Native Americans of Middle and South America

D

3

Education

The future of indigenous languages is linked to education. Most Latin American countries have highly centralized, urban-oriented, school systems with instruction only in Spanish. Longstanding neglect of education in indigenous rural areas prior to the 1970s caused large literacy gaps between nonindigenous and indigenous populations, especially among women. But rural schooling began to improve greatly after 1970. However, the differences in literacy between nonindigenous and indigenous populations are still dramatic: In Colombia, 16 percent of all Colombians were illiterate in the 1980s versus 45 percent of indigenous Colombians. In Guatemala 40 percent of all citizens were illiterate versus 79 percent of indigenous ones; in Panama the rate was 14 percent versus 62 percent; and in Paraguay 13 percent versus 70 percent.

Most of the indigenous confederations have pressed for bilingual-intercultural education, with instruction in both the indigenous language and the country’s primary language. The objective is for students to keep lasting competence in both languages and cultures. Human resources are not lacking; in some Peruvian highlands almost 40 percent of teachers already know the indigenous languages of Quechua or Aymara.

Yet bilingual education still faces great obstacles. Parents fear that teaching their children indigenous languages will stigmatize them. Teachers aspiring to jobs in urban areas do not commit to improving rural schools. Ministries are slow to publish teaching materials in indigenous languages. However, there have been some places of progress. Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru established bilingual-intercultural education programs in their ministries of education in the 1990s. Indigenous-language radio stations such as Bolivia’s Radio San Gabriel in Aymara have also made inroads into the media industry.

As recently as 1970, it was unheard of for indigenous people to attend college. But by 2000 indigenous students from countries with large Native American populations had made their way into higher education. In Guatemala, a nongovernmental Academy of Mayan Languages, in which indigenous college graduates were often active, achieved remarkable successes by a grassroots method. Instead of leaving indigenous language issues to outside specialists, local committees of linguistically trained native speakers built up norms for writing each local dialect, while also coordinating with peers to maximize common ground among dialects. A new generation of Native American intellectuals is appearing everywhere. Guatemalan Maya proponents of ethnic revitalization such as Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil and Víctor Montejo have been especially effective in promoting scholarship among indigenous peoples.

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D

4

Health Care

Where health care is concerned, virtually all reporting countries show important gaps between indigenous health care and overall levels. Panama in 1992 reported infant mortality for indigenous peoples at 3.5 times the national average. Honduras found in 1993 that life expectancy for indigenous men was only 36 years (compared to 65 for all men) and 43 for indigenous women (compared to 70 for all women). A Guatemalan report showed the percent of indigenous women who died in childbirth was 83 percent higher than the national rate in 1994. Indigenous populations overall show high incidences of viral disease, malaria, and tuberculosis.

A particularly troubling problem is the continued spread of devastating infectious diseases among Amazonian peoples with weak immunological defenses. Measles was often a recurrent disaster. Areas with growing nonindigenous populations, such as gold rush zones and adjacent forests, have an increasing number of infections from sexually transmitted infections as well. However, rural health posts in the densely populated highlands have made important progress in reducing perinatal deaths and tuberculosis. This progress has been made in part by training local, often indigenous, peasants to be health promoters in the public health system. Because they are respected members of the community, they help greatly in explaining how and why to practice medicine that uses antibiotics.

One issue with health care is that indigenous patients tend to fear medical personnel and avoid them until illnesses become extreme. They feel doctors who are unaware of indigenous ideas about the body, or scorn them, bring danger and shame onto them. Indigenous confederations have strongly urged including shamans, midwives, and herbal curers within the public health service. Some model clinics, such as an Oxfam International-sponsored project among the Shipibo people in Amazonian Peru, have proven this feasible.

D

5

Religion

Since European contact, indigenous peoples have often combined their religions with nonindigenous religions. Indigenous religions coexist, and sometimes blend, with Catholicism. Most, if not all, indigenous people have at least some knowledge of Christianity, but most also conserve indigenous worship practices of pre-Hispanic origin. Literate Maya increasingly see a sacred testament in the Popol Vuh, an ancient Maya account of the creation and history of the world. Most Andean highlanders receive the main Catholic sacraments, such as Communion, but also make sacrifices to the deified mountains whom they feel own their land and water. After the Vatican II reforms (1962-1965), many Catholic clergy took a more positive attitude toward such combinations, in conjunction with Church support for the social justice claims of oppressed peoples. Peru’s spectacular Qoyllur Rit’i (starry snow) pilgrimage includes both a ritual climb in which costumed dancers bring sacred ice from the heights, and a mass in a chapel under a peak.

Protestantism is booming in many indigenous communities in Middle and South America. It is not new. As early as 1900 Adventist missions attracted many Aymara peasants on Lake Titicaca’s shores, and in the 1950s Guaraní-speaking indigenous people from Paraguay’s arid Chaco region began gathering around non-missionary Mennonites. But since the 1970s Protestant missionary religions, especially Evangelical churches, Pentecostal churches, and Adventists, have grown explosively among indigenous groups as well as among mestizos living in cities. Some Protestant converts are intolerant of indigenous practices. Lynchings of “idolatrous” shamans have been reported in Bolivia. At the same time, certain Evangelical groups strongly affirm the worth of indigenous identity. They propose improving the indigenous way of life by eliminating the use of alcohol and promoting indigenous-language literacy.

E

Outlook

Is the resurgence of what Bolivians call the “original peoples” just a passing phase, or is it the new dynamic? Many unknowns remain: how to implement ethnic rights without bureaucratizing culture; how to save endangered languages; how to stop political and drug-related violence from drowning reform; and how governments with deep problems of debt and corruption can serve long-neglected indigenous citizens. Indigenous groups fear, too, that they are defenseless in global free markets. Some Maya who consider growing corn a sacred duty, protest they cannot sell it amid a flood of cheaper imports. But one achievement is secure: Latin America’s native peoples have shown impressively how oppressed peoples can achieve resurgence without engaging in mass violence against their neighbors.

The Native Americans Today section of this article was contributed by Frank Salomon.

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