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South America's Indigenous Peoples

South America's Indigenous Peoples
▪ 2000
by Alcida Rita Ramos More than 350 indigenous groups with a population totaling over 18 million people inhabit South America. Some of these groups still struggle for their physical survival, but many others have begun to demand ethnic recognition and assert their political visibility. Particularly in the period after World War II, the 20th century has witnessed ever-greater participation of indigenous peoples in international forums. Denunciations of state-sanctioned (or state-ignored) human rights abuses have become routine, while on their own lands the Indians have engaged in protests—sometimes even armed conflicts—against breaches of their territorial rights and, above all, against disrespect for their cultural heritage. The clash between Latin American governments and Indians reached a climax in the 1960s and '70s, when large-scale development projects were launched that encroached upon the lands and lives of thousands of indigenous residents.

      In southern Brazil the Indians were pushed to extinction by large-scale colonization. By 1964 Xetá society no longer existed. Eight Xetá survived because they had been kidnapped in childhood by the developers, but they were left virtually homeless and lived scattered among various Indian reservations. In Chile, following a series of massacres and other atrocities by the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in the 1970s and '80s, the Mapuche people lost most of their traditional land, which was either awarded to the usurpers or sold for their profit; the Mapuche faced compulsory assimilation. In Colombia members of the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca (CRIC), an organization created in 1971, suffered repeated attacks from coffee growers and government forces, and by 1979, 30 of their leaders had been killed. CRIC also came under pressure from the other side; by 1986 more than 100 Cauca Indians had been murdered in their own communities by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), while others were killed by the Colombian military, which accused them of engaging in guerrilla warfare.

      Such tragedies as these had a beneficial effect, however, in that they helped catalyze organizational efforts by native peoples. Beginning with a few timid incursions into United Nations forums in the 1940s and '50s, indigenous peoples gradually brought their cause into the international arena. The Declaration of Barbados, signed by 11 Latin American anthropologists in 1971, urged the countries of the Americas to recognize themselves as multiethnic states, asserted the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples, and called for the defense of indigenous culture and territory. In 1974 the UN recognized an indigenous organization, the National Indian Brotherhood of Canada (now called Assembly of First Nations), as a nongovernmental organization (NGO). Such status was granted to a specific association for the first time because no international indigenous peoples' organization yet existed. The following year the World Council of Indigenous Peoples was created.

      The first Barbados meeting had been attended exclusively by non-Indians, but Barbados II (1977) drew as many Indians as non-Indians. They reiterated the claim for self-determination. In the same year, some 100 Indian and Inuit delegates convened in Geneva to propose a revision of Convention 107, which had been approved by the International Labour Organization in 1957 to promote the protection and integration of tribal and semitribal populations. Native representatives strongly objected to the convention's “assimilationist and paternalist” bent and demanded to be recognized not as “populations,” a term used in animal biology, but as “peoples.” Their demands were not met until 1989, when Convention 107 was replaced with Convention 169. The new statute defended self-determination for indigenous “peoples”—that is, greater autonomy in relation to their respective national states.

      In the 1980s the first transnational South American organization was created: COICA (Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin). The organization brought together 81 interethnic confederacies from five Amazonian countries, covering a population of 1.5 million people.

      In the 1991 Declaration of Mexico, 19 Latin American countries as well as Portugal and Spain acknowledged the importance of indigenous peoples for national development and cultural diversity. During the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, a large number of native delegates from several countries attracted the world's attention with cultural and political events that ran parallel to the official meetings. The United Nations proclaimed 1993 the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples. In December 1998 the UN Commission on Human Rights discussed the draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which had been approved at all levels of the UN apparatus after it was introduced in 1986.

      Inevitably, this growing international visibility of the indigenous people's rights movement had enormous consequences at home. Under intense scrutiny, if not pressure, from abroad, nine Latin American countries and Canada incorporated provisions in their constitutions guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples. For example, even though the 1988 Brazilian constitution does not define the nation as multiethnic, it has brought about significant changes in the status and authority of Brazilian Indians. One major improvement over previous constitutions was the elimination of assimilationist clauses according to which the Indians should be “harmoniously integrated into the national communion.” In the current document “[the] social organization, customs, languages, creeds and traditions [are] recognized, as well as their original rights to the lands they traditionally occupy.” The new constitution redefines Indianness as a permanent rather than temporary condition, implicitly ending the centuries-old state wardship in the purportedly inescapable passage from Indianness to Brazilianness. For all these legal advances, the Brazilian state continues to own Indians' lands, which are reserved for the exclusive use of the indigenous communities. In short, Convention 169 has yet to be applied in Brazil.

      Colombia's 1991 constitution is much bolder in comparison. In Article 7 “[the] state recognizes and protects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Colombian nation.” Indigenous peoples are acknowledged as culturally distinct self-governing bodies while keeping the right to full citizenship. As in the Brazilian case, however, Colombia's constitution has no effect until complementary legislation renders it operational. Moreover, to delegate Western-style land jurisdiction to the Indians themselves—a form of management contrary to their traditions—could jeopardize their cultural integrity. In November 1999 the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela voted a chapter that, for the first time in the country's history, acknowledges the ethnic identity of indigenous peoples but leaves no room for ethnic autonomy within the “indivisible Venezuelan nation, State, and people.”

      In both countries constitutional changes resulted from pressures both within the country and abroad, and the NGOs played a key role. Neither here nor elsewhere, however, have legal advances solved all problems. Land takeovers are still endemic, and health and education programs have failed to satisfy the needs of the Indians. Moreover, a new form of plunder—“biopiracy,” the theft of unique biological and genetic materials—poses an increasing threat to the habitats of indigenous peoples, especially in the Amazon region.

      The past decade has seen a slowdown in the political mobilization of South America's native peoples. Further progress for these besieged peoples probably still lies with the NGOs, which are gradually taking over from the states the responsibility for the management of indigenous affairs.Alcida Rita Ramos is professor of anthropology at the University of Brasília, Brazil, and the author of Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil.

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Universalium. 2010.

  
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