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<h2><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5 color="#008080"><b>Indigenous
Movements in the Americas: From Demand for Recognition to Building
Autonomies</b></font></h2><font size=1>
<a href="http://americas.irconline.org/am/5020?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=318212&utm_campaign=Indigenous%20Autonomies%20Built%20in%20the%20Americas%20%7C%20Francisco%20L%F3pez%20Barcenas" eudora="autourl">
http://americas.irconline.org/am/5020?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=318212&utm_campaign=Indigenous%20Autonomies%20Built%20in%20the%20Americas%20%7C%20Francisco%20L%F3pez%20Barcenas<br>
</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Francisco López Bárcenas
| February 26, 2008<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=1>Translated from:
<a href="http://ircamericas.org/esp/4948">Autonomías Indígenas en
América: de la demanda de reconocimiento a su construcción</a><br>
Translated by: Maria Roof<br>
Americas Program, Center for International Policy
(CIP)</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><div align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=1>
<a href="http://americas.irc-online.org/">americas.irc-online.org</a><br>
<br>
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<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2><i>"In the struggle for a freed
Latin America, in opposition to the obedient voices of those who usurp
its official representation, there arises now, with invincible power, the
genuine voice of the people, a voice that rises from the depths of its
tin and coal mines, from its factories and sugar mills, from its feudal
lands, where obedient to usurpers of their official function, now rises
with invincible power, the genuine voice of the masses of people, a voice
that emerges from the bowels of coal and tin mines, from factories and
sugarcane fields, from the feudalistic lands where rotos, cholos,
gauchos, jíbaros, heirs of Zapata and Sandino, grip the weapons of their
freedom." <br><br>
</i><div align="right"><b>Havana Declaration, 1960 <br><br>
</div>
Latin America is living a time of autonomy movements, especially for
indigenous autonomy. The demand became a central concern in national
indigenous movements in the 1990s and intensified in the early 21st
century. <br><br>
</b>Not that it didn't exist before. On the contrary, demands for
autonomy have permeated struggles of resistance and emancipation by
indigenous peoples since the conquestSpanish in some cases, Portuguese
in othersand the establishment of nation-states, since the rebellions
against colonial power by Tupac Amaru, Tupac Katari, and Bartolina Sisa
in the Andes and Jacinto Canek in Mayan lands; by Willka Pablo Zarate in
Bolivia, and Tetabiate and Juan Banderas among the Yaquis in Mexico
during the republican period [1800s]; Emiliano Zapata in Mexico and
Manuel Quintín Lame in Colombia in the 20th century; and on into the 20th
and 21st centuries with the Zapatista rebellion in Mayan areas. <br><br>
These struggles have included among their most important demands the same
utopian proposals that arise from peoples demanding full rights,
territories, natural resources, self-defined organizational methods and
political representation before state entities, exercise of internal
justice based on their own law, conservation and evolution of their
cultures, and elaboration and implementation of their own development
plans. <br><br>
This is not a small matter. From the beginning of the 21st century, the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned that indigenous movements would
be one of the main challenges to national governments over the following
15 years and that they would "increase, facilitated by transnational
networks of indigenous rights activists and supported by well-funded
international human rights and environmental groups. Tensions will
intensify in the area from Mexico through the Amazon region ...
."<a name="_ednref1"></a>1<br><br>
More recently, United States Deputy Secretary of State, John Dimitri
Negroponte, referring to victory by the indigenous Aymara Evo Morales
Ayma in the Bolivian presidential elections, averred that subversive
movements are misusing the benefits of democracy, which endangers the
stability of nation-states throughout Latin America. <br><br>
Indigenous movements and their struggle for autonomy are a concern for
dominant economic and political groups because they are a part of other
social movements in Latin America that are resisting neoliberal policies
and their effects on people. They are also an integral part of the broad
social sectors supporting alternative proposals that would help us
resolve the crisis in which the world finds itself. <br><br>
But in contrast to others, indigenous peoples movements and organizations
are more radical and deeper in their framing of the issues, as is
apparent in their choice of the means of strugglemostly pacific, but
when that is not possible, with the use of violenceand also because
their demands require a profound transformation of national states and
institutions that would practically lead us to a re-founding of
nation-states in Latin America. <br><br>
The reclamation by indigenous peoples of recognition of their autonomy
has another component that gives pause to the hegemonic classes wielding
power in Latin American states where movements occur. Movements arise
precisely at a time when states begin to undergo a serious weakening, a
product of the push by international economic forces to move them out of
the public sphere and reduce them in practice to simple managers of
capitalistic interests. <br><br>
Paradoxically, these same classes scream to high heaven that states will
fall apart if the indigenous peoples' demands are metdemands for
reformation or re-founding of states to make them more functional for the
multiculturalism of their populations. But the reality is quite
different, because if a new state were established with indigenous
peoples recognized as autonomous political subjects, surely it would be
strengthened, and then free market economic forces would lose their
hegemony in the crafting of anti-popular policies. <br><br>
This argument has been used by those in power to design counterinsurgency
policies against social movements and their allies, under the guise of
defense of national sovereignty, as has happened in different ways. In
some cases, for example, Bolivia and Mexico, the state directly
confronted the indigenous movements, even mobilizing its military without
respecting the constitution. In other places like Panama and Nicaragua,
and to a certain extent in Ecuador, especially in the Andean region, the
use of an "encircling strategy" has been adopted in order to
recover lost spaces. <br><br>
In these cases there is no violent confrontation, because political
parties are used as a means of control, offering channels to power that
become forms of control and disarticulation. Another strategy is
isolation, used in Brazil and part of Ecuador, where an open field has
been left for transnational companies exploiting natural resources to
directly confront indigenous discontent, while the state acts as if
nothing were happening.<a name="_ednref2"></a>2<br><br>
Let's be clear: indigenous peoples in Latin America struggle for autonomy
because in the 21st century, they are still colonies. The 19th-century
wars for independence ended foreign colonizationSpanish and Portuguese,
but those who rose to power continued to view indigenous peoples as
colonies. The hegemonic classes hid these colonies behind the mask of
individual rights and juridical equality, proclaimed by that century's
liberalism, and now, given proof of the falsity of that argument, they
hide behind the discourse of conservative multiculturalism, apparent in
legal reforms that recognize cultural differences in the population,
although the state continues to act as if they did not exist. <br><br>
Meanwhile, Latin American indigenous peoples suffered and continue to
suffer from the power of internal colonialism. That is why indigenous
movements, in contrast to other types of social movements, are struggles
of resistance and emancipation. That is why their demands coalesce in the
struggle for autonomy; that is why the concern among imperialist forces
increases as the movements grow; that is why achievement of their demands
implies the re-founding of national states. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>500 Years of Resistance
</b></h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>In 1992, indigenous
movements substantively revised their forms of political actions and
their demands in the context of the continental campaign of 500 years of
indigenous, black, and popular resistance, in which different indigenous
movements on the American continent protested against
government-supported celebrations of five centuries since the European
invasion, or so-called "discovery." <br><br>
First, indigenous movements ceased to be appendices to rural farmer
movements, which had always put them last in their participation as well
as their reclamations, and became political subjects themselves. Then,
they denounced the internal colonialism exercised against them in the
nation-states where they lived, revealed "indigenism" as a
policy to mask their colonial situation, and demanded their right to
self-determination as the peoples that they are. <br><br>
Nicaragua is an exceptional case because, after the counterrevolution
adopted ethnic discourse, it established regional autonomies in 1987 in
order to deactivate the armed opposition, and this, over time, also
effectively deactivated the indigenous movement. Except for this case,
since 1992 indigenous movements are movements of resistance and
emancipation: resistance in order to not cease to be peoples;
emancipation in order to not continue being colonies. Ethnic reclamations
were conjoined with class reclamations. <br><br>
The axis of the indigenous movements' demands became the right to free
determination expressed in autonomy. <br><br>
Since 1966, the UN Pacts on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights recognized peoples' right to free
determination and, as a result, to freely establish their political
condition, as well as make decisions about their economic, social, and
cultural development. The recognized right included the free
administration of natural resources for their own benefit, without
ignoring the necessity of international cooperation based on mutual
benefit. <br><br>
Indigenous movements demand not only rights for individuals but also for
collectives, for the peoples they are part of. Their demand is not
limited to making state institutions fulfill their functions but also
change. They demand not lands but territories. They ask not that they be
allowed to exploit the natural resources in their territories, but that
they be granted ownership of them. They demand that justice be
administered not only according to state law, but also in recognition of
their right to administer justice themselves and in accordance with their
own laws. They seek not development plans designed for them, but
recognition of their right to direct their own development. They want
their own cultures recognized and respected instead of only the dominant
culture. Indigenous peoples do not want to continue as colonies, but
rather, as peoples with full rights. <br><br>
These reclamations by indigenous movements opened a new period in the
history of indigenous rights, which first became visible when Latin
American nation-states that had not already revised their political
constitutions and internal legislation to incorporate recognition of
indigenous peoples and guarantee their collective rights, did so. A
legislative fever was unleashed, but legislation was passed so that the
political class would not lose legitimacy, more than to recognize rights.
In this way, except for a few places like Chile, almost all states
revised their political constitutions to incorporate indigenous peoples
and their rights. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>Autonomous Tendencies
</b></h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>When indigenous peoples
realized that their struggle for constitutional recognition of their
rights had not produced the desired results, they focused their efforts
on building de facto autonomies. Some movements that already had shifted
in this direction grew more powerful, as others began the long path of
making the shift. To accomplish this, they appealed to what they had:
their cultures, histories of resistance, organic structures, relations
with other social movements, and concrete realities in their countries.
<br><br>
On different levels during the 1990s, Latin American states noticed
transformations in the indigenous movements that had struggled since the
prior decade to reclaim their rights. Some movements transcended local
struggles and broke national barriers, achieving more notoriety than
others. Indigenous movements for autonomy were a social phenomenon seen
in all of Latin America. Just when worker and rural farmer movements were
weakening from Mesoamerica to Patagonia, indigenous movements were
reactivating, much to the concern of neoliberals. <br><br>
Community-based autonomies arose as a concrete expression of indigenous
peoples' resistance to colonialism and their struggle for emancipation.
Since the majority of indigenous peoples were politically de-structured,
and communities were the concrete expression of their existence, when
indigenous movements propelled the struggle for their self-determination
as peoples, it was the communities that defended the right. To do this,
they used their centuries-old experience in resistance, but also their
self-generative experiences within the farm workers movement. <br><br>
Entrenched in community structures, indigenous movements forcefully made
themselves heard, and in many cases, states had no alternative other than
yielding to their demands. The strongest proof of this is that most Latin
American legislation on indigenous rights recognizes the juridical
personhood of indigenous communities and enunciates some of the
competencies states recognize in them, all the while requiring, as stated
in the recognitions, their conformity to the framework of state law.
<br><br>
Another tendency among indigenous autonomies is the regional autonomy
proposal. It arose in response to the need to surpass the community space
of indigenous peoples and seek spaces not only larger than the community,
but also beyond local state governments. Its first expression was in the
autonomous regions in Nicaragua, introduced as a form of government in
the 1987 Political Constitution of the State. Since this event,
unprecedented in Latin America, it spread to other countries through
intellectuals close to indigenous reclamations, to the extent that in
some countries, such as Mexico and Chile,<a name="_ednref3"></a>3
proposals were put forth for constitutional reforms and statutes of
autonomy. In others, it remained one more tendency in the struggle for
indigenous autonomy but without any concrete expression. <br><br>
As on many other occasions, indigenous movements themselves resolved the
"contradiction" between community proponents and regionalists.
When the occasion presented itself, first they showed that the proposals
were not contradictory, but rather, complementary. This has been very
clear in Mexico with the Zapatista <i>Caracoles</i> communities, but also
in the community police in the state of Guerrero. The same is happening
in the Cauca region of Colombia and in the Cochabamba Department in
Bolivia. In all these cases it has been demonstrated that communities
function as a foundation for building regional structure, which is the
roof for autonomy, and they can combine effectively, because regional
autonomy is not imposed from above, but occurs as a process that
consolidates the communal autonomies that then decide the scope of the
region. <br><br>
Together with the community and regional tendencies there are other
indigenous movements that do not demand autonomies but the re-founding of
nation-states based on indigenous cultures. This is the tendency most
apparent in the various movements in the Andean region of the continent,
especially among the Aymara in Bolivia. Participants in these movements
say they do not understand why, since their population is larger than the
mestizos, they should adapt to the political will of minorities.
<br><br>
Many Latin American governments have coopted the indigenous movement's
discourse, emptied it of meaning, and begun to speak of a "new
relationship between the indigenous peoples and the government," and
to elaborate "transversal policies" with the participation of
all interested parties, when in reality they continue to posit the same
old indigenist programs that indigenous peoples reject. <br><br>
In order to legitimize their discourse and actions, they have
incorporated into public administration a few indigenous leaders who had
long worked for autonomy and now serve as a screen to depict as change
what actually is continuity. Some countries have gone further by
denaturing the autonomy demand and presenting it as a mechanism by which
certain privileged sectors maintain their privileges. This is the case
among the bourgeoisies in the departments of Santa Cruz de la Sierra,
Bolivia, Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the state of Zilia in Venezuela.
<br><br>
If one assumes that autonomy is a concrete expression of the right to
free determination, and that this is a right held by peoples, it cannot
be forgotten that the titular subjects of indigenous rights are the
indigenous peoples, not their communities, much less the organizations
that they build to propel their struggle. This is why along with building
autonomies, indigenous movements assume a commitment to their own
reconstitution. At this particular juncture, given the fragmentation
among the majority of indigenous peoples, communities are important to
articulate their resistance struggles and building of autonomies, but
movements do not renounce the utopia of reconstituting the indigenous
peoples of which they are a part, so that the peoples can assume the
holdership of rights. For this reason the defense of community rights is
made at the same time as they establish relations with other communities
and peoples in their countries and elsewhere, to support each other in
their particular demands, but also hoist common demands. <br><br>
An external problem to becoming political subjects encountered by
indigenous peoples is that in the majority of cases, they are politically
de-structured, affected by the politics of colonialism wielded through
government entities in order to subject them to the interests of the
class in power. A concrete example of such politics is that numerically
larger indigenous peoples find themselves divided between various states
or departments, and the smaller ones between different towns,
municipalities, or mayoralties, depending on how states organize local
governments. <br><br>
Indigenous peoples know that in this situation the construction of
autonomies can rarely be done from those spaces, because even if they
were in control of local governments, their structure and functioning
would follow state logic, limiting their faculties to those that are
functional to state control; but in the worst of the cases it could turn
out that, in the name of indigenous rights, power is handed over to the
mestizo groups led by local cacique bosses, that would use it against
indigenous peoples. <br><br>
On the other hand, they know that indigenous communities composed of one
people find themselves divided and in conflict for diverse reasons that
run from land ownership, use of natural resources, and religious beliefs,
to political preferences, among others. In other cases fictitious or
invented problems are created by actors outside the communities.
<br><br>
To confront these problems interested indigenous peoples make efforts to
identify the causes for division and conflict, locate those that
originate in the communities' own problems, and seek solutions. At the
same time, they try to determine problems created from the outside and
seek ways to repulse them. <br><br>
The struggle for the installation of autonomous indigenous governments
represents an effort by indigenous peoples themselves to construct
political regimes different from the current ones, where they and the
communities that form them can organize their own governments, with
specific faculties and competencies regarding their internal life.
<br><br>
With the decision to build autonomies, indigenous peoples seek to
disperse power in order to achieve its direct exercise by the indigenous
communities that demand it. It is a sort of decentralization that has
nothing to do with that pushed by the government with the support of
international institutions, which actually endeavors to enhance
government control over society. The decentralization we are talking
about, the one that indigenous peoples and communities advancing toward
autonomy are showing us, includes the creation of paralegal forms to
exercise power that are different from government entities, where
communities can strengthen themselves and make their own decisions.
<br><br>
When indigenous peoples decide to build autonomies, they have made a
decision that goes against state policies and forces those who choose
that path to begin political processes to build networks of power capable
of withstanding state attack, counter-powers that will allow them to
establish themselves as a force with which governance must be negotiated,
and alternative powers that will oblige the state to take them into
account. This is why building autonomies cannot be a volunteerist act by
"enlightened" leaders or an organization, no matter how
indigenous it claims to be. <br><br>
In any case, it requires the direct participation of indigenous
communities in the processes toward autonomy. In other words, indigenous
communities must become political subjects with capacity and desire to
fight for their collective rights, must understand the social, economic,
political, and cultural reality in which they are immersed, as well as
the various factors that contribute to their subordination and those that
can be used to transcend that situation in such a way that they can take
a position on their actions. <br><br>
With the struggle for autonomy indigenous peoples and communities
transcend the folkloric, culturalist, and developmentalist visions that
the state propagates, and many people still passively accept. Experience
has taught them that it is not enough for some law to recognize their
existence and a few rights not in conflict with neoliberal policies, or
cultural contributions by indigenous peoples to the multicultural make-up
of the country. Nor is it sufficient for governments to mark specific
funds for development projects in indigenous regions, amounts that are
always too small and are applied in activities and forms decided by the
government, which rob the communities of any type of decision-making
power and deny their autonomy. <br><br>
Is it not by chance that the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico began in
January 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
between that country, the United States, and Canada went into effect, or
that most of the national demands by indigenous movements include the
rescue of natural resources from control by transnational corporations,
or that the struggles in Ecuador, Peru, and Chile include opposition to
free trade agreements. <br><br>
They also know that the struggle for autonomy cannot be a struggle by
indigenous peoples alone. For this reason, they build relations of
solidarity with other social sectors, supporting each other in their
particular struggles, while at the same time pushing common demands.
<br><br>
Indigenous peoples, by appealing to their culture and identifying
practices in order to mobilize in defense of their rights, are
questioning vertical political forms even as they offer horizontal forms
that work for them, because they have tested them over centuries of
resistance to colonialism. These are practices that come into play
precisely at a moment when traditional organizations of political
parties, syndicates, or others that are class-based and representative,
are entering into a crisis, and society no longer sees itself reflected
in them. <br><br>
These political practices are apparent in many ways, from the postmodern
guerrilla, as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation has been labeled,
that rose up in armed rebellion in 1994 in Mayan lands, brandishing arms
more as a symbol of resistance than to make war, to the long marches by
authorities among indigenous peoples in Colombia, the
"uprisings" of Ecuadoran peoples, or the Aymara blockade of La
Paz, Bolivia, and the Mapuche direct confrontation against forestry
companies trying to steal their natural resources. <br><br>
In these battles indigenous peoples, instead of turning to sophisticated
political theories to prepare their discourses, recover historical memory
to ground their demands and political practices, and this gives the new
movements a distinctive and even symbolic touch. Indigenous peoples in
Mexico recuperate the memory of Emiliano Zapata, the incorruptible
general of the Army of the South during the revolution of 1910-17, whose
principal demand was the restitution of native lands usurped by the large
landowners. Colombians recuperate the program and deeds of Manuel Quintín
Lame. Andeans in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia make immediate the rebellions
by Tupac Amaru, Tupac Katari, and Bartolina Sisa during colonization, and
by Willka Pablo Zarate during the republican period. Local and national
heroes are present again in the struggle to guide their armies, as if
they had been resting, waiting for the best time to return to the fight.
<br><br>
Along with their historical memory, peoples turn their eye to what they
already have so as to become stronger, and, tired of so much
disillusionment with traditional political organizations, to recover
their own, their own systems of responsibilities. This is why those who
are unaware of their particular forms of organization affirm that they
act anarchically, that it's not the right way, that they contribute to
dispersion, and that it's a bad example for the unity of the oppressed,
the exploited, and the excluded. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>Final Reflections
</b></h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Everything said here about
indigenous autonomies and the shift from demanding constitutional reform
to becoming a process of construction, has as background the search for
the root cause of the problem that is the condition of internal
colonialism in which indigenous peoples live in the states they are part
of. <br><br>
It is a situation that neither juridical equality of citizens prescribed
by 19th-century liberalism, nor indigenist policies imposed by different
Latin American states throughout the 20th century, were able to resolve,
because they did not go to the heart of the problem which, as can be seen
now, involves the recognition of indigenous peoples as collective
subjects with rights, but also the re-founding of states to correct the
historical anomalies of viewing themselves as monocultural in
multicultural societies. <br><br>
Where will the processes to build indigenous autonomies in Latin America
lead us? That is a question that no one can answer, because even the
social movements do not know. The actors in this drama draw their utopian
horizon, but whether they can achieve it does not depend entirely on them
but on different factors, most of which are outside their control. What
we can be sure of is that the problem will not be solved in the situation
in which states currently find themselves, and for that reason, struggles
by indigenous peoples for their autonomy cannot retreat. <br><br>
Neither the Zapatista guerrilla in Mexico, nor the indigenous
self-governments in Colombia, nor the struggles by Andean and Mapuche
peoples will find a full solution if the state is not re-founded. But it
is also true that states cannot be re-founded without taking seriously
their indigenous peoples. The challenge is dual, then: nation-states must
be re-founded taking into account their indigenous peoples, and these
must include in their utopias the type of state they need and fight for
it. This is what indigenous autonomies and struggles to build them are
about. <br><br>
Therefore, we must celebrate that many indigenous peoples and communities
have decided not to wait passively for changes to come from the outside
and have enlisted in the construction of autonomous governments,
unleashing processes where they test new forms of understanding rights,
imagine other ways to exercise power, and create other types of
citizenships. <br><br>
No one knows how the processes will turn out, but it is certain that
there is no going back to the past. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>End Notes</b></h3>
<ol>
<li><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2><a name="_edn1"></a>Jim Cason
and David Brooks, "Movimientos indígenas, principales retos para AL
en el futuro: CIA," <i>La Jornada</i> (Mexico), Dec. 19, 2000,
<a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/12/19/024n1mun.html">
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/12/19/024n1mun.html</a>. The complete
English version of the report is posted at:
<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/index.html#link2">
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/index.html#link2</a>
<a name="_edn1"></a>.
<li><a name="_edn2"></a>Leo Gabriel and Gilberto López y Rivas, ed.,
<i>Autonomías indígenas en América Latina. Nuevas formas de convivencia
política</i>, Plaza y Valdez editores-Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana-Unidad Iztapalapa-Ludwig Boltzmann Institut, México, 2005,
p<a name="_edn2"></a>. 19.
<li><a name="_edn3"></a>Javier Lavanchy, <i>Conflicto y propuesta de
autonomía mapuche</i>, Santiago de Chile, Junio de 1999, Proyecto de
documentación Ñuke Mapu,
<a href="http://www.soc.uu.se/mapuche">http://www.soc.uu.se/mapuche</a>
<a name="_edn3"></a>.
</ol><br>
<br><br>
<i>Translated for the Americas Program by Maria Roof.<br><br>
Francisco López Bárcenas is a Mixtec lawyer, specialist in indigenous
rights, and analyst for the Americas Program
(<a href="http://www.americaspolicy.org/">www.americaspolicy.org</a>). He
is author of Muerte sin fin: crónicas de represión en la Región Mixteca
oaxaqueña [Endless Death: Chronicles of Repression in the Oaxacan Mixtec
Region] and other books.<br><br>
<br><br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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