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ECUADOR: Indigenous Leaders Angry at Vargas Llosa's Remarks
By Kintto Lucas
QUITO, Nov 12 (IPS) - Indian leaders in Ecuador reacted angrily to
internationally renowned Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's criticism of
indigenous movements in South America, which he said posed a danger to
democracy because of the ''political and social disorder that they
generate.''
''Vargas Llosa's thinking is stuck in the past, and he believes
indigenous people should continue to be marginalised,'' Leonidas Iza, the
president of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador (CONAIE), told IPS Wednesday. But ''if there is hunger, poverty and
inequality, we cannot remain calm.''
Iza was responding to remarks Vargas Llosa made at a seminar in Colombia,
which were published Tuesday by the Ecuadorian daily El Universo. The writer
spoke, for example, of the need to combat the growing influence of
indigenous organisations in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
In those movements there is a ''deeply disturbing element that appeals to
the lower instincts, the worst instincts, of the individual, like mistrust
towards others, towards anyone who is different. They thus close in on
themselves,'' he said.
''The indigenous movements of the 1920s, which seemed to have been left
in the past, lie behind phenomena like Mr. Evo Morales in Bolivia. We have
also seen them operating in Ecuador, and generating real political and
social disorder,'' said Vargas Llosa.
The writer was referring to a recent wave of nationwide protests in
Bolivia headed by leaders like leftist lawmaker Morales, an Aymara Indian
and leader of the country's coca-farmers, that culminated in October in the
resignation of then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and to the 2000
indigenous uprising in Ecuador that toppled the government of Jamil Mahuad.
Vargas Llosa's remarks are offensive and insulting to the people of Latin
America, said Iza, who called for respect for the diversity represented by
Ecuador's indigenous movement as well as indigenous groups in the rest of
the region.
''If democracy means equality, we are after just that: true democracy,''
said the president of Latin America's most important indigenous movement.
Around 3.5 million of this Andean nation's 12.5 million people belong to
11 indigenous groups, which mainly live in rural areas.
The Kichwa make up the main indigenous community, inhabiting the Andean
highlands as well as the Amazon jungle region. The Awa, Chachi, Epera and
Tsáchila can be found along the country's Pacific coast, while the Cofán,
Siona, Secoya, Huaorani, Achuar and Shuar are Amazon jungle communities.
The country's indigenous peoples are governed by ancestral values and
live according to a communitarian model based on solidarity, which clashes
with the individualism of modern society. They defend practices like the
''minga'' - community work, whether at harvest-time or in the construction
of housing or roads.
Vargas Llosa lashed out against indigenous movements at an international
seminar on ''The Threats to Democracy in Latin America: Terrorism, Weakness
of the State of Law and Neo-populism'', held Oct. 5-8 in Bogota.
In Peru, the indigenous movement is led by ''two or three 'little
brothers' who, in the name of that collective identity, the indigenous,
autochthonous, genuine identity, that of true 'Peruvian-ness', have launched
a campaign that when examined rationally looks silly, almost comic, but
which touches a nerve centre called 'spirit of the tribe','' he said.
That ''spirit of the tribe never disappears, even in those societies that
have advanced further along the path of civilisation,'' he argued.
He also said indigenous communities see themselves as victims of
injustice, on the argument that they have been and are the victims of
''imperialism, white people, the colonisers, and companies that want to
steal their natural resources.
''In Bolivia, they complain that the companies want to steal their
natural gas. In (the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa) the people rose up
to keep two foreign companies from taking over the electric industry,'' he
said in allusion to the main grievances set forth by indigenous movements in
the two countries.
Vargas Llosa said such demands are incompatible with civilisation and
development, ''and in the short- or long-term drag us into barbarism.
''If we want to achieve development, we must choose civilisation and
morality, and we must resolutely fight these outbreaks of collectivism,'' he
argued.
Lawmaker Ricardo Ulcuango, the head of the Indigenous Parliament of the
Americas and of the Ecuadorian parliament's Commission on the Affairs of
Indigenous and Other Ethnic Groups, was also indignant over the writer's
remarks.
''Mr. Vargas Llosa seems to have completely lost his identity and even
the words that he used so well in his time to depict reality in Latin
America, the reality of the long-suffering Latin America,'' Ulcuango told
IPS in an interview.
Vargas Llosa, one of Latin America's most prestigious living writers, is
the author of books like Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Storyteller,
The War At the End of the World, and The Feast of the Goat, and has won
leading awards like the Romulo Gallego International prize for literature,
the Ritz Paris Hemingway prize, the Principe de Asturias prize, and the
National Book Critics Award.
In 1990, Vargas Llosa, whose writing has often incorporated political and
social criticism, ran as a conservative candidate for the Peruvian
presidency and lost to Alberto Fujimori.
Ulcuango criticised what he saw as the writer's ''exclusive and racist''
worldview, and suggested that he bring himself up-to-date by reading
International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention 169 on the rights of
indigenous peoples. He also wondered what ''civilisation'' Vargas Llosa was
talking about.
For the author, ''does civilisation mean allowing a tiny group of people
to profit from Bolivia's natural gas, privatisations in Peru, or Ecuador's
oil? Does it mean polluting the environment until leaving it dried up, or
selling the water from the rivers to whoever pays the best price?'' he
asked.
Vargas Llosa's mentality is ''colonial,'' said Humberto Cholango,
president of the National Confederation of Kichwa Peoples (Ecuarunari, in
the Kichwa language), CONAIE's biggest member organisation.
It is positions like his ''that do not allow us to make progress towards
a more democratic, tolerant, participative and integrated Latin America that
recognises the diversity of every country,'' said Cholango.
Former Ecuadorian agriculture minister Luis Macas, a founder of CONAIE,
said the writer's statements seem to come ''from someone who has forsaken
his own identity, and, thus, his geography and history.
''Vargas Llosa is in favour of an exclusive, elitist power, similar to
that proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush, in a unipolar world,'' he
said.
''Indigenous people, on the other hand, propose another kind of power,
known as 'Ushay' in Kichwa, which means perfecting living conditions and the
ability to develop ourselves collectively, based on everyone's
contribution,'' said Macas. (END)
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