Mar del Plata: Indigenous Summit
CUMBRE CONTINENTAL DE PUEBLOS Y ORGANIZACIONES INDIGENAS
30, 31 de Oct. – 1º de Noviembre 2005. Mar del Plata.
Argentina
POLITICAL DECLARATION AND APPEAL TO THE ORIGINAL PEOPLES OF
ABYA YALA(America)
The resistance and reivindication of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Americas for their territories and identity reaches today
every corner of the continent. It confronts the capitalist-
neoliberal model, model pretending to impose an imperial
project of domination and unlimited plunder. A model with no
identity or nationality, but supported by countries trying to
reinforce their power and global hegemony: the U.S. and
Canada.
These are the two actors we identify in an endless conflict:
on the one side, an economic model without identity or
nationality but with clear responsibles, and on the other, the
Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala. In this conflict these two
central protagonists appear in the 30+ States of Central and
South America. A decision has to be made by those States:
either to distance themselves from NorthAmerican hegemony or
to replicate that policy of oppression and repression within
those States. To subordinate themselves to the U.S. or to
assert sovereign policies, together with their peoples.
In that context, the Canadian Government is supporting an
“Indigenous Summit in Buenos Aires ” Argentina, a week befote
the meeting of the Presidents of all states of the continent,
including Bush. We can not accept this intrusion of the
Government of Canada while its transnational companies
continue to exploit and pollute our territories and jointly
with the U.S. are imposing an inhuman economic globalization.
That summit is trying to manipulate Indigenous organizations,
in a meeting in Buenos Aires a week before the Presidents’
Summit in Mar del Plata , 300 miles afar, and with an agenda
both depolitized and folklorical. Delegates will be unable to
go to Mar del Plata. The intention is clear: to divide the
Indigenous movement and to separate us from civil society and
popular groups going to Mar del Plata to debate the future and
to denounce the globalizing policy imposed upon our continent.
Once again, U.S. and Canada manipulating, colonizing and
controlling the successive Summits.
For that reason, we call our brothers of the Indigenous
Organizations of the continent not be manipulated by a Summit
which will only serve the political interests of the status of
the North. Fraternally we invite them to join forces to the
Indigenous Summit in Mar del Plata to genuinely deliberate
about our future, and from there to send a clear message to
governments and civil society.
The Chiefs of State of the 34 states will be meeting on
November 4 and 5th. in Mar del Plata Argentina, in the IV
Summit of the Americas, organized by the OAS. The center of
attention in this event – where we cannot be absent – will be
the mechanisms for control and exploitation of the wealth of
our territories, biodiversity and traditional knowledge.
The tools for pillage and destruction will there be honed,
lubricating the W.T.O., the differents Free Trade Agreements,
the imposition of ALCA, new threats will be created to make
more difficult the payment of the fraudulent external debt ,
and for the militarization of the region to contain and
repress resistance, criminalizing our demands and imposing the
privatization of the main public services. In all, deepening
the existing poverty, inequality, marginalization, and
fundamentally, advancing towards the ideological extermination
of any cultural position that will put in doubt the hegemony
of the Northern countries.
That is why we are mobilizing the continent from extreme to
extreme. We will come from valleys and pampas, forests and
deserts, mountains and snow-caped peaks, for the world to
listen. We will be arriving from territories where
biodiversity is a way of life, but nowadays terminally
threatened unless devastation and sometimesinvasion, are nor
reverted.
This is not a new struggle. We are taking again and giving
full value to the history of the indigenous movement of the
whole continent, on the basis of our common history and
cultural criteria: First Continental Meeting– Quito, Ecuador
1990 – Second Continental Meeting – Temoaya, México 1993 –
First Indigenous Continental Summit, Teotihuacan, México 2000
- Second Indigenous Summit, Abya Yala, Quito, Ecuador 2004.
To push forward the impunity we confront, we have the strength
and the power our elders and ancesters have given us to
venerate and preserve Mother Nature, source of all life. The
political, cultural and social institutions we keep are the
basis to built a real alternative to so much nonsense.
As we are going to face the direct responsibles of our
situation, our análisis must be crystal clear:
- What is the legitimacy U.S. and Canada have to impose
free trade upon the Aboriginal peoples, peoples who
have sustained themselves on reciprocity,
redistribution and complementarity .
- Which ones are going to be the mechanisms and
safeguards we are going to implement to guarantee the
survival of our peoples in a market world, where
power is more and more concentrated and established by
macroeconomic powers.
- What model for the State are we going to demand, a
model where the diversity we represent (cultural-
biological and geographic) is established in the same
strategic ecosystems where the “competitive” natural
resources are located?
- How we are going to implement diversity, with our
sistems of collective identity, with our institutions
legitimized communally, built upon legal principles
supported by millennia of development, to confront a
model of civil relations based on corruption,
clientelism, and the “party-cracies”of the empresarial
democracy of the States?
- We must subvert the context of centuries of
colonization through the OAS system as a regional
organization of the UN, in violation of the right of
the self-determination of peoples declared by U.N.
General Assembly resolution 1514 and 1541 in 1960.
Towards that goal, we want to transform the present Nation-
States in Pluri-national Status where it will be possible to
exercise
- Free-determination as Aboriginal peoples, pre-existing
the establishment of the modern status.
- Control of our territories, which we inhabited by
history and by legal rights, in an inalienable,
imprescriptible and unembargable way.
- Models for our own development based on knowledge and
practices that will guarantee our peoples’
reproduction, and nationalities in harmony with our
environment, based on criteria for happiness and
equilibrium.
- Autonomy in political, juridical, fiscal, territorial
and cultural spheres
Today the challenge is harsh and we shall connect and
articulate with those social and cultural movements of the
Continent struggling for diversity instead of free
competition. With those who resist violence and evictions,
displacements from our territories, cultural and physical
repression, which continuous to be imposed with impunity.
We are working hard to have a meeting of the International
Political Committee in Buenos Aires on September 7th , 8th.
and 9th. , 2005. Soon, you will receive proper confirmation.
All these with the goal to meet in Mar del Plata from October
30th. to November 1st. as Indigenous peoples and organizations
MARICIWEU – JALLALLA – KAUSACHUM!
Todos Unidos avanzando!
AHEAD ALL TOGETHER.
Por ONIC – Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia - LUIS
EVELIS ANDRADE CASAMA
Por – AIDESEP – Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la
Selva Peruana Perú, HAROLDO SALAZAR ROSSI
Por Kus-Kura, Proyecto Ecológico Kan Tan- COSTA RICA José
Carlos Morales
Por el Comité Inter-Tribal, BRASIL, Marcos Terena
Por el Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas –ECMI:
Margarita Gutiérrez
Por Wara-BRASIL Azelene Kaingang
Por Congreso General Kuna, Panamá, Representante Provisional
Héctor Huertas
Por CIDOB – BOLIVIA, Presidente de Confederación Indígena del
Oriente Boliviano, Saúl Chávez
Por la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador –
C.O.N.A.I.E.- ECUADOR Luis Macas
Por Indigenous Environmental Network – I.E.N., ESTADOS UNIDOS,
Tom GoldTooth
Por TONA TIERRA - AZTLAN, Tupac Enrique ACOSTA
Por Abya Yala Nexus, ESTADOS UNIDOS, Nilo Cayuqueo
Por Nación Metis de Ontario – CANADA, Tony Belcourt
Por el Consejo de Organizaciones Lencas de Honduras, COPINH –
HONDURAS, Salvador Zúñiga
Por Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras, OFRANEH -
HONDURAS.
Por Comisión de Juristas Indígenas en la República Argentina –
C.J.I.R.A.- ARGENTINA, Dr. Eulogio Frites – Dr. Eduardo Nieva
Por la COORDINACION DE ORGANIZACIONES MAPUCHE – ARGENTINA,
Jorge Nahuel, Werken – Huilipan Verónica, Werken -
Secretaría de la Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y
Organizaciones Indígenas
Lavalle 437 4º ‘B’. (CP 1047) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos
Aires –
Tel./Fax: 0054 11 4326 2940