Tag: land

Chile: "The Indian Problem"

antunezy on

Although colonialism has historically targeted Latin America, such effects on the Latin American people have not been enough to stop their own imperialist efforts. Issues of land and sovereignty: the uneasy relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui  details the case of Chile, where the state’s imperialist efforts were inspired through their conquering of Peruvian and Bolivian land. The resolution of the War of the Pacific granted Chile land from the beaten countries, making Chile somewhat of an imperialist state over those newly gained territories. Here, they gained the Mapuche land, which allowed them to garner exploitive methods that would expand to the newly gained territory of Rapa Nui.  Through merchant trade, Chile saw a possibility in Polynesian territory and annexed Rapa Nui.
The relationship between the Rapa Nui and Chile is complicated and has remained ambiguous across Chile’s changing government regimes. When Chile annexed Rapa Nui, it was due to a misunderstanding between the Chilean representative and the island’s chief who gave them the blessing to use the land for agricultural purposes but without ownership. Chile took this ritual as acceptance to their land ownership, which came back full circle when the Chilean Navy practiced gifting land to newly married Rapa Nui couples. In their terms, this gifted land could be used for agricultural purposes, but it was to be understood that the owners were still the state. The Rapa Nui also understood this as holding property ownership, which attests to the confusing nature of these two group’s relationship, as well as its legitimacy.
The Rapa Nui have used this confusing relationship to circumvent Chile’s rule as the laws passed such as the Inscription of 1933, La Ley Indigena of of 1933, and La Ley Pascua, which subjected the Indigenous people of Chile to regulations. These laws have created unforeseen consequences that have been to the advantage of the Rapa Nuis’ autonomy. The Inscription of 1933 made it so no foreigners could invest or own the land on the island, which benefited the Rapa Nui peoples as they didn’t have to worry about the threat of foreign land ownership. Unlike other Latin American Indigenous groups who have and are subject to foreign attractive forces, the Rapa Nui were guaranteed against that.  La Ley Indigena of 1933 made it so land redistribution became a norm amongst Indigenous groups of Chile, which was a polarizing issue amongst the island.
Since Rapa Nui culture was founded on the practice of the Kainga, ancestral lands pertaining to each klan, land redistribution would force Rapa Nui to go against the Kainga and take ownership of a specific land not spiritually given to them. The Kainga made it so land could be used communally and without specific ownership because each group claimed their own land spiritually or through historical patterns. Then La Ley de Pascua was passed in which the Rapa Nui peoples were recognized as Chilean citizens and given the right to vote, which created greater pressures on the island to distribute land in a way that would create individual land ownership. Throughout the regime transitions of Chile, the factor that has remained the same is the pressure to instill land privatization that is a characteristic of the neoliberalist policy, but such pressures to enhance this practice undermine the cultural importance of the Kainga to the Rapa Nui, which indicates an instilled sense of the state that the Rapa Nui have not assimilated to Chilean culture and are therefore undeserving of practicing that culture.
The issue of Chile to recognize the cultural importance of land to the Rapa Nui and instead pressure them into privatizing their land is indicative of their lack of understanding of indigeneity that is described in the chapter “The Problem of the Indian” in Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality. In this essay Jose Carlos Mariategui discusses how others attribute the “Indian problem,” in terms of it being an educational, religious, or administrative issue. The problem is not purely socio-economic, but it is also not purely a problem of the administrative policies or the education of some. It is also not just a land tenure problem, although that area is highly focused on as it is the most visible discrepancy of Indigenous peoples from state civilians. The complexity of what the “Indian problem” entails is similar and a relation to explaining why Chile has lacked in being able to police the Rapa Nui in the way that they have over the Mapuche. Instead of policing their land, their cultural habits, and the way they present themselves to outsiders as they have with the Mapuche, Chile has forgoed much intervention with the Rapa Nui, although they do, technically, own their land. By testifying that the problem of Indigenous assimilation or prosperity under the state is not merely due to a department of the state, but all combined, which makes the “issue” one almost impossible to define or fix.
https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.carleton.edu/chapter/515052
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/7-interpretive-essays/index.htm

Chile's relationship to Rapa Nui

abesse on

In the article “Issues on Land and Sovereignty: The Uneasy Relationship Between Chile and Rapa Nui”, anthropologist Riet Delsing focuses on the Rapa Nui, also named Easter Island (or Isla de Pascua), and the way it has been administrated by Chile for the past 150 years. Delsing gives a general historical overview of the history common to the island and the mainland, and examines the successive laws that had an impact on the population and the landownership of Rapa Nui. 
Chile gained independence from Spain in 1818, but was still consolidating its territory in the 1880s: the integration of the Mapuche territory in the south and the annexation of former Bolivian and Peruvian territories in the north were the context in which Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888. Policarpo Toro Hurtado signed the Agreement of Wills with the Rapanui leaders. From this date, Rapanui ancestral customs, specifically regarding landownership, were disrupted. After the annexation of the island, and especially because of the civil war of 1891, the Chilean nation-state lost interest in Rapa Nui. Everything changed in 1917, when the Chilean Republic started to consolidate its hold on the island by sending the navy as a colonial agent applying strict military rules on Rapa Nui. 
The history of Rapa Nui is intrinsically linked to landownership. Before Chilean colonization, the kainga as a form of collective landownership was exclusively applied. With the arrival of Chilean settlers and moreover with the passage of the Ley Pascua of 1966, private landownership was introduced. It was reinforced by the Ley Pinochet in 1979. In opposition to those laws, the Ley Indígena of 1993 established norms of protection, promotion, and development of Chile’s indigenous people, and recognized land as the lifeblood of indigenous cultures. Nevertheless, Rapanui people were not spectators in this process of assimilation. They often fought the Chilean government, organizing themselves into a Council of Elders in 1980 and creating a Rapanui Parliament with demands of autonomy. Eventually, in 2007, the island was granted a Special Status, thanks to a constitutional reform. 
Delsing’s article highlights the evolution of the relationship between Chile and its Pacific colony through a detailed examination of landownership on Rapa Nui. It identifies the specificities of Rapa Nui, both its peculiar indigenous social organization and the policy of the Chilean government towards it, as opposed to mainland indigenous territories.
 
Delsing, Riet. “Issues of land and sovereignty: the uneasy relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui (Easter Island)” in Decolonizing Native Histories: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Language in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/515052

Indigenous Rights Organization

delgadoe on

The Beginning

Subcomandante Marcos (Leader of EZLN)

One of the Indigenous movements in Mexico is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional). They are a far-left libertarian-socialist political and guerrilla group founded on November 17, 1983 by non-Indigenous members of the National Libertarian Forces and Indigenous inhabitants in Chiapas, Mexico. They hold control of most of the southernmost states in Mexico. This movement was named after Emiliano Zapata, who was the main leader of the peasant revolution in Morelos.
 
Federal Highway 307, Chiapas.

The EZLN has grown among the Indigenous communities and the peasant organizations. The Zapatistas’ main goals were land reform and redistribution, political and cultural autonomy for Indigenous groups, and protection for these Indigenous communities. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of land, specifically communal farms were the main policies that began the EZLN movement. They saw themselves as a revolution against the rise of neoliberalism and became a platform to raise awareness of the inequality in Mexican society. The EZLN wanted more democratization of the Mexican government as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has been in power for decades.
 
 
On January 1, 1994, they made their first public declaration against the Mexican government. The EZLN called for an armed struggle against economic policies hurtful to the peasant and Indigenous communities, as peaceful protests did not achieve any change. An estimated 3,000 Zapatistas seized towns in Chiapas and had brief success until the Mexican army counterattacked. On January 12, 1994, the armed clashes stopped and the Zapatistas retreated into the surrounding jungles. To this day, the Zapatistas are still active, mostly in the southern states of Mexico. 
Activity during the 2000s
In 2001, the Zapatistas created 32 “autonomous municipalities in Chiapas, Mexico, where they implemented their demands without the Mexican government’s support and with funding from international organizations.
In 2005, the Zapatistas presented the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle where they spoke about their vision for Mexico and the world. This included support of Indigenous communities, racial minorities and peasants. It also supported the leftists government in other Latin American countries like Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador.
In 2006, the Zapatistas began “The Other Campaign” where the EZLN visited all 31 Mexican states at the same time the 2006 presidential election was taking place. Before the campaign began, the EZLN invited national leftist organizations, Indigenous groups and non-governmental organizations to listen to the group’s claims for human rights and their goals.
In 2007, the EZLN along with other Indigenous communities in the Americas announced the Intercontinental Indigenous Encounter. The purpose of this meeting was to connect with other Indigenous communities through their shared pains and sufferings but also their differences.
 
 
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation#History
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zapatista-National-Liberation-Army
Images:
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/92258912@N00/64601617)
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico.Chis.EZLN.01.jpg
License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Who is Indigenous? A Question of Indigeneity Throughout Latin America

jfrancoportfolio on

The term that has been the hardest for me to understand throughout the term is indigenous. At the beginning of this course, I heavily attributed this term to the word native, meaning originating from, as I mostly commonly associate this term to plants and herbs. However, as the term has gone on I have noticed that the meaning of indigenous varies within different countries and peoples, especially in the case studies of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Chile we have focused on.
The piece by Andrew Canessa, “Who Is Indigenous? Self-Identification, Indigeneity, And Claims to Justice in Contemporary Bolivia”, further explores the meaning of indigenous by analyzing the complexity of indigeneity in Bolivia in terms of identification of self and entire communities.  Canessa describes how the term indigenous is heavily associated to the ideas of hunter-gatherers and nomads. Most notably the word indigenous is thought closely to stand for “primitive” in relation to the ancestors of humankind. Although this is the initial thought when discussing the term indigenous, Canessa acknowledges that who is indigenous and what it means to be indigenous throughout Latin America is complex and variable among different individuals and time.
An aspect of indigeneity could include language, specifically the language of Quechua in the case of Bolivia, but many indigenous languages throughout Latin America also contribute to this. Although language is an important factor to indigeneity, it is not a binding requirement since there are many individuals who do not speak Quechua, such as the president Evo Morales, and still identify as indigenous.  Indigeneity can also be identified through jobs worked, such as that of farming and agriculture, that also reflect social class. Plus, geographical setting was a key role to some individuals who identify as indigenous through their ties to land pre- and post-colonialism. However, it is not always the case or required as seen through the cases of migrants who have been forced off their land. One of the biggest challenges that comes with self-identification when it comes to indigeneity is the relevant political issues that rise up, since many take the identity of indigenous as a political position. As Canessa points out in this article, this brings up the question of who gets a say when discussing indigenous needs and rights if those who identify as indigenous do it in varying ways.
Defining this term is also a bit subjective in many cases, as one may wonder if the term indigenous is meant to be an inclusive or vastly exclusive term. In some areas, this word is very exclusionary since it requires the individual to be, look, live, work, and identify a certain way in order to be able to identify or be accepted as indigenous. This may leave those who do not fit these standards exactly, or at all, to be unacknowledged.
The piece “Transnational Settler Colonial Formations and Global Capital: A Consideration of Indigenous Mexican Migrants” by Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera and Korinta Maldonado attempts to describe and understand the relationship between the migration of indigenous communities into spaces influenced by settler-colonialism. The authors discuss the underlying question of how settler-colonialism influences indigeneity in terms of social order and relations to the land. The article mentions how the migration led to a sort of “Indigenous Resurgence” among the Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Mixes people from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico into the surrounding area of Los Angeles. Specifically, the Zapotec people have been noted to have left a big impact in the city of LA, in a space that has become known as “Oaxacalifornia”, through the formation of enclaves, restaurants, and stores. Also, they even formed local organizations such as bands, basketball teams, dance groups, and festivals or parades of cultural celebration. This specifically reflects how the indigenous communities of migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico were able to develop their indigeneity even in this transnational space they found themselves in. The article analyzes the question of indigeneity through migrants who are no longer in the land their culture and way of life contributes to. But despite this, the indigenous communities of the Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Mixes people show how their indigeneity can be lived, practiced, embraced, and supported despite the distance and space they live in today.
Also, this term can serve to be inclusive in other areas, as there is no exact definition of the word, leaving it to be more general including everyone who wishes to identify this way. However, there are even some homologous terms in other countries, such as our current case study of Peru where the people prefer the term campesino, which in a sense implies indigenous descent but more importantly acknowledges a socioeconomic status. Although, there is no straightforward or single definition for the term indigenous, the themes and complexities that its understanding entails is important in order to begin, or continue understanding indigeneity as a whole.