Fight for identity, justice

"NOW IS OUR CHANCE': The indigenous peoples of Ecuador are united in their fight to gain a place in the political system.

By DAVID ADAMS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 21, 2000

LATACUNGA, Ecuador -- While produce is abundant, shoppers are scarce at the Saturday fair in this bustling town in the central Andean highlands of Ecuador.

Market women in felt hats, from the indigenous Indian communities of Cotopaxi province, come here three times a week to sell their vegetables.

They struggle to make a living at the best of times, but lately the women complain they have never had it so bad.

"No one has any money. If this goes on, we are all going to die of hunger," said Laura Espin, a 55-year-old Quichua Indian selling parsley and coriander for 1,000 sucres (four cents) per bunch.

Last month, thousands of indigenous men and women in traditional dress -- many carrying small children on their backs -- marched 55 miles across the sierra from Latacunga to the capital, Quito, to demand political and economic reforms.

The government fell and the country's Harvard-educated president, Jamil Mahuad, was ousted from office.

The indigenous coup made news around the world. After centuries of political repression and abandonment, it was the first time indigenous peoples had overthrown an elected government in Latin America.

It was the most dramatic illustration yet of the Americas' rising indigenous movement, whose leaders are seeking to preserve cultural identity, as well as bring about political change.

"We are fighting to recover our ethnicity," said Manuel Caiza, 28, an organizer with the Cotopaxi Indigenous and Peasant Movement who has a degree in industrial psychology. "The whites have to erase from their minds that the indigenous people are ignorant or less capable. We will show that with the right advice, the indigenous people can administrate this country."

Other indigenous groups have rebelled against the Americas' largely white and Spanish-speaking political establishment.

In 1994, an armed Indian peasant uprising in southern Mexico took that country's political leaders by surprise. Elsewhere, in Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and Brazil, indigenous peoples are struggling -- mostly by peaceful means -- to defend their lands from oil companies, logging interests and other forms of modern economic development.

But nowhere has the indigenous movement taken off as in Ecuador.

"This is the most important indigenous movement in Latin America," said Diego Iturralde, a leading Ecuadoran anthropologist. "It is 20 years ahead of its neighbors."

Against all the odds -- racial discrimination, poverty and poor access to education -- Iturralde says Ecuador's indigenous peoples have emerged in the past two decades as the country's most coherent political force.

Their evolution from the margins of society to the forefront of political change is all the more remarkable given that they consist of 11 nationalities, each with its own language and customs. Making up an estimated 30 percent of Ecuador's 12.5-million population, they are widely dispersed across the central Andean sierra, down into the Amazon rain forest to the east.

Cotopaxi province, named after the giant snow-capped volcano that rises to 19,342 feet, is one of the country's most densely populated indigenous regions.

Once part of the vast Inca empire ruled by Atahualpa, the indigenous Indians were colonized by Spain in the 16th century and forced into a life of feudal servitude.

Ecuador's independence from Spain in 1822 meant little change. Emiliano Jacome, the 72-year-old Roman Catholic priest in charge of indigenous pastoral activities in the area, recalls growing up with Indian servants on his father's 150-acre hacienda.

"They were taught to venerate the white man. It was a relationship of obligated respect," he said.

Under the land-use system known as huasipungo, Indian families were allowed to farm small plots on the hacienda, earning a pittance from the owner. In gratitude, they worked a half day in the main house on Saturdays, for no pay.

The system began to change in the 1960s when, led by the church, an agrarian reform movement abolished the huasipungo.

"When I was a child, I saw them as servants. Now they are my brothers," Jacome said.

Starting out as a landless peasant movement in the 1960s, the indigenous cause gradually took on a political identity to combat the threats of modern development including logging and oil companies.

Identifying themselves for the first time as the authentic native peoples of Ecuador, they also began to discover their shared interests. By the mid-1980s, the 11 indigenous nationalities came together to form the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

"It's a unique experiment," said Iturralde. "Nowhere have the indigenous people been so formally united."

The country was forced to take notice in 1990 when Indians from half a dozen provinces staged uprisings, blocking highways and demanding land rights and bilingual education.

What followed was "a period which changed the lives of indigenous people in Ecuador," according to Gonzalo Ortiz, the presidential chief of staff charged with defusing the 1990 crisis. "From being simply objects of exploitation they have begun to participate in politics. There's the beginnings of an Indian middle class, which never used to exist."

But any sense of indigenous pride was undermined by a decade of government mismanagement and corruption, leading to the worst economic crisis in Ecuador's history.

It was a recipe for disaster.

Just as the indigenous movement was demanding greater access to economic opportunity in the countryside, the government began cutting social spending for health, education and agricultural credits.

"The situation has became more and more desperate," said Jacome. "The government has no policy for reducing poverty. The poor have been abandoned."

Last year, the government began to lose control of the country's economy altogether. Inflation went through the roof, banks folded and the national currency collapsed in a catastrophic devaluation.

The crisis prompted the indigenous movement to expand its demands.

"This is no longer about land rights, or ethnic and cultural matters. Now we are talking about the politics of state and institutional reform," said Luis Macas, a former president of the CONAIE.

"It's a fight about ethics and morals in government. This political system is exhausted. It's at an end."

After decades of quiet organizing, including forging broad alliances with other disaffected sectors of society -- including the military -- the indigenous movement is well-placed to take the lead in the popular protests.

"We are the ones who have most criticized the structure of the state. We were never allowed a role in constructing the political system. Now is our chance," said Macas, a veteran indigenous politician, who still wears his traditional Quichua dress: a felt trilby hat over long, plaited hair; a poncho; and knee-length woolen trousers with long socks.

"They left the political space open to us and we walked right in."

All the way through the gates of the presidential palace.

On Jan. 21, to cries of "ama sua, ama llulla, ama kjella," (no thievery, no lying, no laziness) indigenous leaders occupied the palace. The gathering followed a day of political chaos, with Indians demanding Mahuad's resignation and forcing their way into Congress and the Supreme Court.

After the president's ouster, Antonio Vargas, head of the indigenous confederation, was briefly named to a three-man, military-led junta.

But the junta quickly collapsed, after U.S. and other regional officials denounced it as a military coup. The generals abruptly switched allegiances, backing the country's vice president, Gustavo Noboa, who took over as head of state. Dozens of junior officers, including colonels sympathetic to the Indians, were jailed or reassigned to distant posts.

Angry indigenous leaders say it was never their intention to seize power and that their protests were hijacked by ambitious generals.

Somewhat embarrassed by the turn of events, the indigenous groups who had marched on the capital retreated to their rural communities.

"They overreached themselves and lost the moment," Iturralde said. "But this is far from over, they have a tremendous organizational capacity to regroup."

The new government's controversial decision to rescue the economy by adopting the American dollar has given the indigenous movement a new issue to rally around.

Indian farmers are passionately opposed to the measure, seeing it as another government trick to rescue the big banks.

"The dollar is for rich people and robber barons," said Transito Velasquez, 75, who earns barely $4 a week selling onions at the Latacunga market.

"The politicians and the rich never take us into account. They live apart from us."

Church leaders worry that dollarization could have drastic social costs in the countryside, where new price scales would be slow to take effect. "The products of the earth are not valued like other products," Jacome said. "They don't have the value they deserve. Dollarization could leave the indigenous people poorer than before."

The CONAIE, led by the charismatic Vargas, a 41-year-old Shuara Indian from the Amazon region, now is organizing a national referendum calling for the dissolution of Congress and the Supreme Court, as well as a halt to the government's dollarization plan.

Despite efforts to establish a dialogue, the government and the CONAIE once again appear on course for a head-on collision.

Analysts fear a failure to reach some sort of political consensus could result in dire consequences, including a further radicalizing of the indigenous movement.

Some point to the split in the military between the generals and the colonels, as providing the potential for a civil war.

Indigenous leaders say their cause is a peaceful one. But they warn it might not stay that way.

"Everything depends on the government," Vargas said in a recent interview. "It can strengthen itself if it gets rid of corruption and puts the thieves who impoverished us in jail. If it doesn't tackle corruption, we will go back to the struggle. In three months, if there are no changes, there will be a great social explosion."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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