{"id":328174,"date":"2016-04-13T03:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T01:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/guarani-project-of-the-focolare-in-paraguay\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:03:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:03:44","slug":"guarani-project-of-the-focolare-in-paraguay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/guarani-project-of-the-focolare-in-paraguay\/","title":{"rendered":"Guaran\u00ec Project of the Focolare in Paraguay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>“Scholars estimate that from 3000 BC, <\/strong>populations from the Southeast Asian continent arrived here. Among them were also the Guaran\u00ec<\/strong> people, composed of many ethnic groups that through the centuries spread to the Caribbean up to the southernmost tip of the continent,” explained Diana Dur\u00e1n<\/strong>, a Paraguayan sociologist and scholar of the aborigines of America. The meeting with a small community of the Av\u00e0 Guaran\u00ec and Mbya ethnic groups came about two years ago, when a big flood of the Paraguay<\/a> river forced the indigenous group of 33 families (115 members) to abandon the unsteady settlement on the banks of the river where they used to live by gathering wastes from the dumpsite nearby.<\/strong> “At the start we tried to help them with clothing, food, medicine, and healthcare, like the hospitalisation of a diabetic patient, intervening with one of them who had gunshot wounds, renting mobile toilettes when they were sent away to a desert area, or when, after a storm we collected tents and drinking water\u2026 and yet we saw that these actions were still insufficient. They needed a piece of land,<\/strong> that could give them shelter and security.“<\/strong> After a long search, a suitable lot was found<\/strong>: 5.5 hectares at 4.5 km from the city of Ita, with a school and medical dispensary close by. All was surrounded by greens and above all, with the possibility to cultivate a community orchard for their self-support and the space to build a facility for educational courses. The challenge now is to find the finances to buy the land. “<\/strong>We knocked on many doors <\/strong>\u2013 Diana recounts. A qualified person helped us to obtain the juridical status as an Indigenous Community, so they would be entitled ownership of the property.\u00a0 Furthermore, a friend of the Mennonite Community offered to advance the payment of the land, which seemed impossible for us to do. We undertook, with our Av\u00e0 friends, to pay back the money by instalment.” “God has looked on us with special love\u00bb, the head of the community, Bernardo Ben\u00edtez, said.<\/strong> It was a God who they regard as the \u201cFirst and Foremost God,\u201d whose main command is mutual love. \u00a0He is present in the daily acts and gave this land, a sacred place to protect and where we can build fraternal relationships. “Standing by the Yary Mir\u00ec community also means suffering \u2013 Dian affirmed \u2013<\/strong> due to the discrimination they suffer because of ancestral prejudices, and\u00a0 the misery they live in. But it is a joy to acknowledge and share the community and solidarity values they have conserved through the centuries, besides the love and trust that has been established between us and them. Today we are not alone but have the support of many friends, two associations linked to the Focolare (Unipar and Yvy Por\u00e0)<\/strong> that support the development of the community orchard), two bishops, some officers from financial institutions, two Mennonite Christians and the Indigeneous Pastoral. We obtained four scholarships in Educational Sciences for their leader and three youths. They themselves chose that faculty \u2018because our people need education,\u2019<\/strong> they said.” “I am now writing a book on the history of their community <\/strong>\u2013 Diana Dur\u00e1n concluded \u2013 not only as a denunciation and to give a voice to those who have no say, but as an obligation to them for what they have suffered and what we owe to them. I consider it a step towards universal brotherhood, our Ideal.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A small citron tree, it is the sacred symbol of Yary Mir\u00ec, the Av\u00e0 Guaran\u00ec community with which a group of the Focolare Movement in Paraguay came in contact. The story of a friendship which resulted in concrete and important actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893,894],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2","category-senza-categoria-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}