The following is from www.movimientos.org
2005-08-02
*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 before 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 different 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-capped
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 sometimes invasion, 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 ancestors 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 build 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
E-mail: cumbrecontinentalindigena@yahoo.com.ar