Tiwanaku, Bolivia

March 6-13, 1983

South American Indian Information Center

Berkeley, California

Beginning in the 1960's, Indian people throughout South America, and in the Americas as a whole began to organize. Within each Indian community that is traditionally organized to carry out daily activities and spiritual ceremonies, there was born a new type of organization led by the spiritual leaders. This organization became a political tool that reached from the community level to centers of national power in order to:

1. Make known Indian rights;

2. Educate the wider society regarding current issues, and the cultural and spiritual basis of Indian peoples' lives;

3. Establish contact with other Indian people in the western hemisphere and forge a hemispheric solidarity that will affect international awareness of the current situation of Indian people. The goal is to reverse the colonial process under which Indian people in the Americas have suffered since the arrival of Europeans.

At first there were a number of regional conferences, followed by international ones that gave rise to the formation of international Indian organizations. For example, in 1977 the second assembly of the World Council of Indigenous People was organized in Sweden, in the homeland of the Samis. In the same year, the United Nations conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Land was held in Geneva. In 1980 the 4th Russell Tribunal was held in Rotterdam, Holland with the intent of bringing to international awareness some of the violations that have been committed against Indian people.

These and other conferences have served as a powerful force in strengthening the ties between Indigenous peoples and establishing contacts with other nations, organizations, and individuals that are concerned with the crisis that stalks the world, and the oppression under which a great part of humanity lives.

The First Conference of Indian Nations and Organizations of South America was held in Cuzco, Peru in March 1980. Here, the South American Indian Council (CISA) was founded. At that time, the central office was established in Bolivia for three months until the bloody military coup in August, 1980. Following this event, CISA was forced to move the office to Lima, Peru where it is currently located.

The Second Conference of Indian Nations and Organizations of South America took place in Tiwanaku, Bolivia from March 6-13,1983. There were representatives of Indian organizations from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Indian brothers and sisters from Central America, Mexico, Canada, and the United States also attended, as did Sami representatives from Norway and Sweden, and representatives from various international organizations. The number of those attending was outstanding: over two hundred delegates and approximately two thousand additional attenders were present, many of whom had traveled a number of days over rugged mountain terrain in order to attend. In addition to joint sessions, the conference divided into six working commissions (Territorial rights; Cultural and scientific rights; Indian philosophy and ideology; Economy and labor, health and education; Organization and policy of Indian nations and CISA; and Human rights and solidarity) where delegates spent seven days presenting information, discussing major concerns and issues, and formulating conclusions. These in turn were presented to the plenary session of the conference for discussion and approval of the entire assembly. During these meetings, one of the founders of CISA was appointed as representative to the United States in order to establish an information center.

With this publication, the South American Indian Information Center (SAIIC) initiates a series of bimonthly publications of information received from CISA and other South American sources, in order to reach English-speaking readers throughout the world. We depend on your valuable collaboration in order to continue to maintain open communication, which will bring us together in a dialogue of solidarity focusing on the problems we face today, and our aspirations for the future.

Nilo Cayuqueo and The Committee of SAIIC Oakland, March 1984.

After lengthy discussion the Commission arrived at the following conclusions and resolutions.

First, the European invasion of our land meant the mass extermination of our people and our culture. It meant the imposition of a foreign system which was dedicated to the plunder and exploitation of the riches and resources of Mother Earth, and the eradication of our way of life. The Church, the military and the colonial entrepeneurs were directly responsible for the destruction of our system of collective and communal work and the imposition of a system of private property, racial discrimination and inequality.

Second, the governments created by the sons of the European invaders continued this systematic exploitation after the establishment of " national independence," as do contemporary governments now in power.

Therefore, our only alternative is ALL POWER TO THE INDIANS in the countries where we are the majority and CULTURAL AND TERRITORIAL AUTONOMY in the countries where we are a minority.

We know this is a difficult goal, especially since those who exploit us control many resources. But we know that our aim is just and we have the communal and collective ideology of the Indian people on our side. We must therefore unite and work together.

The Spanish and Portugeuse invaders and their descendents divided us and imposed national boundaries among us to facilitate their control, repression, and murder of us. We are subject to laws and decrees whose clear objective is the complete extermination of all Indian people. But the unity of the Indian people is our principal defense.

The national governments do not respect our ancestral territorial rights, which embrace not only the land itself but the spiritual world of the Indian as well. These governments only respect European laws of territoriality, which guarantee private property and exploitation of some people by others, which is contrary to our principles. Laws brought by the European invaders continue to be used by the present governments and imperialism to usurp Indian lands. But MOTHER EARTH IS NOT FOR SALE OR RENT.

We know that Indian rights are diametrically opposed to the European system of the oppressors, and therefore in the countries where we are the majority we must impose our own natural, collective and communal laws; and where we are the minority we must demand the right to our own CULTURE, RELIGION, LANGUAGE, SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS and especially our LAND.

For centuries Indian communities have been shoved aside as lands, minerals, and other natural resources were exploited without regard for their economic and cultural importance to Indians, thus destroying Mother Earth and the basis of Indian life. Given that Indian judicial doctrine does not now prevail, our only means of defending our territorial rights is to combine resistance with demands for compliance with the protective measures that exist under current laws. We must organize and prepare ourselves physically and ideologically for the time when we take power and replace existing judicial and government systems. IN POWER WE SHALL CHANGE WESTERN THOUGHT AND ORGANIZATION.

• We must reconstruct and write our own history to replace the history of our people written with European methods, perspective, and interpretation.
• We must defend and retake our lands and our riches which are today exploited by landlords, homesteaders, companies and multinationals.
• We must reconstruct the traditional social organization of Indian people.
• We must disregard national boundaries and unite our peoples and nations.
• We must create an Indian Constitution to institutionalize our actions.
• The Second Congress must demand that governments and states recognize Indian minorities.
• We must strengthen Indian movements in order to recapture our past, present, and future and establish a Collectivist and Communal Indian government.
• Given that organizations such as trade unions have replaced our traditional structures (such as the ayllu*), we must write an Indian Communities Law that revives our own social organization.
• We must write laws that guarantee the land to its true owners, the Indians, and which eliminate taxes on Indian land.
• We must mount a unified struggle to obtain Territorial Rights for all Indian people in South America.
• We must demand that agrarian reform not be imposed on Indian land, but only in latifundios* and haciendas*.
• CISA and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP)* must speak out at the international level concerning destruction of natural

*See Glossary for terms marked with asterisks.

resources and pollution of the environment (such as that caused by nuclear plants) which threaten human life and Indian people.

• We must write a resolution establishing that Indian communities are owners of the soil, the subsoil, the water and the air where we live and that these are not transferable to other persons.
• CISA and WCIP should demand through a resolution, indemnification (including right of passage) for and protection of natural resources-including land, water, air, and subsoil-which have been or are objects of pillage, abuse and exploitation. There must be an international expose of the policy of extermination and massacre to which Indian people are now subjected.
• CISA must demand compliance with existing international agreements concerning the protection of natural resources.
• CISA must organize commissions to conduct international work with the greatest efficiency while at the same time continuing work at the local level.
• CISA must organize a system of communication so that the resolutions of the Second Congress are complied with.
• CISA and WCIP must participate as voting members of the United Nations.
• We must work with international organizations that support the liberation of the Indian people, keeping them informed of developments among Indian people and encouraging their solidarity.
• We must demand annulment of the Papal Bull of 1494, promulgated by Pope Alexander VI, which divided Indian lands among the European invaders, as well as later decrees that imposed private property and annulled the communal property of the Indian people.

The Second Working Commission presents for consideration by the Plenary Session the following conclusions and recommendations in accordance with the Program Guide prepared by the Organizing Board.

I. INDIAN CULTURE: Before speaking of the culture of our Indian people, of Indian attitudes, it is necessary to speak of our civilization as a product of the daily organizational and communal activity in our lives. Starting from this, we may consider that our culture is the joining of our moral, scientific, and intellectual values that come alive from the relation of man to his environment in an experience that is total and communal.

2. INDIAN SCIENCE: For our people, science is the understanding of cosmic laws and energy whose practical/theoretical use and application are in harmony with an order inside of space and time that always materializes into a natural cosmic equilibrium. That is the reason our people have harmoniously developed cosmic energies as part of the evolutionary process of being human, applying their genetics, astronomy, architecture, engineering, medicine, techniques of work, etc., always for the benefit of communal life. Within this capacity, we can affirm that Indian science is the materialization of knowledge and wisdom as the sum of consciousness in total conjunction with theory and practice.

Today, our Indian science is considered by the westerners to be the fruit of superstition or empiricism, which corroborates their complete ignorance.

3. CULTURAL VALUES: Among the most important values of our Indianhood we can remark upon principally the very organization of the Indian community such as the Ayllu*, the Gallpulli*, etc., social organizations governed under a communal cosmic order. The profound respect for nature and the creatures that comprise it, manifested in rites, ceremonies, offerings, etc. to Mother Earth (Pachamama), Father Sun (Inti), the Moon, the divinities of the Water, the Wind, the Mountains, Animals, Apus*, Achachilas*.

We also give prominence to the cultural value of our Indian language, whose onomatopoeic phonemes emerge from. the very sounds of nature, so that our languages do not only serve for communication among humans, but also with Mother Nature herself through our songs, poems, orations.

4. SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS THAT INDIANS HAVE CREATED FOR HUMANITY Our Indian cultures have left to all humanity cultural and scientific contributions that were neither recognized nor respected, being that many monumental works of architecture, such as pyramids, temples, and cities were destroyed and dismantled. The same was done with works of engineering, aqueducts, roads, bridges, etc. Our cultures have also contributed astronomical knowledge, creating calendars calculated accurately to one hundred and four thousand years; these instruments of time measurement and those that served for writing, calculation, statistics, and computation were all depreciated and destroyed, as for example: the libraries of quipus* that were burned because of the dreaded inquisition. Our native languages constitute another cultural contribution. They also were and are now depreciated. The same occurred in the field of art, where artifacts of gold, silver and ceramics were looted and destroyed through the greed of the invaders from Europe. Our music, poetry, theater, like all the other artistic manifestations, all despised and trampled upon by the ignorance of invading colonialism, and now used as "cultural patrimony" to fill the cultural vacuum of those who created the capricious republics and the "nation states" on our Indian territories and nations. In the area of genetic agronomy, our civilization created and cultivated hundreds of varieties of potatoes, corn, quinoa*, cotton, cacao*, etc., foods that have saved westerners from tremendous hunger before, during and after the First and Second World Wars (examples: potatoes, corn). In the area of medicine, the contributions are innumerable and were never understood; on the contrary, they were rejected to the point that our doctors, priests, sages, kamanis*, qullawayus*, sociologists, etc., were persecuted and murdered along with their families; thus they attempted to exterminate our sages for entire generations, branded our doctors as witch-doctors, and persecuted and murdered the Quilpucamayus*, continuing in this way the colonial clerical policy of exterminating idolatries.

Another misunderstood aspect, one later cleverly and scandalously utilized by the European invaders, was that concerning coca*, which for us constitutes one of the deepest cultural values to be immersed within our ceremonial world and Andean ritual.

Our Andean peoples have been familiar with the cultivation and use of coca for 1800 years. Thus, to the Andean people, coca represents a bible provided by the sacred divine power; it is because of that that it is used in ceremonies, offerings to Mother Earth and Father Sun, and other natural divinities, and, even more, serves. communal relations. Thanks to its medicinal and salutary virtues, the people of the Andes have been able to relieve the hunger and fatigue of the long work day, and also cure their infirmities.

This last aspect was craftily captured by the Spaniards during the colonial period (that has not yet ended) to force intensive consumption by our elder brothers, the Mit’ayus* who worked as slaves in the mine (of Huancavelica, Potosi, etc.) in the work shops and plantations. It was thus that our brothers were able to endure the harsh treatment an, work forced on them for such a long time (500 years of slavery). In ever, way they were decimated by hunger, fatigue, pulmonary disease tuberculosis, silicosis, etc. Now, the whites, mestizos*, and creollos us great quantities of our kuka mama* (sacred coca) to be transformed into cocaine to satisfy their dirty interests and pleasures, satisfying in this way the drug market of the decadent western world.

Similarly, in the area of natural medicine, the west did not know how to utilize the curative techniques of the soul, spirit and body, the medicines from vegetables, minerals and animals to cure various infirmities: coca*, cinchona, plantain, tajivo, huayusa, matico, chucuchucu (medicinal herbs) and others, as well as minerals such as p'asa salt,water.

5. THE TRANSMISSION OF CULTURE AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE refers always to our communal life, since we deem the community (Allyu*, Callpulli*, etc.) is the fundamental school where knowledge and wisdom are transmitted from the sages, ancients, elders gifted with expertness and a special capacity which they transmit to the children from tender infancy until death. In this process of education, one that is not formed or systematic in the same way as is considered necessary by the west, the young continue to learn from their elders, as well as from the nuclear family, and from the entire community. They learn specific tasks appropriate to their age and sex, extending later to agricultural tasks, cattle-raising, craftsmanship, etc., developing thus, through theory/practice teaching, in conjunction with observation and manual experience, a socio-cultural fonnation, governed moreover under norms of conduct emergent from the cosmic order of the community.

Thus our education and transmission of manual, intellectual, scientific and religious knowledge are effected in oral form (stories, tradi. tions ... ), experimental, and also in written form (ideograms, drawings signs, quipus*, etc.) in such a way that this kind of education was fully coordinated to totally cover the necessities of preparation oriented to. ward a secure future, always tending to improve Indian society.

6. INDIAN CULTURE AND WESTERN CULTURE: The fundamental difference between the two cultures and sciences rests in the fact that, on one hand, Indian science and culture emerged from a cosmic civilization oriented toward life and peace through communal emulation and respect. Those of the west are owed to an individual, egoistic culture, developing an anti-human and destructive science and technology inevitably oriented toward war through competition and disregard; moreover, the west is marching along the road of armaments, managed by the imperialist powers, creating in this way the peril of the desctruction

WEST INDIANESS

Individual culture Cosmic communal culture

Materialism/idealism Spiritualism/materialism

Anti-human sciences Sciences oriented toward

oriented toward war and life, peace and respect,

contempt, stimulated by stimulated by emulation

competition

Loss of identity Reaffirmation of identity

of the planet. To this must be added the irreversible poisoning and contamination of the environment, the exploitation and destruction of the forest riches, which give rise to natural catastrophes, droughts, floods, and ever-deepening the separation between rich and poor. Because of the survival of Indian culture, science and millenial wisdom, there exists a positive alternative for the equilibrium of Humanity in the Universe.

7. MULTIFORM CHARACTER: Indian culture is multiform. Since it is based on the cosmic collective vision of the Indian people, it is neither superior nor inferior, but rather is seated at the base of its development. The principles of the total equilibrium of natural laws, contradictory, but not antagonistic, are compatible to the facts of its socio-cultural reality. Thus in Tawantinsuyu, for example, the different cultures are respected in their reconciliation, which demonstrates the principle of "equality" in difference.

From all that has been presented, we can conclude that:

a) Our science has been and always will be in harmony with nature, since for Indian society, the land is vital to its existence, and thus has its respect; while for the west, it is an object of domination by any means, in the past, present and future, being considered as simply a means of production.

b) Of all the principles put forth regarding the cultural and scientific rights of our peoples, the most important is the exercising of our own education, Indian, that will keep our culture alive and dynamicreaffirm, in an effective manner, our identity, and, lastly, lead us to fulfill our struggle of national liberation as Indian people.

Jallalla pueblos indios del mundo!! Jallalla CISA!!

Jallalla segundo congreso delpueblos indios!!

March 12, 1983

Tiwanaku, Huinay Marka, Kollasuyu

Recommendations

The Second Commission places before the consideration of the Plenary Assembly the following recommendations:

Education

1. We denounce the acultural, alienating and oppressive education of the governments of the Americas, who have no respect for cultural differences in their educational plans and programs. We recommend the installation of systems of participatory and liberating education, defined and controlled by the Indian organizations in every locality.

a) In this spirit, we recommend to the appropriate Indian organizations in various countries that they implement the creation of purely Indian schools, starting from the fundamental school (Ayllu*, Callpulli, etc.). In other words, the Indian school should be bi-lingual, bi-cultural, so that they may adapt to the necessities of evolutionary development of the communities, and serve the consolidation of the identity of the Indian people.

b) For the purpose of what has been proposed in this Commission to restore cultural and moral values, it is recommended that the creation of the World Indian University be concretized.

c) The Indian organizations from the different countries should organize seminars for Indian linguists to establish alphabets and writing for the native languages. In this sense, the Second Commission proposes that you consider for possible approval the alphabet and writing extracted from the same sources bequeathed from our ancestors, which has been advocated by brother Claudio Paye, Indian investigator, for a long time, and which was approved in 1973 by the Bolivian government.

General Recommendations

The Commission of Culture and Science (Ethnoscientific) of the Second Congress of the Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of South America recommend to the Plenary Session of the conference:

1. It be demanded of the governments that the Aymara, Quechua, Tupi-guanari, Mapuche, Schuar, Amazonian and other languages be made official at the national level in all the countries.

2. The protection of natural medicine, its cultivators and their knowledge; that it not be supplanted by the allopathic medicine of the west which is in great part counter-productive to our health. For these reasons, we advocate the practice and recovery of values and curative properties of minerals, vegetables and animals in their entirety. Similarly, centers and hospitals of natural medicine should be created.

3. The hindrance of the cultivation of coca by the Yankee imperialists and other systems must not be tolerated, as this is a latent cultural expression bequeathed to us by our ancestors, to whom it represented a totally scientific process of experimentation to achieve curative and health properties. In the present, the sacred leaf continues to be a source of health and medicinal virtues.

Similarly, we regret the meddling of the OEA, an organization that recommended to the governments that coca and its cultivators be eradicated.

4. With the object of bringing our peoples closer, an interchange of our Indian students is necessary as a first step in achieving our intermingling, which will benefit us and achieve a true confederation of the Indian peoples for the defense of our cultural, scientific, religious and other values.

5. Chemical fertilizers and artificial insecticides must not be used because they corrupt and degenerate the food products that are basic to the life of the Indian people.

6. The free use of our clothing. Other clothing must not be imposed on us in the education centers and other public places.

7. Rejection of ministries of tourism, institutes of culture, archaeology, etc., because they profane, outrage, loot and traffic in our cultural remains, using terminology such as "folklore," which is an insult to our cultural manifestations.

8. As a result of the alienating Spanish program "Three-hundred million" recently making an announcement to the effect that Spain will hold festivities in 1992 commemorating the five centuries since the discovery of America, and since that date was the most important in Spain, all American artists will attend this event to put forth their works and a series of acts paying "homage" to this event.

We, the Indian inhabitants of the continent, can neither see nor accept this aggressive homage that the Spanish are preparing, still nine years before the event. Therefore, in defense of our dignity, we declare that day to be the most infamous in the history of our continent, and we protest most energetically against Spain and its program "Threehundred million." We demand its exclusion from the television channels of every country in America, this misnomer applied to our continent. At the same time, we are preparing to block this homage and demonstrate our position of repudiation of the event as well as support the restoration of our rights and the protection of our cultures and civilizations.

9. A twice-monthly magazine of the Indian Council of South America should be established for the wide-spread dissemination of the cultural, scientific, artistic, and other advances-of all the advances-of the Indian people.

10. A Youth Secretariat of the Indian Council of South America, CISA, should be created to carry out every type of activity, in consideration of the fact that the youth is the most active segment of the Indian people.

11. All the sacred places, such as archaeological sites, cities, temples, monuments, museums which display art objects, ceramics, textiles, gold and silver smithing, documents, etc., now controlled by ministries of education, culture and tourism, must come under the control and administration of the Indian communities and organizations, by our historic right, by right of being the cultural heritage of the Indian peoples.

12. The Indian Council of South America should accelerate its installation of international-range radio transmitters, if possible, in every country.

We demand of CISA the review and introduction of radio projects to be implemented in the different countries where corresponding projects exist, since we consider the possession of our own radio an indispensible tool in our people's struggle for liberation.

13. In the city of La Paz (Bolivia) there is to be found one of the greatest monoliths of the Tiwanacotas, called Pachamama. It was brought in to the city fifty-one years ago as an ornament. This monolith is exposed to bad weather, erosion, the pollution of destructive gassesall characteristic of cities of this nature. This monolith is located in a subterranean pavilion. For this reason we demand that the Bolivian government and related institutions restore the monolith Pachamama to its original location, as well as the other relics of our heritage, since in Tiwanaku it has greater cultural value, and the latter location is where it belongs.

14. CISA should institute legal action against Carlos Ponce Sanginés for causing the disappearance of monoliths and the mis-administration of the archaeological sites in his charge, in accordance with Bolivian laws for the protection of monuments and works of art.

15. CISA should propose to the organizations of Indian peoples that they initiate the appropriate steps to demand the return of our cultural relics that are to be found in the museums of Europe and the United States, or, failing to do this, demand indemnity for the same.

16. We ask for the condemnation and appropriate prosecution of such organizations as: The Indigenous Inter-American Institute (III) which, working with funds from the OEA, is carrying out the task of breaking up and mutilating our Indian communities. Also the Summer Institute of Linguists whose infamous projects obstruct the move for liberation by the Indian people.

We also alert the Indian peoples and their organizations to the continuing arrival of US, European and other drug addicts, products of the cultural decadence of the west, who seek refuge in our communities, many joining with our movement-something we consider to be dangerous.

17. In view of the fact that our Indian communities are material for study by different investigators, anthropologists, sociologists, archaeologists, etc., and that they come to the most hidden regions in which our communities are found, extracting a great part of our culture, we consider that those investigatory workers can, and to a large degree, be well directed and constitute not a negligible contribution, since they shape books, projects, etc., that can serve the cultural enrichment and formation of our youth. We should demand from these gentlemen a sample of the works they produce, to be sent to CISA. Moreover, we should instruct, through CISA, our communities to demand of these investigators a written commitment to deliver a copy of such work. In case this formality is not realized, the corresponding credentials having been demanded, they should not be permitted access to the sources (communities, ruins, etc.) where they extract their information.

18. We consider Mr. Virgicio Roel and Mr. Carnero Hoke to be traffickers in Indianism in the name of the World Indian University, with the ends of personal gain, whose labor seeks the division and confusion of Indianess. We ask they be declared enemies of the Indian people, and we ask CISA to take the measures necessary for their prosecution.

19. We ask that CISA send a letter to the Ministry of Education and the President of the Republic of Colombia, Belisario Betancourt, demanding that the control of their own education be handed over to the Indians of the Sierra Nevada, in conformance with what is ordained in Decree #1142. At the same time, we ask for the repudiation of the present Indigenous law in Chile, ignored by the bloody Pinochet through Decree #2568, which goes against the interests of the Mapuche people. At the same time, we support the list of claims presented by the Mapuche nation in August, 1982.

20. We ask the endorsement of CISA for Project Huancollo, which is in the process of execution and which consists of the construction of a hospital of natural medicine, since we consider the exercise of natural medicine to have always been a force, and even more because it constitutes one of the first centers of its kind (created and run by Indians) on the continent. Its creation responds to the needs of the different jurisdictions of Tiwanaku, and beyond, in the Province of Ingavi, Department of La Paz, Bolivia.

21. We ask of CISA, appropriate protection and endorsement, in every sense, of Indian-born investigators, trained or self-taught, such as Claudio Paye, linguistic investigator, and creator of the QuechuaAymara alphabet, Rufino Pax, investigator of natural medicine, the historians German Choquehuanca, Roberto Choque, and many more like them who are dedicated to enriching and conserving the cultural values of our Indian peoples.

22. We ask CISA and all Indian organizations to launch a protest against the dirty strategy of the multi-national Nestle, which continues to exploit Third World countries by employing sales people disguised as nurses and nutritionists who advise mothers to substitute brand-name unnatural milk with little nutrition for mother's milk. Such strategy has provoked the death by malnutrition of many poor children, and the boycott of Nestle's products in many countries.

Commission #3

Indian Philosophy and Ideology

This report resulted from the contributions of community organizations and the direct participation of Indian people through study, research, and concrete practice. Order and discipline played an important role in the healthy development of the deliberations.

Since we consider the contributions of the participants to be rich and important, and since there are both common and divergent points, this is an objective presentation of the conclusions of the commission. Our intention is to open a process of discussion, analysis, and investigation, confirmed by social practice, and to contribute to the unity and organization necessary for victory.

We consider this theme to be complex, delicate, and polemical. Our conclusions should not be taken lightly or seen as academic, theoretical recommendations. CISA and the destiny of the Indian people are at stake.

We must not allow the pressure of time to prevent careful consideration of this profound and complex theme.

Contributions of the First CISA Congress, 0llantaytambo, Peru, 1980

Considering

* that cosmic perception of life and the world which surrounds us is the basis for understanding Indian ideology, which is order in constant movement and the harmonious succession of complementary opposites; that Indian ideology, as Indian thought in nature and the universe, is the search for, reencounter with, and identification with our glorious past, which is the basis for taking into our own hands the destiny of the Indian people;

* that Indian ideology is nurtured in the collective and communal conception of our Tawantinsuyana civilization, based on the philosophy of egalitarian social well-being;

* that Indian scientific doctrine defines man as an integral part of the cosmos and as a factor in the equilibrium between nature and the universe, on which depends the development of creative life in nature; and that the non-Indian world is clearly decadent, its inane philosophy enriching only the theory of death and its political ideologies lacking human content and being valueless for the Indian world;

Therefore, we declare

1. INDIAN is the name we use for the indigenous people of this continent because by that name we have been subjugated for five centuries and by that name we shall liberate ourselves. WE ARE PROUD TO BE INDIANS. Indianismo* maintains that the Indian is the author and protagonist of his own destiny. Therefore Indianismo is the banner of our struggle and the slogan of continental liberation.

2. The Indian people are descendents of the first residents of this continent. We have a common history, our own ethnic personality, a cosmic world view, and, as heirs to ancient culture (despite 500 years of separation), we are newly united at the vanguard of liberation from European colonialism.

3. Indianismo is the central element of our ideology because its vital philosophy proposes self-determination, autonomy, and socio-economic-political self-management of our people. It is the only alternative to the current world, which is in a complete state of moral, economic, social and political crisis.

4. Indigenismo* must be rejected because it corresponds to the ideology of oppression. Since its origin it has served the racist interests of governments, missionaries, and anthropologists.

5. Comunitarismo must be resurrected. The guiding principle of daily conduct for our ancestors, it is manifested in the ayni*, minka*, carnayaji*, yanapacu*, and other collective forms practiced throughout the continent. It is guaranteed by the high moral justice of ama sua, ama llulla y amaquella* which is completely different from and which predates European capitalism and socialism.

6. Political currents copied from Europe must be rejected because none of them even attempt our liberation. The right, in its various shades, oppresses the Indian, and the left, in its various factions, divides our people into antagonistic social classes. Both are creations of the dominant caste which hates the Indian.

7. Racism must-be repudiated because it supports an undemonstrated theory of the permanent biological superiority of one race over others, a pretext that has been used by the European invaders and their descendents to physically exterminate our people. We are not racists because we have never claimed to be superior to any other people on earth and we don't accept being inferior.

8. Rising to salute the memory of our Indian martyrs, we swear to restore our cities of stone, recapture our political destiny, recover our historic personality, and refurbish our ancient culture, proclaiming our pride to be Indian people.

Contributions of the First Seminar on Indian Ideology, Philosophy and Politics, Cushiviani, Peru, 1982

Indian thought and life is based on the following fundamental principles.

1. Dialectics: The General Law of the Universe, with its unique characteristic of non-antagonistic contradictions.

2. Harmonic Materialism: The pillar of the scientific/philosophic thought of man.

3. Cosmic Order: The Model of Organization.

4. Collectivism and Communalism: The practices and standards of life.

5. Matter and Energy: Matter is the fundamental element of the universe. Matter is absolute, eternal, and infinite. It constitutes the whole body of the cosmos without limits. It had no beginning and it will have no end. It is always in movement and constant change. Its principal transformation is always from mass to energy and then, again, from energy to mass. Mass and energy are the two principal states of matter in different degrees of movement, internal and external, producing forces for its own constant and infinite transformation.

Matter is governed by order within the universe. Each element occupies a determined place in space and time with reciprocal and equilibrial relation to its force. The cosmos or the universe is a system organized and governed by its own laws.

DIALECTICS: The existence, movement, and transformation of matter, the principal cosmic element, is governed by a General Law which is as eternal and infinite as matter itself: dialectics.

Matter, which is the body, and dialectics, which is the spirit, are the same thing. They never existed independently of each other. As General Law, eternal and infinite in the universe, dialectics has been characterized two different ways in the natural cosmos and in human social life, which is an extension of the natural cosmos:

1. As non-antagonistic contradictions: The opposing forces are complementary, united completely in both major and minor aspects.

2. As antagonistic contradictions: The first is the underlying principle which governs the existence and dynamics of all beings in the universe and, therefore, the collective and communal societies of human life. The second is merely a transient characteristic which governs Europeanderived class societies. It appeared with these societies and will die with them. The essence of spirit of the Indian people is of the first concept and is irreconcilably opposed to the second, which is the essence and spirit of the individualistic and class-based European-derived world.

HARMONIC MATERIALISM: All Indian knowledge and thought corresponds to its own social reality and to reality in relation to Mother Nature, with whom human life is integrated and of whom human life is a consequence.

Nature, living beings, humans, and human social organization are all the same. Entities with only minor differences, they are brought together and governed by the same laws and integrated into the greater whole, the Universe or Cosmos.

The natural Cosmos is a great, organized body whose elements, governed by opposing and complementary forces and energies, regulate the place of each and the equilibrium between all, thus generating order and harmony throughout its infinite existence.

Humans and nature are organized matter, from the simplest to the most complex, in constant movement and transformation, internally and externally, all in complete order and complete harmony. This is the universal characteristic which governs our knowledge, our world view, and the spirit of our culture.

COSMIC ORDER: In the universe and in nature all is order, all is harmony. There is no "struggle of opposites" or breaking into parts to generate dynamics and change. Rather there is complementary opposition between the distinct parts of greater and lesser unity that constantly generate new states, always in harmony and order, never in chaos.

In the universe all elements are organized collectively and communally. They are characterized not by unequal antagonisms but by positions and situations which are different, complementary, and harmonic.

COLLECTIVISM AND COMMUNALISM: Humanity is an integral part of nature, an extension of the universe. Since it functions under the same laws, humanity should organize itself in a collective and communal form as the universe is organized.

In the beginning, the organization and the philosophical-ideological concepts of humanity were the same as the current characteristics of the Indian people, without inequality and with collective organizational practices. There existed an equality and harmony between humans throughout the planet and between humans and other living beings. This is the essence of the Indian spirit. We Indian people practice the philosophy of non-antagonistic contradictions which is the fundamental characteristic of dialectics, the general law of the universe.

In accordance with this Indian concept, nature, humanity, and society are the same thing, not exclusive parts or enemies one of the other. The great antagonistic-and destructive inequality which exists in the world today was generated by the European-derived societies. The equality and harmony of the original human societies, the "primordial community" egalitarianism which everyone acknowledges, degenerated into slavery in the European-derived world. Slavery is the form of society where people fight among themselves, private property is valued above natural resources, and a vertical hierarchy predominates, along with individualism, egoism, and exploitation of some people by others. This inequality, this unnatural disharmony generated since the time of slavery, today has become stronger and more sophisticated, reaching a stage of barbarism which they themselves call imperialist capitalism.

In today's world there are two different, irreconcilable systems: the Indian system, which is collective, communal, human, loving, and which respects nature profoundly; and the European-derived system, which is exploitative, individualistic, and egoistic, and which destroys nature. The problem is not merely a struggle of classes, not only rich against poor or right against left. The problem is between two different systems, between two different forms and attitudes toward life and existence. This is why Indian people are a forceful model for the future of humanity. The Indian system is human collectivism living in complete harmony and love with nature. The European-derived system will disappear because it is antinatural. Its peoples, and our brothers and sisters, who followed obscure and uncertain paths for many generations will return to be natural beings, to join with us in a united humanity, without hatred or inequality, with love and respect for Mother Nature, for all life and all existence.

RELIGION:

Humans with the development of culture are the highest expression of the evolution of living species. This is the most advanced work and art of nature in compliance with her own laws and highest objectives.

Humans owe their existence and condition to Mother Nature and are at the same time a reflection of Nature herself. Humans reciprocate and show their gratitude through veneration and reverence of the mother creator, who personifies and differentiates the beneficial forces in each of her elements.

All the cosmos and its laws influence life and give reason to existence. All vital cosmic force is "father" and "mother" to humans and all living beings, our plant siblings, animal siblings, and other humans like us. The cosmos, nature, living beings, and humans-we are all one family, collective and communal. Life and death are for us a constant interchange between simple elements (inorganic) and complex elements (organic) in Mother Earth. We come from her and return to her, forever. Death is not a terror for us. Indeed, many anticipate with great joy the return to Mother Nature to emerge again in new life. Our spirit never separates from our body because it is the vital creative force. In the unending return of the body to Mother Nature, the vital spirit returns to reincorporate the creative energy of the cosmos to immediately continue with the generation of new lives.

In Indian thought, religion is the sacred conception of the universe. In it one finds the interior human feeling united with the spiritual and sacred principle of nature.

Religion, as the product of human culture, is the practice of harmonic coexistence between humans and the universe. It is our dialogue, our permanent communication, and our reciprocal interchange of values with Mother Nature. It is daily life in open respect and harmonious coexistence and interrelation with the other beings who inhabit Pachamama and the cosmos.

Religion as a conduit or line for individual spirituality never existed and never shall exist for Indian people. For Indians religion is respect and appreciation of the ambiance which surrounds us for a better existence in all orders of life.

INDIAN MORAL PRINCIPLES:

Indian moral principles conform to standards and rules appropriate to collective and communal life. Co-existence is determined by the communal character of moral principles, religion, and social life.

Our morality is subject to the overall interests of our Indian communities. Its objective is the harmonic coordination of our collective ideology and our communal life.

Faithfulness to the Indian world, to Pachamama*, and to all Indian nations is the principal obligation of the Indian moral code.

Indian moral principles are based on communal well-being through work, which is both obligation and honor of the Indian before the community. Collectivism and mutual help can be summed up as EVERYONE WORKS FOR EVERYONE.

Work for the good of the community and the concern of each to preserve and increase communal wealth are community mandates. They are summarized in an important standard: Only those who have worked can eat.

The moral principles also apply to friendship: respect all other life, no hostility between living beings, and respect Mother Nature.

Indian morality requires that all Indians observe the standards of communal living and be attentive and respectful to all members of the community. Harmony in the family is fundamental to harmony in the community. Communal life requires reciprocal love within the family, equality and mutual help between man and woman, and friendship and confidence between parents and children.

Concrete Positions of the Thesis Presented by Sixto Vasquez Suleta (Argentina)

* Indian people should possess, or at least control and manage, the means of mass communication in the communities where we live, putting them to work diffusing and strengthening Indian culture. Indians can and must run radio stations; produce cassettes, records, and videotapes; edit books, magazines, and newspapers; and even make films.

* The two primary goals of the struggle of Indian organizations and communities are:

1. Recognition of our civil and political rights as human beings.

2. Rediscovery and reaffirmation of the lifestyle of our ancestors.

* One can be Indian by heritage or by conviction, or by both. That is to say, one can be born Indian or one can chose to become Indian. To be Indian or non-Indian is more a state of mind, a spiritual question, than a semantic definition.

The Indian is a distinct entity with particular customs, languages, music, rites, beliefs, forms of life, and so forth. He or she maintains a balanced relation between humans, the cosmos, and nature.

The struggle for survival has been elemental to Indian life over the generations. To survive Indians have confronted and dominated the very elements which form the cosmic vision: humans, nature, and the cosmos.

The Indian world has been filled with antagonistic and irreconcilable contradictions. Within groups there have been punishments and human sacrifices. Between groups there have been confrontations, persecutions, and exterminations of entire peoples. There have been hierarchies, both central and isolated. Civilizations have imposed themselves on others.

Indians have been characterized as combative in the past and will be in the future. Despite collectivism, social organization has depended in great part on the power of acquisition, the accumulation of goods, and the strength and capacity to confront the surrounding elements. This gave rise to differentiation of power and hierarchies both within groups and in the relations of one group to another.

Even before the Europeans arrived, there were already large civilizations with scientific advances, technology, power, and material development based on persecution, assault, capture and extermination of other Indian people who were relatively weaker and limited in their ability to confront or negotiate.

The Europeans were able to take advantage of these pre-existing internal contradictions to impose their yokes on Indian people. The European presence changed the nature of domination, submission, extermination, and power in the Indian world. Some considered it their salvation, others took a contemplative attitude, and others challenged the Europeans directly and violently.

The forms of colonization were sophisticated compared to the Indians' means of confrontation and resistance. The Europeans used various tactics to dominate, control, or exterminate Indians. They employed military power, including terror, persecution, looting, war, destruction, massive assassination, and rape of women and children. They employed ideological power, through religion and use of the cross, spreading terror and fear. On the one hand this weakened the Indians' ability to fight and resist, and on the other hand, by dividing the people into believers and non-believers, it made some abandon their principles and betray their people. And they employed economic power, completely pillaging the riches of the soil and subsoil of Indian land. They imposed an inhumane system of forced labor under which thousands and thousands of Indians died. When confronted with the physical exhaustion and resistance of Indians, they imported African slaves to reinforce Indian labor. This process destroyed a large part of the Indian population, our methods of production and organization, and our political and ideological framework.

In time a new system of oppression and domination evolved, with new names and new categories. Neo-colonialism developed, and with it the valuation of people, both Indian and non-Indian, by standards of economic exchange, the accumulation of goods and capital, and the use of political and military power to raise some people above others and some countries above others. Penetration through economic, political, ideological, and military power advances each day, intensifying constantly, shaped to the interests of the dominant and oppressing class.

Along with Indians, who are oppressed, marginalized, humiliated, and doubly exploited, there emerge new social sectors which form a huge block of exploited and oppressed people.

Indian people are not untouched by this historic, social, political, ideological, and economic penetration. It induces alienation and loss of Indian identity. We find Indians who are exploiters as well as exploited, oppressors as well as oppressed, sometimes in slave and semi-feudal relations. Indians assassinate other Indians to snatch their land and goods in defense of "honor." Ideological, political, and military authoritarian leaders develop among Indians to suppress others. An Indian bureaucracy arises that lives off Indian problems. Personalism, individualism, ladder-climbing, and search for reknown and prestige chip away at Indian mentality.

When attempts are made to reconstruct Indian ideology or philosophy, the historical, social, political, ideological, and economic processes in which Indian people are immersed must not be neglected or denied.

The construction of an ideology as a means for practical action by the South American Indian Council should be integrally related to the character of the organization, depending on whether it is broad, democratic, popular, political, cultural, union, or religious.

It should be broad enough to manifest the confluences of the social practice of the community organizations which form CISA, the concrete realities of people and organizations, and the degree of politicalideological, economic, social, and military penetration. Unity, autonomy, and independence should be its fundamental strengths.

CISA should

*Transform itself into a true central organization of the South Americian Indian movement, strictly based on the active community

organziations and respecting their autonomy, independence, judicial character, and political space.

* Take an activist role with a real understanding of the Indian situation and the process of social transformation, national liberation, and the realization of a just and humane society where Indian people can achieve self-determination.

* Make alliances with other exploited and oppressed sectors of the country for the conquering and defending of the political space which the Indian movement should have, making use of organized and independent force in the process of social transformation, national liberation, and self-determination

* Avoid the imposition of or submission to any economic, political, or ideological model, be it from the Indian world or from outside, which impedes our development, self-determination, or autonomy in the process of social transformation and national liberation. We propose that where Indian people are the majority, Indian organizations choose the most appropriate road between participating or not participating with the popular sectors to change the existing system of exploitation in the country.

* Recognize the continued existence of the communal organization despite the introduction of various other ideological and economic forms. We must determine the characteristics of communal organization in order to launch the struggle to recuperate these forms for the well-being of Indian people.

Proposals and Recommendations

1. To deepen the study and investigation of the concrete realities of Indian people, their understanding of the universe, and their vision and conception of nature and the world.

2. To conduct regional seminars on Indian philosophy and ideology.

3. To maintain a spirit of solidarity, unity, and struggle in the process of reconstructing Indian ideology and philosophy.

4. To publish descriptions of the experiences and achievements of the community organizations which make up CISA.

5. To maintain a permanent vigilance of the development of different social conflicts involving the community organizations in order to enrich with practice the theory constructed.

6. To respect the autonomy of the community organizations whose own experiences and social practice flow into theory.

7. To publish the materials from this congress in a way which avoids presenting ideology and philosophy as isolated forms which sustain the other contributions, thus avoiding opportunism and the imposition of supposed truths.

8. To substitute the terms ideology and philosophy for Indian wisdom and thought.

1. A rich discussion took place in this commission, contributing new theoretical elements for the reconstruction of Indian ideology and philosophy.

2. Theoretical and practical elements are still lacking for the consolidation of a coherent theory.

3. Practice alone will determine the reason and truth of the theoretical elements we attempt to define as Indian ideology and philosophy.

4. CISA, without authoritarianism, heavy-handedness, or dictatorial methods, will be able to eliminate the rough edges of the nonantagonistic contradictions.

5. The present work is the fruit of the active and effective participation of the community organizations and can not be considered completed, decreed, or ordered.

6. Only practice, unity, struggle, and organization will determine if our theories are correct, coherent, or valid. This is an attempt to reconstruct our concepts of nature, the world, and the Indian universe.

Commission #4

Economy

Economic self-sufficiency is one of the greatest challenges confronting Indian Communities. We face the advance of a powerful capitalist system, consumerism, and individualism, while at the same time our communal economy is weakened and without possibility of expansion.

We must devise a policy to reverse this process. Our efforts must embrace and integrate all aspects of communal life, including the economic, cultural, and philosophic dimensions, since there can be no development of one without the others.

Development and economic independence means the power to determine and maintain our own form of life and culture. To achieve economic independence we must strengthen our organizational abilities, our means and our objectives. Organization is a fundamental weapon in the struggle against exploitation and against those who control economic and political power, the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie.

The following points embrace the principal problems presented in the work commission by members of our community of producers, farmers, and herders. They reflect the shared burden of exploitation that unites us.

* Agricultural and livestock production is in a state of decline because of inadequate methods and technology.

* Agrarian reform has not yet come to many areas controlled by latifundistas* who remove Indians, the originals inhabitants, to inhospitable and unproductive areas or convert the land into leased plots.

* In areas where communities were organized in ayllu* or other traditional communal forms, agrarian reform destroys our traditional organization since it doesn't recognize communal property or our form of life.

* Under the influence of non-Indian society, cultivation of traditional crops like quinoa* has been abandoned in favor of crops with less nutritional value.

* Drought is a widespread problem in our communities. We have no system to counteract such natural phenomena which afflict large parts of the Andes.

* The sale of meat from traditional high attitude livestock (llamas* and alpacas*) has been prohibited for so-called sanitation reasons, despite its nutritional value.

*The subsistence economy practiced in the majority of communities is not able to expand its production and market.

* The marketing of our products is impeded by official policy inspired by consumer capitalism. Prices of our products are fixed by the government or float by the law of supply and demand. Either way we are exploited by merchants, lenders, and distributors who profit by the products of our labor.

* Many communities depend for their survival on paternalistic institutions within and outside the community (patrones*, missions, government authorities) and are therefore powerless to decide for themselves questions which affect them.

* National resources which are found on the lands inhabited by Indians are indiscriminately exploited by governments or multinational corporations without any kind of indemnification to Indian people. They ignore our respect for nature and our preservation of resources, and they destroy the environment, often making our lands uninhabitable and forcing us to migrate to other areas where we are treated poorly.

To overcome the ever-present problems which confront the Indian economy, we make the following recommendations:

* Reestablishment, in accordance with local practice, of the Ayllus* and other traditional communal systems which existed for thousands of years and which still exist in some regions America.

* Creation of truly representative organizations responsible for the defense of our interests. They can be organized among workers, farmers, herders, artisans, Ayllus, and so forth.

* Thorough study of the existing commercial system, with the end of implementing forms for marketing our products which will benefit us.

* Formation of representative commercial groups in the communities to defend, develop, and promote communal products.

* Maintenance and promotion of trade and local market systems among communities.

*Restoration and revitalization of all agricultural and livestock production, traditional industry, and artisanry.

*Recognition and defense of the nutritional values of coca*, our sacred plant.

*Promotion of legislation that recognizes communal property and the theft of lands that legitimately belong to Indians.

* Promotion of self-sufficiency in our communities so we can decide our destiny.

* Incorporation of technological methods which will promote our economic development.

* Rejection of methods which go against our way of life and production, such as chemical fertilizers and synthetic fibers.

* Demand the recognition of Indians' right to our land and natural resources.

The following recommendations are based on concrete and positive experiences of our communities:

* Create producers markets in which products can be sold directly from Producers to consumers.

* Demand the legalisation of sale of alpaca and llama meat.

* Large-scale formation of communal producers organizations in order to obtain better prices.

* Create producers organizations in order to establish prices independent of the government or intermediaries.

* Promote low-interest credit.

* Create self-financed producers' banks.

LABOR LAWS

Nowhere in the oppressor states is there justice for the Indian. Discrimination exists everywhere. For the poor, labor laws are meaningless. Although they exist on paper, it takes money to pay a lawyer to use them, making them inaccessible to many Indians. Wage increases which are achieved through great struggle, still leave the majority of Indians working without health and welfare benefits.

The labor unions are oriented toward salaried workers with fixed jobs. In most cases there are no unions for Indians who work the land or are independent migrant workers. In countries with dictatorial governments, the right to organize unions, the right to strike, and all other means of raising demands are prohibited. Unions in some countries are not fulfilling their role to defend the rights of workers. In some cases this is due to the lack of economic means, and in other cases it is because the union leadership is not representative, which is to say it represents its own personal interests instead of the workers'.

Recommendations

* Indians and all workers should. organize themselves in unions, cooperatives, campesino* organizations, and other organizations to struggle for their rights. The gains we make will depend on the degree of our organized and conscious participation in struggle.

* Governments should be advised to concern themselves with the rights of Indians who work on estancias*, in mines, in factories, in colonias*, and elsewhere. For a long time we have been exploited for cheap labor, often receiving vouchers or useless paper instead of the money due us.

* We Indian workers believe our enemy is the capitalist system which exploits us. Our struggle for compensation and liberation is waged within the struggle of the other oppressed sectors of societies, regardless of color of skin, and it will be together with them that we will march toward the construction of an egalitarian society.

* There should be labor and social security legislation which pays special attention and offers special protection to working women, such as maternity leave, food for nursing mothers, and child care.

CISA should create schools to train community leaders.

HEALTH

Our oppressed and exploited situation is reflected in the poor health conditions and malnutrition in which we live. Many illnesses like measles, tuberculosis, and whooping cough which are no longer a threat in the developed countries and in large cities still ravage the rural zones in which our people live. Malnutrition is a serious problem in Indian communities. It is aggravated by the lack of sufficient arable land to cultivate. Forced migration from the mountains to tropical lowlands in search of work causes unfamiliar illnesses against which we have no defenses.

National resources for health care are allocated to the urban centers and to technologically sophisticated medical institutions to which only the privileged classes have access. Meanwhile, neglected groups which form the majority of the population have no permanent form of access to health care. The health system is organized outside the socio-cultural framework of our people.

* To improve the health situation we must tackle the inter-related problems of our communities. An adequate health care program should include preventative and curative medicine, nutrition, and hygiene. Prevention should pay special attention to basic health care.

* Community participation is necessary in the design and implementation of the health system which includes the creation of community development centers and the participation of medical personnel. We need to develop our own specialists to revive, compile, and systematize our knowledge of Indian medicine and train competent personnel to practice it.

* We must develop activities to help train Indian doctors and nurses and promote the understanding of Indian medicine among non-Indian medical people, thus improving their knowledge and encouraging a more flexible attitude on their part.

* We must encourage the improvement of the nutritional condition of our population through programs of domestic agriculture designed to serve the basic needs of family and community.

* That the leadership of CISA be empowered to promote community health care plans with the participation of the communities themselves.

* That the leadership of CISA organize a seminar on "Indian Medicine, Science, and Technology," to include useful and simplyapplied technical knowledge.

* That support be sought for a program to compile knowledge of Indian medicine.

* That delegates from the committee organize centers of Indian medicine, science, and technology in their communities.

EDUCATION

Present day education as carried out by oppressor states is a powerful weapon designed to eliminate our culture. Its goal is assimilation and it aims directly at our destruction. Education should be bilingual and bicultural. All Indian people should study and educate ourselves in our own languages and establish our own schools.

In Indian nations which have no written languages, it is recommended that brothers and sisters capable of drawing up an alphabet be commissioned to do so. To develop our own schools, universities and teachers we should implement socio-economic programs with the goal of self-sufficiency, and enlist the aid of international organizations like UNESCO.

Equal access to state education must be guaranteed. Non-Indians must be sensitized to the means of eliminating cultural and racial prejudice toward Indians.

To advance the struggle for unity and liberation of the oppressed Peoples, the Second Congress of Indian Organizations and Peoples of CISA puts forth the following recommendations:

* Designation of a special commission to study, create and implement a preliminary plan for a system of education among Indian people at all levels.

* That special attention be paid to education and development opportunities for women, recognizing that they take special care in the education of children.

* That our brothers as well as our sisters assume full responsibility for education of our children and preservation of our heritage. Since the education they now receive in schools has no relation to our traditional culture, it is we who must influence their education for the most part. We must also educate them to advance the struggle which we have begun for the liberation of Indian people, and with us all men and women who suffer exploitation by and subjugation to European-derived society.

* Publication and distribution of written, visual, and other material for the spreading of our culture.

*Organization of sport and cultural activities by local community leaders and by CISA at the international level to promote and invigorate the physical and spiritual life of our communities, a Promotion of sports, traditional artisanry, and traditional sciences such as medicine.

* Rejection of all interference from religious sects and organizations like the Summer Institute of Linguistics*, which, under the pretext of "civilizing," "educating," and "evangelizing" us, practice ethnocide.

*Establishment of print shops for the production of instructional material at specific educational levels and which reflects our culture in each region.

* Organization of classes taught by Indians from our communities that raise the consciousness of children and adults, outside the official schools.

Commission #5

The delegates participating in the commission were from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia. Each made reports regarding the state of their respective organizations, explaining their objectives and programmatic goals. Each discussed the daily practical aspects of their ongoing struggle for fundamental rights: defense of land and resources, respect for Indians as peoples distinct from the dominant society, and the right to self-determination and self-managed development in attainment of political, economic, and social liberation.

The reports from delegates demonstrated that all Indian nations have survived by maintaining traditional methods of organization, changing actions and strategies in accordance with political events and social pressures taking place in their homelands.

Each country has or is planning its own organizational structure in accordance with the reality in which it exists. Indian organizations are aware of the need to conserve and consolidate Indian identity within the context of modern society.

No Indian organization puts into practice all the forms and methods from our ancestors' time. However, we are determined to recover the good, the efficient, and that which has served well; to combine these with methods and actions that modern society offers, without losing our own unique cultural values. We are dedicated to preserve and protect to the end of time, Indians as courageous and vital peoples distinct from the dominant society. Thus, we shall move ahead, recovering our own traditions while being aware that we live in a changing world, and that everything is in a process where individuals have to play a determined role for a society that is more just, more humane, more dignified, and where we are all brothers and sisters.

We have suffered submission, dispossession, and marginalization through the actions of dominant castes which have brought us to the condition of being oppressed and humilated. For that reason, Indian liberation is intimately linked with the liberation struggles that sustain all peoples, Indian or not. The hunger of people is not just for bread, but for liberty and economic and social justice, and that has only one road, unity of all the oppressed and humilated people that struggle for a better society through an alternative that is real, objective and clear, and that corresponds to the aspirations of those who have been dispossessed, marginalized and damned for centuries.

Our program is as follows:

* Political power where we are in the majority, such as in Bolivia and Peru. It falls to the Indian organizations of those countries to bring these goals into practice, in accordance with specific contexts.

*Where Indians are in the minority, the goal will be autonomy or sovereignty as well as active participation in externally initiated devolpment projects that concern Indian people.

The Commission recommends that the comunity based idigenous organizations be reconstituted and that all practical traditional forms of organizational structure be recovered.

The commission recommends that Indian organizations serve the times in which we live. Traditional forms in combination with modern methods will allow us to participate as equals with other organizations in our respective countries.

Whatever the operative processes of change in our countries may be, by means of our organizations and efforts, we will bring about the realization of our needs which are distinct from those of other peoples. In no instance will we function in isolation; this would be suicide. All nations need one another, within a framework of reciprocal understanding from equal to equal, without hegemony.

With regard to CISA, the commission agrees:

1. CISA is an organization representative of the Indian nations of South America, whose mission is to set forth the claims of its member organizations, support them, orient them, and lead them toward unity for the achievement of the objectives of improved respect for and liberation of Indian nations in accordance with specific cultural contexts, but always having Indian philosophy as the basis for action.

2. So that its functioning may be dynamic, creative, efficient and responsive to the struggles and hopes of its member organizations, CISA must have a permanent communications system, linked with other organizations of common interest.

3. CISA must diffuse, develop and project the philosophy, ideology and policy of Indianess-while respecting the autonomous position of its community based member organizations.

4. CISA must support and protect the tactics and strategies of its member organizations, peoples, and nations.

5. CISA must maintain unity with other progressive forces that have similar goals.

6. CISA must maintain solidarity with all international solidarity organizations that support the Third World.

7. At the local community level, CISA must promote the creation of entities and institutions that support economic, social, cultural and political development.

8. CISA must support the defense of human rights and the propagation of information concerning human rights violations in coordination with the United Nations, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and other similar organizations having the objective of reestablishing respect for our human dignity.

9. As a non-governmental organism of the United Nations, CISA must achieve ratification of its status wherever its principal office is established.

10. CISA must maintain cultural interchange with all nations.

11. CISA must develop and carry out economic self-sufficiency projects for all its activities, while at the same time maintaining assistance from international organizations.

12. CISA must stimulate the community-based organizations to actively plan and develop liberating education.

13. CISA must promote the historical, cultural, and territorial claims of the Indian nations.

14. CISA and its community-based member organizations which it represents, must have a presence in all the social, cultural, and community activities of different nations in order to re-educate global society to the fact that we are a people with distinct culture and heritage.

15. CISA must have a legal presence in all territorial disputes, particularly those in which land has been stolen or people have been displaced.

16. CISA must promote the permanent training of Indian leaders among the youth and women.

17. CISA must strive for the unification of Indian organizations, peoples, and nations with the object of solidifying our liberation struggle.

18. CISA and its community-based member organizations must give its members, associates, adherents, and sympathizers a consciousness of the need to contribute materially to the economic strength of our organizations in ways that develop infrastructure.

19. CISA must plan, develop, and fulfill the general and specific objectives of the organization.

Commission #6

This commission had thirty-two participants from different countries with the objectives of 1.) listening to the reports of the various organizations represented concerning the violation of human rights committed in their country of origin and 2.) setting forth motions of solidarity regarding these violations of human rights, and presenting them to the plenary session of the congress.

The commission began by defining human rights as fundamental and basic requirements for the development of life, personality and communal relations in all human existence. There are not only individual rights, but also communal and regional ones, and the rights of a people.

It is essential to understand that the violation of human rights is not only physical, but also psychological and cultural, as for example, when an Indian nation is denied the right to its ethnic identity and the use of its own language.

In regard to the term solidarity, the commission established that it is a sentiment and act of fraternity that inspires us to protest the injustices that our brothers and sisters suffer. We must search for concrete ways to contribute to the solution of these problems. It is more effective when we express this solidarity in the form of a group or organizational action.

This commission understands that it is necessary to explain that even though many of the points touched here seem to be outside the strict orbit of human rights, we deem that some are very intimately related to them, since the lack of any kind of liberty or right constitutes a violation of the integrity of the human being.

Reports were heard from representatives from the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. From Central America there were representatives from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua. Moreover, representatives from Canada, Belgium and the United States made use of their right to speak.

The languages used, with their respective translations, were Aymara, Quechua, English, and Spanish.

The nations represented were: Kolla from Argentina, Aymara and Quechua from Bolivia, Xavantes from Brazil, Brunca. from Costa Rica, Mapuche from Chile, Schuar from Ecuador, Maya from Guatemala, Miji from Mexico, Guarani from Paraguay, Campa, Aymara and Quechua from Peru, and Guajiros from Venezuela.

In this commission's deliberations, the following problems and rights were discussed:

The majority of the delegates placed special emphasis on the despoilation of their lands, especially in the Amazon, where, under the pretext of industrial development, the homesteaders and multinational companies, in complicity with the government, displace and even exterminate the Indians. The method they employ to invade the lands of Indian communities and expropriate their resources is first to construct highways that penetrate and divide the Indian territories, and second they use laws and institutions such as the National Foundation for Indian Assistance (FUNAI) whose supposed purpose is the protection of the Indians, to consummate the outrage of land theft and destruction.

The governments of Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador assert that Indians do not exist, but are only Argentine, Chilean and Ecuadorian citizens, respectively. The tragedy is, that in spite of this, our brothers and sisters are not allowed the same rights as the non-Indian citizens.

The health of Indian people constitutes one of the areas most neglected by governments and institutions designated for Indian services. We must especially denounce the problem of the epidemic of onchocerciasis among the Chachi people of Ecuador, where more than 50% suffer blindness for lack of adequate sanitary measures. Also, Indian communities, especially those located in the Paraguayan Chaco, have a massive problem with tuberculosis. The other Indian delegates also denounced the many cases where western medicine could not resolve their health problems, and when they then demanded a return to their own traditional medicine, they were met with obstacles and negativism on the part of the doctors.

Problems due to bi-lingualism have been encountered in education. Each Indian community demands that its education be carried out in its own language. If it is not, then not only is the foreign language incomprehensible, but the loss of the Indian language also produces a cultural uprooting and loss of identity. Access to centers of professional training and higher education is very difficult for Indian people.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics is denounced for the alienating and ethnocidal work it carries out, which has resulted in its expulsion

from some countries while lamentably, in others, it is supported by the governments. The delegations from Peru, Chile, and Ecuador now demand its expulsion from their countries.

There is a problem of lack of work and unemployment that is especially serious for our youth. One of the reasons is the lack of technical and professional preparation for children in rural Indian communities. Then, when the youth are forced to migrate to the cities, it is difficult to get work, obliging them to survive on very low wages, which then leads to malnutrition and susceptibility to disease.

An Aymara delegate pointed out that the Indian nations have suffered 490 years of enormous hunger since colonial ambitions have forced us to work as virtual slaves. The colonial powers have plundered the natural resources of our communites. For example, the precious gems belonging to the Ayores community have been taken by the descendants of the Spanish, while their legitimate owners have seen no improvement whatsoever in their economic condition. The same occurred with the gold mines in the Province of Nuflo de Chavez which belong to the Guarayo communities. The delegate also denounced the establishment of eleven foreign colonies on lands pertaining to the Indian communities. These examples show the necessity of avoiding the penetration of the western system into our Indian communities, since they will attempt to hold us under their political/economic domination.

A country in economic crisis is fertile ground for the activities of guerrilla groups. In Peru, economic crisis is severe in all regions, especially among the Indian nations of the Amazon, the Central Andes region and the South Andes. The Campa, Quechua and Aymara nations suffer the grave threat of repression through the armed confrontation existing between the guerilla group "Sendero Luminoso" and the special government anti-subversive military units, the "Sinchis". Especially in the central region of the country, in the department of Ayacucho, the military forces in their desire to terminate the activities of the guerrillas, are carrying out a systematic genocide of the Indian populations. They are using the Indian communities of the high mountain zones, inciting and pressuring them to attack the Indian agricultural communities of the valleys and to suspect every outsider of being a Sendero. We denounce these actions. By this procedure, a civil war has been invented, consciously provoked by the same governmental and military authorities. Thus, for example, as a result of this state of civil war, on the 27th of January, 1983, eight Peruvian journalists on their way to the high mountain villages were denied all protection by the armed forces, and were killed by those from the community of Ucchuraccay, at the instigation of the "Sinchis". According to all the evidence, the massacre was directed by the Lieutenant Governor of Ucchuraccay, who is Fortunato Gavilan. He is an ex-soldier who returned to his community to work for the government security forces. The Investigating Commission established by the president of Peru, on presenting its report, has neither thrown light on the facts nor pointed out the truly guilty, in a situation of murders promoted by the authorities themselves. This is leading the country to major bloodshed for both sides, where the innocent victims are more numerous than the armed groups. Confronted with this situation, we cannot remain silent.

The report from the Central American delegations has been enlightening in its reference to what has really been happening in those countries, especially in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The people of Guatemala are suffering the most violent and inhuman repression of the past thirty years. Since 1954 there have been more than 120,000 killed, including men, women, children and the old. 12,000 have been killed in less than a year by the government of President Rios Montt. Many of those killed have been captured and then burned, hanging from the beams of their houses. This is most frequent in the departments of Quiche, Sololá, las Varapaces, San Marcos, el Pentén, Chimaltenango, Huehuetenango, Escuintla, Quezaltenango, Chiquimula, and Puerto Barrios. More than 300 villages have been totally destroyed by the "Kaiviles", a specialized counter-insurgency force that does not limit itself to murdering people with bullets, but entirely destroys all our means of subsistence, by burning our food crops such as corn and beans. Because of this, we have 170,000 refugees in Mexico and more than a million internal refugees living in the ravines and scrub forests within the country.

We denounce the use that Rios Montt makes of the name of God to cover up these great slaughters, his formation of strategic hamlets that are nothing more than concentration camps, and the recent shooting of ten of our people. We denounce the resumption of North American military aid that had been suspended by the previous Carter administration for human rights violations.

We have received an urgent request from Service for Peace, and Justice regarding El Salvador, asking for the cessation of the massacre of the civil population there, and for the initiation of a dialogue to bring about negotiations between the protagonists in the conflict there, in order to achieve peace based on justice.

We condemn all foreign military intervention and call for the suspension of arms and military supplies to the Central American region.

Having heard the reports regarding Nicaragua, we recognize the complex character of the situation, especially in regard to the Miskito people. In the report of the delegate from Amnesty International, the legal aspects of the problems there were stressed. On invitation of the commission, we listened to a diplomatic representative from Nicaragua who also spoke to us regarding the problem. Taking all these discussions into account, the commission decided that CISA should send a commission to Nicaragua to clarify the problems and real perspective of the situation of our brothers and sisters, the Miskitos. (According to what was published in the Magazine of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, no. 1, we understand that in November 1982, a commission was sent to Nicaragua, but we have no information regarding its outcome.)

TAKING INTO ACCOUNT WHAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED HERE, THE COMMISSION ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS.

1. We thank the European and United States organizations that support our struggle. Nevertheless, we ask of the United States and European governments an urgent and serious revision of their policy of international military aid and cooperation. On one hand they allot a percentage of their budget for assistance to developing countries; on the other hand, they contribute to the oppression of the people through the sending of arms and through military alliances which perpetuate the power of repressive military regimes. At the same time, through the payment of low prices for our raw materials, they contribute to the maintenance of the state of poverty of our people.

2. In the present situation of economic crisis which the countries of the Andean highlands and South America are going through, those

most affected economically are the Indians and farmers. Therefore:

a. We demand just prices in the purchase of agricultural products.

b. We ask for the creation of Indian farmer's markets controlled by the producers themselves as a means of stopping their being victimized by intermediaries. We ask the support of the governments for this measure.

c. We demand of the governments of Bolivia and Peru especially, that they render emergency aid to all the provinces of the Andean highland plateau which has been severely affected by the drought, and that this aid be channeled through the leadership of the Indian and farmers organizations, using strictly humanitarian criteria, without political interests,

3. We denounce the action of the multinational corporations and national and foreign colonization projects in the Bolivian eastern jungles and in the Amazon Basin that, under the pretext of industrial development, actually despoil the Indian communities' lands, pollute their natural resources, transmit unfamiliar, often fatal diseases to them and, in cases where there is resistance, resort to murder of Indians.

4. We denounce the constant abuse of the large manufacturing enterprises throughout the continent, that contract our brothers as cheap labor to work under inhuman conditions, and who then receive very low wages or "vouchers" to exchange for merchandise or alcohol. For example, these abuses occur in some Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, and in the sugar mills of northeast Argentina.

5. We condemn the foreign plans to destroy our coca* plantations, offending the culture, religion and way of life of the Andean peoples. We reaffirm the sacred and ancestral character and the nutritional and medicinal value of our Spirit of Coca. We declare at the same time that this destruction of coca plantations is done with the objective of monopolizing coca production abroad. Also, with the same objective, the Bolivian government of General Garcia Meza, allied with colonial forces, is proceeding to spray coca plantations with a dangerous herbicide, extending environmental contamination to nearby communities. This has caused widespread deaths and genetic alterations.

6. We denounce ideological penetration and action to divide us by certain sects and churches alien to our Indian culture.

7. We denounce the imprisonment, torture, death, and persecution of leaders of organizations working for the struggles of oppressed people. These actions are often perpetuated under the false accusations of terrorism or trafficking in narcotics. Of specific mention in the commission was the killing of Chulumani in Bolivia.

We demand respect for the life and dignity of Indian people throughout the expanse of our Indian continent.

8. We demand for 0 Indian communities, especially those of the greater Amazon:

a. The transfer of property titles and the termination of inappropriate divisions of our communal lands.

b. Bilingual education and that Indian people be trained as bilingual teachers, to occupy leadership of their respective educational centers.

c. The right to a free education at the universities and schools of higher education for Indian children, with scholarships reserved for them.

d. Immediate governmental attention to the problems of Indian health, and the recognition and official support of the practice and professionalization of traditional Indian medicine.

10. We recommend that CISA support and carry out studies and execution of projects for the socio-economic and commercial development of our communities.

11. We demand through a resolution, the immediate withdrawal of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the World Mission, and any other institution whose covert actions provoke confusion and loss of cultural identity in Indian communities.

12. We are in solidarity with the Indian peoples of the central Andes of Peru, whose center is in Ayacucho, who are the innocent victims of the present civil war that has exploded in that zone. We denounce the application of sophisticated methods of counter-insurgency by the military forces of that region. They are using the different Indian communities against each other in the belief that this will enable them to terminate guerrilla activity. We condemn the massacre of the eight Peruvian journalists in the high altitude village of Ucchuraccay at the hands of the residents who were instigated by the anti-subversive forces of the government. At the same time, we denounce the systematic homicide of hundreds of our Indian brothers and sisters that is occurring throughout Peruvian territory. We request that CISA demand of the Peruvian government a full report of these murders.

13. We condemn with all our strength the genocide and ethnocide committed by the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador. Likewise we condemn the aggression against Nicaragua carried out by the Reagan administration, Israel and other regressive forces in Latin America.

We support the revolutionary process of the peoples of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua as the only route to attain their liberation while at the same time advance, consolidate, and extend the liberation of Indian peoples of Central America.

14. We condemn the homicidal action of the military governments of Chile and Argentina that has caused the death of hundreds of our brothers and sisters accused of terrorism and who have, moreover, been made the object of serious persecutions, preventing them from returning to their homes. Mapuche leaders who have been detained under such circumstances are still in the category of "disappeared". In Argentina, the Tobas-Matacas and Mocovies communities in the province of Formosa have also been the objects of attack, five of their leaders were jailed of whom all but one was killed.

As we raise our voice to condemn these atrocities, we also condemn with total indignation the episode of the Argentine Malvinas Islands where our Mapuche brothers and those from other nations were sent into battle as cannon fodder. Once again the racism of the authorities is revealed who prefer the death of an Indian to that of a non-Indian.

15. We demand that CISA, in its role as the guiding force and principal organization of all the Indian movements of South America, activate all resources necessary for its representative to be present at the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations Assembly. In this fashion, the violations of Indian rights will be dealt with at an effective level.

Alpaca: A Camelid whose wool is used in the Andean region.

Ama sua, Ama Ilulla, Amaqhella: Basic moral precepts of the Andean region-don't rob, don't lie, don't be lazy.

Andean region: A cultural area found in the Andean mountains stretching through parts of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and the northern parts of Chile and Argentina. The most numerous Indian nations here are Quechua and Aymara.

Apus: Spiritual forces that reside in mountain rocks and caves.

Ayllu: Traditional economic/social organization found in the Andean region.

Aymara: Refers to Indian people and their language located in the Andean region.

Ayni: Traditional social organization in the Andean region.

Criollos: Descendents of the Spanish.

Decree 2569 in Chile: Established by the military government of Chile, through which Mapuche communities were forced to divide communal lands into individual plots.

Estancias: Ranches.

Frente por la Defensa de los Derechos Indigenas de Venezuela: Venezuelan Front for the Defense of Indian Rights.

Haciendas: Substantial ranches, including their resources.

Indianismo: Indian ideology.

Indigenismo: An interest in things "Indian".

Kamanis, quallawayus: Spiritual leaders.

Latifundios: Large tracts of land under the control of one or a small number of families.

Llama: Beast of burden in the Andean region. The wool is also used.

Mapuche: Indian people from Chile and Argentina.

Mestizos: People of mixed Indian and European race and culture.

Mink'a: Economic organization in the Andean region.

Mitayus: Inhuman system of exploitation of transient workers.

OAS: Organization of American States.

Patrones: Owners of the mines, agricultural fields and the factories.

Quechua: Refers to an Indian people and their language located in the Andean region.

Quinoa: High protein grain grown in the Andean region.

Quipus: Mathematical and accounting system of the Incas in which knotted cords were used.

Schuar: Indian people from Ecuador and Peru.

Summer Institute of Linguistics: Religious missionary group also known Wycliffe Bible translators. Principal headquarters located in the United States.

Tawantinsuyu: Political confederation of Indian nations in the Andean region during the Inca period.

Tupi-guarani: Indian people from Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil.

World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP): Established in Canada for Indigenous rights.

World Indian University: Project initiated at the first conference to found an Indian University.