[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, Bolivias 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 womens 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
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080226/374a6211/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list