Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Echoi and later became the principal route for clandestine trade in the
Chaco, beginning with smugglers moving Bolivian rubber to be sold to
Nazi Germany during WWII and, later, stolen automobiles and cocaine
paste. Mennonite colonists and immigrant ranchers also began pushing
farther north along the Dajei'date in the 1950s. From these routes, farm-
ers, ranchers, soldiers, and hide hunters moved into areas that had long
been extremely difficult to reach.
At the same time, petroleum exploration in the Chaco began in earnest
after the Chaco War, and oil companies expanded military roads. The
first well in the Paraguayan Chaco was drilled in 1944 by the US-based
Union Oil Company, under a decree by the dictator Morinigo. Through-
out the 1940s and 1950s, international companies such as Texaco, Stan-
dard, Pennzoil, Placid Oil, and Victory Oil drilled forty-seven additional
wells in the Paraguayan departments of Boquerón and Alto Paraguay.
The Pure Oil Company of Chicago, then one of the largest companies
in the United States, obtained leases in the middle of the home territo-
ries of the Ducodegosode and Ijnapuigosode subgroups, to the north and
east of Cerro León. The company established its base of operations at
Madrejón in the late 1940s. By 1948, Pure Oil was drilling north of Fort
Pitiantuta and had brought in heavy machinery to build water tanks and
roads. The line of wells began in Teniente Martinez and continued to
Madrejón, Cerro León, and near the Bolivian border at Mendoza, along
Dajei'date and straight through Ayoreoland. From their base, Pure Oil
Company workers had repeated sightings of Guidaigosode groups, with
