Native Americans of Middle and South America

IV

Native Americans Today

Indigenous peoples in Middle and South America today make up a large majority of all Native Americans throughout the world. At least 400 different groups count themselves as culturally distinct peoples. Some strive to reinforce cultural traditions, while others have shifted toward urban and international ways of life. Some live on land that the government set aside for them, but many more live as peasants in the countryside, or migrate to cities.

Diverse as they are, these peoples share a common experience: All of them live in countries that until very recently excluded them from power. Indeed the word indio (Indian) still carries a racial stigma. Many who bear it seek to free their cultures from misperceptions through political and social activism.

This section describes indigenous peoples in Latin America today—their demands for increased self-government, their increasingly close alliance with each other, their evolving struggles to defend land and resources, and their efforts to combine sacred cultural heritages with practical adaptations to the modern world.

A

Population

Recent estimates of Latin America’s total indigenous population vary from 40 million to 49 million people. Native groups are spread unevenly throughout the area. The majority of indigenous people live along the mountainous spine of Middle and South America, in densely settled villages in the Mesoamerican highlands and the Andes Mountains. Many of these villages have the status of “recognized peasant community,” although the term varies among countries. This status means that the government recognizes the village as collective owner of its lands. In the lowlands, indigenous groups often live in government-demarcated reservations, tribal areas, or autonomous zones. Throughout Middle and South America, many indigenous people also live in cities.

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The size of indigenous populations varies widely from country to country in Latin America. In some countries, indigenous people make up almost half or more of the population. These countries include Bolivia (60 percent of the population), Peru (45 percent), Guatemala (44 to 53 percent), Ecuador (43 percent), and Mexico (8 to 30 percent). Bolivia is the only country that officially describes itself as having a Native American majority.

The countries with large indigenous populations—notably Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru—also have very large numbers of people, even majorities, who are mestizo. The term mestizo refers to people of mixed indigenous and European or African ancestry who generally do not practice indigenous lifeways. Mestizos make up between 70 and 92 percent of Mexico’s population, 40 percent of Ecuador’s population, and 37 percent of Peru’s population.

In Latin American countries at the other end of the spectrum, indigenous groups form small minorities both absolutely and relatively. Only about 3 percent of Argentineans are neither white nor mestizo. About 1 percent of citizens in El Salvador and Costa Rica are counted in the census as indigenous. Less than 1 percent of Brazil’s population is officially indigenous.

Some of these smaller numbers were undercounts because they come from countries where both the government and individuals have tried to minimize the heavily stigmatized “Indian” identity. As more people began to value and embrace indigenous culture, however, more have begun to publicly identify themselves as indigenous. In any case, population numbers fail to capture the importance of small indigenous groups. Some small minorities, especially in Brazil, have become human rights test cases with powerful implications for how the majority population should treat minorities.

Many indigenous peoples have been completely wiped out by varying combinations of epidemic, massacre, cultural assimilation, servitude, flight, and intermarriage. For example, the three sea-hunting and guanaco-stalking peoples who lived around Tierra del Fuego, South America’s southern tip, were all but exterminated. Of the Ona, not a single descendent survives. In the 20th century, activities such as land grabbing, misuse of natural resources, and frontier violence took their toll on just about all of Latin America’s native peoples. Occasional reports of so-called isolated or newly contacted tribes usually turn out to be reappearances of groups that had sought refuge by making themselves mobile and elusive.

Indigenous ways of life today in Latin America defy the tourist-brochure stereotypes of timeless traditionalism. The huge majority of indigenous Latin Americans take part, willingly or not, in many aspects of industrial-based life such as the market economy and government institutions. But they are integrated into national institutions to different degrees. Most highlanders in the former Inca domains of South America (Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) and in the Mesoamerican highlands (Mexico and Guatemala) retain ties to peasant villages of pre-Hispanic origin. In lowlands, indigenous populations who live near major rivers and airfields—with their webs of trade, military outposts, and missionary networks—are more assimilated than inland populations, who tend to conserve older lifeways such as the Amazonian circular village.

Increasingly, indigenous Latin Americans are people in motion. By the 1990s the largest single body of people who knew Quechua, the language of the Inca, lived in the congested boroughs of Lima, Peru. But many urban dwellers are also anchored to the villages of their origin. Many return for traditional events such as festivals where sacred mountains are venerated. This link to their past provides them with social networks for a lifetime.

Some indigenous people have lost the bonds of homeland because they fled as refugees amid political violence. From 1978 to 1983 about a quarter of a million Maya fled to Chiapas, Mexico, to escape Guatemala’s guerrilla warfare. Thousands gradually returned home, but more stayed in Mexico or headed for the United States. Substantial numbers of Maya have lived in the Los Angeles area since that era. Many more indigenous migrants have left for economic reasons. Texas, New Jersey, and California have notable colonies of Andean people. Also present in California are Mixtec and Zapotec migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico. Gradually indigenous populations have built distinctive institutions in these new places, such as societies to benefit schooling and health back in their homelands.

Some migrants and refugees return home, periodically or permanently. But the circuit of migration and return does not mean that the old order is restored because those who return often come back with a will to modify old lifeways and customary law. Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú Y Así Me Nació La Concienca (1983; translated as I, Rigoberta Menchú, 1984), the semiautobiographical testimony of Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú Túm, a Quiché Maya woman, gave voice to this resistance against oppressive aspects of tradition. She urged a struggle against the subordination of the Maya, even at the price of armed conflict.

B

Political Issues

Indigenous societies have local ways of governing themselves that are deeply rooted in their histories. They range from the intricate hierarchy of Andean village camachicos (“those who set things in order”) to the moral authority of the Amazonian headman who leads by setting a self-sacrificing example as first among equals. But the nonindigenous groups who founded independent Latin American republics did not recognize these forms of government.

During most of the 20th century Latin American governments usually claimed responsibility for protecting indigenous peoples, while excluding them from full citizenship until they could be absorbed into urban-dominated nonindigenous society through assimilation and intermarriage. In Brazil beginning in 1910 the government’s Serviço de Proteção aos Indios (SPI, Indian Protective Service), tried innovative nonviolent methods to shelter small indigenous groups from conflicts they could not win. The SPI meant to protect Indians until supposedly inevitable assimilation would merge them with the majority. That same era saw the rise of indigenismo among nonindigenous artistic and political elites. This philosophy exalted indigenous heritage as a past root of the nation while denying it any future other than assimilation.

Latin American governments also tried to protect indigenous peoples by providing land for them or safeguarding their existing lands. From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1930s, some governments set aside reservation land for lowland indigenous peoples. This period also produced new leyes de comuna (laws of the commons), which enabled ancient local communities to obtain collective titles to their lands and waters. Legal title gave them the right to decide how to use their territory. It also made it more difficult for outsiders to grab land through coercion or fraud.

By the beginning of the 21st century the old expectation that indigenous Latin Americans would assimilate into broadly European-American culture gave way to growing recognition that nations were made up of many ethnic groups. Nine countries, including once war-torn Guatemala, embodied this recognition in constitutional reforms. The most decisive case was Colombia’s 1991 constitution, which awarded many indigenous groups self-government rights and the right to elect a small number of congressional representatives. In 1988 Brazil finally erased the assimilation of indigenous peoples from its statutory goals.

B

1

Neo-Indianism

In the last quarter of the 20th century many Native Americans in Latin America became involved in a family of movements known as neo-Indianism. These movements are characterized by mobilizations within indigenous society, rather than by outside sympathizers, to seek autonomy rather than assimilation. Neo-Indianism’s growth began where it was least expected—among Amazonian peoples who are far smaller in numbers and more remote from power centers than highland groups. But they were also less tangled in bureaucracies.

In 1964 a number of Shuar groups in eastern Ecuador loosely banded together to create the Federation of Shuar Centers. The Shuar effectively resisted ranchers who intruded on their lands by using amateur radio to warn of intrusions and to rally households. They also used an alphabetized version of the Shuar language to write documents that helped crystallize the reasons for their struggle. Soon after Amuesha (Yanesha) Peruvians and Cauca Valley Colombians achieved similar advances. They formed autonomous self-defense federations using modern legal and media techniques rather than waiting for help from government agents.

The Shuar pointed an important new direction by staying out of traditional vehicles for change such as political parties, guerrilla armies, and labor unions. Beginning in the 1970s, the most successful indigenous mobilizations followed the Shuar model, with loose confederations linking grassroots committees. Ecuador’s Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE, Confederation of Ecuadorian Indigenous Nationalities), a nationwide alliance expanding on the Shuar pattern, shook the republic in 1990. Indigenous peoples throughout the country simultaneously mobilized, demanding foremost the settlement of a long list of disputes about lands allegedly stolen from indigenous peasants. It was the first truly pan-indigenous uprising since the 18th century. In the capital city of Quito, urbanites were stunned by the sight of massed marchers in all kinds of indigenous garb from feathers to ponchos. At first they called them “Martians.” In less then a decade, however, Ecuadorian indigenous power was recognized when the government appointed indigenous leaders to some governmental agencies. By 1992 the organization representing the Quechua inhabitants of the Pastaza region in southeastern Ecuador secured at least nominal autonomous control of a tract of land as big as the U.S. state of Connecticut.

In the early 1990s political parties turned toward indigenous activists in order to appeal to voters. In 2000 Mariano Conejo was elected the first indigenous mayor of the tourism-rich city of Otavalo, Ecuador. In Bolivia, a pro-indigenous political movement called Katarismo began winning important political victories in the 1990s when many voters began to redefine indigenousness as a cultural right rather than a demeaning racial definition. In 1993 Victor Hugo Cárdenas was elected vice president of Bolivia, the first Native American to hold such high office in the country. He took the helm with his wife beside him in Aymara traditional dress.

However, the course of neo-Indian movements has been very uneven. In Chile, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) suppressed the autonomy of the country’s indigenous peoples. It broke up reservations of the Mapuche and sold the land. However, the Mapuche made impressive strides after democracy was restored in 1989. In 1990 the government put a stop to the dismantling of reservation territory. It also created a national commission for indigenous development with Mapuche representation.

A neo-Indian movement in Chiapas, Mexico, hit the headlines in 1994 under the leadership of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista National Liberation Army). The Zapatistas claimed to represent the indigenous Tzol, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, Tojalabal, and Zoque Maya groups, many of whom had already mobilized under other banners influenced by the fiery liberation theology of Roman Catholic bishop Samuel Ruíz García. The EZLN occupied four municipalities in Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state. An indigenous army of 800 took over official buildings in the state capital, proclaiming war against the “looting of our natural resources” and demanding regional political autonomy. In 2001 the Zapatistas and many of their followers marched to Mexico City and confronted President Vicente Fox to demand that the national government address indigenous issues. Although the Zapatistas never won a consensus of Maya support or any major reforms, they powerfully renewed Mexican and international interest in indigenous issues.

Indigenous movements are no longer constrained by national boundaries. Instead, indigenous groups have begun to come together across country borders. Many groups dwell on both sides of formerly closed boundaries, divided by customs and immigration police or even by hostile armies. New transnational organizations are reuniting the Aymara of Chile and Bolivia; the Shuar of Peru and Ecuador; the Garifuna and Miskito of Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama; the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina; the Guaymí of Costa Rica and Panama (where they are also known as Ngobe-Buglé); and peoples who inhabit both sides of the U.S-Mexican border (the Yaqui, Kickapoo, and Tohono O’Odham or Papago).

Reconnecting the Quechua-speaking peoples of the former Inca lands, now situated mostly in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and the equally fractured Maya population, has proven a hard job. They have been separated into regional groups with dissimilar dialects and incomplete knowledge of one another. Likewise, uniting indigenous peoples of the lowlands with those of the highlands has proved difficult, but it is underway; in Bolivia, in 1990, 12 eastern lowland groups marched 700 km (400 mi) to La Paz, where thousands of Aymara highlanders feasted with them in Andean style.

On a larger scale, indigenous movements have created transnational confederations. These organizations align big and small ethnic groups and build alliances beyond Latin America. A pioneering example is the Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica (COICA, Coordinating Body for Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin), which by 1995 represented more than 100 ethnic groups. COICA and similar confederations succeeded in building ties with powerful allies abroad, including the World Council of Churches and major foundations in wealthy countries. By 1995 COICA had secured representation within the World Bank, the European Union, and Consejo de Cooperación Amazónica (Council for Amazonian Cooperation), a treaty organization formed by the countries with Amazonian territories.

B

2

Land Rights

From 1952 through the 1970s a wave of nationalist revolutionary movements, notably in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, led governments and political parties to redefine indigenous citizens by class rather than ethnicity. They viewed class and nationality as the only important categories, and they wanted to avoid any indications that the nation was not culturally unified. They thought that raising issues about cultural diversity would dilute their efforts. Therefore, indigenous people in rural areas came to be called campesinos (peasants) in public life. Agencies such as Ecuador’s Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria y Colonización (Agrarian Reform and Colonization Institute) or Venezuela’s Comisión Especial para el Desarrollo de la Región Sur (Special Southern Development Corporation) at first grouped indigenous peoples with nonindigenous farmers despite their differences.

The ensuing agrarian reforms provided a firmer footing for some of the rural poor, but they marginalized indigenous lifeways. By pressing peasants to grow more of certain crops to sell at market, they eroded indigenous knowledge of crop varieties and techniques. Amazonian groups were affected by land reforms in a special way. The reforms failed to recognize the indigenous, swidden-based use of the forest, which involved cutting and burning patches of forest to create temporary fields, and later letting the forest regenerate. Governments thought swidden lands were unused. By opening them to ranchers, planters, and loggers, all of whom permanently clear-cut the land, reformers unintentionally wrecked ecologically sound practices.

Many governments of the 1970s—in Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, for example—promoted massive schemes to develop forested areas in the lowlands. They wanted to relieve agrarian conflicts in overexploited highlands and to raise national productivity. When Brazil’s president in 1968 proposed to send “people without land to the land without people,” he was in fact sending them as unwitting invaders into the homeland of hundreds of indigenous peoples whose traditional swidden use of the land was not protected by law.

New roads and easy land grants in rain forests all the way from Mexico to Bolivia brought influxes of settlers, many of whom were themselves indigenous families from thickly populated peasant zones. The development of these areas affected most indigenous peoples who live in the rain forests, including the Lacandón Maya of Mexico and the Yek’uana of Venezuela.

In addition, in Brazil and Colombia, gold rushes brought tens of thousands of garimpeiros (gold panners) into rain forests in the mid-1970s. They used airstrips built by the military to leapfrog into the lands of native peoples, especially the Yanomami of the Brazilian-Venezuelan border. Miners often murdered indigenous locals who interfered with the gold mining. In addition, the miners brought with them deadly epidemics of diseases such as measles. Measles killed about 2,500 Yanomami, or about a quarter of the population. Under international pressure, Brazilian troops repeatedly blew up airstrips and expelled miners, but the airstrips were quietly rebuilt and the miners continued to ravage the land.

Starting in 1991, the World Bank put its financial power behind a policy requiring consideration of native peoples’ interests. Increasingly, the World Bank and many aid agencies have funded ethnodevelopment, development projects built around indigenous institutions and interests that are intended to strengthen them. There were important successes. Yet disorderly and invasive development in the interior of Middle and South America also continued apace in the 21st century. As countries developed roads across the inland, such as the transoceanic highway from the Peruvian Pacific to the Brazilian Atlantic, indigenous leaders prepared themselves for a struggle to protect their lands from newcomers.

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