11 d. Statement by José Alberto Braunstein, expert witness The indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco are a heterogeneous group of approximately fifty people whose apparent unity derives from their asymmetrical relationship with society as a whole. It is an Amerindian population estimated at two hundred and sixty thousand individuals who speak seventeen different recognized languages, associated with six linguistic groups. The current situation of the indigenous peoples of the Chaco is very dynamic. When one refers to the indigenous peoples of the Chaco, one speaks of territorial, linguistic and historical units that before the breakdown of ties due to effective occupation of the territory by the Paraguayan State, effectively were societies with a political structure, social control and their own organization, different from those of any other society. In other words, historically each of those peoples had independent sets of social rules, leaderships and social control systems, and the descendants of their members today are aware of their shared, exclusive history. Within each of these systems of social rules, the legal persons subject to them were, rather than individuals, bands conceived as families. Therefore, the modern communities, which are the sedentary expression of traditional bands, should be considered legal persons if one of the objectives is to respect the categories of the original systems of social rules. The specific case is that of the Chanawatsan people, that is, the indigenous groups that speak a dialect of enxet (lengua), who lived near the Paraguay River, facing the city of Concepción, and who were traditional hunter gatherers. With regard to possession of indigenous land, it is necessary to point out that the way it is adopted differs considerably from how it is regulated in legal codes and, therefore, the signs that identify said act are also different. Occupation is expressed in a different manner and is not always evident due to the cultural mode of production that does not include the practice of massively transforming nature, due to the noteworthy adjustment to the environment attained by these peoples in the course of many generations. Despite the subtlety of the signs of possession, sites periodically settled, watering places, water deposits, hunting territories, gathering or fishing areas, almost imperceptible cemeteries, and so forth, are an indelible part of the historical memory of these peoples. This historical memory, inseparably associated with geography, is the main sign of traditional possession. The relationship of the indigenous peoples with the land they inhabit is such that a severing of that relationship entails the certain risk of an irreparable ethnic and cultural loss, with the subsequent gap in diversity that would result from it. Mobile hunter-gatherers covered their territory using nature insofar as the resources of each annual cycle and cultural technology allowed them to take advantage of it. Thus, traditional production activities followed a rhythm due to seasonal conditions and to what existed at specific times in various parts of the territory occupied by each people. Use of their territory by the indigenous peoples is not at all haphazard or sporadic if one views it from the standpoint of the internal logic of each culture. The territory, all the space used by the band and in which it moved, was ultimately a vast dwelling which an enormous family used completely in the course of an annual cycle. Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the land also has non-utilitarian aspects. The cosmological spheres of the people of Chaco are ruled by “lords” [“señores”] of the