ECUADOR: Indigenous Cabinet Ministers Symbolise Change

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Jan 3 2003 (IPS) - Indigenous leaders have been named to two key posts in the cabinet of Ecuador’s president-elect Lucio Gutiérrez, who takes office on Jan 15.

Nina Pacari and Luis Macas will be Ecuador’s new ministers of foreign relations and agriculture, respectively.

According to Pacari, ”In the midst of today’s globalised world, this is a recognition of the various identities that are building a new Ecuador and a new political blueprint that integrates cultural diversity and seeks to promote the participation of social sectors that have been historically marginalised, neglected and discriminated against.”

The naming of Pacari and Macas to ministries that have traditionally been controlled by the country’s powerful elites of mainly European ancestry amounts to ”a revolution without blood,” according to political analyst Ruben Montoya.

For his part, political analyst Jorge Vivanco, assistant- director of the daily newspaper Expreso, which is published in the city of Guayaquil in southwestern Ecuador, said the cabinet appointments that were announced Monday showed that ”Gutiérrez has taken the helm” and has decided to clear up the questions and doubts as to what shape his government will take.

Gutiérrez is a retired army colonel who took part in a January 2000 indigenous and military uprising that overthrew then- president Jamil Mahuad.

He won the second round of elections in November at the head of an alliance between his small party, the 21st of January Patriotic Society Party, and the Pachakutik-New Country Movement of Plurinational Unity, beating his rival Alvaro Noboa, a banana magnate who is the richest man in the country.

The designation of Pacari and Macas indicates a break with ”a long and unjust cycle in which indigenous people have been marginalised from all national decision-making spheres,” wrote Vivanco.

He argued that the agriculture ministry ”should have always been administered by indigenous people, who are the ageold cultivators of the land, since before the Inca empire.

”After the Spanish conquest, during the colonial era and a good part of Ecuador’s history as a republic, they continued planting – but for the large landowners, under the crack of a whip,” Vivanco added.

Participating in the new government is just another challenge for Ecuador’s indigenous movement – the best organised in Latin America – and for social movements in the countryside and the cities, and ”just one step in the construction of a country with greater equality and a stronger sense of solidarity,” said Macas.

”Ushay is a Quechua word that means power, which is to perfect living conditions and the capacity to develop ourselves collectively, based on contributions in the various areas of decision-making. The government can be another instance of continuing to build ushay,” he said.

Pacari, meanwhile, said that holding posts in the government should not lead to the coopting or assimilation of the indigenous and social movements.

”The struggle of the indigenous movement began in the streets with a call for change, and we have continued to grow as actors at the local and national levels,” said Pacari. ”Administrative roles in the different spheres must be complemented by the active participation of the people.”

Around 30 percent of the 12.5 million people of this impoverished Andean nation belong to 12 different indigenous groups, the largest of which is the Quechua. Smaller minorities are of African and Spanish descent, while most of the population is of mixed-race Indian and Spanish ancestry.

Since 1996, Ecuador’s indigenous people have taken part in elections through the Pachakutik Movement, which brings together Indians, environmentalists, women’s groups, and other sectors of civil society.

Pacari said shortly after her new post was announced that the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) should only go into effect if the relations between the 34 participating countries are modified and the weaknesses and specific characteristics of each nation are taken into account in the negotiations.

”Under the current conditions, it would be suicidal for Ecuador to enter the FTAA. Not even the survival of the biggest national businesses would be guaranteed,” she told IPS.

She also explained that she would put a special emphasis on supporting Ecuadoreans living abroad, who number more than 1.5 million, most of whom are residing and working in the United States, according to official statistics.

Industrialised countries ”should invest in and collaborate with social programmes to generate employment, and not impose unnecessary measures like visas” on Ecuadorean immigrants, said Pacari. ”We will promote measures to get them to improve the living conditions of immigrants and their families.”

The future minister said she would promote joint action by the countries of the Andean Community trade bloc – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela – in defence of immigrants.

She also said Ecuador would follow a policy of non-intervention in Colombia’s four-decade armed conflict, and that it would help work for a solution to the conflict by backing efforts for the resumption of peace talks between the government and guerrillas in the neighbouring country.

The concession of the Manta military base in western Ecuador to the United States, an arrangement made by the government of Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000), will be respected, said Pacari, because the agreement was upheld by the Constitutional Court.

But the agreement specifies that the base can only be used in the fight against narcotrafficking, and only under certain conditions, and if those terms are violated, it will have to be cancelled, she added.

In addition, she said ”We must move towards the political, economic, social and cultural integration of Latin America, which could begin with an agreement between the Andean Community and the Mercosur” (Southern Common Market – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), which is currently being negotiated.

Pacari, a lawyer and a Quechua Indian, served as president of the National Council of Planning for Indigenous and Black Peoples, was a member of the National Constituent Assembly that wrote the constitution adopted in 1998, and served as vice-president of Congress, a post that had never been occupied by an indigenous person.

Macas, who is also a lawyer, said it was essential to reinvigorate the agricultural sector with an emphasis on small and medium farmers, in order to guarantee food security.

”We are going to provide access to credit by promoting community lending networks in rural areas, and by capitalising the National Development Bank,” he explained to IPS.

Macas is one of Ecuador’s most emblematic indigenous leaders, having played a key role in the founding of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Like Pacari, he has also served as a lawmaker.

He is currently president of the Intercultural University of Indigenous Peoples, director of the Scientific Institute of Indigenous Cultures, and a member of the editorial board of Tintají, a semimonthly magazine published in Quito.

Decent jobs must be generated in the countryside to curb migration to the cities and to other countries, said the incoming agriculture minister.

He also expressed his determination to resolve disputes over land ownership and extend property titles to poor peasants, in order to give them a sense of security that they will not be kicked off their land.

In addition, he announced that ”credit incentives, technical assistance, access to water for irrigation, and possibilities for marketing their products” will be made available to small and medium farmers.

”It is indispensable to regulate the importation of foodstuffs, in order for our people to be able to produce food,” said Macas, who added that under the conditions under which it is being negotiated, the FTAA ”will destroy national production.”

”We must not allow the country to be flooded by imported products that drive our peasant farmers into ruin,” he stated emphatically.