Bolivia:
The Amazon peoples discuss their future
A forum has been opened in Bolivia to
discuss the issues and the vision of the Bolivian Amazon and to
give back to the indigenous peoples the dignity stolen from them
by the conquest of America.
Last June in the Amazon city of Guayaramerin,
the Ministry of the Presidency of the Bolivian Republic organized
the First Amazon Forum on “Macro-Regional Identity and Development.”
One of the centres of the debate was local identity and the present
situation of indigenous peoples that represent the country’s greatest
ethnic-cultural diversity and in particular, the critical situation
of the most vulnerable originating groups. Some of these are threatened
by strong acculturation processes and the violation of their human
rights, others are in danger of physical extinction and some live
in voluntary isolation.
At the opening session, Evo Morales
Ayma, the first President of Bolivia to be born within an originating
indigenous community, stated before some three hundred participants
– where a motley group of indigenous and peasant leaders from
the whole of the Amazon stood out – that “To defend the Earth
is to defend humanity. To save the environment is to save humanity.”
At a forum the previous day, indigenous
peoples and peasant communities from the Amazon region had established
the strategic outline for what they understand must be the Amazon
development policy. Among its foundations, they affirmed that
it “must be based on the special protection of indigenous peoples
in a state of extreme vulnerability and particularly those who
are at risk of disappearing, as they are the Amazon’s cultural,
historic and ethnic heritage.”
These positions were expressed in a
proposal, denouncing the attempts by transnational companies to
pursue their avidity to privatize and monopolize the Amazon’s
natural resources, presently allying themselves with the Departmental
prefectures of Beni and Pando.
Furthermore, the proposal defends the
right of the indigenous peoples to an autonomous and communal
territory within the region, considered to be one of the most
important biodiversity reserves in the world.
The proposal also rejects the Brazilian
government’s intention of building mega dams on the Madera River,
which would place at risk the environmental and social integrity
of a large part of the Bolivian Amazon. The Brazilian government
has just granted an environmental licence for dams at Jirau and
Santo Antonio on the Madero River, going against the position
of the Brazilian and Bolivian representatives of the Peasant Communities,
Peoples and Organizations and other people affected by the dams,
gathered in the “Social Movement in Defence of the Madero River
Basin and the Amazon Region.” The Madero River Complex is
a pilot project for a new management of the South American territory,
that intends to establish a kind of parallel state, with its private
sovereignty, its own rules, beyond the sovereignty of national
laws.
On this occasion, the political minister,
Juan Ramón Quintana, stressed the fact that “it must be the indigenous
peoples that, together with the state negotiate sovereignty and
territorial control in the Amazon to end centuries of colonial
exploitation and discrimination.” According to the official,
genocide and aggression towards the indigenous Amazon people has
been a tool used to consolidate economic interests external to
the region such as those that marked the rubber boom at the end
of the nineteenth century. This continued through the second half
of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century
with disregard for indigenous issues, projecting the power rationale
of vernacular right-wing political “caciques” and their present
demands for an isolating autonomy, counter to the demands of the
indigenous movements.
“The Amazon must become a linking
and integrating factor in a country as diverse as Bolivia and
within the Amazon, indigenous peoples must act along the same
lines to overcome feudal and racist stigmas that still survive
in the region,” stated Minister Quintana, who was responsible
for reading out the “Guayaramerin Declaration” (available
at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Bolivia/Declaration_Guayaramerin.html),
closing the first Amazon forum.
The following sentences are taken from
this declaration, signed by all those present at the event: “from
this forum is born an irreversible process that will help to heal
the wounds of history, both those that bereaved our indigenous
peoples and peasant communities, and those that degraded and ransacked
our nature and our biodiversity.” Further on it adds “from today
on a new history starts, the history of Amazon dignity.”
Article based on: “Primer Foro Amazónico
en Bolivia defendió derechos de los pueblos indígenas más vulnerables
de la región” (First Amazon Forum in Bolivia defended the rights
of the region’s most vulnerable indigenous peoples) Pablo Cingolani,
e-mail: pablocingolani@yahoo.com.ar
sent by the author; “¿Liderazgo sudamericano de Brasil? La aprobación
de las represas del río Madera viola los principios para la convivencia
pacífica de las naciones” (South American leadership of Brazil?
The approval of the dams on the Madera River violates principles
for peaceful and harmonious cohabitation of nations), FOBOMADE,
Foro Boliviano sobre Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo,(Bolivian Forum
on Environment and Development) e-mail: comunicacion@fobomade.org.bo,
http://www.fobomade.org.bo
