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Ayoreo

Fierce Zamucoan hunters of the thorn forest straddling the Paraguay-Bolivia border, whose isolated Totobiegosode bands are the last uncontacted people in the Americas outside Amazonia.

Missionized in waves from the late 1940s and pushed off their land by cattle ranching, most Ayoreo were settled by the 1980s; groups of Totobiegosode still live in voluntary isolation in the shrinking northern Chaco. Some 5,600 Ayoreo live in Bolivia and Paraguay.

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Borders over time

The atlas holds 2 border frames for Ayoreo — the shape you scrub through changes in 1717 · 1980.

Moments from the Chronicle

• 1932 The Chaco War overruns the foragers The 1932-1935 war between Bolivia and Paraguay sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers and new epidemics across the homelands of the Nivaclé, Ayoreo and Chorote, scattering bands and pushing them into evangelical and Mennonite mission settlements.
• 2026 The last isolated people of the Chaco Groups of Ayoreo-Totobiegosode still live in voluntary isolation in the shrinking thorn forests of the northern Paraguayan Chaco — the only uncontacted peoples in the Americas outside Amazonia — as industrial cattle ranching clears their land at one of the fastest deforestation rates on earth.

Further reading

• Peoples of the Gran Chaco Elmer S. Miller · 1999

  Covers the Zamucoan Ayoreo of the Paraguay-Bolivia thorn forest, including their isolated Totobiegosode bands.

• The Last of the Tribe Monte Reel · 2010

  On the last uncontacted peoples of South America, the context for the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode who still live without contact (broad context).

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Sources

• Ayoreo — Wikipedia