Culture

“For me, it is fundamental that we—indigenous communities—win the right to govern ourselves.”

Carlos Mamani is a Bolivian professor, researcher, and campaigner for the rights of indigenous communities. Being an Aymara Indian, he is of indigenous origin himself and has first-hand experience of indigenous culture and of the discrimination faced by his people. He became known during the 1990s for his work promoting the ayllu system of governance in Bolivia, an indigenous land-management method which existed in the pre-Inca era. For this, he was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship, a worldwide network of social entrepreneurs dedicated to changing the world. Since then, Carlos has continued to work tirelessly to discover and disseminate knowledge about indigenous cultures and is regarded as a world expert on the topic.

He spoke to Development Roast about his work and his lifetime passion for bringing recognition and equality to the indigenous populations of the world.

What is the ayllu system and why did you want to promote it?

It’s an organizational model belonging to the indigenous settlements in the region of the Andes and South America that was in existence before the time of the Incas. The system is designed according to the characteristics of our land: our environment is very challenging, especially the Altiplano [high planes] region which is 3,800 to 4,000 meters above sea level. We have to see how we can successfully face the challenges which go with this landscape. For example, there is only one harvest period per year and we have very few crops – only potatoes and quinoa – and only one type of animal – the llama. So it’s important that we have control over, and understand, the ecosystem. The organization is based on relationships between human beings, especially the lending of services, and mutual help. This idea has been fundamental for us [indigenous people] to survive the process of colonization since the 16^th century.

In the 1990s, we had the idea of recovering the ayllu system. At the time, Bolivia, like the majority of the other countries in Latin America, had adopted the process of acculturation [forcing people to adopt a new culture] so that the indigenous settlements would forget their identities, their languages, and their customs, in favor of a single state organization and culture. When we started this work, we set goals of recovering and strengthening awareness of the indigenous identity, building the self-confidence of indigenous people, and preserving the land in a ‘natural’ state. We conducted a study about the state of indigenous communities, and we published several books on the topic. We also made some radio programs which were aired in Aymara and Quechua, and some in Spanish. As well as doing research, I also wanted to disseminate our findings at the international level.

What was it like growing up as an indigenous child?

Until I was 10 years old I didn’t speak Spanish (my native language is Aymara) but I learned at school. When an indigenous person first encounters the western culture and has to use the Spanish language, it’s very difficult because the languages have very distinct rules and concepts. Economically, our family didn’t have many problems because my family were comfortably-off and had a large farm, so my father could pay for my schooling. We indigenous people aren’t all that poor – our problem is not economic but that we are excluded, socially.

My family are Pacajes [one of the ethnic groups that make up the Aymara people], the people who formed the largest population in South America in ancient times. We, and the other Aymara people, originally had territory that spread from the Amazon to the Pacific coast. But, by the time I started school the Aymara territory had already been reduced to a single province of 10,000 square meters.

What have been the best and the most challenging moments of your career?

One of them must be obtaining a Masters degree in Andean History from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLASCO) in Ecuador. After that I started working as a professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, teaching history to anthropology students. Becoming an academic in a university was a very big achievement for me.

Then, between 2008 and 2010 I was a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. During the last year, whilst I was resident at the organization [the UN headquarters], I visited many indigenous communities all over the world, and had to interact with government officials and specialist state bodies. I still have a very active international life – I’m always attending conferences on global issues such as climate change, as well as those specializing in indigenous topics. For example, I’ll be going to Norway over the summer for a conference that is being held in preparation for the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples that will take place in New York in 2014.

For me, being a political activist is also very important, not only for the indigenous settlements in my own country, but for those all around the world. I find this very satisfying.

Is there anyone in particular who has inspired you?

I think of myself as very privileged because my father, who is no longer with us, taught me everything about my identity. But what motivates me most isn’t a person, but a personal desire that all indigenous communities in the world can continue to exist. These communities are a sector whose rights have been neglected by the world for some time. Enabling them to survive is my biggest motivation and all my attention and effort has been directed towards this.

What do you wish for in the future, for your career but also for the country?

I haven’t done any research for a few years and I’ve just started again. In September, we’re going to hold a symposium in Geneva on the historical memory of indigenous populations. This is a very important step for me, because I’m not young anymore and I have to think about summarizing the advances we’ve made as well as the difficulties that still exist.

In the long-term, what I want is for all indigenous communities to be entitled to their own responsibilities, for example so that they have the right to educate their own children. For me, it is fundamental that we indigenous communities win the right to govern ourselves, not just here in Bolivia, but also in Canada, Australia, the north of Europe – wherever there are indigenous people.

Do you know of any other people who have fought for the rights of indigenous communities? Please leave a reply below.

Tracey Li is a Senior Research and Communications Intern with INESAD.

For your reference:

More information about Carlos’ work can be found in the following:

Ashoka Fellows <https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/carlos-mamani>.

Mamani, C 1994, ‘History and prehistory in Bolivia: what about the Indians?’, in R. Layton (Ed.), Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, Routledge, London, UK (pp. 46-60). Available online from <http://goo.gl/FsGgt>.

Mamani, C. 1997, ‘Memoria y Reconstitución’, in: Intelecutales indígenas piensan América Latina, Zapata, Claudia, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar.

Choque, M. E. & Mamani, C. 2001, ‘Reconstitución del ayllu y derechos de los pueblos indígenas: el movimiento indio en los Andes de Bolivia’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 202-224.

Carlos Mamani Condori, El Proceso de Reconstitución Política Territorial en la coyuntura de la Asamblea Constituyente, katari.org. <http://www.katari.org/proceso.pdf>

If climate change seemed far away, here are three reasons to reconsider. From basic daily staples to our favourite morning drink, climate change is already affecting crops in South America. The Inter-American Development Bank estimates that Latin America and the Caribbean contribute 11 percent of the value of world food production, making shifts in the region’s agricultural production relevant to global, as well as regional, food security.

1. Potato: According to the International Potato Centre (CIP), the potato is the third most widely consumed food crop in the world, with annual production approaching 300 million tons. According to a 2012 report by the 8th World Potato Congress, South American potato production reached slightly over 14 million tons in 2010. However, production in South America has come under climate-change induced stress. In 2012, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) reported that potato production in the Andes is increasingly threatened by late blight disease, which caused the severe Irish potato famine in the 1850s. The Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University outlines the course of the disease: Late blight is particularly severe under warm, humid conditions. it is triggered by the ‘oomycete pathogen’, which is a microorganism that produces millions of spores from infected plants. These survive from one season to the next in infected potatoes and travel through the air causing new infections if the weather is sufficiently wet. Infected potatoes develop dark lesions on the surface and – in many cases – rot from the inside. Read More »

Social movements generate a lot of excitement. Many people see them as the most legitimate way of enacting change in society, as they are “from below”, from the people themselves, more ‘inclusive’ and ‘democratic’. Movements that have come around since the 1960s differ from older styles of public pressure where the voice of the poor and the oppressed was expressed through leaders in trade unions or political parties. Examples of the “New Social Movements” in contemporary Latin America include the indigenous movement EZLN (Exército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) in Mexico and the landless workers movement in Brazil, the MST (Movimento Sem Terra). But how truly democratic and inclusive these new movements are is rarely a serious research question, but a mere assumption by scholars and supporters who fall in love with the idea of movements from below.

For almost 20 years, Dr. Judy Hellman, professor of Political Science and Social Sciences at York University, Canada, has written critically about the largely uncritical worship of new social movements that seems to have swept the world. She spoke to Development Roast about her once controversial views (which are increasingly becoming common wisdom) and the past and future of research on social movements in Latin America:

Read More »

By Giulia Maria Baldinelli

Although this fact may not be immediately obvious to most people outside the region, the Bolivian Altiplano is the origin and heart of much of the world’s agricultural biodiversity. While most Western consumers have at least seen one type of potato and some health-conscious eaters have come into contact with quinoa, most of us would have never heard of other foods such as oca, isaño, papalisa, cañahua, and tarwi. This is because these crops have traditionally been excluded by developed countries’ agricultural research and conservation activities for a number of reasons.

Firstly, past and present efforts have aimed at increasing yields and productivity of a narrow set of crops suited to high-input, high-output farming, focusing on grains like rice, wheat, and maize, which produce more than half of the global food energy needs. Indigenous crop varieties are simply less commercially viable and thus remain relatively invisible. They are rarely sold for money, but are instead consumed directly by poor, rural people that grow them in order to meet their own families’ nutrition needs. The likes of oca, tarwi, and papalisa are thus relatively unknown outside rural areas; the demand for them in urban and international markets is scarce, and commercialization is difficult. Read More »

By Valerie Giesen

Private sector investment in infrastructure and extractive projects such as mining are often perceived as opportunities by national governments. For instance, African governments have welcomed the large-scale involvement of Chinese and Indian firms in infrastructure and mining projects as an economic advantage, which allows governments to improve their competitiveness abroad and increase employment at home. However, these projects tend to affect local populations unevenly, confronting governments with the dilemma of weighing the benefits and disadvantages of economic development in emotionally charged environments. Just last week Ricardo Morel Berendson wrote about the difficulties of building an inclusive mining model in Peru.

An example of the tensions between development goals, which made it into the international headlines in 2011, was the Bolivian government’s plan to build a 182-mile highway, parts of which were to cut through a national park in the Bolivian part of the Amazon basin. Up to this point, the government under Evo Morales had presented itself as a radical defender of indigenous ecological rights on the global stage and had gone beyond external demands on developing countries to preserve their natural environment as a safeguard against climate change. For instance, in 2010, Bolivia was the only country to refuse the outcome of the United Nations (UN) climate summit in Cancún; Its ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solon, argued that the voluntary agreements proposed at Cancún would not be sufficient to bring global warming under control, accusing the international community of acting irresponsibly.

In July 2011, the government’s ‘green’ discourse was undercut by its desire to improve domestic economic growth, when Bolivia’s participation in a continent-wide Brazil-led infrastructure plan was announced. Read More »

Today, the time of the Winter Solstice in the Southern hemisphere, marks the beginning of the new agricultural year for the Aymara indigenous people of the Andean region. In June 2010, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, an Aymara himself, decreed June 21 as an important national holiday: the Aymara New Year.

Although the celebrations center in the ancient ruins of Tiwanaku, with more than 50,000 participants in 2010, all over Bolivia, indigenous Aymarans gather on this typically coldest, longest night of the year to see in the sunrise. They brave the freezing temperatures in order to welcome the sun out of its winter season, characterized by short days and early darkness, and into longer days and more sunshine. Rituals back-dropped with traditional music abound and sacrifices of  llama, incense, alcohol, and coca are offered to Pachamama (mother nature/Mother Earth) until sunrise. All of this is in the hopes of enticing Tata Inti, the sun god, to heal the earth and give the farmers a good harvest. Read More »

The concept of a “flipped classroom” emerged in the late 2000s as an alternative (or the beginning of one) to the classical system of teaching where the teacher introduces the content in class and the students practice it at home. Instead, in the flipped classroom, students learn the content at home, and do the “homework” in class. The concept’s creators, two American high school teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, first recorded lectures for students who had missed classes. Soon, however, the lectures became so popular that they decided to substitute all their classroom lectures with online ones, and use classroom time to engage with students individually. This flipped classroom allowed for students to learn at their own pace, enabling them to skip the online videos that they feel like they master, and repeat those on which they are stuck. The model proved a big success: many of the students’ performances improved, better preparing them for jobs that (should) await them, and they seemed to be having more fun than before.

Read More »

Around 10,000 years ago, the only borders known to human beings were natural borders such as mountains, forests, or bodies of water that separated one area of land from another. Humans were hunter-gatherers at that time, meaning that all food was obtained by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. Given the relatively small number of people and large availability of resources, there was little need to ‘claim’ and fight over territory. People still fought, but not for resources – it is speculated that it may instead have been for cultural or psychological reasons such as the need to demonstrate one’s dominance (Gat, 2000).

However, since the rise of agriculture and modern civilization, humans have sometimes shown a territorial instinct similar to that of some animals. People fight over land in order to gain possession of the resources there, just as a pack of wolves defends its territory to secure sufficient food for all its members. But the human desire to create borders goes far beyond the animal instinct to ensure the survival and wellbeing of one’s social group. For us, borders have a psychological aspect too – that of identifying ourselves and making us ‘belong’ to one group rather than another, while separating us from the unfamiliar and the ‘other’. Finnish Professor of Geography, Anssi Paasi, wrote in his 1998 paper ‘Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows’:

“National identity is one of many, often coexisting and overlapping identities (religions, tribal, linguistic, class, gender, etc.)…”

and that,

“Boundaries are both symbols and institutions that simultaneously produce distinctions between social groups and are produced by them.”

Social groups often define themselves, and are defined by others, in terms of any of the identities listed above. National borders often coincide with these groupings. In Europe, for example, linguistic groups are very prominent: the official language(s) of most countries is distinct to that of its neighbors e.g. France and Spain. The members of different European nations therefore tend to have different linguistic, as well as ethnic, backgrounds. This seemingly ‘natural’ division exists because many of Europe’s borders are natural borders, like the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain. In ancient times, such obstacles would have been difficult to traverse, and so it would have been natural for groups on either side to independently develop their own language and culture. In modern times, these natural borders have often been adopted as the political, legal, and economic boundaries that define nations. Read More »

Today, the popular anthropology site PopAnth published an article by INESAD’s Ioulia Fenton in which she reflects on her time living and researching in Guatemala and the shopping experience that helped her feel more connected with food and the local people who produced and sold it.

Shopping for the human connection?

By Ioulia Fenton

In Guatemala I was addicted, truly addicted, to my morning regimen. No, it wasn’t a catch up to the day’s news on my iPad with a cup of coffee from Starbucks. Nor was it my favourite bowl of cereal or brand of orange juice. It wasn’t even a luxurious shower or a sleep-in. It was something much more sacred: a daily experience that allowed me to indulge in what makes us human — connections with others. Read More »

Living abroad is undoubtedly one of life’s most enjoyable, interesting, and eye-opening experiences. By stimulating economic growth and cultural exchange, it is also something that literally and figuratively enriches entire nations and the world as a whole. So, does placing restrictions on cross-border migration present a possible barrier to economic and human development?

My parents are originally from Hong Kong and emigrated to the U.K. during the 1960s, along with many thousands of other Hong Kong citizens. My mother arrived without knowing a word of English yet was welcomed warmly by the medical training school that she attended. She stayed in the U.K., working as a nurse for nearly 40 years, while others chose to return to Hong Kong, taking back with them the education, training and experience that they had acquired abroad.

Following in my parents’ international footsteps, for the past couple of years I have lived and worked in Spain. Aside from some logistical and social obstacles – such as finding a new house, making new friends, and learning a new language – the process of emigrating and starting a job there was pretty simple. For many people, however, emigrating abroad, permanently or temporarily, is much more difficult as many countries have strict immigration constraints against the inflow of citizens of certain nations.

The extent of this problem is illustrated by the results of a survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and the French Agency for Development (AFD), who collected data from 146 countries between 2008 and 2010. They found that roughly 630 million adults, around 14 percent of all adults in the world, said that they would like to move to another country permanently if they had the opportunity. Findings from the Gallup World Poll also revealed that around 1.2 million people wanted to migrate temporarily for work purposes. However, only ten percent of the people who said they would like to migrate were actually planning to do so in the following year. Clearly, there is something preventing the other 90 percent from pursuing their dream of migrating. Read More »