INDIA AT WAR

Human Rights and the Naxalite Insurgency

by Suhas Chakma, Madrid11.net

With the March 15 slaughter of fifty-five policemen by Naxalites (or Maoists) in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, India’s Maoist insurgency once again entered the international limelight. The local state government launched an operation involving 8,000 security personnel, indelicately described as an “act of revenge.” As the conflict escalates, human rights monitoring becomes next to impossible. The ongoing counter-Maoist offensive remains largely opaque to scrutiny, with egregious violations on both sides.

In suppressing insurgencies, national and local authorities have developed a reputation for committing unlawful killings in so-called “fake encounters”–incidents fabricated by security forces in order to justify the murder of dissidents. The guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission of India on fake encounters were developed after incidents with Naxalites in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. On July 23, 2006, eight Maoist rebels, including Gurra Chennaiah, were shot dead by state police in an alleged encounter in the Nallamala forests in Prakasam district. The opposition Telugu Desam Party claimed state malfeasance, joining a groundswell of popular and intellectual protest. Despite the public outcry, the state Home Minister K. Jana Reddy rejected the demand for a judicial probe into the killings.

Maoist brutality

Government excesses are matched–if not exceeded–by the Maoists. Their targets are no longer restricted to the “petty bourgeoisie,” police informers or “class enemies.” The chilling massacres of 27 Adivasis (“tribal” people) at Darbhaguda on Feb. 28, 2006, of 13 Adivasis at Monikonta on April 25, 2006 and 31 Adivasis at Errabore on July 17, 2006 evidence the widening reach of Maoist violence. Hostages released after the Monikonta massacre told the Asian Centre for Human Rights that the Naxalites “selected” 13 hostages, tied their hands from behind and blindfolded them, before stabbing the bound captives repeatedly and slitting their throats in front of other hostages.

With increasingly brazen rebel attacks, it is difficult to foresee a negotiated solution to the insurgency. The ultimate aim of the Naxalites is to win power in Delhi, like their counterparts sought power in Nepal. India is not a weak state like Nepal, where the Maoists took advantage of the absence of governmental machinery and expanded their base of support to the point that they became a determinant factor in the democratic struggle against King Gyanendra. The Naxalites certainly speak the language of the rights of the poor and the “tribals,” a language that many Adivasis and Dalits can relate to, but their true interests are not Adivasi- or Dalit-centric. The Adivasis and the Dalits are pawns, both perpetrators and victims in the Maoist insurgency.

A robust challenge

The offensive capabilities of the Maoists should no longer surprise the Indian security establishment. In the past two years, attacks on state and national government facilities–including Jehanabad jail in Bihar on Nov. 13, 2005, security and electricity installations in the town of Udayagiri in Orissa on March 24, 2006, and the detention of the Tata-Kharagpur passenger train in the forests of Jharkhand on Dec. 10, 2006–show that the Maoists are not another rag-tag armed opposition group.

Officials from states in the grip of Maoist insurgency–which has cut through central India–have met frequently to hone their counterinsurgent efforts. These meetings do not seem to be having any impact on the ground. India has never been able to suppress armed insurgency in its forested areas through military means. Since independence, Indian forces have attempted to defeat separatist movements in the northeast of the country, which continue to plague the region. There is no reason to believe that the Maoists will prove any easier an opponent. Following the killing of 13 police personnel at Kanjkiro on Dec. 2, 2006, Madhu Koda, Chief Minister of Jharkhand, claimed that even with 50 companies, he could not guarantee security in the state. The recent killing of Jharkhand parliamentarian Sunil Mahato testifies to the precarious hold local forces have on sections of central India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2006 stressed a two-pronged strategy to addressing the Naxalite problem: effective policing and accelerated socio-economic development programs. However, at the state level, the demand for more security forces has been the common refrain.

Doing more harm than good

Given the lack of infrastructure in the areas where Naxalites are strongest, no development activity can be undertaken without creating the necessary security pre-conditions. Maoists have consistently opposed development activities, killing two villagers April 1 in Chhattisgarh for allowing the construction of a steel plant on their land. However, whenever security forces are deployed in a concerted manner, they only accentuate the conflict through gross human rights violations.

It does not appear that New Delhi foresaw the implications of the Salwa Judum campaign, an effort begun two years ago to equip paramilitary citizen militias against the Maoists. The central government has supported such so-called civilian “uprisings” in other insurgency-hit areas. However, Salwa Judum has made little positive impact. Poorly equipped (because state officials are wary of losing sophisticated weapons to the Maoists), the paramilitaries have struggled to compete with the strength and tactical sharpness of the Maoists. Furthermore, the militia has deeply disrupted the lives of locals, displacing nearly 50,000 civilians into government-managed relief camps in an effort to isolate the populace from the rebels. The paramilitary effort threatens to alienate local people despite being calculated to win their support. It is preposterous to expect that the ineffective Salwa Judum campaign in “six blocks” of one district (Dantewada, Chhattisarh state) can serve as a model in denting an insurgency spread over 170 districts in 13 states across the country.

Chhattisgarh state officials have not plotted a way out of the mess created by the Salwa Judum campaign. If the Salwa Judum relief camps are dismantled, the civilians living in them will be even more vulnerable to Maoist retaliation. At the same time, so long as the Salwa Judum campaign continues, the loss of lives will be high, and the killings will continue to draw international attention.

The present Naxalite movement is not similar to the guerilla movement launched in the backstreets of Calcutta in 1960s, one driven in large part by students in keeping with the idealistic uprisings of the period. The present Naxal conflict brings the peripheries of India to the national mainstream and directly springs from the concerns of those historically oppressed and dispossessed. If the Naxal conflict develops into the kind of intractable crisis plaguing Jammu and Kashmir, it will bleed mainland India.

Despite the difficulty of such a route, the Naxal conflict can be addressed only through the rule of law and rights-based approaches to development. The government must ensure compliance with the common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocol Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II); ban forcible displacement of civilians, the recruitment of child soldiers and the destruction of the means of survival of civilian populations; better protect vulnerable civilians and ensure accountability for the violations by security forces.

Insurgent movements like that of the Maoists are in large part sustained by the human rights violations of the government. India has never before relied on the rule of law to combat its rebels. Such an approach may be New Delhi’s best and only option.

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Suhas Chakma is director of the Asian Centre of Human Rights in New Delhi.
http://www.achrweb.org

This article first appeared April 2 on Madrid11.net
http://www.madrid11.net/articles/naxalites020407

From our weblog:

India: Maoists pledge to resist anti-guerilla drive
WW4 REPORT, March 27, 2007
/node/3451

Maoist-Madhesi violence in Nepal
WW4 REPORT, March 23, 2007
/node/3416

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingINDIA AT WAR 

CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE

by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus

It was unexpected.

At the Seventh World Social Forum (WSF), held in Nairobi, Kenya, in late January, the most controversial topic was not HIV-AIDS, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, or neoliberalism. The topic that generated the most heat was China’s relations with Africa.

At a packed panel discussion organized by a semi-official Chinese NGO, the discussion was candid and angry. “First, Europe and America took over our big businesses. Now China is driving our small and medium entrepreneurs to bankruptcy,” Humphrey Pole-Pole of the Tanzanian Social Forum told the Chinese speakers. “You don’t even contribute to employment because you bring in your own labor.”

Stung by such remarks from the floor, Cui Jianjun, secretary general of the China NGO Network for International Exchanges, lost his diplomatic cool and launched into an emotional defense of Chinese foreign investment, saying that “we Chinese had to make the same hard decision on whether to accept foreign investment many, many years ago. You have to make the right decision or you will lose, lose, lose. You have to decide right, or you will remain poor, poor, poor.”

The vigorous exchange should have been anticipated since many Africans view China as having the potential to bring either great promise or great harm. If African civil society representatives were hard on China, this was because they desperately wanted China to reverse course before it was too late, so that it would avoid the path trod by Europe and the United States.

Beijing’s High Profile in Africa

The debate at the WSF took place amid a marked elevation of Africa’s profile in China’s foreign policy. In early February, President Hu Jintao made his third trip to Africa in three years, following the success of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which took place November 4-5, 2006. Attended by 48 African delegations, most of them led by heads of state, the Forum was the largest international summit held in Beijing.

At the start of the summit, Beijing unveiled a glittering trade and aid plan designed to cement its “strategic partnership” with Africa. The key items in the package committed China to doubling its 2006 assistance within three years, providing $3 billion worth of preferential loans and $2 billion worth of export credits, and canceling all interest-free government loans that matured at the end of 2005 and were owed by the heavily indebted and poorest African countries. In addition, the two sides agreed to raise the volume of trade from $40 billion in 2005 to $100 billion by 2010 and set up of a China-Africa Development Fund that would be capitalized to the tune of $5 billion to support Chinese companies investing in Africa.

If not yet the biggest external player in Africa, China is certainly the most dynamic. It now accounts for 60% of oil exports from Sudan and 35% of those from Angola. Chinese firms mine copper in Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville, cobalt in the Congo, gold in South Africa, and uranium in Zimbabwe. Its ecological footprint is large, says Michelle Chan-Fishel of Friends of the Earth International, consuming as it does 46% of Gabon’s forest exports, 60% of timber exported from Equatorial Guinea, and 11% of timber exports from Cameroon. Contrasting Images of China

China is popular with African governments. “There is something refreshing to China’s approach,” said a Nigerian diplomat who asked not to be identified. “They don’t attach all those conditionalities that accompany Western loans.” Adds Justin Fong, executive director of the Chinese NGO Moving Mountains: “Whether accurate or not, the image Africans have of the Chinese is that they get things done. They don’t waste their time in meetings. They just go ahead and build roads.”

An African development specialist working with a western aid organization claimed that Chinese projects are low-cost affairs compared to western projects. “Labor costs are low, they integrate African labor, so some transfer of skills takes place, and the Chinese workers live in the village, and this means living like the villagers, down to competing with them for dog meat.”

While they might dispute this characterization of China’s impact, most NGOs are nuanced in their assessments. They acknowledge that China has a different trajectory in Africa than Europe and the United States. Whereas the West began by exploiting Africa, China initiated its relations with Africa with “people-to-people” medical and technical assistance missions in the 1960s and 1970s, the most famous of which was the building of the now fabled Tanzania-Zambia (Tanzam) Railway. But with China’s rise as a modernizing economic superpower after the definitive decision in 1984 to use capitalism as the engine of growth, the old solidarity rationale has been replaced by a dangerously single-minded pursuit of economic interests– in this case, mainly oil and mineral resources to feed a red-hot economy.

If African governments were accountable to their people, say NGO critics, Chinese aid could play a very positive role, especially compared to World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans that come with conditions to bring down tariffs, loosen government regulation, and privatize state enterprises. But with non-accountable, non-transparent governments, such as those in the Sudan and Zimbabwe, say the critics, Chinese loan and aid programs contribute instead to consolidating the rule of non-democratic elites.

Crossing the Line in Sudan

Where China has definitely crossed the line is in Sudan. Using its veto power at the UN Security Council, China has prevented the international community from creating and deploying a multinational force to protect people in Darfur who are being killed or raped by militias backed by the Sudanese government. Even one African diplomat sympathetic to China asserts, “China’s strong backing for the Sudanese government has discouraged African governments that are trying to push it to accept an African Union solution to the problem.”

China has very substantial interests in Sudan. These are set out in detail in an important collection of studies launched at the WSF entitled African Perspectives on China in Africa, edited by Firoze Manji and Stephen Marks. China obtained oil exploration and production rights in 1995 when the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) bought a 40% stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, which is pumping over 300,000 barrels per day. Sinopec, another Chinese firm, is building a 1500-kilometer pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where China’s Petroleum Engineering Construction Company is constructing a tanker terminal. Author John Rocha estimates Chinese investment in oil exploration to reach $8 billion.

Chinese interests go beyond oil. China’s investment in textile mills is estimated at $100 million. It has emerged as one of Sudan’s top arms suppliers. In one particular barter arrangement, China supplied $400 million worth of weapons in return for cotton. It is active in infrastructure, with its firms building bridges near the Merowe Dam and two other sites on the River Nile. It is involved in key hydropower projects, the most controversial being the Merowe Dam, which is expected to ultimately cost $1.8 billion.

The construction of the Merowe Dam has involved forced resettlement of the Hambdan people living at or near the site and armed repression of the Amri people who have been organizing to prevent the Sudanese government’s plan to transfer them to the desert. Local police and private agencies now provide 24-hour security to Chinese engineering detachments, but civil society observers say the aim of these groups is less protection of the Chinese than repression of growing opposition. As Ali Askari, director of the London-based Piankhi Research Group, puts it, “The sad truth is, both the Chinese and their elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership. They are joining hands to uproot poor people, expropriate their land, and appropriate their natural resources.”

Chinese and Sudanese officials tend to dismiss such criticism as the machinations of western powers. Such powers are alarmed at China’s becoming the top international player in a country long treated as being in the West’s sphere of influence. But, according to Beijing and Khartoum, the West’s dismal record of colonial plunder deprives its statements of any moral authority. Defending its close relations with the Sudanese government, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Zhai Jun, noted the contrast in African governments’ reception of China and the West: “Some people believe that by ‘taking’ resources and energy from Africa, China is looting Africa… If this was so, then African countries would express their dissatisfaction.”

Chinese officials are, however, wrong to think that African NGOs are merely parroting the rhetoric of self-interested western governments. In fact, civil society groups also consider such western criticism hypocritical. Commenting on the remark of a World Bank official to the effect that “Chinese handouts without reforms” would not be beneficial to Africa, John Karumbidza, a contributor to the China in Africa volume, acidly remarks, “It is the case…that this same bank and Western approach over the past half century has failed to deliver development, and left Africa in more debt than when they began.”

Other Problematic Partnerships

These criticisms are unlikely to go away, not only in Sudan but in many other countries where Chinese involvement with controversial regimes runs deep. With relations with the West and even South Africa deteriorating over his political record, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has increasingly turned to China, which one of his key ministers has characterized as an “all weather friend.” Chinese investment in mining, energy, telecommunications, agriculture, and other sectors was estimated at $600 million at the end of 2004, with another $600 million pledged in June 2005. The price, however, has been high, according to critics, who claim that Mugabe’s government has handed de facto control of key strategic industries to the Chinese. A contract with China to farm 386 square miles of land while millions of Zimbabweans remain landless has come under fire, with rural sociologist John Karumbidza blasting it as “nothing more than land renting and typical agri-business relations that turn the land holders and their workers into labor tenants and subject them to exploitation.”

The Nigerian government is another problematic Chinese partner, according to civil society activists. China has extensive interests in Nigeria, particularly in oil exploration and production. The China National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC), notes researcher John Rocha, has acquired a 45% working interest in an offshore enterprise, OML 130, for $2.3 billion; the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has invested in the Port Harcourt refinery; and a joint venture between the Chinese Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the L.N. Mittal Group, plans to invest $6 billion in railways, oil refining, and power in exchange for rights to drill oil.

These interests have led to an increasingly tight alliance with the faction of the ruling People’s Democratic Party dominated by President Olusegun Obasanjo. This relationship has a controversial security dimension. As Ndubisi Obiorah, another contributor to the China in Africa volume who is director of the Center for Law and Social Action in Lagos, notes: “The Nigerian government is increasingly turning to China for weapons to deal with the worsening insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The Nigerian Air Force purchased 14 Chinese-made versions of the upgraded MiG 21 jet fighter; the navy has ordered patrol boats to secure the swamps and creeks of the Niger Delta.” Not surprisingly, the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Nigerian Delta (MEND) has warned Chinese companies to keep out of the region or risk attack.

With their integrated political, military, economic, and diplomatic components, China’s “strategic partnerships” with governments such as those of Nigeria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe increasingly have the feel of the old U.S. and Soviet relationships with client states during the Cold War.

Will Civil Society Make the Difference?

Nevertheless, many civil society activists do not discount the possibility that things may yet be turned around. Though critical of current Chinese policies, Humphrey Pole-Pole of Tanzania appealed at the Nairobi meeting for a “win-win-win” strategy — that is, “a win for China, a win for African governments, and a win for African people. This is not impossible.”

The key to such a change may be the growth of Chinese civil society organizations, some of which are increasingly independent of and indeed critical of government policies within China.

But closer ties between Chinese and African NGOs are not enough, says Justin Fong. Mechanisms to ensure Chinese government accountability are needed. One point of vulnerability he identifies is the practice of Chinese government entities, such as the China Export-Import Bank, of going for co-financing for their Africa projects to international banks such as HSBC and Citigroup. When it comes to controversial projects, pressure might be indirectly placed on the Chinese by lobbying these institutions, which are more sensitive about their image than Beijing. Such tactics, which sometimes worked with western governments and firms, may not, however, succeed with China.

But whatever their differences, civil society activists, African and Chinese, agree on one thing. It will be a hard, uphill struggle to change the Chinese juggernaut’s direction in Africa.

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Walden Bello is executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

This article first appeared March 9 in the International Relations Center’s Foreign Policy in Focus http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4065

See also:

NIGER DELTA: BEHIND THE MASK
Ijaw Militia Fight the Oil Cartel
by Ike Okonta
WW4 REPORT #129, January 2007
/node/2974

From our weblog:

Ethiopia: Ogaden rebels attack Chinese oil field
WW4 REPORT, April 24, 2007
/node/3686

Darfur: guerillas warn off oil companies
WW4 REPORT, April 19, 2007
/node/3655

China and Sudan reaffirm military ties
WW4 REPORT, April 5, 2007
/node/3529

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE 

COSTA RICA: CAFTA REFERENDUM PLANNED

from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

Costa Rican president Oscar Arias announced on April 13 that his government will hold a referendum on the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a trade accord between the US and Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. “For the first time, Costa Ricans…will be able to decide directly the future of a very important law for the country,” Arias said at a news conference. He is to send Congress a decree on April 17 authorizing the referendum, which could take place within three months. Under Costa Rican law, the referendum will be binding if 30% of Costa Rica’s voters, a little more than 781,000, participate.

Costa Rica is the only one of the seven countries that signed DR-CAFTA in 2004 not to win approval for the pact from its legislature; it now becomes the only country to subject the controversial measure to a popular vote. DR-CAFTA took effect in the other countries during 2006. President Arias is a strong supporter of the pact; he acted on the referendum only after a decision by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on April 12 to authorize the referendum if DR-CAFTA opponents could collect signatures from 5% of the country’s registered voters (about 130,000) in nine months. Observers said opponents could easily meet the requirement.

Anti-neoliberal activists described Arias’ announcement as a major victory for Costa Rican democracy. As recently as December, analysts expected Congress to approve DR-CAFTA by March or April. Now observers feel there’s a real possibility that the pact will be rejected. Opinion polls currently show less than 40% of those surveyed in full support of the trade accord. But Rafael Carrillo, president of the Union of Chambers of Private Enterprise (UCCAEP), insists that Costa Ricans will “certainly” vote to ratify the accord. Albino Vargas, a leader of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP) and of the campaign against DR-CAFTA, warned against “corrupt political manipulation.”

“We can’t allow money to decide the fate of the referendum, in defiance of the people’s wishes,” he said. (Boston Globe, April 13 from Reuters; La Nacion, Costa Rica, April 13 from AFP)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 15

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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See our last report on Central America:

WW4 REPORT #132, April 2007
/node/3498

See related story:

TRADE PROTESTS ROCK COSTA RICA
Central America’s Last Stand Against CAFTA
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT #127, November 2006
/node/2707

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOSTA RICA: CAFTA REFERENDUM PLANNED 

CONTINENTAL INDIGENOUS SUMMIT IN GUATEMALA

by Marc Becker, Upside Down World

Thousands of Indigenous peoples from 24 countries gathered in Guatemala on March 26 for the Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala. After U.S. President George W. Bush visited the country two weeks earlier during his contentious “diplomatic” tour of Latin America, Maya priests cleansed the site of his “bad spirits” in preparation for the summit.

The week-long summit was held in Iximché, a sacred Maya site and main city of the Kaqchikel Maya people. The first day dawned bright and sunny. In Tecpán, a nearby town where many of the delegates to the summit were housed with local families, organizers gathered in the main plaza and exploded fireworks to celebrate the beginning of the meetings. In the early morning light, delegates crowded on buses to travel the four kilometers up to the Iximché ceremonial site. Nestled in a plaza among the pyramids, Maya leaders led the group in a spiritual ceremony as the sun peeked over the horizon. On subsequent days, people from North, South, and Central America all took their turns with the opening ceremonies.

After the ceremonies, delegates descended to the entrance of the archaeological site for breakfast (well organized in a communitarian and solidarity style) and the inauguration of the summit under a huge tent set up for this purpose. A Maya elder cleansed the speaker’s table with incense before the presentations began. Despite this cosmological framing, the summit’s discussions focused primarily on economic and political rather than cultural issues. The summit’s slogan “from resistance to power” captured the spirit of the event. It is not enough to resist oppression, but Indigenous peoples need to present concrete and positive alternatives to make a better and more inclusive world.

The summit’s ideological orientation was apparent from the inaugural panel onward. After Tecpán’s mayor welcomed delegates to Iximché, Ecuadorian Indigenous activist and Continental Council member Blanca Chancoso called for Indigenous peoples to be treated as citizens and members of a democracy. She rejected war-making, militarization, and free trade pacts.

“Our world is not for sale,” she declared. “Bush is not welcome here. We want, instead, people who support life. Yes to life. Imperialism and capitalism have left us with a historic debt, and they owe us for this debt.”

She emphasized the importance of people creating alternatives to the current system.

Joel Suárez from the Americas Social Forum was also present to announce that the Third Americas Social Forum will be held in Guatemala in 2008. For it to be successful, Suárez emphasized, the forum must have an Indigenous and female face. He called on delegates to support the forum.

Indigenous Peoples and Nation-States

Three plenary panels with invited speakers framed the discussions of the summit’s theme of moving from resistance to power. The panels examined relations between Indigenous peoples and nation-states, territory and natural resources, and Indigenous governments.

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj from Guatemala pointed to a gap between Indigenous political understandings and the technical skills necessary to achieve those visions. In particular, Indigenous leaders need better training in economics and international law. But this does not mean borrowing solutions from the outside world.

“There are no recipes for success,” Velásquez emphasized. “We need to make up our own alternatives.”

Bolivia’s Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca argued that we should not rebuild current states, but dream and create new ones. “Our minds are colonized,” he stated, “but not our hearts. It is time to listen to our hearts, because this is what builds resistance.”

Development plans look for a better life, but this results in inequality. Indigenous peoples, instead, look to how to live well (vivir bien). Choquehuanca emphasized the need to look for a culture of life.

Rodolfo Pocop from the Guatemalan organization Waqib’ Kej argued that we need a new word for the term “resources” because it reflects a mercantilist concept foreign to Indigenous cosmology. He suggested using instead “mother earth” because if we don’t live in harmony with the earth we will not have life.

Isaac Avalos, secretary general of the Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), picked up on this concept, suggesting that we should not talk about land but territory because it is a much broader term that includes everything–land, air, water, petroleum, gas, etc. Following along with this symbolism, we must take care of the earth as our mother so that it can continue to provide a future for its children. The discussions led the gathered delegates to advocate for very practical and concrete actions, such as drinking local water and boycotting Coca-Cola.

Following the panels, delegates broke into working groups that focused on a variety of themes including self-determination, intellectual property rights, identity and cosmology, globalization, and Indigenous justice systems. While public events were often filled with discourses long on rhetoric, the workshops provided a venue for substantive and concrete proposals.

Women’s Participation

Inclusion and equality are expressed values that have long run through many Indigenous communities and organizations. Nevertheless, aspects of the dominant culture’s inequalities surfaced throughout the summit, most visibly apparent in gender inequalities. Women participated actively and massively throughout the summit. But while organizers made honorable attempts at equality on the plenary panels, men still outnumbered women by about three to one at the speakers’ tables. The imbalance became even more notable during discussion periods during which there were about ten men for every woman who approached the mike. Finally, a woman from Peru rose to note that men always dominate these conversations. “We need parity,” she demanded, “both individually and collectively.”

Declaration of Iximché

The most visible and immediate outcome of the summit was the Declaration of Iximché. It is a strong statement that condemns the U.S. government’s militaristic and imperialistic policies, and calls for respect for human rights, territory, and self-determination. It ratified an ancestral right to territory and common resources of the mother earth, rejected free trade pacts, condemned the construction of a wall between Mexico and the United States, and called for the legalization of coca leaves.

For an Indigenous summit, the declaration is perhaps notable for its lack of explicit ethnic discourse. Instead, it spoke of struggles against neoliberalism and for food sovereignty. On one hand, this pointed to the Indigenous movement’s alignment with broader popular struggles in the Americas. On the other, it demonstrated a maturation of Indigenous ideologies that permeate throughout the human experience. Political and economic rights were focused through a lens of Indigenous identity, with a focus on concrete and pragmatic actions. For example, in justifying the declaration’s condemnation of a the construction of a wall on the United States/Mexico border, Tonatierra’s Tupac Enrique Acosta declared that nowhere in the Americas could Indigenous peoples be considered immigrants because colonial borders were imposed from the outside.

The declaration endorsed the candidacy of Bolivia’s Indigenous president Evo Morales for the Nobel Peace Prize. Morales was widely cheered at the summit. Initial plans called for him to attend the summit’s closing rally, but ongoing political tensions in Bolivia prevented him from traveling to Guatemala. Instead, he sent a letter that read: “After more than 500 years of oppression and domination, they have not been able to eliminate us. Here we are alive and united with nature. Today we resist to recuperate together our sovereignty.”

Morales’ reception was in notable contrast to Guatemala’s own 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú who is currently making a bid for the presidency of that country. She did not appear at the summit, nor did she send a message. A delegate’s proposal to include support for her presidential aspirations in the declaration was loudly rejected. Some justified this exclusion as a reluctance to become involved in the internal politics of a country. What it perhaps more accurately reflected, however, was the messy contradictions of aspiring to exactly what the summit’s theme advocated: political power. Menchú continues to enjoy more support outside of Guatemala than within, with some of the choices she has made for political alliances being unpopular among her base. The refusal to support her candidacy was the most visible fractionalization at the summit.

Integration of Indigenous Movements

In order to build toward the integration of a continental Indigenous movement, organizers called for regional coordinating committees in Central and North America similar to South America’s Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Andean Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations that was formed last year. Delegates also agreed to establish a Continental Coordinating body for Nationalities and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The body will allow exchange of ideas about quality of life and the movement against neoliberal trade policy.

The final item of business at the closing session was the location for the next meeting. The first summit was held in Mexico in 2000 and the second in Ecuador in 2004. Organizers requested that proposals be done by region not country, and proposed that the next logical location would be either southern South America or the North. No proposal was forthcoming from the North, but Argentina proposed the Chilean side of the triple Peru/Bolivia/Chile border in 2009. Justification for the location included supporting socialist President Michelle Bachelet to lead Chile out of the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship, and the lingering issue of Bolivia’s outlet to the sea.

The continental coordinating committee will be based in Chile to help organize the next summit. The idea of a continental Indigenous organization did not seem to inspire a good deal of enthusiasm among the assembled delegates, although when it came to a vote only three delegates indicated their opposition. Perhaps delegates recognized the value of international meetings but believed that the most important work would happen locally in their own communities. Regional Indigenous organizations in Latin America have a history of being subject to external co-optation and internal divisions, which naturally makes some activists hesitant to create another such supra-natural organization. Nevertheless, no one publicly questioned the wisdom of forming more regional coordinating bodies.

Despite these persistent concerns and other divisions that occasionally surfaced, the level of energy and optimism at the summit was high. The week closed with three marches that converged in a rally in Guatemala City’s main plaza, symbolically representing the unification of Indigenous struggles across the Americas. In the dimming light, organizers launched three hot air balloons, two with the rainbow colors of the Indigenous flag. As delegates slowly dispersed, a remaining determined group of activists danced in a circle waving Indigenous flags as a Bolivian tune, “Somos Más” (we are more), blasted on the sound system. An almost full moon hung over the national palace. The week-long summit ended on a high note. The meeting seemed to have built a lot of positive energy. Discussions reflected a deepening and broadening of concerns and strategies. The gathering successfully strengthened both local and transnational Indigenous organizing efforts.

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Marc Becker is a Latin America historian and a founder of NativeWeb, a project to use the Internet to advance Indigenous struggles.

This story first appeared April 4 in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/687/1/

RESOURCES:

Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala
http://www.cumbrecontinentalindigena.org/

From our weblog:

Hemispheric indigenous summit bashes bio-fuels
WW4 REPORT, April 2, 2007
/node/3517

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCONTINENTAL INDIGENOUS SUMMIT IN GUATEMALA