Rosa Pachurí Paraba: How Indigenous Women are Leading Bolivia’s Response to Wildfires

This story by Mary Luz Guzman Ruiz originally appeared on Global Voices on May 22, 2026.

In 2024, Bolivia experienced the worst forest fire catastrophe in its history: 12.6 million hectares burned, more than double the amount in 2019. In Chiquitanía, one of the hardest-hit regions, Indigenous communities lost forests, crops, and water sources. In the Josema community, in the municipality of San Rafael de Velasco, Rosa Pachurí Paraba, president of the Regional Organization of Chiquitana Indigenous Women (ORMICH), is fighting to recover what the fire took away: her people’s food sovereignty.

When she was a little girl, Pachurí Paraba could still enjoy a delicious cassava soup accompanied by fresh fish caught from the river’ those ingredients were enough for her mother to feed the family. Today, she can no longer eat the dish she loved so much because of the fires and the drought — and her story is not an exception.

According to the Ombudsman’s Office of Bolivia, forest fires and uncontrolled burning devastated 12,658,157 hectares in 2024, a figure that exceeds all historical records in the country. The most affected department was Santa Cruz, with 8.5 million hectares burned (68 percent of the department's total), according to Fundación Tierra’s 2024 report on the fires.

To put the catastrophe into perspective, it is as if a territory equivalent to the size of Cuba had burned. The Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest (FCBC) calls the Chiquitano Dry Forest the largest and best-preserved tropical dry forest in South America.

When the rains stop, the forest becomes extremely fragile: if fire is used improperly, it becomes a devastating threat. According to an analysis by the FCBC on the country’s 2019 fires, at ground level the humus layer is lost, invertebrates and fungi essential for decomposing organic matter are eliminated, and minerals and nutrients are volatilized, making the soil less fertile. The seed bank that allows the natural regeneration of the forest is almost completely lost.

In 2024, Bolivia experienced the worst wildfire season in its history. It was a very painful season for communities located in the department of Santa Cruz; by September, the government declared a national disaster.

In the municipality of San Rafael de Velasco, the fires burned more than 201,000 hectares, equivalent to 20.9 percent of its territory. The mayor of San Rafael, Jorge Vargas Roca, publicly cried out of helplessness in the face of the devastation, while denouncing that there was only a handful of volunteer firefighters on hand to confront half a million hectares burning across the Chiquitania region.

In Josema, where Pachurí Paraba lives, they only experienced smoke, but neighboring communities shared devastating accounts of families who lost their homes and their crops. The impact on food security, however, was regional.

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Leadership born from the ashes

As president of ORMICH — an organization that, according to Cultural Survival, brings together 800 women from five provinces in the department of Santa Cruz — Pachurí Paraba assisted people both during and after the emergency, by providing them with shelter and other resources.

The Casa Grande, from which women obtain materials to market handicrafts and cosmetic products, has emerged as a key economic resource. Pachurí Paraba’s testimony to Cultural Survival reveals that speaking about this is still difficult. The fire not only took her forest; in some cases, families even lost their homes.

Elizabeth Arteaga, who hails from another Chiquitano community, lost her family’s plantain, cassava, and corn crops. Her father-in-law, whose lungs could not withstand the smoke, also did not survive. Those affected by these fires carry a trauma they learn to live with, but from which they never fully recover.

In the midst of this tragedy, the state response was lacking. Despite demands from local authorities, Indigenous communities, and civil society, the government took weeks to declare a national disaster.

Faced with the state void, the response came from the collective. Communities organized themselves, formed environmental monitors to stay constantly alert to any heat spots, and women took on an unprecedented leading role.

The IOM documents that, with support from international organizations, Chiquitano communities now have evacuation plans and trained brigades. According to the same report, this was the first time resources were allocated based on a forecast that anticipated unusually intense fires.

As the land has not yet fully recovered and the climate is uncertain, harvests are not enough to provide for everyone equally. Faced with this situation, communities have revived barter, an ancestral practice that today functions as their main food security safety net. If a family only managed to harvest corn, it seeks another that had success with peanuts or rice; thus, through fair exchange, tables are filled again.

In Chiquitanía, food security is built not only with external assistance, but also sustained in memory. After the devastating fires, some communities have come to understand that their greatest emergency reserve lies in the knowledge of their elders.

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A study published in 2023 in the Environmental Science and Policy journal documented how Bolivia’s Monkox people developed a controlled burning protocol, a fire monitoring program, watershed and forest conservation policies, and cultural revitalization strategies — all with ancestral knowledge as the central axis, and Western technical knowledge as a complement.

The study explains that fire is the main tool of Monkox agriculture, an ancestral method passed down from generation to generation that helps fertilize and aerate the soil. Under the approach of the Indigenous Confederation of Native Communities of Lomerío (CICOL), Indigenous knowledge is placed at the center of fire management strategy.

For communities affected by fire, recovery comes from two fronts: evidence-based public policies and a return to ancestral wisdom. Fundación Alternativas, which specializes in food security and climate change in Bolivia, has proposed strategies that include promoting diversified production in polycultures to reduce the use of agrochemicals, providing technical assistance to small producers, promoting sustainable irrigation methods, and strengthening local food processing enterprises.

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