[News] The Trajectory of Indigenous Politics in Latin America

Anti-Imperialist News news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Feb 26 12:20:30 EST 2008



The Trajectory of Indigenous Politics in Latin America

February 26, 2008 By Sujatha Fernandes

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16650

On Monday January 28, Bishop Alejandro Goic 
announced that the Mapuche rights activist 
Patricia Troncoso was calling off a 111 day 
hunger strike in Chile. Troncoso, along with 
several other strikers, was demanding the release 
of Mapuche political prisoners, an end to 
military repression of indigenous groups, and 
retraction of charges of arson leveled by the 
Forestal Minoco company. The strike was 
accompanied with protests in the Chilean capital of Santiago and petitions.

In 2002, Troncoso and several Mapuche activists 
were accused of setting fire to 100 acres of pine 
plantations – charges they deny – and were 
sentenced to ten years in prison. They were tried 
in an unjust trial, where the administration of 
Ricardo Lagos drew on anti-terrorism legislation 
devised during the time of military ruler Augusto 
Pinochet. Further, Mapuche people claim the 
plantations as part of their ancestral lands, 
unrightfully occupied by the company. Forestry 
companies expanded their expropriation of 
indigenous lands during the Pinochet era, when 
many indigenous people were forced to relinquish their rights.

The recently elected administration of Michelle 
Bachelet offered certain concessions to Troncoso 
on Monday, including transfer of the Mapuche 
rights activists to a Education and Labor Centre 
penitentiary and a review of the controversial 
anti-terrorism legislation. Bachelet also 
appointed a presidential commissioner for 
indigenous affairs to begin a dialogue with 
indigenous groups and promote recognition of 
indigenous peoples. The case has brought national 
and international attention to the plight of the 
Mapuche people in Chile, a country often touted 
as a successful free market democracy with high 
growth rates, despite having one of the worst 
levels of social inequality in the region.

The strike has also highlighted the 
militarization of indigenous communities that has 
been accelerating in recent years across Latin 
America. Mapuche zones in the south of Chile have 
a heavy police presence and Mapuche people are 
subject to frequent police brutality, daily 
raids, and the use of firearms against unarmed 
members of their community. On January 2, a 
Mapuche youth was shot and killed by police when 
members of the Yupeco-Vilcun community staged an occupation of a farm.

There are similar reports from other parts of 
Latin America as well. The Zapatistas, a 
revolutionary indigenous group based in 
southeastern Mexico, have faced growing violence 
from paramilitary forces in the last six months. 
In Brazil, a law is currently under debate that 
would allow the state to intervene into 
indigenous communities to protect children from 
neglect and abuse. Like the Australian 
intervention into Aboriginal territories, where 
police and military personnel were sent into the 
Northern territory on the pretext of saving 
indigenous children, the actions are seen by 
local communities and human rights groups as 
being less concerned with the welfare of 
children, and more with efforts to occupy 
indigenous lands and eventually take over coveted property.

The stepped up efforts at containment and 
repression are linked to the growing mobilization 
of indigenous people across the region, that 
received a strong impetus with the armed uprising 
of the Zapatistas on January 1st, 1994. This 
followed on the trail of an Americas wide 
indigenous campaign to mark “500 Years of 
Resistance,” that protested the official 
“Discovery of the New World” commemorations in 
1992. In Ecuador during the 1990s, there were 
five large indigenous uprisings and several 
demonstrations in opposition to neoliberal 
reforms. In Bolivia, a coalition of indigenous, 
peasant and workers groups participated in water 
wars to protest the privatization of water and 
gas wars to demand the recovery of natural gas reserves from transnationals.

The 2005 election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first 
indigenous president and a leader of the coca 
growers union, is an expression of these years of 
indigenous organizing. The rise of Morales and 
other left leaders across the region, along with 
their attempts at nationalizing gas reserves, 
rewriting the constitution, and giving land 
titles to indigenous communities, has highlighted 
the contradictions that exist, as wealthy 
landowners, transnationals, and creoles are 
unwilling to give up their entrenched power and control over ancestral lands.

In Venezuela, the 1999 constitution guaranteed 
indigenous communities the right to lands which 
they have traditionally and ancestrally occupied, 
and the 2001 Law of Demarcation generated a 
process of mapping of indigenous territories that 
would restore indigenous ownership of land once 
officially ratified. But the process of accessing 
those lands has been highly conflictual and 
indigenous people have suffered intimidation from 
private goon squads of landowners. The growing 
activism of indigenous groups in Venezuela has 
prompted a resurgence of racist stereotypes and 
caricatures in the media. One piece published in 
the supplement El Camaleón of the daily El 
Nacional in 2003 entitled “Founding of the 
bolivarian circles in the community of the 
Tabayara Indians,” reported the visits of 
president Hugo Chávez to the imaginary Tabayara 
community. In one visit to the Cacique Konsoda, a 
parody of an indigenous chief, the chief 
supposedly speaks with the president for an hour 
and a half, but since the president does not 
speak indigenous languages he is unable to 
understand anything. The report concludes: “That 
is the problem with these indios, nobody 
understands anything they say.” These racist 
constructions of indigenous people as ignorant 
and incomprehensible demonstrate the anxieties of 
a wealthy and middle class opposition sector, who 
are fearful of indigenous people reclaiming their rights.

Likewise, in Bolivia, where a new agrarian reform 
law was passed in 2006 to protect indigenous 
lands from being sold or bartered, indigenous 
leaders have been assaulted for defending their 
territories against intruders violating the laws. 
The IPS reported that public land in Ascensión, 
occupied by the Guarayo people in eastern 
Bolivia, was illegally sold by corrupt indigenous 
leaders of the Union of Guarayo Native People 
(COPNAG). Guarayo members of a disciplinary panel 
formed to indict the corrupt leaders were subject 
to threats on their life and attacks from private militias.

Under the agrarian reform law, the government has 
the power to redistribute unused land to 
indigenous communities, in return for 
compensation to private landowners. Under 
Morales, there has also been an attempt to reduce 
the concentration of land ownership among private 
interests. On December 8, the constituent 
assembly in Bolivia finally passed a draft 
constitution after seventeen months of partisan 
conflicts and delays, that limits the amount of 
land that can be held by any individual. The 
proposal will be voted on in a referendum in six months time.

But indigenous communities are understandably 
cautious about entering into coalitions with 
leftist leaders. Lucio Gutiérrez, a former army 
colonel who was lauded as part of a new wave of 
left leaders when he was elected president of 
Ecuador in 2003, has been blamed as responsible 
for the cooptation and demobilization of a 
vibrant indigenous movement in Ecuador. The 
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of 
Ecuador (CONAIE) was formed in 1986 and led many 
large demonstrations against multinational 
corporations. In 2003, CONAIE entered into a 
coalition with Gutiérrez, and found themselves 
betrayed by Gutiérrez, who signed a letter with 
the IMF to privatize natural resources, 
liberalize the labor market and undertake fiscal 
reforms, all contrary to the platform on which he 
was elected. In April 2005, Gutiérrez was forced 
to rescind power and flee the country amid massive demonstrations.

Recently, on January 10-12, indigenous groups in 
Ecuador came together at the Third Congress of 
Indigenous Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador. 
Congress delegates vowed to fight for the 
recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples 
and the recognition of Ecuador as a plurinational 
state, and to oppose the extraction of natural 
resources. They called on the constituent 
assembly underway under the leadership of leftist 
leader Rafael Correa to include an agrarian 
reform law that would restore lands to indigenous 
communities. At the Congress, a new president, 
Marlon Santi, was elected to CONAIE. Santi was 
involved in the protests against the 
multinational oil company ARCO (Atlantic 
Richfield company) in the 1980s, and was a 
dissident during the Gutierrez administration.

In an interview with Patricio Zhinghri T., Santi 
said that proposals from the indigenous movement 
are not on the agenda of the Correa government, 
and there are concerns that it will not be 
represented in the constitutional reforms. He 
revealed a willingness to strategize and 
collaborate with the government, but emphasized 
that indigenous groups will continue to mobilize 
independently to put their concerns on the agenda.

These concerns are being echoed in other parts of 
Latin America as indigenous groups have sought to 
retain a sense of organizational independence 
under left wing governments. In March 2005 and 
January 2006, indigenous groups from the 
north-western state of Zulia in Venezuela 
organized protests against plans of the Chávez 
government to increase coal mining in their 
state. While expressing their support for the 
president, they also pointed to the water 
contamination and health risks for the mostly 
indigenous population of the region who depend on scarce water supplies.

The growing level of indigenous activism in 
recent months and years, which also included a 
historic Zapatista women’s meeting and a Meeting 
of the Zapatistas with the People of the World 
from December 28 to January 1, 2008, has signaled 
the strength of indigenous movements within the 
revolutionary processes taking place across the 
region, and their unwillingness to be intimidated 
by the violence or threats of the powerful.

Sujatha Fernandes: sujathaf at yahoo.com




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