MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES OF LATIN AMERICA IN DEFENSE OF THE NATIVE PEOPLES AND ANTI-CAPITALIST AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLES.

Cacique Guaicaipuro 

MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES OF LATIN AMERICA IN DEFENSE OF THE NATIVE PEOPLES AND ANTI-CAPITALIST AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLES.

[Spanish language original text: https://prensapcv.wordpress.com/2022/05/27/manifiesto-de-partidos-comunistas-de-latinoamerica-en-defensa-de-los-pueblos-originarios-y-de-las-luchas-anticapitalistas-y-antiimperialistas/]

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The invasion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the lands of Abya Yala, of Pindorama or Tawantinsuyu[1], between the XV and XVI centuries, resulted in the enslavement, expropriation and death of millions of indigenous peoples. As a result of the expansion of commercial capitalism, the colonial project was established through the appropriation of land and water, the plundering of natural resources and the consolidation of a political power based on multiple forms of violence against the native peoples.

Within the scope of the colonial project, the indigenous people, their way of life and their worldview were considered insignificant. Treating them as inferior and/or savage beings, the dynamo of capital accumulation ordered social relations that disregarded the previous organization of the native peoples and demanded the work of their individuals for the extraction of minerals, agriculture and livestock. Regardless of the type of exploitation carried out - mita, encomienda, villagization, among others - the capitalist economic order prevailed, tinged with a Eurocentric vision of the world.

It is estimated that more than 50 million indigenous people were killed over centuries of colonial enterprise. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest genocides recorded in the history of mankind.

The independence of Latin American countries from European imperial domination in the 19th century did not result in overcoming the fundamental bases of exploitation and oppression against the indigenous people. In spite of the important role played by the latter in the struggles against what remained of the colonial project of domination, the right of the original peoples to land, water and other natural resources was largely prohibited. The different fractions of the ruling class were in charge of preventing the transition to political independence from leading to a revolutionary rupture that would transform the old economic-political structure and prevent the problems and demands of the indigenous peoples from becoming a central point on the agenda of the new nation-states. In this sense, a juridical-political order was agreed upon to grant legality to the dispossession and commodification of indigenous lands - sustained in the doctrine of tierra nullius - and, in addition, as has been recorded in Brazil, the remaining indigenous peoples were considered to be on the verge of extinction.

During the twentieth century, the discourse of the integrity and territorial consolidation of Latin American countries has managed to project itself. It became common to call for the occupation of frontier areas and areas far from the most populated centers. In the name of development, large projects piloted by the State and by national or foreign companies directly impacted the territories of indigenous peoples, exacerbating the dispossession of their members.

The advent of the crisis of capital, at the beginning of the 1970s, generated a political-economic arrangement formed, strictly speaking, by a restructuring of production, by various deregulations (fiscal, monetary, labor, environmental, agrarian, etc.), by the emergence of the neoliberal State and by the financialization of the global economy. Since then, the capitalist offensive on the goods of nature has increased. Land, water, trees, seeds, minerals, among other elements, have become the target of the onslaught of business corporations that yearn to monopolize them and turn them into commodities and/or assets on the stock market.

The present capitalist offensive involves business corporations rooted in the center of the capitalist economy in close articulation with the fractions of the bourgeoisie located in Latin American countries, anxious to incorporate the goods of nature to their product portfolio and obtain profits. It is an offensive that puts pressure on indigenous territories and ultimately leads to the expropriation of the lands of native peoples.

The expansion of mineral extraction on indigenous lands is one of the most obvious examples. In addition to illegal mining promoted by export agents, there are projects carried out by large mining and hydrocarbon producing companies, which in cooperation with national governments and international coordination through IIRSA-COSIPLAN, extract minerals and channel pipelines, project roads, railroads and ports for the export of raw materials, leaving a trail of environmental destruction, damage to human health and strong divisions between communities and indigenous and peasant peoples. We highlight the contamination of water by heavy metals and the contamination of people by potentially carcinogenic and/or allergenic products. A report was recently published which indicates that 8,000 indigenous people, belonging to 11 communities in the province of Espinar, Department of Cusco, Peru, have worrying levels of mercury, lead and arsenic in their bodies, due to mining activity around their villages. In Bolivia, there are also alarming cases of human contamination. A survey has found that indigenous people of the Ese Ejja people, located in the communities of Eyiyo Quibo (a little north of La Paz) and Portachuelo (Pando state) have alarming levels of mercury in their bodies, most likely due to gold mining on the banks of the Beni river[2]. It is worth mentioning the situation of the Ai'Kofan indigenous people, located in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where innumerable occasions of water contamination by extractive-industrial activities have been reported, as in the emblematic episode of Texaco's (Chevron) responsibility. In the case of the Orinoco Mining Arc, the Venezuelan State has legislated on 111,000 square km, which facilitates for national and foreign capital the territorial possession for the extraction of gold, in a geographic space superimposed on the territories occupied by the Yekuana, Eñepá, Pemón, Hivi, Mapoyo peoples, among others: The indigenous reactions have not been well accepted by the State; on the contrary, the responses have been to create a media profile of conspiracy and indigenous secessionism or the assimilation-cooperation of indigenous defenders through political parties inclined to the interests of the miners and the State. At that time, the indigenous people of the Shuar Arutam people, who live in the Cordillera del Condor, in the extreme southeast of Ecuador, were protesting to prevent another mining company from entering their territory without their consent. In the last decade, the Arutam's territory has been invaded by mining projects carried out mainly by multinationals and with strong support from the State. These types of struggles against extractive activities and against the dispossession of indigenous lands and territories are registered in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Paraguay, just to mention a few more.

The systematic seizure of indigenous lands by private individuals or agribusiness, mining, energy and investment fund companies constitutes an indisputable chapter in the offensive of capital. Land grabbing is the illegal appropriation of land and may be preceded by deliberate deforestation of the area and its consequent commercialization, in addition to the application of mechanisms of co-optation of leadership and criminal and terrorist violence against indigenous and peasant resistance. It should be considered that the phenomenon of land grabbing is part of the process of primitive and original accumulation of capital, which extends over time, generating the expropriation of the original peoples and the conversion of lands and natural assets, under their protection, into private property. This is part of a stage of deepening capitalism, which seeks to continue with the expansion of monocultures, the plundering of natural resources and the exploitation of the indigenous and peasant labor force.

The pace and tone of this process are diverse, with particular components in each social formation in Latin America. In Brazil there are often invasions carried out by land grabbers who wish to appropriate part of the indigenous lands and then secure amnesty for their act through a decision of the federal parliament, as has happened on other occasions[3]. There are many examples of land grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon, as recorded in the Uru Eu Wau Wau indigenous reserve, in the state of Rondônia, whose plots are traded on Facebook, and as seen in the Indigenous Land of the Kayabi people, between the states of Mato Grosso and Pará, where it is verified, even, the invasion carried out by Brookfield, a Canadian fund that manages many assets in Our America. The Argentine Chaco is also the scene of these initiatives. The expansion of grain monocultures and cattle ranching has led to the suppression of forests used since time immemorial by the Wichi people. One of the two main actors in this massive land grabbing in northern Argentina is the Cresud group, which controls thousands of hectares in the province of Salta and has the consent of the State.

A similar situation exists in Peru, where the expansion of agro-industrial projects (oil palm cultivation), hydrocarbon exploitation and timber extraction have reduced the territories of indigenous or native peoples, a situation that is aggravated by the expansion of illegal mining and drug trafficking, which in recent years have invaded indigenous reserves, protected areas, national parks and buffer zones, which are not only protected territories for their biodiversity but are also inhabited by uncontacted native or indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation[4].     It should be noted that, in the case of Peru's indigenous peoples, a long battle resulted in Law No. 28736, which has allowed, among other things, the administrative recognition of these peoples with their registration in the National Superintendence of Public Registries, which is a body attached to the Peruvian Ministry of Justice. The administrative recognition of their existence and of their 3 million hectare territory prevents the granting of any type of administrative concessions for the exploitation of natural resources in these territories, but does not prevent illegal activities, whether due to the absence of the State, negligence or State action in favor of landowners and miners. These three features characterize the land and border policy of the Venezuelan State in relation to the territory of the Yukpa, Barí and Yanshitu peoples in the Perijá region, bordering Colombia. The data show a process of accelerated territorial dispossession, persecution and criminalization since the 1960s and the most tenacious threat to indigenous peoples and nature, with mining-extractivist projects on a projected area of 159,000 hectares of open-pit hydrocarbon mines. And in spite of the indigenous mobilizations of the 1990s and 2000s, to stop mining and claim the rights established in the national constitution (1999), every year actors appear summoned by the State to carry out mining investments in the Yukpa, Barí and Yanshitu territories. The last event was the creation of the company Sociedad Anónima Carbones de Turquía y Venezuela with the purpose of restarting the exploitation of two mines in the region of Guasare, to the north of Perijá, adjacent to the territory occupied by Wayuú indigenous people; before that, companies of Russian and Chinese origin did the same. The extractivist threat is matched by the ambiguous titling of lands to the Yukpa people in the last ten years, since, with this act of handing over land titles, the State has made clear the reservation of rights of third parties, namely, miners and cattle ranchers, who are the actors that dispute the territory from the indigenous peoples. In environmental and anthropological terms, the Venezuelan State has projected Perijá as a zone of environmental and ethno-cultural sacrifice, by virtue of the expansion of extractivist investments and the satisfaction of international demand for coal and other raw materials.

In addition to land grabbing, the criminalization and prosecution of indigenous peoples has led to episodes of police and military violence, imprisonment of leaders and eviction of families from their lands. In Paraguay, the recent approval of a law, with the consent of the Paraguayan government and in response to the demands of the country's landowners, opened the way to flagrant repression. The new law modified an article of the penal code and established the possibility of imprisonment for indigenous people who wish to defend or retake their territories. Several members of the MBy'a Guaraní and Ava Guaraní peoples were directly affected by this measure. In Venezuela, the Yukpa people have a tragic record of 13 indigenous people killed by hired killers and military forces. The event occurred in the Yukpa Kuse community, Yaza river basin, Perijá region, where cattle violence, military persecution, criminalization and imprisonment of several Yukpa have been the cause of continuous protests and mobilizations since 2013 in the capital of the province and in Caracas. The impunity of the crimes, above all, the impunity of the cattle ranchers who are the intellectual authors, the aggressions, threats and kidnappings keep several Yukpa communities in a situation of constant risk, while the Public Prosecutor's Office does not give continuity to the trials and denunciations.

Uncontacted indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation comprise transboundary territories in almost all of South America. In the case of Peru, there are 20 documented uncontacted indigenous communities, including the Kakataibos, Isconahuas, Matsigenkas, Mashco-Piros, Mastanahuas, Murunahuas (or Chitonahuas), Nantis and Yoras, located between the Amazonian borders of Peru and Brazil. The problems faced by these peoples lie mainly in the expansive activities of logging and hydrocarbon exploitation, which in many cases must cross their territories. But the dangers do not stop there, but have existed for 400 years with the arrival of the European conquerors missionary activities. These activities carried out in the colonial past by the Catholic Church brought with them not only the detriment of indigenous cultures, paved the way for the exploitation and oppression of their inhabitants (rubber slavery), but also new diseases that decimated thousands of peoples throughout the Americas. Missionary activities have not ceased, since the 60's of the last century, when the Protestant and Evangelical missions penetrated the indigenous settlements of the Amazon, not only initiated a process of cultural, linguistic-educational-confessional uprooting, but also brought new diseases, activities that persist today without any State establishing limits to their expansion projects (linguistic-educational-confessional-political) in territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and uncontacted peoples.  

Given the above, several communist parties in Latin America, with a broad and recognized trajectory of struggles in their respective countries, publish this manifesto. It is a call to accompany the struggle of indigenous peoples in defense of their common goods and their vital conditions of existence. It is a call to grant legal, collective and inalienable title over geographical spaces that they occupy ancestrally and give meaning to national assets associated with cultural and linguistic diversity, autonomy and self-government of the indigenous peoples of the continent. It is a call to oppose, together with them, the advance of capital and the project of bourgeois domination over their territories.

It is based on the premise that the immediate tasks to supplant or defeat the different expedients launched against the indigenous peoples must be combined with the strategy of overcoming the capitalist order and, of course, racism. In the current historical period there is no doubt that the capitalist mode of production is absolutely incapable of ensuring the self-determination of indigenous peoples and respect for their ways of life. The exercise of this right is absolutely impossible under capitalism.

In this sense, the parties that subscribe to the current manifesto intend to build a permanent discussion forum that contemplates the reality experienced by the indigenous peoples of Latin America and, in addition, functions as a qualified space for the coordination of political actions. It is a collective initiative that is open to the collaboration of other political organizations that support this anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist perspective. 

Long live the indigenous peoples of Latin America!

Long live the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle!

Latin America, May 20, 2022.

Brazilian Communist Party

Guatemalan Labor Party

People's Party of Panama

Communist Party of Ecuador

Communist Party of Bolivia

Communist Party of Chile

Communist Party of Venezuela

Peruvian Communist Party

[1] Examples of names given by different indigenous peoples to their place of life before the colonial invasion. That is, before being called the American continent, the lands of the original peoples received different names.

[2] It is necessary to mention that Bolivia stands out in the world trade of mercury, occupying the first positions among the countries importing the metal.

[3] A bill (PL) is in process in the Brazilian parliament, known by the nickname of PL of grabbing, whose content legalizes new invaded areas, especially in the Amazon.

[4] Isconahua, Mashco Piro and Murunahua indigenous reserves (Department of Madre de Dios, Peru).

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