Declaration of Mama Quta Titikak

2009-06-04 00:00:00

12 to 16 October: Global mobilisation in defence of Mother Earth and its peoples!
Meeting [on the shores of] Lake Mama Quta Titicaca, 6500 delegates from representative indigenous peoples’ organisations in 22 countries of Abya Yala, together with fraternal peoples of Africa, United States, Canada, Polar circle and other parts of the world, with the participation of 500 observers from diverse social movements, resolve the following:
To declare our presence at a time of a profound crisis in the western capitalist civilisation which has imposed an environmental, cultural, energy and social crisis, leading to social exclusion and hunger. It is an expression of the failure of eurocentrism and colonial modernity born out of ethnocide and which now sacrifices the whole of humanity.
To offer an alternative of life against a civilisation of death, looking to our roots in order to project a future, based on our principles and practices of harmony between men, women, Mother Earth, spiritualities, peoples and cultures, which we call Buen Vivir (Good Life). A diversity of thousands of civilisations with more than 40,000 years of history which were invaded and colonised by those who, just five centuries later, are leading us to planetary suicide. We defend food sovereignty, prioritising native plants, internal consumption and community-based economies. We mandate our organisations to deepen their strategies of Buen vivir and to exercise them in our communal governments.
To call for the construction of Pluri-National Communitarian States, based on self-government, free determination of the peoples, reconstitution of the indigenous territories and nations. With legislative, judicial, electoral and political intercultural systems, and political representation as peoples without the mediation of political parties. We will struggle for new constitutions in all the countries that do not yet recognise pluri-nationalism. Pluri-national states not just for indigenous peoples, but all those who are excluded. For everyone everything and calling on all social movements and social actors for an intercultural dialogue which is respectful, equal and which overcomes hierarchies and attempts to “invisibilise” [people and issues.]
To rebuild our ancestral territories as the source of our identity, spirituality, history and future. The peoples and our territories are one. We reject all forms of dividing up the land, privatisation, concessions, degradation and contamination by extractive industries. We demand proper and previous free, informed, public consent and consultation, in our own language, in good faith, through representative organisations of our peoples, not just for specific projects but all policies and national development laws. We call for the decriminalisation of the coca leaf.
To ratify the organisation of a Global mobilisation in defence of Mother Earth and its peoples from 12-16 October, against the commodification of life (land, forests, water, seas, agrofuels, external debt), contamination (extractive transnationals, international financial institutions, genetically modified organisms, pesticides, toxic waste) and the criminalisation of indigenous and social movements.
To build a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge transnational companies and complicit governments which harm Mother Nature, loot our natural resources and threaten our rights, as the first step towards an International Court on Environmental Crimes.

To organise during the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, in December 2009, an alternative summit in defence of Mother Earth in order to push for effective measures in the face of climate catastrophe, such as the consolidation of indigenous territories, buen vivir, previous and informed consent, all as strategies to save the planet.
To confront the criminalisation of exercising our rights, militarisation, foreign military bases, forced displacement and genocide of our peoples by building alliances and broad mobilisation in order to get amnesty for our imprisoned leaders, especially for those fighters for liberty and life who can be found in the prisons of the United States as well as worldwide. We support and broaden the legal complaints that have been presented to the Inter American commission on Human Rights and the Committee for the Eradication of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations. We push for an international trial of governments of Colombia, Peru and Chile – the government of Alvaro Uribe Velez for the genocide of Colombian indigenous peoples; the Chilean state for its use of the antiterrorist laws, its persecution of Mapuche demands, its crimes against Mapuche leaders and the militarisation of Wallmapu; Alan Garcia for his legislative coup that enacted 102 decrees in favour of the Free Trade Agreement with the US which privatise indigenous territories, and for the more than a thousand leaders who have been persecuted and put on trial.
To implement our rights, calling for the UN declaration on Indigenous Peoples Rights to be made national law, following the example of Bolivia, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela amongst other countries. And for it to include the right to communication for indigenous peoples. If Barack Obama wants to make changes to the imperial disaster, he must start at home, and approve the UN declaration on indigenous peoples as law in the United States.
To mobilise our organisations in defence of the Peruvian indigenous peoples’ struggle against laws which will privatise our territories and natural goods. Their struggle is our struggle. To organise in the first week of June, demonstrations in front of Peruvian embassies in each one of our countries, calling for a solution and an end to repression of our brothers. In this regard, the indigenous and campesino organisations of Peru agree an immediate National Uprising of the Peoples of Peru in June 2009 calling for a repeal of anti-indigenous decrees which resulted from the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
To reject the Free Trade Agreements with the United States, Europe, Canada, China and other countries signed with our broken economies, as new forms of submitting our peoples and looting Mother Earth. We reject the manipulative actions of the European Union together with the dictators of Peru and Colombia which have been designed to destroy the Community of Andean Nations and to impose a Free Trade Agreement.
To mobilise our organisations and social movements in our countries in defence of the process of decolonisation begun in Bolivia, to reject separatist, racist, violent, coup attempts by the local oligarchy and the North American Empire. We reject the asylum given by the Peruvian government to Bolivian politicians responsible for genocide. We also agree to hold the Fifth Indigenous Peoples Summit of Abya Yala in 2011 in Qollasuyu, Bolivia. 

To strengthen our own intercultural, bilingual, systems of education and indigenous health, in order to advance the decolonisation of knowledge, and especially to prevent biopiracy, defending our own unique systems of intellectual patrimony that is held by indigenous peoples collectively and across the generations.
To support the struggles of all the peoples of the world against imperial powers, which includes an end to the blockade of Cuba, the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories, the collective rights of the peoples of Masai, Mohawk, Shoshoni, Same, Kurds, Cataláns, Basques, among others.
To construct paradigms of alternative ways of life in the face of the crisis of western civilisation and colonial modernity, through a Forum on the Crisis of Western Civilisation, Decolonisation, Buen Vivir, amongst others, to be held in Cuzco, 26-28 March 2010.
To globalise our struggles through the holding of First Summit of Indigenous Communications in 2011, in Cauca, Colombia; the First Indigenous Summit on Water; Summit of Indigenous Communicators, and the Second Summit of Indigenous Women in 2011 in the framework of the Fifth Summit of Indigenous Peoples.
To build the Coalition of Indigenous Peoples and Nations of Abya Yala, continuing the process of building up from the grassroots, creating commissions of women, children, adolescents, youth and indigenous communicators, and especially a regional organisation in North America. The coalition of Abya Yala will monitor the Organisation of American States and the UN to overcome their subordination to imperial power, and if it is unable to, will build the United Nations Organisation of Abya Yala and the World.
The earth belongs to us, we belong to the earth!
The condor and the eagle fly together again!

Mama Quta Titikaka, 31 May 2009