NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: after recognition

El buen vivir: Peruvian

Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios

Deborah Poole is
Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her
recent publications
include A Blackwell
Companion to
Latin American
Anthropology
(Blackwell, 2008).

30

In 1999, community leaders representing more

than 1,200 communities in nine regions of Peru
came together to form the National Confederation
of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI).
Foundedto counter the negative environmental and
social impact of mining and the virtual absence of
state regulation, CONACAMI initially sought direct,
bilateral dialogue with the mining companies. But at
its second national congress in 2003, delegates voted
to reject dialogue and to embrace an anti-systemic
politics that calls for the total rejection of mining
and the neoliberal economys exclusionary practices and principles. They also voted to reconstitute
CONACAMIas an indigenous confederation that
would center its demands on defending indigenous
rights, promoting indigenous political participation,
and refounding the nation-state. In subsequent years,
CONACAMI has expanded its presence in the Andean region through the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), an umbrella organization that CONACAMI helped to found in 2006.

The history of CONACAMI and its importance

to popular struggles in the Andes points to the
centrality of both community and Mother Earth
to indigenous proposals for rethinking politics
and the state. In this respect, it is also significant
that CONACAMI, as an organization founded in
opposition to the untrammeled destruction of the
environment and natural resources, has played
such an important role in revitalizing indigenous
political organizations in the Andean regions of
Peru, where self-ascribed indigenous organizations have not historically played as visible a role
as either peasant or labor movements in popular
political resistance.
In May, Deborah Poole interviewed Mario Palacios,
president of CONACAMI (200810), in New York. In
the edited transcript that follows, Palacios expands on
the political and cultural vision of CONACAMI and its
relationships with other indigenous organizations, including AIDESEP, the Peruvian Amazonian confederation that led the indigenous uprisings of 2008 and 2009.

courtesy of conacami

By Deborah Poole

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

report: after recognition

onacami is composed of communities from the

Peruvian Andes that have suffered from the chaotic and disorderly expansion of mining in recent
years. In Peru, mining is a crucial activity for the government in that it represents 64% of the countrys exports.
However, although the state celebrates mining as an activity
that is crucial for maintaining exports, it never talks about
the negative effects that mining has on our lives. Mining
generates not only environmental contamination but also
greater poverty; it affects social relations within communities; and it leads, in many cases, to the actual disintegration of communities. It also jeopardizes resources that are
necessary for the development of communities, like water
and land, by degrading or contaminating them. Faced with
this, CONACAMI is responding as an organization to defend our territories and the natural resources of Peru.
CONACAMI is basically an organization of communities that works in 16 of the countrys 24 departments.
There are around 6,000 communities in Peru, of which
3,200 suffer the negative effects of mining. CONACAMI
has almost 2,000 Andean community affiliates. Beyond
that, however our work also draws on the diversity of
Perus social movement. For example, we are constructing a strong alliance, a process of unity with indigenous
organizations from the Peruvian Amazon. In this sense,
CONACAMI and the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) are organizations that have led the struggle in both the Andes and the
Amazon. We greatly respect the work of AIDESEP, an organization that has been carrying on very effective work in
the Amazon since the early 1980s. In the Peruvian Andes,
however, indigenous political organizing is more recent.
Perus neoliberal political process bases its economy
on extractive industries. This political process brings not
only the free market, but also free access to natural resources, free investment, and above all the looting of our
resources. So our ancestral communities, many of which
have territorial titles that date back 300 or 400 years to
the colonial period, are today suffering from the expropriation, dispossession, and dissolution of their territories,
not only because of the actions of the mining companies,
but also because of the state itself and the governmental
policies that are being applied in Peru. This is a politics
of expropriation that dissolves or liquidates communities.
And within this politics of extermination of communities,
the rights of ancestral, originary, or indigenous peoples
are not recognized.
In these last years, however, as a result of pressure,
struggle, and resistance from both Andean and Amazonian communities, the Peruvian state has recognized the
existence of the International Labor Organization Con-

vention 169 (ILO 169). Although Peru signed this international convention 15 years ago, the state has continued
to deny us our rights, as indigenous peoples, in every
conceivable way. But the indigenous struggle has finally
forced the state to recognize that this convention does
have normative value as a binding international convention. It was the indigenous uprisings of 2008 and 2009
that forced the state to recognize these rights.
Today in Peru we are debating a legislative proposal
that would implement our right to prior consultation,
as provided for in the text of ILO 169.1 They are also
debating a Law of Indigenous Peoples. I think these are
important elements to achieve the recognition of indigenous rights in Peru, because these are rights that have
been dismissed or denied ever since our lands were first
invaded and colonized. But the proposal put forward by
CONACAMI and the indigenous movements goes well
beyond this question of rights and the defense of our own
territories and natural resources. We are fighting because
humanity itself is lost in a way of life that is marked by
forms of accumulation and by the destruction and contamination of Mother Earth. These tendencies have increased in recent years because neoliberal capitalism is
putting humanitys very survival at risk. In Peru, for example, we are experiencing in a particularly dramatic way
the effects of global climate change.
For us, it is not just climate change, but rather a climatic
crisis that manifests itself in the frosts, hailstorms, torrential
rains, droughts, floods, and landslides that we are enduring in the Andean region. These climatic changes, which
reduce agricultural production and introduce new diseases
that we never before knew, are directly affecting our way of
life. Humanity must think carefully if we are to avoid in the
next decades a crisis that could lead to our own extinction.
The indigenous movement has taken up this challenge to
construct, during the past 20 years, a political proposal
that is also a proposal for life, a project of lifeel buen vivir.
This project, which translates in Quechua as allin kawsay or
in Aymara as sumah qamana, is composed of various parts:
It encompasses a new vision, a new way of seeing, that is
1. O
 n May 19, the Peruvian legislature passed the Law of Prior
Consultation to implement rights guaranteed in ILO 169. President Garca refused to sign the bill, arguing that indigenous
communities are not juridically recognized subjects and that
the law would give indigenous peoples veto power over the
nations development initiatives. The governments actions,
which were supported by Perus Constitutional Commission
on July 15, have met with vigorous opposition from indigenous
organizations, including CONACAMI, as well as from the
Peruvian Ombudsmen (Defensora del Pueblo).

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NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: after recognition

different from Western developmentalism in that we call

for harmony with, and respect for, Mother Earth.2
Our project also calls for another way of conceiving the
state. The republican states that were invented 200 years
ago are effectively exhausted, since have not been able to
resolve fundamental problems. These homogenizing, uninational, monocultural, monolingual states, which took
shape in the aftermath of the French Revolution, are today
in crisis. In Peru, for example, we are effectively excluded
from social, political, and economic participation because
the state is dominated by criollos who are, in fact, a minority
in the country. So the indigenous movement has put forward the need to reinvent another form of the state and a
new model of democracya democracy that is no longer
just representative. In the Peruvian case, representational
democracy, through the Congress, has effectively collapsed.
The Congress is highly corrupt, inefficient, and informal.
The executive branch is also characterized by high levels of

corruption. So we need a different democracy, and the form

of democracy that we propose from within the indigenous
movements is communitarian; it is a participatory democracy of mandar obedeciendo.3
2. The literal translation of allin kawsay is to live well. However,
the term is understood and used in a much broader sense by
indigenous political organizations and activists, who use it to
refer to the practices of living in harmony with nature, with other
communities, and within families and communities. As such, it
refers as much to the practice of equality and ethical responsibility as to the aspiration of achieving a more just world.
3. M
 andar obediciendo is a Zapatista phrase that has gained wide
currency in indigenous movements in Latin America to refer
to practices of democratic consultation in which authorities
or elected representatives lead by obeying. In this view of
political authority, leaders do not have the authority to make
decisions without both consulting their bases and taking all
opinions into account.

n June 19, a barge belonging to the Argentine transnational Pluspetrol spilled 400 barrels of oil into the
MaranRiver in Perus northeastern Loreto department.
The day after the spill, the Peruvian governments Bioactive
Substances Laboratory tested the river waterwhich the
Cocama and Achuar peoples depend upon for both water and
fishand found very high levels of oil. It was practically all
petroleum, said chemical engineer Vctor Sotero, of the governments Peruvian Amazon Research Institute.1
Even though the extensive contamination had been
reportedto the central government, Minister of Energy and
Mines Pedro Snchez seemed to suggest that the many lives
and the complex environmental systems it had destroyed
were not important, when he declared on national television
that the Maraon spill involved a very small amount of oil.
When compared with what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, he concluded, it should not be a cause for alarm.2
The Maraon spill was certainly much smaller in absolute terms than the estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of
crude oil that British Petroleum dumped each day into the
Gulf of Mexico for almost three months. 3 But scale is not
an issue in environmental disasters that destroy complex
ecological and riverine systems, and deprive the humans
who depend on those environments for food, water, and a
future for their communities. Snchezs comparison does,
however, speak clearly of the Peruvian governments attitude that environmental disasters are acceptable collat-

32

eral damage for the millions of dollars that mining generates for Perus elite.
Indeed, the Maraon spill was just the latest example in a
long series of environmental disasters that have accompanied
Perus boom in mining, logging, and oil. Less than one week
after the Maraon spill, the Caudalosa Chica companys zinc
and lead mine in the southern region of Huancavelica dumped
more than 550 tons of tailings containing cyanide, arsenic,
and lead into rivers that provide the sole source of drinking
and irrigation water for more than 40,000 Peruvians. 4 Again,
the government of President Alan Garca responded with a
series of denials, dismissals, and disclaimers.
One of the biggest challenges facing indigenous peoples
in Peru, and throughout the Americas, is the unregulated
expansion of these industries and the resulting contamination of land and water. The Garca government has granted
oil, lumber, and mining companies territorial concessions and
leases to almost 75% of the Peruvian Amazon. Of these, the
vast majority (58 out of 64 leases) are located in indigenous
territories. Garcas government has also refused to implement rights of prior consultationor any of the many other
rights accorded to indigenous peoples in International Labor
Organization Convention 169, which Peru ratified in 1993 and
signed into law in 1994.
Because natural-resource extraction directly affects both
nature itself and those forms of community and social life that
seek harmony with the earth, it has served as a catalyst for the

cred cred

Extractivism Spills Death and Injustice in Peru

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

report: after recognition

This proposal for life also envisions a deep discussion of

the rights of Mother Earth. If in the last 200 years, political
debate has revolved around the issue of human rights
and we have made enormous advances in this arenawe
consider that the present century must necessarily incorporate within international and national debates the issue
of the rights of Mother Earth, the rights of nature, as a new
focus, a new understanding. It is not just the rights of man
[that are important]. In the last instance, humans are just
one of many threads in the great cosmic tapestry where all
of us who make up this cosmos have rights. If man continues to destroy life, the life of other beings, the very life of
humankind itself, we also put our own life at risk.
So el buen vivir is another form of life, an alternative
response to Western civilizationa civilization that is,
moreover, in a grave crisis. So we propose, for the whole
of society, a project to build a different life, a life that has
as its fundamental support the principle of el buen vivir.

El buen vivir, however, is not a theoretical concept. It is a

daily practice in the communities. And it has to do with
different thingswith good agricultural practices, with
the good use of resources, with honesty, with politics, and
even with the economy. Unequal relationships among nations result in such things as free trade agreements, which
are nothing more nor less than agreements for the looting
and subjection of poor countries.
With el buen vivir, these would no longer exist because
we are proposing a new form of relationship among nations, among people, and between humans and Mother
Earth. We must take on and debate these concepts, and
this debate is not one that involves only indigenous peoples, but also non-indigenous sectors of society, and the
political classes who make decisions. In the end, the indigenous peoples are going to provide the foundations for
a new way of thinking that emerges and is born from our
own ways of life.

by Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rnique

emergence of radical indigenous politics grounded in the defense of nature and life. Indigenous Peruvians have taken the
lead in denouncing the mining, logging, and oil companies, as
well as Peruvian government policies that promote extractive
economies while trampling the rights of local communities and
populations. In response, indigenous communities have mobilized to resist laws and policies that support the further incursion of mining companies. These include laws that grant the
state ownership of subsoil resources in indigenous and peasant communities, laws that give the state the right to grant
concessions without compensation, and policies that call for
the titling and privatization (regularization) of collectively
held lands in peasant and indigenous communities.
Indigenous organizationsincluding the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP),
the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), and the National Federation of Communities
Affected by Mining (CONACAMI) have called for criminal
charges to be brought against companies like Caudalosa Chica
and Pluspetrol. Faced with continuing protests from indigenous and regional leaders over the Caudalosa Chica disaster,
the government finally imposed a symbolic fine on the mining
company. The fine comes nowhere close to compensating for
the extensive environmental and economic damagesand it
will no doubt join the long list of environmental penalties that
the Garca government has levied yet failed to collect. In the
three years leading up to these two most recent environmental

disasters, Peru has managed to collect only $4.4 million of the

$20 million in environmental fines it had imposed on the largest
mining companies, which made more than $20 billion in profits
from Peruvian mines between 2005 and 2009.5 As a result, mining and petroleum companies continue to operate in a de facto
state of impunity in Peru.
This and other serious challenges remain for Peruvian indigenous movements, despite their significant advances over
the years. The neoliberal agenda allows no room for negotiating territorial or political rights, and the entrenched racism of
Latin Americas dominant criollo or mestizo societies makes it
difficult for indigenous perspectives and voices to be heard.
The Garca government has systematically criminalized indigenous organizations, and demonized indigenous peoples
in speeches and TV spots that portray Indians who defend
the environment and their territorial rights as manger dogs,
subversives, and savages.
Indigenous organizations have made common cause with
political actors who do not necessarily identify as indigenous
but share their concerns. On July 7 and 8, for example, indigenous leaders joined opposition political representatives
from Huancavelica to lead a regional strike and a sacrifice
march to Lima to protest the Garca governments refusal to
act in the Caudalosa Chica case. Only after a general regional
strike, marches, and protests of indigenous and popular organizations, and an increasing critical media, did the government reluctantly agree to temporarily close the mine. 6

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NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

notes

Consortium Signals Investor Concerns Over Financial Risks, press release,

internationalrivers.org, July 16, 2010.
9. Plataforma Bndes, A Letter From Peoples Affected by Projects Financed by
BNDES, plataformabndes.org.br, November 25, 2009.
Extractivism Spills Death and Injustice in Peru
1. Q
 uoted in Milagros Salazar, Dont Minimize Impacts of Amazon Oil Spill,
Inter Press Service, July 1, 2010.
2. Ivn Herrera Glvez, Per: el mito de la petrolera limpia y responsible se
hunde en la oleosa realidad, Servicios en Comunicacin Intercultural Servindi
(servindi.org; Lima, Peru), June 30, 2010.
3. CNN.com, Oil Estimate Raised to 35,000-60,000 Barrels a Day, July 16,
2010.
4. Servicios en Comunicacin Intercultural Servindi, Peru: Denuncian atentado
criminal a la ecologia de los rios Totora y Opamayo, June 28, 2010.
5. Milagros Salazar, La impotente regulacin, IDL-Reporteros.pe, June 3,
2010.
6. La Repblica (Lima), Ordenan paralizar operaciones de mina Caudalosa
Chica, July 13, 2010.
Indigenous Justice Faces the State
1. C ONAPO, Indicies de Marginacin 2005, conapo.gob.mx/index.
2. Armando Bartra, Guerrero Bronco. Campesinos, ciudadanos y guerrilleros, en
la Costa Grande (Mxico, Editorial, ERA 2000); Joaqun Flores, Reinventando
la democracia. El sistema de los policas comunitarios y las luchas indias
(Mxico: Plaza y Valdz, 2007).
3. See feature articles in Proceso (Mexico City), no.1754, June 13, 2010.
4. Comisin Estatal de Derechos Humanos de la Montaa Tlachinollan, Informes
www.tlachinollan.org/notart/notart100308_win.html.
5. Mara Teresa Sierra Las mujeres indgenas ante la justicia comunitaria. Perspectivas desde la interculturalidad y los derechos, Desacatos 31 (CIESAS,
2009): 7388. See also Folleto Mujeres Comunitaria: Mirada y participacin
de las mujeres en la comunitaria, www.policiacomunitaria.org.
6. Rachel Sieder, Building Mayan Authority: The Recovery of Indigenous Law in
Post-Conflict Guatemala, Law, Politics and Society (under review).
7. Kau Sirenio Pioquinto, Detiene la Comunitaria a otros siete por homicidios y
asaltos en Malinaltepec, El Sur de Guerrero (Acapulco), April 13, 2010.
8. William Roseberry, Hegemony and the Language of Contention, in Gil Joseph and David Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution
and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Duke University Press, 1994).
MALA: Discrediting Alternatives to Neoliberalism
1. J uan Forero, Oil-Rich Venezuela Gripped by Economic Crisis, The Washington Post, April 29, 2010.
2. The Miami Herald, Venezuela Heads toward Disaster, editorial, February 8,
2010; Marifeli Prez-Stable, Chvez Snubs Colombia, The Miami Herald,
op-ed, May 23, 2010; Jackson Diehl, A Revolution in Ruins, The Washington
Post, op-ed, January 25, 2010.
3. The Washington Post, Mr. Chvezs Weapons: While the Economy Plummets, Venezuelas Strongman Splurges, editorial, April 8, 2010. For more
examples of the Posts sustained denunciation of the Chvez government,
see the following editorials: Venezuelas Revolution, January 14, 2005;
Cash-and-Carry Rule: Venezuelas Hugo Chvez Cements His Autocracy With
Petrodollars and Another Push For Reform, August 17, 2007.
4. Scott Wilson, Obama Closes Summit, Vows Broader Engagement With Latin
America, The Washington Post, April 20, 2009.
5. Mark Weisbrot, Venezuelas Recovery Depends on Economic Policy, Le
Monde diplomatique, reposted on ZNet, April 17, 2010.
6. On this history of hypocrisy, see Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth

40

of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2007; reprint, London:
Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
7. Tamara Pearson, The Insidious Bureaucracy in Venezuela: Biggest Barrier to
Social Change, Venezuelanalysis.com, May 17, 2010.
8. Mark Weisbrot, Venezuelas Recovery Depends on Economic Policy. See also
Weisbrot, Venezuela Is Not Greece, The Guardian (London), May 6, 2010.
9. S ee Federico Fuentes, Venezuelas Economic Woes? ZNet, May 23, 2010.
10. Weisbrot, Venezuelas Recovery Depends on Economic Policy. I have substituted the figure of 3.7% for Weisbrots 3%, since the former is the figure given
in Simon Romero and Andrs Schipani, Neighbors Challenge Energy Aims in
Bolivia, The New York Times, January 10, 2010.
11. On inequality see the report by the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America (briefing paper, 2009), 1112. Quotes from The Economist, Power Grab: Another Bolivian
Nationalisation, May 8, 2010, and Juan Forero, Chile Race Reflects Broad
Regional Trend: Growing Preference for Free-Market Centrists Seen in Latin
America, The Washington Post, January 17, 2010. On the implicitly (or explicitly) negative meaning of nationalization and Chvezs name in the U.S. media,
see particularly the articles in the November/December 2006 issue of Extra!.
12. The Washington Post,Bolivias Rift: President Evo Moraless Attempt to Impose Venezuelan-Style Socialism Is Literally Splitting the Country (editorial),
May 6, 2008.
13. Romero and Schipani, Neighbors Challenge Energy Aims in Bolivia; cf.
Romero and Schipani, In Bolivia, a Force for Change Endures, The New York
Times, December 6, 2009.
14. The Economist, The Explosive Apex of Evos Power: Bolivias Presidential
Election, December 12, 2009.
15. Juan Forero, Despite Billions in U.S. Aid, Colombia Struggles to Reduce Poverty, The Washington Post, April 19, 2010; ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin
America, 1112.
16. Forero, Chile Race Reflects Broad Regional Trend.
17. Alexei Barrionuevo, Chilean Vote Is another Sign of Latin Americas Fading
Political Polarization, The New York Times, January 20, 2010.
18. Jackson Diehl, Buying Support in Latin America, op-ed, The Washington
Post, September 26, 2005.
19. Prez-Stable, Chvez Snubs Colombia.
20. Corporacin Latinobarmetro, Informe 2008 (Santiago, Chile), 38; Informe
2009, 9596. For additional analysis, see Kevin Young, US Policy and Democracy in Latin America: The Latinobarmetro Poll, ZNet, May 26, 2009, and
The 2009 Latinobarmetro Poll (blog), ZNet, December 15, 2009.
21. See Young, US Policy and Democracy in Latin America, n. 1.
22. Charles Eisendrath, The Bloody End of a Marxist Dream, Time, September
24, 1973, quoted in Devon Bancroft, The Chilean Coup and the Failings of the
U.S. Media (unpublished manuscript).
23. Joanne Omang, The Revolution Comes First: The Sandinistas Are AllowingNicaraguas Economyto Collapse, The Washington Post, October 6, 1985.
24. Flora Lewis, One Step Forward, The New York Times, February 5, 1988.
25. Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, 4th ed.
(Westview Press, 2003 [1981]), 95, 129; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S.
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage Press,
1995), 302.
26. Hunger, desperation and overthrow of government: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory to Assistant Secretary
of State for Inter-American Affairs Roy Rubottom, April 6, 1960, in Foreign
Relations of the United States, 19581960, vol. VI: Cuba (Washington: US
Government Printing Office, 1991), 885. Making the economy scream: Handwritten notes of CIA director Richard Helms, Notes on Meeting With the
President on Chile, September 15, 1970, in Chile and the United States:Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 19701976, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book no. 8.