Introduction

The writers and signers of these documents share a common legacy: they are all Native South Americans. They come from different tribes, speak different languages, worship different gods, and live in different environments. But they have shared, until now, a common fate when they encountered the civilization of white men: pestilence, slavery, as well as loss of land and culture. The declarations in this book testify to the Indians' resolve to free themselves of the yoke of foreign domination, and to assert their own thought and ideals. They demonstrate that Indians are perfectly capable of explaining themselves and their grievances. The Indians show that they do not need anthropologists whose only interest may be collecting material for a dissertation on some tribe, nor missionaries whose only cause may be to convert the Indians to Christianity and subvert their ancient beliefs and native language.

In 1492, when some Arawakan speaking Indians first encountered the "whiteman," the native population of North and South America was somewhere between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 people. After the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean, Cortds in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru, and Cabral in Brazil, the Indians soon learned that they had no immunity against smallpox, influenza, measles, whooping cough, and host of other European diseases - By 1650, the number of Native South Americans was approximately 4,000,000. Since that time the Indian population has recuperated somewhat, perhaps numbering between 20 and 30 million people. Nevertheless many groups of Indians continue to face the threat of cultural extinction, a process known as ethnocide. Ethnocide is like genocide, in that large numbers of people die; unlike it, in that some are allowed to survive, bereft of their cultural life and knowledge of their historical past. Ethnocide has been occurring in North and South America since 1492.

The spread of epidemics among the native populations helped the less numerous Spaniards and Portuguese to conquer and subdue them. The Iberian invaders possessed firearms, which helped them to enslave the Indians who had survived the first shock waves of conquest. In the Andes and in Mexico, Spaniards forced Indians to labor in gold and silver mines. In Brazil, the Portuguese captured Indians to work the sugar mills, fish and gather food for them. In the Caribbean, they tried to enslave the native peoples, but almost all the Indians had died in epidemics before 1600.

In this book, the reader will see that these people, who have survived more than four centuries of alien political rule, outside diseases and economic subjugation, now want to determine their own destiny. Quechua and Aymara Indians of Bolivia proclaim that they will be the "designers of [their] own progress and masters of [their] own destiny." Their words recall the legendary struggle of a young Kollasuyu Indian named Tupac Catari. Tupac Catari tried to revolutionize Indians subjected to forced labor on colonial plantations. In 1781, he led 40,000 armed Indians against the Spanish elite in Bolivia. Afterwards, the Spaniards captured, executed and quartered Tupac Catari. His last words, spoken just before his captors cut out his tongue i were, "I am only one and you can kill me, but tomorrow I shall return in the form of millions like me. " Today an Indian movement in Bolivia called Tupac Catari carries forth his struggle.

In 1973, representatives from this and three other peasant movements wrote the Declaration of Tihuanacu, a document demonstrating that the Quechua and Aymara Indians can still argue lucidly and forcefully for their basic rights. In Bolivia, where the annual per capita income is US $120, the per capita income of the Quechua and Aymara Indians is only US $50. And yet, these people produce more than three-quarters of the national product.

At Tihuanacu, representatives of these Indians expressed a wish to receive the benefits of economic development, but not to become victims of development dictated by corrupt public officials or profit-oriented multinationals. Instead, they want an economic system that assures the well-being of their people and which is "rooted in [their] own system of values." Bolivian Indians want new schools, better roads and hospitals, none of which they possess at present. Teachers, they argue, should use native languages in the classroom, teach Indian history and honor Native American heroes, ideals and ancient ways of life. Until now, rural education has been a vehicle for cutting Indians off from their heritage.

The Aymara and Quechua leaders at Tihuanacu called for the return of their aboriginal lands, taken from them in the sixteenth century. Today these people occupy the least fertile lands in Bolivia and seldom have enough land to survive. As a result, Indians must work in the tin mines, yet cannot properly nourish their families. Further, working conditions in the tin mines of Bolivia are among the most archaic in the world. The cry of the Quechua and Aymara Indians is an affirmation of their right to self-determination.

All of the Indian movements in Latin America aspire to self-determination. The Venezuelan Federation of Indians, for example, represents many indigenous peoples, among them: the Goajiro, a highland, pastoral people; the Guahibo, nomads of the tall-grass savannas; the Yaruro, a riverine people; the Makiritare, who inhabit the tropical forest of the southern part of the country. Despite their linguistic, cultural and ecological differences, all of these Native American groups share a profound respect for nature; they ask that they may be allowed to maintain the lands they now occupy; they affirm the basic right to pass on their languages and cultures to their children. They also want to be treated as full Venezuelan citizens, but they do not wish to be incorporated into a national state that would force them to sacrifice their heritage and make self-determination an impossible dream.

In 1971, some 2000 Indian campesinos (indigenous peasants), calling themselves the Regional Indian Council of the Cauca (CRIC), convened in Colombia to discuss reappropriating lands and rights that they had lost. CRIC outlines seven aims essential to self-determination in Colombia: 1) restoring lost reservation lands, 2) expanding the size of existing reservations, 3) fortifying the Indian councils, 4) abolishing all land-rents, 5) disseminating laws protecting Indians from exploitation, 6) defending indigenous history, language and customs from the threat of ethnocide, and 7) training native Indian teachers in the native languages.

The Council's manifesto proclaims that: "Destruction or unmerciful exploitation of nature is repugnant to our way of thinking." The sudden disappearance of forests, poisoning of lakes and air, and extinction of many species of animals and plants followed the displacement of Native Americans by Europeans. In this manifesto, the Amerindian concept of land and nature is an integral aspect of self-determination.

Representatives at the First Indian Congress of Mexico in 1974 declared that the land belongs to those who work it. Indigenous peasants constitute about ten percent of the population of Mexico, yet they own a much smaller fraction of the usable land. The grievances expressed by native leaders at this historic Congress were many: minimum wages for plantation workers, regular salaries from big landowners and employers, and reduction of the burden of taxes currently carried by Indians. "We want," the leaders wrote, "to know where our taxes go, because we do not see any improvement in our communities." Large landowners in the highlands, the leaders argued, should stop diverting their water supply. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs always had enough water for everyone. The Indians also demanded that the national government deliver health care to their communities, modern health care be supplied, traditional health care be respected and Indian paramedics administer medical aid to the Indian communities.

Mexican Indians also demanded fair prices for their goods. They called for the abolishment of "middlemen," who for centuries have bought Indian goods cheap and sold them elsewhere for profit. Those attending the First Indian Congress point out that only a few years ago, middlemen paid them only 25-30 pesos for mahogany trees worth at least 10,000 pesos each.

The meeting of the American Indian Parliament of the Southern Cone in Paraguay included representatives from several tribes and countries: the Maguiritare (Makiritare), to whom we were introduced in the chapter on Venezuela, a people of the Amazonian tropical forest of Venezuela; the Quechua and Aymara, constituting the largest native population in the New World, occupying expanses of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia; the Mapuche, who live mainly in the central valleys of Chile; and the Guaranf from the Gran Chaco, an extensive region of marshes in northern Argentina and Paraguay. Leaders at these meetings described how their people regard the threat to their existence and integrity. Like others whose voices we hear in this book, they want local autonomy, better working conditions, fair payment for their labor, better medical care and education that stresses the Native American conception of the world and history. These Indians espoused a pan-American Indian movement: "Those outside the Indian communities should realize that we are united ... Any attack on a community or any of its members, we will sense as a blow against all the Indians of the Americas."

The proceedings of the National Indian Association of Panama in 1975 show that the aspirations of the Cuna Indians closely resemble those of other Native Americans. In 1977, this group protested the role anthropologists, sociologists and certain missionary groups have played in the fate of Indian societies. These so-called experts, according to the documents, have tended to watch passively as Indian groups such as the Cuna were integrated into the national state, eroding their native language and culture.

Appropriately, the last and longest chapter in this book concerns Brazilian Indians. In contrast to most other South American Indians, the Brazilian Indians have until recently tended to occupy remote and nearly inaccessible tracts of tropical forests. Today, there are approximately 120,000, a tiny minority of the total Brazilian population. Nevertheless, these people represent the four major language groups of lowland South America-Tupi, Arawak, Carib and G~. They practice a simple form of agriculture that has proven to be the most rational form of land use in Amazonia. Now, as the Amazon jungle slowly disappears to make room for highways, large cattle ranches, mining and timber operations, and squatters' settlements, the Brazilian Indians face not only environmental loss, but physical extermination.

In recent years, government policies have encouraged this rapid development in Amazonia, and in its aftermath many Indian groups have been destroyed from epidemics of measles, influenza, tuberculosis and other diseases. Because of massive deforestation projects in the Upper Amazon, onchocerciasis (African River Blindness) has appeared in epidemic proportions among such groups -as the Yanomam6 nation. The Trans-Amazon, the Bel6m-Sdo Luis and the Northern Perimeter highways have cut through Indian territories and villages, causing epidemics, death and expropriation of Indian lands. The Brazilian National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the agency with the responsibility for "protecting" the Indian, has been ineffective and corrupt.

Self-determination for Brazilian Indians has a somewhat different meaning than it does for the other Indians of South America. The Indians of Brazil express the desire for autonomy and isolation, in contrast to the Indians of Mexico and highland Bolivia, who seek a greater role in the national state. Brazilian Indians cannot maintain their present methods of farming, collecting, hunting and fishing-their very survival-if outsiders continue to usurp their lands. They want to demarcate and protect their reservations. They ask the Brazilian government not to abandon them to multinationals, settlers and diseases, all of which loom as a threat to their aboriginal way of life. Instead, they ask only that the government protect their borders.

In possession of their lands, Indians know how to live in harmony with nature. If the Brazilian Indians lose in their struggle for survival, Brazil will also lose. For with the Indian will go the superior knowledge of the Amazonian habitat, the rich cosmologies and the egalitarian social life. In the end, all of us must share the guilt.

In 1971, the signers of the Declaration of Barbados I foresaw the creation of an American Indian movement across Latin America. The documents in this book show that by the mid-1970's, such a movement already had come into existence. Barbados 1, attended by anthropologists, had an effect on Catholic and Protestant missionaries who, in general, by the mid-70's, seemed more sensitive to Amerindian religious beliefs and practices. Barbados II, however, in 1977, attended both by certain Native American leaders and anthropologists, criticized the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a "fundamentalist" group of missionaries, for practicing ethnocide in Latin America. Barbados II also condemned the corporations which covet and exploit the forests, waters, minerals and petroleum found on Native American lands.

What is the future of the Indian awakening in Latin America? It is difficult to say. Whatever the outcome, the destiny of Native Americans is intimately tied to our own. As one Incan said, "A nation that oppresses another nation cannot be free."
-William Balee

Willaim Balee, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York, recently did field research in the Amazonian region of Brazil.