Abstract
Indigenous movements have increased power and won land reform in Bolivia and Ecuador, but not without obstacles, reports
“We have done a lot for the 26 indigenous people in the country since we came to office in 2006,” said Celima Torrico, a Quechua Indian who became the country’s first indigenous minister of justice under Morales, in an interview in October with the Inter Press Service. Torrico said the country’s new constitution, approved during Morales’s first term, made the power of indigenous groups much stronger, giving them the right to vote for seven special deputies to represent their interests.
The indigenous population voted for these deputies for the first time in October’s elections. Indigenous leader Rodolfo Machaca told the independent Global Research organisation at the time: “Bolivia is one of the few places in the world where indigenous people are taken into account and are given responsibility and influence in the political sphere of administrating the state … In our country we are experiencing a high-intensity democracy.”
Álvaro García Linera, Morales’ chief aide, told me a couple of years ago that while there has been “a major popular, indigenous awakening” in much of Latin America, it is only in Bolivia that the state itself has become “plurinational”. In a recent interview with IPS, he explained more fully: “While in other countries, there is social and cultural diversity, a strong social presence of indigenous peoples to a greater or lesser extent. But the state remains monocultural, and to a certain point ethnocidal, because it kills the diversity of cultures. So Bolivia has been a pioneer in showing the need for plurinational states.” In other words, Bolivia now recognises that all the country’s diverse cultures and ethnic groups must be represented in the state itself.
Along with other forms of participatory democracy, Bolivia has 15,000 territorially based organisations that allow local people to take part in the planning process. It is this greater participation, not only in government but in the state itself, that is leading to real, structural change. More than a million people, many of them indigenous, have been given land. Almost one quarter of the land titles have been given to women, and another third to men and women jointly. This has given a much greater voice and power to women, who have historically been excluded from land ownership. In this, and other ways, Morales is moving towards a form of democracy that is far more inclusive.
The growing power of indigenous groups in Bolivia was believed to be a factor in the recent re-election of President Evo Morales. Here, people wait to vote in presidential elections in Achacachi, La Paz, October 2014
Credit: Gaston Brito/Reuters
But some indigenous leaders are dissatisfied. They believe that, in Morales’ desire to generate funds to pay for his social welfare programmes, he has followed traditional forms of economic development, giving business too much power. There have been protests against the government’s pro-business legislation, including a new mining law that, they claim, will contaminate drinking water and agriculture. One indigenous critic, Fernando Vargas, who led the successful campaign to stop the construction of a road across the indigenous territory of Isiboro-Sécure (TIPNIS), has repeatedly criticised Morales for his decisions.
As well as providing land titles to more than a million people, Morales has succeeded in creating a form of participatory democracy
Ecuador is another South American country where the indigenous population is finally gaining a voice in the running of the country. During his brief stint as finance minister in 2006, Rafael Correa became critical of the country’s subordination to the IMF and the World Bank. He resigned as minister and began to travel the country. In an interview with New Left Review in October 2012, he explained why he took this step: “Faced with the delegitimisation of the political class, which no longer represented anyone but itself, we said to ourselves that it was we citizens who had to reveal its inadequacies. So we decided to call it a citizens’ revolution, a revolt of indignant citizens. In that sense, we anticipated the indignado movement in Europe by five or six years.” Correa’s message was enthusiastically received, and he was elected president at the end of the year.
One of Correa’s first steps was to draw up a new constitution. It proposes an alternative model of development based on a new concept – sumak kawsay. If it is ever fully implemented, sumak kawsay, which is generally translated as “good living”, is an idea that is interpreted as putting a much greater emphasis on collective rights, reciprocity, solidarity and participation, values that do not coexist easily with the western emphasis on individual rights.
However, since his election Correa has concentrated on generating wealth to fund social welfare programmes. He has redistributed income and created what is widely seen as a more egalitarian society, achieving all this without antagonising the rich. He was re-elected president for his third term in February 2013.
But, just as in Bolivia, some indigenous leaders feel betrayed. One of Correa’s most vociferous critics is Carlos Pérez Guartambel, the leader of Ecuarunari (Ecuador Runacunapak Rikcharimui, Confederation of the Kichwa peoples of Ecuador), the historically powerful indigenous organisation in the Ecuadorian highlands. He said recently in an interview with a local newspaper: “I think the next decade is going to be the decade of social conflict because of mega-mining, mega-projects in the fields of oil, monoculture for biofuels, sugar cane, maize, soya – we are going to experience more or less what has happened in Brazil and Paraguay where millions of hectares are dedicated to the cultivation of soya which is just going to feed the stomachs of cars to the detriment of stomachs of people. This will lead to resistance from the original inhabitants who don’t want to be divorced from nature … And they will clash with the extractivist model proposed by Correa.”
Indeed, what is currently happening in Brazil is a warning that advances can be reversed. In Brazil, the giant of South America, the indigenous population is much smaller, some 800,000 people, less than 0.5 per cent of the total population. Even so, in the wave of democratic enthusiasm that swept over the country after the return to civilian rule after 21 years of military dictatorship, article 231 of the new constitution, passed in 1988, gave the indigenous population “inalienable” rights to their land. Today the Indians occupy about 115 million hectares of land, or about 13 per cent of Brazilian territory. Much of it is in the Amazon basin and the indigenous communities are widely considered as playing an important role in environmental conservation.
This has given a much greater voice and power to women, who have historically been excluded from land ownership
However, the agribusiness lobby, which has long campaigned against the “excessive” amount of land given to the Indians, is growing in strength. Mauricio Guetta, a lawyer working for a large Brazilian non-governmental organisation, the ISA (Instituto Socioambiental or Social-Environmental Institute), finds this very worrying. He wrote in a recent blog: “The big centres of economic power (banking, arms industry, mining, pharmaceutical companies, engineering, agro-business) have found ways of managing the democratic system established by the 1988 constitution, and distorting the pillars of our democratic republic. In this way, they are appropriating political power, in violation of the constitutional principle that ‘all power emanates from the people’.”
It is for this reason that, despite having won their land rights, some indigenous Brazilians feel that their voices are being increasingly ignored. In September 2014, Davi Kapenawa, the leader of the Yanomami indigenous people in Brazil, told me: “The federal government will not listen to us. It is becoming harder and harder to talk to them. They listen only to the powerful landowners and business people. They do not value our culture or our profound knowledge pf the forest. I am fearful for the future.” Brazil is fast becoming a modern, sophisticated economy. Indigenous leaders in Bolivia and Ecuador may well fear that a similar fate awaits them, as their economies develop.