PARTLY CONCURRING AND PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF
JUDGE RAMON FOGEL
I participated in issuing the judgment of the Court in the Yakye Axa case,
and I have dissented with regard to some of its operative paragraphs, based
on the reasons stated during the deliberations, including the following:
1.
The Yakye Axa Indigenous Community is part of the Chanawatsan group and
of the Enxet-Lengua people. The Enxet are a nomad people with a hunting,
gathering, horticultural and pastoral way of life; the Yakye Axa Community is
constituted by a variable number of families, 28 at the time of the 2002 Indigenous
Peoples Census, and 57 in 1993 1. The facts described by the Commission and by the
Representatives of the alleged victims state that the community includes 57 families,
some of whom live in the settlement called El Estribo or in places neighboring the
farms that they claim. El Estribo settlement covers 27,741 ha and includes 266
families, according to the 2002 Indigenous Peoples Census.
2. The Chanawatsan, an Enxet-Lengua group, traditionally inhabited the territory
whose limits are the Verde river to the North, the Montelindo river toward the South,
the Paraguay river toward the East, and a band parallel to this river some 70
kilometers inland in the Chaco. The Chanawatsan, like other Enxet groups, are
hunters, gatherers, horticulturalists, and herdsmen.
3. With more intense economic occupation of the lower Chaco since the early 20th
century, livestock ranches were established in the Chanawatsan’s traditional
territory. The 1978 Anglican Mission census found 47 indigenous people in one of
those ‘estancias’, Loma Verde, and today they are part of the Yakye Axa
community. 2
4. Due to the very difficult living conditions at Loma Verde, the Community moved to
another cattle ranching area, El Estribo, in 1986. 3 They were not forced to move, and
the State was not involved in this process. In their new settlement at El Estribo, the
community was unable to overcome the problems associated with extreme poverty,
and in 1996 they decided to return to the vicinity of the Loma Verde ranch, part of
their ancestral territory, where they settled along the road between Pozo Colorado
and Concepción, around kilometer 80.
5. At the community’s makeshift settlement, between the public road and the barbed
wire fence of the Estancia, it is not feasible to build basic sanitary infrastructure, and
the possibility of providing basic social services is severely hampered by the very
The 2002 Indigenous Census records 28 dwellings with 147 individuals, and it defines a dwelling
as the lodging for individual homes; the Census defines a home as all persons living together under the
same roof and sharing food expenses (common pot).
1
2
Autonomous submission by the representatives of the victims before the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights. Historical Background of the Yakye Axa Community.
The colony at El Estribo encompasses 27.741 hectares and in 2002 it included 266 homes or
dwellings. 2002 National Indigenous Census.
3