Native peoples gaining power in politics in Latin America

[tliouk]

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Native peoples gaining power in politics in Latin America

By Hector Tobar
Los Angeles Times

Abstract: 
"What we're seeing in Bolivia is really a clash between 
civilizations, between Western individualism and Indian communalism", 
said Jacqueline Michaux, (an anthropologist who has worked there).
The Indian-led movement that brought down Bolivian President Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada was only the most recent and startling expression 
of a growing militancy and political assertiveness among the native 
peoples of the Americas. In Mexico, nearly a decade after the 
Zapatista uprising, the Zapatistas have moved toward self-rule in the 
southern state of Chiapas, a momentum of indigenous autonomy which 
has spread northward to Oaxaca and other states. Meanwhile, on the 
outskirts of Mexico City, about 100,000 Nahuatl Indians, descended 
from the Aztecs, have set up 12 indigenous communities and are 
demanding that the government recognize their autonomy.  

Article in full:

EL ALTO, Bolivia — Above the rocky bowl of La Paz, this vast township 
of brick and adobe homes stretches across a dry plain. This is where 
the Aymara Indians of western Bolivia come to live and work when 
their farms can no longer feed them.

Earlier this month, the hardscrabble order of El Alto gave way to a
fervor of rebellion. Armed with the traditional weapons of the Aymara 
people — sticks, slingshots and muscle — its residents fought the 
army, built barricades and derailed a train, cutting off and shutting 
down the capital below them.

"We are not going to allow ourselves to be pushed around anymore," 
said Bernaldo Castillo Mollo, a 37-year-old Aymara bricklayer and 
jack-of-all-trades who was shot in the foot during the protests. "So 
that our children have a better life than us, we are willing to die."

The Indian-led movement that brought down Bolivian President Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada was only the most recent and startling expression 
of a growing militancy and political assertiveness among the native 
peoples of the Americas.

In Ecuador and in Guatemala, indigenous leaders are wielding more
influence in local and national affairs. And in Chile and Mexico, 
resistance to the changes brought by the global economy are helping 
to feed a renaissance of indigenous organizations.

"Everyone thought that globalization would wipe out local identities 
and cultures," said Alejandro Herrera, a professor at the University 
of the Frontier in Temuco, in south-central Chile. "Instead, the
opposite has happened. People are embracing their indigenous 
identities against these outside threats."

'Clash between civilizations'

In recent years, the Mapuche villages around Temuco have been the site
of a smoldering, low-tech war against corporate tree farming that has 
landed a handful of Mapuche Indian leaders in prison on charges of 
burning logging trucks.

Similarly, Bolivia's plan to export the country's natural-gas reserves
through a pipeline to be built by a multinational consortium helped 
coalesce Indian resentment against a government dominated by
politicians of European descent.

Castillo Mollo, the wounded bricklayer, has only a fifth-grade
education. Until he moved to El Alto in 1986, he worked the land, 
growing potatoes and other crops. But like many other residents of El
Alto, he is well-steeped in the anti-globalization rhetoric that has
swept through Latin America.

"It's not just the gas that we're angry about," Castillo said from a 
La Paz hospital ward he shared with a dozen other El Alto residents 
injured in the uprising. "Look at all the privatizations (of
government enterprises) and how many people they threw out of work.

"People are going hungry," he said.

What Soweto was to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, El 
Alto has been to the indigenous movement in modern Bolivia: an 
overpopulated slum of internal migrants that has been transformed 
into a cauldron of activism.  In El Alto, the ideas first expressed 
by left-leaning economists a decade ago — that U.S.- inspired
economic policies would benefit only a small minority of Latin 
Americans — have found fertile ground among the poor. Brought into 
the national debate by a handful of Indian and union leaders,
they have percolated down to the community's neighborhood assemblies. 
In all, there are more than 150 such assemblies in El Alto, a city of 
750,000 people, according to residents and activists here.

The assemblies are the urban equivalent of traditional Aymara and
Quechua communes. All decisions are made by voice vote. The opinions 
of elders carry additional weight. And all members of the community 
must carry out responsibilities, such as participating in safety 
patrols.

"What we're seeing in Bolivia is really a clash between 
civilizations", between Western individualism and Indian communalism, 
said Jacqueline Michaux, an anthropologist who has worked in the
community.

Mexico's indigenous movement

In Mexico, too, indigenous consciousness appears to be gaining 
momentum, nearly a decade after the Zapatista uprising that first 
brought worldwide attention to the plight of Mexico's native peoples.

The movement's charismatic leader, Subcomandante Marcos, is moving the
Zapatistas toward Indian self-rule in the southern state of Chiapas. 
Zapatista leaders have sworn in five "good government boards" to 
oversee a scattering of rebel-controlled indigenous communities 
there. The Zapatista army seizes drugs, alcohol and illegally cut 
timber trafficked through its territories.

The years since the Chiapas uprising have been hard on the peasantry
throughout Mexico. The free-trade agreement with the United States 
has flooded the country with cheap corn, the staple crop of 
indigenous people since before the arrivals of the Spaniards.

Now the movement for indigenous autonomy is spreading northward, to
Oaxaca and other states. Many villages practice de facto autonomy, 
for example by electing mayors in village assemblies rather than by 
secret ballot, by farming the land communally and by settling 
disputes by centuries-old methods rather than using Mexico's legal 
system.

Even on the outskirts of Mexico City, about 100,000 Nahuatl Indians,
descended from the Aztecs, have set up 12 indigenous communities and 
are demanding that the government recognize their autonomy. City 
officials have barely acknowledged their demands.

Bolivia's radical voices

In years past, Indian discontent in the Americas often was channeled
into traditional political parties dominated by Western ideas and non-
Indian leaders. But in Bolivia, as in other countries of the region, 
new Indian leaders have emerged. And there is a growing, if still 
small, indigenous intelligentsia.

"We have lots of educated people now. We don't have to rely on the
'experts' to make decisions for us anymore," said German Jimenez, a 
teacher and Quechua from the city of Potosi who joined a group of 
miners marching to La Paz last week.

Perhaps the most well-known and radical voice of "indigenismo" in
Bolivia is Felipe Quispe, a former professor and the president of the 
nation's largest peasant union. In the Aymara villages around Lake
Titicaca, he is known as "El Malku," the Condor.

Quispe's Pachakutik Indigenous Movement won only a small fraction of 
the vote in last year's presidential election, but he wields much 
influence as the leading proponent of Aymara nationalism.

"If the concerns of the original inhabitants of this land are not
addressed, then the so-called Bolivia will cease to exist," he said 
recently. "The indigenous people will march into La Paz and an Indian
will sit in the presidential chair."

Another Aymara, Evo Morales, finished second in last year's 
residential election here. He is the leader of the Movement to 
Socialism, whose strongest base of support is among the nation's
Quechua.

Once a coca farmer trying to eke out a living in the Chapare region,
Morales is a leading figure in Bolivian politics, but also a 
proponent of radical tactics, including confrontations between 
striking peasants and the authorities.

Power in Ecuador

In Ecuador, the indigenous movement is one of the best organized and
most powerful in Latin America.

The country's primary indigenous group, the Confederation of 
Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or CONAIE for its initials in 
Spanish, was behind a brief 1999 coup that toppled the government.
And the indigenous Pachakutik political movement formed a key part of
the support that catapulted Lucio Gutierrez to the presidency.

Until a recent falling-out, indigenous leaders held several key 
position in the Gutierrez Cabinet, including South America's first 
indigenous foreign minister, Nina Pacari, a Quechua.

In Guatemala, indigenous political power has flourished since the
signing of a peace treaty ending the country's civil war in 1996. 
Maya children now can be educated in their native languages, a right 
that was long denied to them under the country's repressive military 
regimes. There is also a Maya member of the Cabinet.

On Oct. 18, fewer than 24 hours after Sanchez de Lozada's resignation,
Bolivia's new president, Carlos Mesa, visited El Alto, where he made 
a speech to thousands of Aymara and other community residents. He 
later participated in an Indian religious ceremony.

In one of his first official statements, he said he would name
indigenous leaders to his Cabinet.