Paper short abstract:

New urban redevelopment projects in Asunción, Paraguay, deem that floodplains areas of the city “rightfully” belong to the river and that marginalized communities living there should move elsewhere. This ethnographic research examines how top-down environmental claims could be used against the poor.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, there has been an emerging debate about the “rights of nature” and “nature’s jurisprudence.” From rivers to forests to animals, holders or claimants of rights are no longer presumed to be exclusively “human.” This research centers on the case of the Paraguayan river and marginalized indigenous/mestizo communities’ struggle over access to urban spaces in the city of Asunción. State-run new urban redevelopment projects deem that floodplains areas of the city “rightfully” belong to the river and that marginalized communities living there should move elsewhere. However, these areas, known as Bañados, were never empty floodplains. Indigenous, mestizos, and rural migrant communities have lived there since colonial times, forming a historically rooted socio-ecology with the neighboring river. This project aims to understand the way(s) in which the recent urban redevelopment projects in Asunción create a socio-ecological conflict between what is understood as the “rights” of the river in direct contradiction to that of marginalized urban communities. It raises the main question of: how is the Paraguayan State evoking the social and political jurisprudence of the river as a way to delineate environmental claims and deny access to land, housing, and basic services to the urban poor? It combines ethnographic accounts in different locations of Asunción city and state institutions with historical archival research. In this way, the goal is to advance understandings about novel forms of governing people and the “environment” in an era marked both by climate change as well as greater social and political inequalities.