in Russia. He then pledged an extra million dollars and yesterday two specialist helicopters arrived. The US promised a skimpy 50,000 dollars to buy machetes and other fire-fighting equipment (that “winning of the hearts-and-minds” isn’t going to well here either...). Brazil, Chile and Argentina all pitched in and then; finally, the Almighty did his bit too. It started raining, although only in the south and only a few millimetres. With some luck an end to the fires may be in sight.

Does that mean it’s over. No, quite the opposite. For one thing the fires have caused the displacement of thousands of people. At some point they will want to return to what’s left of their villages to build on the ruins. Typically, Salas told me, the government has made no effort to record these movements or to document testimonies. In a country where property rights are constantly disputed, that’s a recipe for future conflict.

Possibly an even more dire consequence is the effect of animal migration. The fires have driven millions of mammals and birds from their habitat. Apart from the impact on biodiversity, that mass migration could also be fatal to humans. “It means that viruses that were once confined to determined areas could now spread causing an epidemic,” the biologist explained. Some of those viruses, such as Hanta transmitted by rodents, kill humans.

In fact the only good thing to come out of the blaze is that it has damaged the government’s chance of winning in April’s elections. Polls show the Colorado’s trailing both Lugo and former colonel Lino Oviedo. If nothing else, perhaps the forest fires have cleared the way for a new horizon in Paraguayan politics.

First published in the Buenos Aires Herald on 18/09/2007