“Allpamanda! Kawsaymanda! Jatarisun!” (“For our land and our life, we shall arise!”) These Quichua words echoed in the streets as a multitude seized the church of Santo Domingo in Quito on May 28, 1990, turning it into a national arena of political dispute. By June 4, a nationwide uprising of indigenous peoples had paralyzed Ecuador. The “Revolution of the Ponchos,” as the uprising became known, demanded the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the country’s political process and galvanized indigenous social movements throughout the Americas. In other countries, indigenous peoples received the news and throughout that year and later, invited the rebels to their own meetings, to re/present the story. Based on the historical event, cassettes with messages in Quichua were taped; video-makers circulated documentaries, and early Internet availability helped to circulate the news in North America and Europe.
Up until then, the Quichua and their language had been carefully excluded from Ecuador’s public life. But from then on, as their voices filled the airwaves and official TV channels, they could no longer be denied. Ecuador would now respect them, and in recognition of its ethnic heterogeneity, would define itself “pluricultural.” The Quichua, along with 17 other ethnic nationalities, had begun to rectify 500 years of oppression by calling for the redefinition of their relation with the Ecuadorean nation-state. The lesson was well taken. All over the Americas, a younger generation of indigenous leaders, both women and men, learned from the dignified stand of the Quichua of Ecuador. The Ecuadorean event marked the official presence of an indigenous social subject that had been “invisible” up to that point. This was crucial in solidifying the bases for a transnational movement of indigenous peoples.
These social movements of indigenous peoples are forcing us to reconsider the meaning of struggles beyond the general limitations posed by class-only defined organizations. The introduction of ethnic consciousness and gender/sexual debates over the past few decades, has helped to clarify the relationship of indigenous peoples to social movements and popular organizations. Indigenous peoples in rural as well as urban areas have worked to reconstitute proposals specific to their needs. Indigenous demands can no longer be grafted to the whims of top-down politics dominated by traditional party elites. Indigenous peoples have proposed horizontal coalition building and, through the 1990s, have forged ethnically and culturally inspired social movements.
In Mexico, after the Zapatista rebellion of 1994, concrete proposals to work out notions of autonomous territories, if not to implement them, have stirred up both the right and the left. Critics have interpreted “autonomy” as secession or balkanization of the nation-state. “Autonomy” seen from an indigenous perspective, however, talks to the possibility of an indigenous community being able to manage its resources in close agreement and assistance, but not with uncritical interference by the nation-state. “Autonomy” means prioritizing the fulfillment of basic community needs. This debate that emerged in Mexico, has now spread all over Latin America. The notion of “autonomy” is closely linked to the demands for “indigenous sovereignty,” and “self-determination.” Such proposals reject a mistaken assumption about indigenous peoples as stranded in the past. Instead, they focus on communities that struggle to maintain, or to reinvent themselves using their ethnic and social memory.
Every indigenous community then, negotiates a different form of autonomy with its respective nation-state. Disillusioned by developmentalist policies and neoliberalism, indigenous movements have articulated an international network of mutual assistance, though in terms of implementing their own proposals, some examples are better than others. As the Ecuadorean upsising and the Zapatista movement both show, “autonomous” models will arise from local and concrete practices. In historically Indian countries such as Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru, for example, while indigenous peoples continue to struggle to defend their rights—and the rights of indigenous peoples in general—the struggle for autonomy will be shaped by the fact that a “campesino” identity tends to prevail over an indigenous one.
We must remember the circumstances in which these indigenous social movements occur. Long traditions of nation-state tutelage and caciquismo are hard to disavow. Most indigenous movements, in fact, continue to explore legal mechanisms to validate their demands. Anthropologist Stefano Varese thinks that “indigenous peoples have striven to maintain critical distance from the colonizer’s worldview and values in an effort to safeguard moral autonomy, cultural independence, and political sovereignty.”[1]
Probably the most tragic examples of indigenous peoples’ travails within the nation-state, have been the linguistic barriers within Western-inspired legal systems that have always ended up castigating them. This is especially the case given Latin America’s lax juridical systems, which have persistently failed to protect indigenous human rights. In general, says Franco Mendoza, “the State fails to fulfill its obligations through acts of omission; despite its duty to guarantee justice for all. It is for this reason that as an act of justice, the model of the State must be changed; from the [homogeneous] nation-state to a plural State.”[2] In addition, fundamentalist religious missions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of all kinds and colors, party politics and the impact of international economic competition all disrupt the possibilities of stronger national autonomous movements of indigenous peoples.
In the Americas, the indigenous movement has experienced a radical change of leadership. The younger generations have felt that the international leaderships of the 1960s and 1970s had become stale and comfortable. Not much was known then at the grassroots about mobilizations and international decentralized coordination, let alone the circulation of pertinent information about international instruments to advance the rights of indigenous peoples. The self-criticism has prompted a more militant, better coordinated and internationalized movement.
Indigenous movements, clearly aware of the diminishing power of the nation-state and the overwhelming presence of globalizing forces, have contested “indigenism,” a colonialist policy that assumes the need to “protect” indigenous peoples. At its worst, indigenism has often served to manipulate and to patronize Indians. Its hope was to realize their “full assimilation” into dominant society. In a sense, “indigenism” substituted itself for the Indian, taking the voice away, obliterating indigenous resurgence and agency. “Indigenism” became a state policy throughout the Americas since the 1940s. The indigenous movements of the Americas have persistently questioned the validity of this ideology, and Mexico’s Zapatistas have strongly spoken to the need to dismiss it and further rethink the question in a global context.
In this context, Mexican anthropologist Alfredo López Austin remarks that “for centuries one vision imposed itself, and it drove us to failure.”[3] Against that failure, the “autonomy” of indigenous territories may well now be debated in Mexico’s Congress, thanks to the ceaseless urging of the Zapatista rebels.
Recent meetings of indigenous peoples have proposed changing the terms of relationship with “outside” groups and individuals. They have requested, for example, that “researchers” rather than simply presenting indigenous lives in distant textbooks and studies, accompany the struggles of indigenous peoples. This new proposal—or political stand—indicts scholars and sympathizers, often inspired in the Western ethic of “objectivity,” requesting, in a very direct way, that they be accountable to the immediate indigenous community, its needs and its expectations.
Naturally, indigenous movements are reacting against the exploitative ethics so embedded among researchers of indigenous matters. They reject the use of themselves as “informants,” a term that they feel is disparaging. In a sense, indigenous movements are redefining the terms of collaboration, promoting horizontality and co-working rather than accepting hierarchy; within the confines of the research relationship itself, they are attempting to do away with the no-longer valid modern dichotomy of “civilization” versus “barbarism.”
Part of the process of decolonization is to give stronger space to the use of indigenous languages, to restore linguistic agency as a means to retrieve certain ways of thinking. Parallel to this repositioning is the redefinition of specific terms such as “land.” According to an indigenous way of thinking, by talking about “land” and agrarian reform—a policy that assumes further subdivision—we disregard the complexity of “territory” which, for indigenous peoples, calls for a deeper meaning of relationship between nature and humans. “Land” in a sense is infinitely divisible, a capitalistic imperative, and because of this, destructive of the ecological balance. “Territory,” on the other hand, would press the user to re-evaluate the possibility of ecological/cultural sustainability for the forthcoming generations.
Women have gained in this renewed momentum of indigenous movements. Many indigenous women are re-evaluating gender relationships in the family, the community, their political organizations and the society at large. Indigenous women propose to renarrate the historical epics of women that directly shaped their own social history and agency. Several indigenous women of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), have retrieved stories about the power women leaders and elders have had in their communities, and are promoting the active participation of women in the communities’ social struggles.
Horizontal communications, prompted by international support and recent forms of continental coordination of indigenous women, are helping to redesign NGOs throughout the Americas, and are circulating new strategies to promote gender balance. Of course, the obstacles are weighty: militarization of indigenous territories, the presence of paramilitary forces, institutionalized violence, structural impunity, population displacements, etc.
Cross-ethnic work has been noticeable as part of the hemispheric forging of indigenous activism. The extensive dialogues between indigenous peoples of the North and the South, inspired by the 1991 meeting in Quito of representatives of 120 indigenous organizations and nations, including the Peoples of the Eagle (North America), the Condor (South American Andes), the Jaguar (Amazon Basin) and the Quetzal (Guatemala), continue to promote exchange of information based on common grounds. That seminal meeting was co-organized by indigenous organizations from Ecuador, Colombia and California.
The hemispheric approach has helped to observe and re-evaluate long-lasting consequences of the so-called “development recommendations,” economic measures that have consistently depleted territories, deforested areas, and intensified economic poverty on indigenous territories. One of the everlasting effects of “development” is that about 100,000 indigenous peoples of Mexico alone can be found working in California’s agribusiness. After the Central American civil wars of the 1980s that expelled indigenous Mayas from their milpas and territories, another large percentage of Mayas from Guatemala have settled in Texas, Florida, Washington D.C. and Mexico. Similar experiences are found in urban Argentina where Aymara, Guaraní and Quichua migrated in the last part of the twentieth century. In Amsterdam, a small community of Quichuas engage in trade today.
These events are seen as tragic by indigenous activists who have demanded a specifically indigenous evaluation. Seen within a global context, forging indigenous identity has not been a problem. The processes of intercommunication and sustained dialogue solidified mutual assistance between the North and the South. The tremendous scholarship produced by First Peoples and Native Americans in the North is beginning to reach the activists and indigenous intellectuals of the South. Globalization also means the circulation of intellectual production and cross-border, cross-ethnic mutual assistance. An excellent example of this has been the organizing of the Society of Writers in Indigenous Languages, based in Mexico City.
At this point, a cross-border indigenous movement in the Americas needs to be seen as an intellectual space that allows for the ample circulation of proposals, including the need to press for dialogue on policies—especially those sponsored by the international financial institutions—that directly affect indigenous peoples. In addition, it must continue re/membering indigenous peoples while rethinking certain notions such as human rights, ecologies and the interactions of ethnicity, gender/sex and social class as elements that help to understand social reality. All of it, hopefully, will redefine the nation-state, promising a better future—a redefined “pichakuti,” the great transformation.[4] The many dialogues between governments and indigenous peoples maintain open space for maneuvering. Such dialogues are tangible examples of achievements of cross-border and cross-ethnic indigenous movements.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guillermo Delgado-P. is a human rights activist and anthropologist who teaches in the Latin American studies department at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
NOTES
1. Stefano Varese, “The New Environmentalist Movement of Latin American Indigenous People,”Stephen B. Bursh and Doreen Stabinsky eds., Valuing Local Knowledge. Indigenous People and Indigenous Property Rights (Washington: Island Press, 1996), pp. 122-142.
2. Moisés Franco-Mendoza, “The Debate Concerning Indigenous Rights in Mexico,” W. Assies, G. van der Haar and A.J. Hoekma, eds.; The Challenge of Diversity (Amsterdam: Thela, Thesis, 2000) pp. 57-76.
3. Alfredo López-Austin, “Señales para un largo Camino,”Revista Ojarasca (Mexico), Vol. 46, 1995-1996, p. 25.
4. See Guillermo Delgado-P., “Ethnic Politics and Popular Movements,”Susanne Jonas and Ed McCaughan, eds., Latin America Faces the 21st Century (Colorado: Westview Press, 1994) pp. 77-88.
