The Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure in South America is the latest and largest in a series of bank-financed schemes to bring "development" to the Amazon Basin—and more trouble to the region's indigenous communities.

Tags: anthropology, culture, latinamerica, humanrights, business, amazon on 2008-06-26 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Initiative for the Regional Integration
of Infrastructure in South America
The Interoceanica Sur highway in Madre de Dios, Peru, is one of the 31 first-stage
IIRSA projects that are programmed for completion by the year 2010. The road
is financed by the Andean Development Corporation, the Brazilian National
Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Peruvian government
and is currently under construction.
The Interoceanica project is going to benefit large agricultural interests,
not local populations. Local populations are not prepared economically to benefit
from the highway, and there’s been no interest from the national or regional
government to give us at least a few incentives to prepare us for the highway.
If the government doesn’t promote a sustainable vision for our region,
what we’re going to see are large trucks passing through here, big businesses
from the Brazilian side. There they have a broad vision of expanding spaces
for soy cultivation, which is going to affect indigenous peoples, riverside
communities, and rural communities. So this is only a capitalistic vision,
not a vision that will help the poor populations of our country.
We’ve been informed that there is a new proposal for an executive law
that would allow the government to begin a colonization project with agricultural
and industrial ends. For the Amazon, this is a threat, because we already live
here, we already exist here, so what lands are they going to colonize? This
could mean land invasions, conflicts between agricultural interests and indigenous
people, so this proposal for new law worries us, and we’ve rejected it
through the Alliance of Federations here in Madre de Dios.
The Madeira Hidrovia Complex is one of the most controversial projects included
in the Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure of South America.
The Hidrovia plans include the construction of five hydroelectric dams (two
in Bolivia and three in Brazil) along the Madeira river, to facilitate transporting
soy from the southern city of Porto Velho to Manaus for export.
For the Parintintin of western Brazil, who depend on the river for their livelihood
and culture, the hydroelectric dams proposed by the Madeira complex are a serious
threat. As cacique (chief) Domingos Parintintin points out, mining and logging
already exert tremendous pressure on their territory. Hydroelectric dams would
offer even more pressure, cutting river water levels, which would threaten
the availability and health of fish, as well as the Parintintin agricultural
plots, which depend on the river’s natural cycles of flooding to restore
soil fertility. There would also be increased competition for land and resources,
as migrants move in to work in construction and agriculture.
This is 2007; it’s time for things to be different. The government
threw a party to celebrate the 500th birthday of Brazil, but we’re against
that. Because today you go to any land in Amazônia, and our close relatives,
brothers, parents, they’re all buried on that land. How can you celebrate
on the land where your relatives are buried?
Our people, in the area of health, we have our own traditions. We make remedies
ourselves. We have a part of our culture that knows which medicine to use,
which medicines cure, and we pass this on to our people who conserve this knowledge.
For example, if you have a bruise, or a cut, we know which treatment to use
to cure it. We have remedies for everything. We never give up our culture.
Beyond this, we never let go of our culture. For example, we never give up
our traditional clothing. Our people are advancing, but they don’t know
how to do everything. We don’t know how to do everything at the beginning
of something new, but we’re advancing. There are some things about our
culture that I can’t speak about, because they are secrets. This goes
for other people too. Truthfully, for us as Parintintin, from the time of contact
to today, our vision has changed. Today, our people are much more like Brazilians.
To us, our people have failed in some parts of our culture. There are things
that are changing our own culture as indigenous people. We speak two languages.
In the case of my village, we speak our own language and Portuguese. But we
never give up our culture. I’m not an enemy of Brazil, I’m an indigenous
man, but the question of land invasions, the question of mining, the question
of illegal logging, hunting, fishing, all of this comes back to our people;
it causes a problem, a very serious problem.

Zápara Leaders and Identity Construction in Ecuador: The Complexities of Indigenous Self-Representation

IN THIS ARTICLE, I EXPLORE THE PRACTICES of self-representation used by indigenous leaders or dirigentes (as they are often referred to in Spanish) from the Zápara Nationality of Ecuador, one of the smallest indigenous groups in the Ecuadorian Amazon. These dirigentes have used indigenous languages, specifically Zápara and Kichwa, to symbolize their authenticity when interacting with non-Zápara outsiders. Zápara dirigentes' emphasis on Zápara and Kichwa as indicators of their communities' legitimacy has been important for creating political space for the Zápara in Ecuador. However, by equating indigenous languages with authenticity, Zápara dirigentes have also partially obscured and invalidated Zápara histories and practices. For example, they have downplayed the use of Spanish in their communities when representing them to outsiders and have highlighted rival indigenous leaders' lack of knowledge of the Zápara language to discredit them. By examining the complexities of these dirigentes' representational practices, I contribute to a more complex understanding of how indigenous leaders in Latin America have articulated new expressions of indigenous authority and power in their processes of self-representation.

Tags: anthropology, latinamerica, research on 2008-06-26 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Latin American anthropology

Wired Campus: Anthropology Professor, Now a YouTube Star, Says Web Video Can Help People Craft Their Identities - Chronicle.com

Tags: wesch, anthropology, youtube on 2008-06-24 and saved by9 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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