On what’s working

Combining modern technology with traditional knowledge produces evidence that is hard to dismiss.

Marcos describes Iniciativa Amotocodie's approach as one of accompaniment — a deliberate choice to follow existing processes on the ground rather than arrive with predetermined solutions. The organization’s early years focused on listening: being present in the territory, building relationships, and learning from Ayoreo communities.

This patient, ground-level process led to monitoring trips that combined modern mapping technologies with the traditional knowledge of Ayoreo community members who could identify signs of presence invisible to outside observers. With this help they recorded hundreds of signs of presence across northern Chaco, confirming the existence of multiple isolated groups — at a critical moment when that existence was being actively denied by both companies and the government.

The practical impact of this methodology has been concrete and durable. After 24 years, the existence of the isolated Ayoreo groups is now at least partially recognized. The management plans for Defensores del Chaco National Park and the Cerro Chovoreca Monument Reserve now include recognition of these groups' presence and of the entire territory as the ancestral traditional territory of the Ayoreo people.

The monitoring trips also produced something less measurable but equally significant: Ayoreo elders who had been born in the forest and contacted by missionaries were able to return to their territory for the first time in 40 years and found that the forest was still standing. "Through these journeys, a memory of that people and that territory is awakened and reconstructed,” Marcos says. “That connection with that territory is revived."

Progress is incomplete. State recognition has so far been limited to the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode and one designated territory, leaving isolated groups living outside that heritage area without formal protection.

On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights

Climate and conservation frameworks hold real potential, but more work is needed to ensure benefits are relevant to isolated communities.

Marcos sees the “environmental defender” narrative as one of the most effective tools available to Indigenous organizations seeking support and allies. Framing territorial demands around ecological defense rather than just land rights is yielding more results, and there is a growing trend among international funders to recognize the role Indigenous peoples play in conservation. But there are risks: well-meaning conservation policies often end up reproducing the same structural inequalities they are meant to address, particularly in carbon markets where Indigenous communities, despite being the very people whose presence has kept forests intact, are forced to compete against large landowners with far greater political and economic access. Any conservation initiative that fails to account for the difference between an external vision of forests as resources and an Indigenous understanding of forests as the world itself risks being superficial at best.

One concrete and promising exception is the emerging category of Indigenous Territories of Environmental Conservation, which would allow communities to channel conservation funds toward managing their own territories, giving them genuine agency rather than forcing them to compete in markets designed for others.

On government accountability

Political will, not just policy, determines whether recognition translates into protection.

The Paraguayan government has taken some meaningful steps, which include signing a protocol for preventing contact and recognizing the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage Zone. But these achievements required enormous effort from non-governmental and Ayoreo organizations and leave significant gaps. State recognition has been limited to one group and one territory, leaving other isolated groups unprotected. Expanding that recognition requires political will to accept the existence of these other groups and to develop protocols applicable beyond the already-recognized territory. For Marcos, this gap between what has been achieved and what remains to be done is primarily a political problem, not a technical one.

On the funding landscape

The shift toward short-term, measurable results is incompatible with the kind of work that actually protects isolated peoples.

Marcos discusses the changing priorities of donors and funding agencies, who have moved away from supporting longer-term institutional work toward shorter-term projects with measurable, replicable results. This shift creates a fundamental tension with the accompaniment approach that Iniciativa Amotocodie practices, work that is by definition slow, relational, and difficult to quantify, and “which is more about protecting and discovering existing processes and figuring out how to guide them, how to revive them, how to empower the Ayoreo people to take a leading role in the decisions they make in building their future." To accomplish these systems-change goals, the organization needs commitment in the medium and long term, even when results may not be visible on the timelines that funders increasingly demand.

On establishing PIACI as a recognized global category

Building a global category requires embracing complexity, not flattening it.

Marcos brings a nuanced perspective to the question of consolidating PIACI as a global category. He sees the effort as necessary and worth pursuing, particularly because engaging with other contexts, like Indonesia, helps organizations identify differences in their own methodologies and definitions that they might otherwise overlook. But creating a category that encompasses situations as diverse and disparate as the Ayoreo in the Chaco and isolated peoples on Indonesian oceanic islands requires translation difficulties not just across languages but also across national contexts, legal frameworks, and fundamentally different political realities.

For Marcos, the goal is not a single unified methodology but a shared space for reflection, one where organizations can contrast their approaches, identify differences, and deepen the discussions that the GTI-PIACI has already been developing across Latin America.