The Indigenous Peoples' Perspective on Autonomous Development

All of the Amazonian countries have made preposterous claims that the great empty Amazon jungle can finance national development, it can provide an alternative for overcoming historical structural problems, and it can become the countries' breadbasket. These flippant and irresponsible claims, which have been the basis for development policies for over three decades, are of great concern for us, not only because of their disastrous consequences for our indigenous peoples, but also for the threat they pose to the very future of the entire Basin.

The Impact of Development on Indigenous Peoples

In order to analyze the impact of the economic policies and practices in the Amazon, we must begin by explaining how we understand "development." There are many different ways to understand and to measure development. We indigenous peoples have long had many different development models imposed on us and our territories by both the state and the private sector, and we have suffered enormously. You see, we do have some experience to speak from.

We believe that there can be development only when the well-being of the entire population involved is improved; there is no development when only a few are benefited at the expense of the majority. That is why we cannot speak of development in the Amazon region when such policies usurp the land and resources of its ancestral inhabitants, nor when hundreds of thousands of poor peasants from other regions are irresponsibly pushed into the Amazon in search of land and livelihood. There can be development only when the benefits created go to the local people, but not when the fruits of the development flow towards the centers of economic power, whether they be national or international.

Development can occur only when the population it affects participates in the design of the proposed policies and the model which is implemented thereby corresponds to the aspirations of the local population. Development can be guaranteed to the people only when the foundations are laid for sustained well-being of the region; only continued poverty can be guaranteed when the policies lead to pillage and destruction of the local resources by those coming from outside.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon have always lived there; the Amazon is our home. We know its secrets well, both what it can offer us and what its limits are. For us, there can be no life if our forests are destroyed. We want to continue living in our homeland. We have no interest in taking everything the forests have to offer and moving to the city to live in material comfort from the profits of our plunder. We become very angry and indignant when we hear Peru's President Garcia ask what the fuss is over a few trees, which is nothing compared to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima or the oil spilled on the Alaska coastline.

We are not talking about a few tress; we are talking about 250,000 to 300,000 hectares a year which go up in smoke in the Peruvian Amazon alone. The reality of this disaster is all the more serious for us indigenous peoples because we live there. This disaster has meant impoverishment for our people, regardless of whether or not we now wear shirts and pants. Our very own sources of nourishment have been reduced dramatically as we exchange fresh fish for noodles, and wild game for white rice. Millions of hectares have already been destroyed: 12% of the Amazon is deforested and it is estimated that 20 million acres of virgin forest are annually deforested in the region.

The Violence of Development

To give you an idea what the impact of Amazonian development is from our point of view, look at the incident that happened recently in the Bolivian Chimore. A young Yuki, member of a little contacted group of Indians, shot an arrow at a colonist. The newspapers played up the savagery of the attack and called on evangelical missionaries to civilize the Yuki. But there was no mention of the fact that a few days before, when a group of Yukis were hunting in their traditional hunting reserves, colonists carrying government issued land certificates along with their guns, took the lives of 11 Yukis and later hung their bodies to make sure others did not return. In this way, the colonist incorporated more empty Amazonian territory for development. Could it be that the Yukis stood in the way of development?

Violence of this type does not simply spring into existence on its own. It is generated out of social conditions. Who created the violence which comes with the drug trade? Indigenous peoples? The peasants who begin to cultivate coca leaf because no one will buy their meager rice crop? The politicians continue dreaming about developing the Amazon, they continue confronting us poor people against each other, and they keep blaming us for the violence on the Amazon frontier.

One of the common myths about these conditions of violence and abuse is that they are the cost of civilization, and that national development calls for the integration of indigenous peoples who need to be taught to be productive. And when indigenous peoples do not want to be productive on the terms established by that "civilization," we are told to get out of the way.

The Indigenous Perspective on Autonomous Development

Faced with a continuous dispossession of our resources, an ongoing invasion and loss of our territories, the growing pillage of our forests, and the systematic and intentional disintegration of our cultures and ways of life, we are now asked to provide the industrial world which has colonized us, with development alternatives. Under these conditions, our obligation to our people, to our children, as well as to our land, rivers, and forest is to struggle to halt this destruction. We have had little spare time during the past 500 years to think about development.

If you want to know what development means to us, you must be willing to accept that our mode of development is not the same as yours. Many development agents have come into our villages, and inspired by what you call the White Man's Burden, say to us: "Soon, you will be able to give us your miserable huts and live in tin-roofed houses." But we like our houses. Our architecture is the result of generations of experimentation and adaptation to the heat and rain of the Amazon. For us, tin roofs, while perhaps a symbol of economic wealth and success, turn our houses into ovens. Even the chickens suffer from heat exhaustion when we put tin roofs on their coops.

Our development is not based on accumulation of material goods, nor on the greatest rates of profit, obtained at the expense of our territories and future generations. Our development is not based on small individual land holders, who tremble with each rise or fall of the market prices. For us development must take into account the well-being of our entire community or group; it must take into account the future, not just at a government which only lasts for 5 years, but of an entire people, who have existed from the beginning of time, and who, ever since that sad date of 1492, have resisted the conquest and colonization led by other people, who calling themselves Peruvian or Brazilian or Colombian, only demonstrate their contempt for us. Our development aims to share, not to dominate and accumulate. For us development would allow us to maintain our own world, and not force us to exchange it for a slum in Manaus or Santa Cruz. Development for us is definitely very different..

The key to development for us is an extensive, diversified, and integral territory where all its occupants, people, animals, trees, and rivers, will share the benefits. With the peace of mind that would come from an end of hostilities against us and our territories, we could begin to concentrate on our own development. We could begin to teach you about development. Our development is our own territory, safe from invasion and threat, and respect for our rights to conduct our activities in an autonomous way. Yes, we have the right to demand resources from the state for our health, our education, and our economic development. We are not going to forfeit these rights. But our development demands that those resources be placed under our own direct responsibility and in agreement with our own interests.

We do not legitimize any government at all, past, present, or future, in any of the Amazonian countries, as long as they do not recognize that we are the original peoples in this land and that justice demands a recomposition of our territories. That's where development begins for us indigenous peoples, who have deeper roots than anyone in this land, the true nationals and aboriginal inhabitants of our America.

Source: Karin Morris, ed., 1992 International Directory and Resource Guide: 500 Years of Resistance (Oakland, CA: South and Meso American Indian Information Center, 1992), 9-10.