20 In response to a request by the Community, the legal bodies with authority over the administrative process heard a request for precautionary measures as an incidental proceeding. Said measures were granted by the first instance, but subsequently lifted by the judge in response to an appeal by the landowners. Lifting of said measures was upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice. The Instituto Paraguayo del Indígena also submitted a request for provisional measures to protect the area claimed while Congress decided on the expropriation request. When Congress rejected the aforementioned bill, the judge lifted the measures, deeming that there was no longer a main proceeding that could enable their continuation. The offer made several times by the State for settlement of the members of the Yakye Axa Community on alternative lands has been rejected primarily because those offers affected other indigenous communities and peoples, and in many cases the resettlement would be definitive rather than temporary. Furthermore, said offers did not mean that there were sufficient funds to buy the lands, and there had been no prior consultation with the Community. f. Bartomeu Melia i Lliteres, expert witness Until 1883, after Paraguay’s great war against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, the only population of the Chaco region was indigenous. Existence of these indigenous peoples of the Chaco, in terms of their land rights, was never acknowledged. The members of the indigenous communities simply became day laborers and employees of the new landowners. At that time, the Paraguayan government was extremely weak, having to pay debts for the war it had lost, for which reason it was in no position to ensure citizens’ rights. Although many indigenous peoples in Paraguay currently have lands, and others are still processing their land claims, it can be said that they absolutely lost their territories. Loss of their territories entails denial of cultural space. For example, the Guaraní say that “their land is not their land” but rather “the place where we are what we are.” This means that “the land is our culture,” in other words, that the concept of culture is closely associated with the land. In the case of the Yakye Axa Community one might say that not having territory and having remained alongside the road for over ten years would prove that it is possible to survive without a territory. However, in terms of their collective imagination the members of this Community live on the land that they claim, and this is what allows them, for example, to remain very faithful to their autochthonous language. The problem of loss of land by the indigenous peoples is a cultural matter. Although Paraguay’s Constitution recognizes that these indigenous societies are prior to the establishment of the State, it does not comprehend that their territories are also prior to the State. It is easy to accept that their language, their political organization, and so forth are prior to establishment of the State, but not that their lands are too. To solve conflicts such as the one in this case, serious anthropological studies should be conducted to establish which are the traditional territories of the indigenous communities, or at least certain core areas of those territories. At the same time, it would be necessary to develop a land registration study of the Chaco, which has not