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: (45) 35 27 05 00 - Fax (845) 35 27 05 07 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 A. Chirif This book is divided into three sections. In the first, entitled Founders and Participants, we meet the people who founded the movement and who attended the first meeting in 1971. Of that original group, more than half have now passed away and one, Venezuelan anthropologist Nelly Arvelo, is in poor health. I must note here with sadness that my efforts to include some of her already published articles in this book have not borne fruit. The second section, entitled Contemporary and Beyond, comprises Indigenous professionals and leaders, some of these latter also professionals, who, since the 1970s or even before, were undertaking work committed to the rights of Indigenous peoples, plus some younger people who followed the same direction in the following decades. Finally, the third section, Barbados and IWGIA, comprises interviews