Towards the conquest of self-determination. 50 Years since the Barbados Declaration

418 Pages·11.861 MB·English

by  Alberto Chirif (Editor), Alberto Chirif, Esteban Mosonyi, Georg Grünberg, Stefano Varese, Miguel Bartolomé, Scott Robinson, Víctor Bonilla, Natalio Hernández, Aída Hernández, Patricia Torres, Alicia Barabas, Pedro García, Zulema Lehm, Kantuta Lara, João Pacheco de Oliveira, Richard Chase Smith, Rodrigo Villagra, Thomas Moore, Silvel Elías, Frederica Barclay, Søren Hvalkof, Jens Dahl, Alejando Parellada, René Fuerst, Espen Wæhle, Peter Aaby (Authors)

INTERNACIONAL
WORK GROUP FOR
INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

Alberto Chirif
Editor
TOWARDS THE
CONQUEST OF
SELF-DETERMINATION
E. E. MOSONYI p G. GRÜNBERG p S. VARESE p M. A. BARTOLOMÉ
p S. ROBINSON p V. D. BONILLA p N. HERNÁNDEZ
A. HERNÁNDEZ y P. TORRES p A. BARABAS p P. GARCÍA HIERRO
p Z. LEHM y K. LARA p J. PACHECO DE OLIVEIRA p R. CH. SMITH
R. VILLAGRA p T. MOORE p S. ELÍAS p F. BARCLAY p S. HVALKOF
p A. PARELLADA p E. WÆHLE  J. DAHL
TOWARDS THE CONQUEST OF SELF-DETERMINATION.
50 YEARS SINCE THE BARBADOS DECLARATION
Copyright: the authors and IWGIA
Compilation and editing: Alberto Chirif
Cover and interior design: Gredna Landolt
Cover photo: Pablo Lasansky, 2019
Editorial production: Alejandro Parellada
translation: Elaine Bolton
ISBN: 978-87-93961-19-7
Legal deposit made in the National Library of Peru: 202104764
Printed in Tarea Asociación Gráfica Educativa
Pasaje María Auxiliadora 156, Lima 5 - Peru
HURIDOCS CIP DATA
Title: Towards the conquest of self-determination.
50 Years since the Barbados Declaration
Edited by: Alberto Chirif
Pages: 416
Language: English
ISBN: 978-87-93961-19-7
Index: Indigenous Peoples– 2. Self-determination– 3. America
Geographical area: Global
Publication date: 2021

INTERNATIONAL WORK GROUP
FOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS
Prinsessegade 29 B, 3rd floor
DK 1422- Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel: [phone] - Fax [phone]
Web: www.iwgia.org
CONTENT
The book and the memories 9
Alberto Chirif
u PART 1
founders and participants
The awakening of the Indigenous world:
From invisibility to potential saviours of humanity.
Reflections on the 50th anniversary of the successful
“Declaration of Barbados” 33
Esteban Emilio Mosonyi
Barbados 1971, an ongoing challenge 45
Georg Grünberg
Fifty years since Barbados I:
Indigenous ethical cosmology and the future of the commons 61
Stefano Varese
A new intercultural dialogue:
Anthropology written by Indigenous Authors 93
Miguel Alberto Bartolomé
To avoid digital feudalism 109
Scott S. Robinson
A Parallel history:
Barbados and the Indigenous movement in Colombia 131
Víctor Daniel Bonilla
Víctor de la Cruz and The Flower of the Word 149
Natalio Hernández
Intergenerational dialogues on Barbados I and II:
An interview with Nahuatl poet Natalio Hernández Xocoyotzin 155
Aída Hernández Castillo
and Patricia Torres Sandoval
The influence of the Barbados
Declaration 50 years on 183
Alicia Barabas
u PART 2
contemporary and beyond
Territorial Governance and Indigenous Peoples 205
Pedro García Hierro
Indigenous movements in Bolivia:
Progress and challenges 211
Zulema Lehm and Kantuta Lara
Barbados and brazilian anthropology 229
João Pacheco de Oliveira
The congress of amuesha communities (1969-1981):
A Collective Dream of Self-government in the Selva Central of Peru 251
Richard Chase Smith
The situation of Indigenous peoples in Paraguay 277
Rodrigo Villagra
Ethnocide and ethnogenesis in Madre de Dios, Peru:
the Fenamad experience 297
Thomas Moore
The Indigenous peoples of Guatemala and echoes of the
Barbados Declarations 323
Silvel Elías
Barbados: From small beginnings 335
Frederica Barclay
Land titling, slavery and democracy.
The process of Indigenous liberation in Gran Pajonal
and Upper Ucayali, Peru 343
Søren Hvalkof
u PART 3
barbados and iwgia
Interview with Jens Dahl 377
Alejando Parellada
Interview with René Fuerst 381
Espen Wæhle
Interview with Peter Aaby
About the founding of IWGIA and the role of the Barbados
Declaration and network 387
Søren Hvalkof
The implication of the Barbados meeting for my work 393
Søren Hvalkof
Interview with Aqqaluk Lynge, Greenland 401
Jens Dahl and Alejandro Parellada
Author references 409

THE BOOK AND THE MEMORIES
Alberto Chirif
z
The book
This year, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of the historic meeting held on the
Caribbean island of Barbados, where a group of 15 anthropologists (14 men and
1 woman) from Amazonian, Central American and European countries met to
reflect on the situation of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. The symposium,
organized by the University of Berne’s Institute of Anthropology in coordination
with the Geneva-based World Council of Churches’ Programme to Combat
Racism (PCR), was held at the University of the West Indies in Bridgetown,
Barbados.
This book was first published in Spanish in January of this year. This English edition
contains the same articles, the only difference being the addition of an interview
with Aqqaluk Lynge, leader of the Inuit people of Greenland, conducted by Jens
Dahl and Alejandro Parellada.
The Barbados meeting was preceded by international accusations against the
governments of Brazil and Paraguay that they were promoting and implementing
genocidal plans against Indigenous peoples with the aim of clearing areas so
that they could be handed over to transnational corporations. This was the
topic of one of the thematic break-out groups at the 39th International Congress
of Americanists, held in Lima in 1970. It was in this context that a group of
participants, mainly anthropologists, agreed to hold the Barbados symposium
a year later.
The participants in the meeting presented reports on violations of the rights
of Indigenous peoples in their countries, specifically: Argentina, Paraguay,
Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico. At the end of
the meeting, they signed an historic declaration, “For the Liberation of the
Indigenous People”, in which they harshly criticized governments, the Catholic
and Evangelical churches and the anthropological trend that sees Indigenous
peoples merely as objects of study and refuses to recognize the problems
that affect them or, when they do recognize them, limits itself to rhetorical
denunciations without any commitment to a resolution.
Both the declaration and the presentations were compiled into the book “La
situación del indígena en América Latina”, edited by the Austrian anthropologist
9
THE BOOK AND THE MEMORIES
Georg Grünberg, organizer of the meeting, in which he also participated. The
book was published by the Terra Nueva publishing house, in Montevideo, in
1972, but was immediately publicly burned by the ruling dictatorship in Uruguay
as a subversive document.
A second meeting was held in 1977, Barbados II, this time with the participation of
Indigenous leaders, many of them persecuted by the authoritarian governments
or open dictatorships exercising power in their countries at that time. The
papers presented, as well as a further declaration, were published in the book
“Indianidad y decolonización en América Latina”, edited in Mexico in 1979 by
the Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, who had also participated
in Barbados I.
The Barbados group met for the third and last time in 1993, in Rio de Janeiro, at
the invitation of Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, to analyze the theme of
“Ethnic Plurality, Autonomy and Democratization in Latin America”. The result
of that meeting was a new declaration and a book entitled “Articulación de la
diversidad. Pluralidad étnica, autonomías y democratización en América Latina”,
published in Quito in 1995.
Since then, Indigenous peoples have become strengthened organizationally,
both nationally and internationally; they have strengthened their alliances and
have obtained the approval of a series of international legal instruments that
have developed and furthered their demands. Noteworthy among these are
the 1989 ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent
Countries; the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the
2016 OAS American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Notwithstanding these advances, forces opposed to the rights of Indigenous peoples
have also been consolidated. Transnational corporations, in cooperation with
national governments, are increasingly interested in exploiting the resources found
on Indigenous territories and, to this end, are deploying all their corrupting power,
both over these governments and over Indigenous leaders and organizations. On
top of which many Indigenous peoples living in local communities have absorbed
the mantra of a “development” that, according to the official rhetoric, they will be
able to access if they “capitalize” the resources on their territories.
Fifty years on from the first meeting in Barbados, an event that marked a
turning point in the development of anthropology, with the emergence of what
became known as “committed anthropology”, it is important to reflect on the
road travelled so far but also on future threats. The time is therefore ripe for
the publication of a new book bringing together both the people who played
a central role in promoting the original initiative as well as those who have
continued this work dynamic since then.
10