McNair Paper Number 53, Chapter 2, October 1996

The sharp rise in ethnicity-based politics in Latin America in the last 20 years has been the subject of a growing literature in anthropology, sociology, and, recently, political science.(Note 1) Anthropologists have focused on factors internal to the identity and organization of ethnic communities. Sociologists have studied Indian and black movements as social phenomena but have not isolated factors that distinguish ethnic movements from the rest. Political scientists have begun to look at external variables, such as the impact of structural adjustment and neoliberal reforms.(Note 2) and the failure of democratic institutions to secure individual rights, (Note 3) but they have also failed to convincingly tie these variables to the recent surge in ethnic politics.

This comparative study will isolate two external variables that may better explain the mid-1970s surge in Indian political activism in Latin America. It will focus in particular on: 1) the impact of the regional trend toward democratization, and 2) the role of international actors and pivotal events. These two countries were chosen because of their similar demograph; both have indigenous as well as significan black populations.

Issues such as culture and identity are crucial to understanding the origin and implications of indigenous organizations. These variables, however, fall outside the scope of this effort. Furthermore, while revealing comparisons will be made between indigenous and black movements, no attempt will be made to fully explore the emergence of black movements or their special situation.

In both countries, Indian policy has been intimately linked to issues of national security: in Brazil, to the military's obsession with control of the country's Amazonian borders; and in Colombia, to the suppression of drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas and the defense of human rights. In both countries the struggle over communal indigenous land rights is the focal point of violent conflict between indigenous communities and those who have invaded those lands or who seek to exploit the natural resources they contain. The Brazilian Government issued decree 1775, signed by President Cardoso on 8 January 1996, which allows "states, municipalities and other interested parties" to contest the borders of indigenous territories that were supposed to have been established in 1993, but whose demarcation has been delayed because of opposition from influential loggers, miners and ranchers. Indians now face the prospect of losing not only the more than 50 percent of designated lands that await demarcation but also those lands already adjudicated.

METHODOLOGY

The evident rise of ethnic identity in the mid-20th century has been described as a defensive reaction by threatened cultures to the process of modernization, the globalization of culture, and the delegitimation of communal identities in favor of identities defined in socio-economic terms.(Note 4) Daniel Bell also ties the rise of ethnic identification in the mid-20th century to a number of important international social and political trends that began with the student movements of the 1960s:

! The enlargement of political boundaries

! The increase in the number and type of political actors

! A questioning of the status quo and the current distribution of status and power at national and international levels

! Increasing international and intranational societal interaction because of advances in transportation and communications

! The breakdown of traditional and parochial beliefs

! The rapid pace of societal change. (Note 5)

For once-isolated rural indigenous and black communities in Latin America, heightened awareness of ethnic identity is also a response to territorial intrusions, and has intensified the traditional struggle for land throughout the region. (Note 6)

In seeking to explain the emergence of ethnic organizations, internal variables-those more associated with the internal organization of ethnic communities, their cultural values and practices, and the expression of their ethnic identity-are distinguished from external variables, such as the structure of the political system in the country in which they live. Contextual variables-factors that have been present since the Conquest, although they may have varied in intensity-must be separated from temporal variables, which indicate important events and actors in the national and international arena.

Contextual variables that permeate the experience of indigenous peoples since the Conquest include a history of violent repression and domination, discrimination, poverty, and political exclusion. An additional contextual variable worth noting is the existence since pre-Columbian times of indigenous community organizations. The strongest organizations are those with an ancestral land base conducive to indigenous self-government, as well as a method for passing cultural and spiritual rites and beliefs on to younger generations. Indigenous community organizations are typically characterized by regular meetings and rotating leadership.

The discussion of temporal variables began in the 1960s (table 1) with the expansion, through advances in transportation and communications, of private and public sector activities into lands traditionally occupied by indigenous or black rural communities. At the same time, advances in healthcare increased population growth and pressure on land in rural areas. Oil and other precious resources were discovered by private or state (usually military) interests on lands claimed or occupied by indigenous tribes. Two international political trends are also important in understanding indigenous political activity during the 1960s and 1970s. First, the rise of Liberation Theology and the Catholic Church's new preferential option for the poor brought indigenous peasant and Amazonian communities increased support from Catholic and Protestant churches throughout Latin America. Second, the student movements of the 1960s and the growth of social movements in the following decade provided new opportunities for political participation to individual and collective social actors excluded from formal politics. Black activists in particular note the importance of the civil rights movement in the United States, as well as the decolonization of African countries, to the awakening and construction of black consciousness and politics in the 1960s. (Note 7)

The next period of interest was the global wave of democratic transition that began in 1974. Though not experiencing a shift from military to civilian rule, Colombia and Mexico underwent important democratizing reforms during the early 1990s. Most of the prominent Indian organizations in the hemisphere today were established in the mid-1970s-before the regional wave of democratization began. Nevertheless, the democratic transition increased the effectiveness and reach of these organizations by opening space for the public expression of the needs of diverse sectors of society and stimulating the formation of community organizations and social movements that often worked together with existing or emerging Indian organizations. For countries returning to regular elections, the extension of voting rights to the illiterate enfranchised large numbers of indigenous peoples.

In the 1980s a number of international trends had a broad impact on national politics in the region. The regionwide debt crisis forced most countries in the region to slash social spending in exchange for debt relief. The new model of economic development prescribed by lenders forced a transformation of the state, while opening protected and inefficient markets to international trade. For rural peoples, this new economic model meant the loss of agricultural subsidies, marketing assistance, and transfer payments, as well as increasing encroachments on Indian and peasant lands due to the expansion of the private sector. It is important, however, not to overstate the direct impact of neoliberal reforms during the 1980s on ethnic-based political activity, for three reasons:

! Numerous indigenous organizations already existed at the time reforms were instituted.

! While many incorporated an analysis of the impact of these reforms on the poor into their political rhetoric, the main focus of indigenous movements continued to be cultural revindication, dignity, autonomy, and land.

! Most rural and Amazonian indigenous communities never received the public services-health care, potable water, electricity, sewerage, roads-that were cut as a result of the reforms. The key link between liberalizing reforms and indigenous mobilization is changes in land policies threatening communal land tenure. Efforts to privatize Indian lands result from

! Pressure from local elites to acquire this land

! Reforms required of debtor nations by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank

! Modernization of the agricultural sector in order to better compete on international markets and join free trade agreements.

Existing indigenous organizations focused intense efforts to halt or reverse the privatization of communal land in Brazil (in 1978), in Mexico (in 1993-1995), in Ecuador (1994-1995), and in Peru (in late 1993).

Two transnational political trends are of particular importance during the 1980s and early 1990s: the decline of the orthodox leftist political parties and the rise of the environmental movement. While during the 1960s-1970s indigenous organizations tended to work within the political Left, particularly within the union movement, classist organizations have always rejected the Indians' explicitly cultural analysis and excluded Indians from positions of leadership. By the 1980s, and increasingly with the decline of the Left, Indians had returned to or initiated their own political organizations, building local, regional, national, and even international networks. The ecological movement, which expanded dramatically in the 1970s, increasingly became involved in international issues in the 1980s. A particular area of concern to North American and European organizations was the fate of the Amazon rainforest. Amazon Indians formed alliances with northern nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to finance their own campaigns to recover and title ancestral lands and to prevent the invasion of colonists, miners, the military, and oil companies. Conferences bringing together northern ecologists and southern Indians were held in Altamira, Brazil (1989), and Iquitos, Peru (1991); these meetings facilitated partnerships resulting in a strong presence by Indian organizations and their supporters at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Note 8) The timing of the cementing of the environmental-Indian alliance (1989-1992) coincided with an additional international phenomenon that would have an even greater impact on ethnic political organizing in Latin America: the marking of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Western Hemisphere.

Plans for the "500 Years of Resistance Campaign" (the Campaign) were hatched at an international meeting for indigenous and grassroots groups held in Quito, Ecuador, in 1987. The idea was to use state-sponsored celebrations of the quincentennary, which were planned to take place during 1992, to challenge the official history of the Conquest and reinterpret it from the point of view of native peoples. (Note 9) In addition to building international networks that would nurture local ethnic organizations in the following years, the Campaign was instrumental in heightening awareness of and defining "Indian" identity and generating renewed interest in indigenous culture and language among indigenous peoples themselves as well as the general public. Indigenous groups involved in the Campaign recovered and renewed traditional cultural identities and generated new identities based on a reinterpretation of shared history. (Note 10) The internationalization of individual Indian communities' quests to reinterpret and dignify particularistic ethnic identities helped to create a pan-Indian identity spanning vast geographic and cultural barriers. Moreover, intensive national and international encounters among Indians helped to crystallize a comprehensive set of indigenous demands that tend to be consistent among diverse indigenous communities throughout the region. (Note 11)

In August of 1991, the revindications of blacks in the Americas officially were added to the Campaign, in response to recognition by participants in a regional meeting in Guatemala that black organizations were not well-represented in the movement. (Note 12) The Campaign was a successful attempt to unite localized struggles of diverse peoples in order to challenge and redefine national identities and to articulate a common analysis of global forces, multinational corporations, communications media, financial institutions, and North American and European political and economic ideologies perceived to be threatening the existence of local ethnic communities. (Note 13)

Finally, a number of events in the past 6 years, listed in the right-hand columns of table 1, have had significant repercussions on ethnic movements in Latin America. Among the most important were the U.N. Year of Indigenous Peoples (1993) and the award of the 1992 Nobel Peace to Guatemalan Indian activist Rigoberta Menchu.

BRAZIL

Brazil is the most populous and ethnically diverse country in South America, with a total population of 140 million, of which about half are considered to be of African descent, and about 0.2 percent Indian. (Note 14) While historians estimate that in 1500 there were approximately 5 million Indians in Brazil, today they number approximately 250,000. In the last 10 years the population has been decimated by malaria brought by garimpeiros (goldminers) and other intruders in indigenous territories. Despite their small number, they comprise 200 separate ethnic groups and speak 170 languages. (Note 15) They are widely dispersed, although 90 percent are concentrated in the 2 million square miles of Amazon Basin located in Brazil, of which Indian reservations make up 18 percent. (Note 16) That concentration is due to the movement of Portuguese colonists from east to west, and south to north, pushing the Indians further into the isolated areas near Brazil's northern borders. (Note 17) Most live in 519 recognized indigenous areas (251 of which are "fully demarcated") that comprise 10percent of the national territory. By contrast, 48.5 percent of the country's land is held by large farms and 21.7 percent is unused, according to the Ecumenical Documentation and Information Center (CEDI). (Note 18) Brazil is among the world's most unequal countries; some 58 percent of Brazilians existed on less than $58 per month in 1992. (Note 19)

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Brazilian government intensively promoted the colonization and development of the Amazon by timber, cattle and mining interests, as well as poor, land-hungry farmers from the northeast and south of the country. (Note 20) In the 1980s, development of the Amazon rapidly accelerated, spurred by massive transportation infrastructure projects and hydroelectric dams, which brought more colonists. The government revoked forest clearance incentives in 1987 under international pressure to preserve the rainforest, although Brazil continues to subsidize the lucrative timber industry. (Note 21) The efforts of Indian organizations and their supporters to stop unrestricted development of the Amazon during a time that the Brazilian political system was gradually opened to democratic competitive elections led to a prominent role for the country's tiny Indian population in the 1988 constitutional reform.

The relaxation of military repression in the 1970s was both a cause and a result of opposition political mobilization. Outlawed organizations were legalized and new forms of organization initiated. The democratic opening in Brazil facilitated the political organization of the country's tiny and isolated indigenous population, letting loose nonindigenous social forces-left-leaning political parties, human rights organizations, and environmental groups-that would be able to support the Indian rights agenda and provide a forum, the Constitutional Assembly, for a national dialogue on Indian rights. In 1970, Indian peoples in Brazil organized the first assembly of indigenous peoples independent of the government. Other assemblies followed, Indian organizations multiplied, and NGOs specifically created to support Indian rights began to emerge. As the democratic transition gained momentum after 1974, so did the pro-Indian rights and other social and grassroots movements. Countering the influence of the grassroots and leftist movements have been the growth of business, ranching, and conservative political organizations. (Note 22)

Throughout the 1970s, Indian groups joined with non-Indian NGOs to protest the destruction of indigenous lands and culture by development and uncontrolled colonization. The emergence of indigenous organizations on the political scene occurred in response to the 1978 campaign by the Ministry of the Interior to reform the 1973 Indian Statute (Law 6001), which had placed Indians under the tutelage of the state. The plan was to "emancipate" the Indian from state tutelage and forcibly integrate him into modern Brazilian society. The real objective was to "emancipate" Indian lands, bringing them onto the marketplace and breaking up the communal land system in order to provide land for poor colonists as well as wealthy speculators. This attack on Indian lands brought a new interlocutor into the national debate on the "Indian question": the Indians themselves. The resolve of the Indians defeated the government's campaign and transformed the image of the Indian in Brazilian society from a savage or a museum piece to an embattled underdog in solidarity with other exploited sectors of society. The Indians won the respect of a sector of public opinion that developed into a constituency for Indians rights in the 1980s, when missionaries, academics, anthropologists, doctors, lawyers, judges and journalists formed a network of support organizations with a national profile in the National Commission of Associations in Support of the Indian.(Note 23) In the context of a slow and carefully studied transition from military to civilian rule, the Indians forced the military government to choose between repression and recognition of Indian land and rights. (Note 24)

In 1979 the first national indigenous organization directed exclusively by Indians was founded. (Note 25) The Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI) did not formally represent the country's diverse Indian ethnic groups but rather became a forum for Indians to express their demands and a nexus for leaders to interact with national and international support organizations. (Note 26) In 1982 a Xavante Indian, Mario Jaruna, became the first Indian elected to Congress after influential friends in Rio de Janeiro secured a slot for Jaruna on the Democratic Labor Party (PTD) slate representing Rio de Janeiro state: (Note 27)

The bluntly outspoken Jaruna became a national symbol of opposition to Brazil's military dictatorship. His unprecedented rise to national prominence rested on his ability to demonstrate that Xavante frustrations with the dictatorship aligned with the political frustrations of the general Brazilian public. (Note 28)

At this time Kayap(, Patax(, Terena, and GuaranR leaders established a presence in the Brazilian capital in order to sensitize public opinion to the problems of Indians. Their efforts were instrumental in getting indigenous rights on the agenda of the Constitutional Assembly and led to the introduction by political parties of indigenous themes in their programs for the first time. (Note 29) In 1985, following the inauguration of President JosJ Sarney, the first post-transition president, the Indian rights issue gained political saliency by highlighting many unresolved issues in Brazilian politics related to minority and human rights. The movement was countered by conservatives who denounced the indigenous movement as being under the control of foreigners seeking to internationalize the Amazon and rob Brazil of its resources and national sovereignty. (Note 30)

During the Constitutional Assembly of 1987-1988, the UNI led efforts to include a chapter protecting indigenous rights in the new constitution, working alongside a coalition of anthropologists, NGOs, environmentalists and lawyers. The resulting "Indian Chapter" explicitly reversed the government's policy of assimilation, recognized the cultural rights of Indians, and guaranteed protection of the lands needed for their survival and cultural development. (Note 31) The 1988 Constitution recognized the existence of collective ethnic rights for the first time and acknowledged the legitimacy of Indian social structures and community autonomy. It also recognized for the first time the rights of descendants of quilombos, communities established in remote areas by runaway slaves, and requires the state to issue land titles to these communities. An estimated half million blacks-twice the Indian population-could benefit from this clause, but as of late 1995, the first quilombo titles had yet to be issued and land conflicts between their members and mining and ranching interests in the northern Amazon are intense. (Note 32)

This dramatic change in the relationship between the Indian and the Brazilian state was led by the indigenous organizations, particularly by leader Ailton Krenak and the Kayap(, who used their political and media savvy to counter a virulent campaign against indigenous rights led by conservative newspapers. Indians active in the constitutional reform, however, did not formally represent particular indigenous nations or communities. (Note 33) The vast cultural diversity of Brazil's indigenous groups, and the divide that separates these groups from the national political culture, has resulted in a marked disparity between the hundreds of local community organizations and the small elite of sophisticated leaders who speak Portuguese and regularly attend international conferences but often lack local legitimacy. (Note 34)

Following the success of the pro-Indian coalition in the Constitutional Assembly, members of the Indian rights coalition established a nongovernmental legal office in Brasilia, the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights. Its staff of non-Indian lawyers monitors congressional activity and files lawsuits to protect collective rights. (Note35) The pro-Indian coalition has been successful in organizing across formerly hostile and widely dispersed ethnic groups and with nonindigenous organizations to fight against logging and ranching that threatened Indian livelihoods and lands. The most dramatic instance of successful Indian organizing since the Constitutional Assembly was a February 1989 demonstration organized by the Kayap\ to stop a $500 million World Bank loan for construction of a dam on the Xing( River.

The Brazilian Government responded by bringing charges of conspiring against the national interest against the chiefs, along with an American anthropologist, under the so-called Law of Foreigners. Summoned to give testimony at the federal courthouse in Belem, the Kayap( showed their superior command of public relations techniques-some 400 warriors and three dozen chiefs in full ceremonial dress and armed with clubs and spears turned up to confront riot-control police armed with automatic weapons before the world press. International pressure soon coaxed the government to drop its case. (Note36) The success of the Kayap( dramatically changed Indians' views of what they could accomplish and inspired other groups to defend their traditional lands. (Note 37)

Since 1988, there has been a steep rise in the number of nontraditional indigenous organizations with regular contacts outside the local community. Carlos MarJs lists 23 Indian organizations in Amazonas state alone, 15 of which were established in 1988 or later. (Note 38) Today, the most influential organization is the Coordinating Group of Indigenous People of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB). It represents Brazilian Indians in COICA, the international confederation that unites the major indigenous organizations of Amazon countries and works with the Amazon Coalition, a Washington-based NGO established in 1993 by a consortium of northern environmental and Indian rights groups to support the work of Amazon Indian organizations. The primary Brazilian organizations working on behalf of the Indians are the Indianist Missionary Council (CIMI), the Ecumenical Center for Documentation and Information (CEDI), the Council for Promotion of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations (CAPOIB), and the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights. The CIMI, led by a Catholic bishop, was formed in 1971, marking a reversal in the attitude of the Catholic Church from the conversion of Indians into Catholics, to intervention between the Indians and the Brazilian state on behalf of the preservation of Indian culture and community autonomy. It has been the most consistent critic of the indigenous agency, FUNAI and maintains a presence throughout the country. Since 1973-1974, CIMI has promoted regional assemblies of leaders of Indian nations, encouraging the collective design of strategies of resistance, and enabling Indians to form a collective Indian consciousness as autonomous minorities within the Brazilian interior. (Note 39)

Since the scheduled constitutional review in October of 1993, governors and legislators from Amazon states have been pushing for a halt to further demarcation of indigenous lands and the review of existing reserves. In December of 1994 the Brazilian Senate passed a that requires a review by the National Defense Council of all demarcations of Indian land in frontier zones and directs the president to consult with the relevant state government prior to sending plans for demarcation to Congress for approval. According to the Indianist Missionary Council, this effectively makes demarcation of indigenous lands unfeasible any where in Brazil. In June 1995, the Brazil Justice Minister was considering the revocation of the 1991 decree ordering the demarcation of all Indian lands and allowing non-Indians to contest past and future Indian claims. (Note 40) The national congress and justice minister continue to press for the repeal of constitutional indigenous land rights, against opposition from indigenous groups, NGOs, the Brazilain Bar Association and representatives of the European Parliament, which condemned the new policy in a February 1996 decree.

Mobilization of Black Organizations

Much as it nurtured the indigenous movement, the abertura's fostering of civil society created the conditions under which black political opposition could emerge. (Note 41) As Winant explains, "not long after the abertura began in earnest (in 1974), the first attempts at national black movement-building were initiated by the Movimento Negro Unificado (MNU), and throughout the later transition period a slow but steady buildup of black opposition voices, actions and organizational initiatives was underway." (Note 42) While only rarely organizing as blacks, Afro-Brazilians were intimately involved in the urban slum organizations, the northeastern land movements, unions, and cultural, religious, and student organizations. Later, more black organizations, like the MNU, established in 1978, and black publications emerged.

Black leaders such as Abdias do Nascimento, a federal deputy representing the same party as Mario Jaruna, were involved in the major political parties, while other leaders rejected the parties as not being sufficiently committed to racial equality. Black organizations continue to be divided among afrocentric and more pluralistic groups, over the relationship of race to class, and between issue-oriented politics and cultural and religious organizations. (Note 43) This activity has involved only a small minority of the black population and has had little political impact, because of reasons discussed by Winant and Skidmore. In 1976 the Brazilian Government published for the first time employment and income data correlated by race that proved the existence of heretofore denied racial discrimination and refuted traditional explanations of the low economic status of blacks. Still, there has been very little political activity by blacks and "vast inequalities . . . stubbornly resist political articulation." (Note 44)

International Actors and Events

While increasingly strong at the local level, indigenous organizations have powerful enemies. Their successes generated a violent backlash on the part of ranchers, loggers, and the military and local authorities. (Note 45) According to CIMI, CEDI, and the U.S. State Department, pervasive violence against Indians occurs with impunity. The massacre of at least 16 Yanomami Indians by goldminers on the Venezuelan border in August of 1993 brought Brazilian and international attention to the problem, yet no one has been punished for that crime. No one has ever been convicted of killing an Indian in Brazil. The constant invasions of indigenous lands, delays in demarcating indigenous territory, and violence on the part of garimpeiros, landowners, the military and police have made the indigenous organizations dependent on national and international support groups who have the power to mobilize international public information campaigns to put pressure on the Brazilian Government to intercede on behalf of Indians' constitutional rights against the interests of powerful local and state interests who covet Indian lands and resources. (Note 46)

International groups, however, have become something of a domestic political liability, in that they fuel the xenophobia of the Brazilian military, as well as a view of Indians as unable to work on their own behalf. (Note 47) The most important international actors have been environmental groups, which have publicized the plight of the Amazonian Indians as part of an effort to protect the rainforest they inhabit from uncontrolled development. These groups pressured the U.S. Congress in the late 1980s and early 1990s to force the multilateral banks to create and implement guidelines to protect the environment and the tribal peoples that are displaced by development projects in the Amazon. Environmental groups work in conjunction with Indian rights organizations such as New York-based Amanaka'a, Boston's Cultural Survival, and Washington's Indian Law Resource Center, to bring Brazilian Indian and union leaders-such as Chico Mendes, Davi Yanomami, and Kayap( leader Paulinho Paiakan-to meetings of the multilateral banks and the United Nations, and to Congressional hearings in Washington. In addition, information networks like the South and Meso-American Indian Information Center help to transmit urgent action requests and information about indigenous organizations' problems and activities throughout the world via the Internet and in their quarterly magazine, Abya Yala News, published in English and Spanish.

The apex of north-south cooperation on behalf of Indian rights in Brazil was reached immediately following the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This conference garnered Brazil's Indians enormous media attention and helped to cement alliances with support groups throughout the world, including contacts made at a 1990 Brazilian meeting of the 500 Years of Resistance Campaign. Immediately prior to UNCED, in December of 1991, then-President Collor demarcated a 37,400 square mile reserve (about the size of Austria) in the Amazon for 9,000 Yanomami. However, since the impeachment of President Collor in 1992, there has been more pressure in Brazil to roll back Indian rights than support to expand them.

While international events like UNCED and the quincentennary have been instrumental in supporting the mobilization of an Indian political opposition, to the extent that blacks have organized at all, national events have played a more important role since the abertura. In striking similarity to the reaction of Indians in Latin America to the 1992 quincentennary, a minority of politicized blacks in Brazil organized demonstrations around the 1988 celebration of the centennial of abolition, repudiating what they called the "farce of abolition" and the government's view of a country that had long since burst the bonds of racial domination. "These were unprecedented efforts to draw national and international attention to the extensive racial inequality and discrimination which Brazilian blacks . . . continue to confront." (Note 48) According to Skidmore, however, this small group of militants was drowned out by the mass of self-congratulatory Brazilians. (Note 49)

The 1995 celebrations by black cultural and political organizations that commemorated the fall of the independent runaway slave republic of Palmares in 1695-which attempted to make a national hero of Zumbi, the warrior king of Palmares-have received more attention. This is due to a steady increase in black political opposition since 1990, and the more vocal political dialogue on race and ethnic rights that was part of the 1994 presidential election campaign. The quilombo movement is using the attention given to Palmares to push for the titling of traditional lands of black communities, which had been promised by the 1988 Constitution. (Note 50)

COLOMBIA

Colombia's ethnic diversity is second only to Brazil's in South America. Its indigenous population comprises 81 distinct ethnic groups speaking 64 languages. Estimates of Colombia's black population range widely from a census figure of 15 percent to claims of black organizations as high as 45 percent. (Note 51) As in Brazil, the black population can be divided into traditional rural communities located principally along rivers in the Pacific Coast interior (descendants of fortified runaway slave communities called palenques in Colombia), and the much more numerous coastal and urban population. While the government estimates that Indians are 1.5% of the population, the National Organization of Colombian Indians (ONIC) estimates there are 700,000 Indians making up 2.3% of the total population of 35 million. As in Brazil, they are widely dispersed among 27 of the country's 32 administrative-political divisions, with the greatest concentration in the Amazon, Orinoquia, the Pacific Coast, Guajira Peninsula, and Andean zone. (Note 52) Colombia falls in the middle range in terms of income distribution, far more equal than Brazil. While poverty has decreased in recent decades (40 percent of the population lived in poverty in 1991, compared to 70 percent in 1961), poverty is more visible in the cities and land distribution has become more inequitably distributed, following a regressive agrarian "reform" in 1970-1971. Although Colombia did not suffer from the syndrome of heavy foreign debts and dramatic cuts in social spending that plagued most Latin American countries in the 1980s, social spending was cut in the 1980s, in part because of reallocated funds to the military. (Note 53)

While there have always been violent struggles over land between Colombian Indians and landowners, struggles in the Cauca region in the 1960s gave birth to a nationwide indigenous movement. Indians organized in the 1960s to demand government compliance with Law 135 of 1961, which called for the expansion of Indian resguardos (the inalienable communal property of indigenous communities, governed by councils called cabildos under Colombian law) according to the cultural, social, and economic development necessary for the survival of the indigenous communities, as well as Law 89 of 1890, which returned to indigenous communities lands that legitimately belonged to them according to their titles and possession. They also demanded that the government cease encouraging colonization of Indian resguardos. (Note 54)

Landholding patterns in the 1960s reflected the Cauca's colonial past. The area has both the country's greatest concentration of indigenous people (about 40 percent of the total indigenous population) and of landholdings: two percent of large landowners (having more than 100 hectares each) own 45 percent of the land, while 61.4 percent of owners have fewer than 5 hectares a piece. (Note 55) As a result, there has been a long history of land conflict in the Cauca and of indigenous uprisings in defense of territory. Large haciendas with terrajeros (landless farmers who worked a small plot of hacienda land in exchange for labor services) were interspersed with resguardo lands, governed by Indian cabildos. The same territory was governed by both municipal authorities, reflecting the interests of the haciendas, and cabildo authorities, which in the 1960s were often supportive of local power structures. As demographic pressure on lands increased, municipal authorities seized resguardo lands for nonindigenous settlement. By seizing Indian lands, the municipal authorities were taking not only the land but the Indians' authority to govern it. (Note 56) In the late 1960s, terrajeros on particular haciendas, predominantly from the Paez ethnic group that had formerly governed the area, began to organize themselves independently of each other to recuperate ancestral lands in the Paez way-by working it. Successfully recuperated lands were attached to the local indigenous cabildo. In this way, the cabildos gained strength from their growing land base and the activism of the indigenous communities. "Combative cabildos" began to distance themselves from the local bosses.

In February 1971, the Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca (CRIC) was formed from the leaders of cabildos involved in the land movement. Its original goals were to reclaim traditional territories, expand existing ones, and train indigenous leaders and bilingual teachers in order to defend their history, customs, languages, and legal systems. In the next 20 years the indigenous communities of the Cauca Valley recuperated almost 130,000 acres of land by obtaining enforcement of legal entitlements. (Note 57) In the early 1970s a split emerged in the Cauca indigenous movement. One sector worked to acquire property and services from the government, in solidarity with other sectors of society, and tended to work within the campesino organization (the National Association of Peasant Producers, ANUC) or the Regional Indigenous Council of the Cauca (CRIC), led by the more acculturated sectors of the indigenous population. As the peasant movement disintegrated in the 1980s, the CRIC became the more senior partner in the alliance, and continues to provide organizational support for local ANUC affiliates. (Note 58) The other tendency in the movement, led principally by the Paeces and the Guambianos, organized according to ethnic group and strove to assert historical rights as peoples under Colombian law and to assert the legitimacy of traditional ethnic authorities. (Note 59)

Indian leaders gained national attention through participation in peasant and labor conventions in 1973 and 1974, (Note 60) but the indigenous movement would gain its greatest notoriety and achieve its first moment of national unity in response to the Colombian government's attempt in 1979 to reorganize its indigenous agency and reformulate the legal and constitutional rights of indigenous communities. The explicit purpose of the changes was to subdue the increasingly militant and autonomous indigenous cabildos and organizations, to intervene in their relations with external actors, and to transform indigenous cabildos and organizations from government opponents and autonomous political actors into clients firmly under the tutelage of the state. As Gros notes, the Colombian government's actions are strikingly similar to those taken by the Brazilian military government in 1978. Both attempted to suppress an increasingly militant and autonomous indigenous movement; to dismantle the Indian communal land tenure regime; to create a new legal definition of the Indian; and place the authority for deciding who was or was not Indian in the hands of the government. And in both countries, the result was exactly the opposite of what the government had intended; the government proposals solidified indigenous opposition to government policy, transcending the local and ethnic differences that had previously divided the widely dispersed indigenous populations of both countries. After a year of intense lobbying for public support by both the indigenous organizations and the Colombian government, the original proposal was withdrawn. (Note 61)

The government's revised proposal-also unacceptable to the indigenous leadership-was the main topic of Colombia's first national indigenous conference, held in Lomas de Hilarco, Tolima, in October 1980. Participants established a "National Coordinating Junta" to prepare the consolidation of indigenous organizations at the regional level with a view toward unifying a national indigenous movement. (Note 62) In 1982 the National Organization of Indians of Colombia (ONIC) was founded to coordinate national efforts from its headquarters in Bogot(. The majority of activity in the indigenous movement, however, continues to occur at the community level. (Note 63) In 1977, a rival organization to the CRIC was established, Governors on the March, which later changed its name to Southwest Indigenous Authorities. In 1991, it changed its name to the Indigenous Authorities of Colombia (AICO). (Note 64) The growing importance of culture and tradition in the indigenous movement deepened the split between the ethnically organized cabildos, represented by AICO, and the more pan-Indian, regionally based movement, headed by the CRIC, although the latter had always included cultural revindications in its program. The unity of the indigenous movement also is continuously challenged by the extreme isolation of many indigenous communities, some of which are only accessible by boat or plane and lack mail service and telephones. Regional and ethnic differences are also important in setting the differing priorities of regional movements. (Note 65)

The success of the indigenous organizations in recuperating their lands elicited an immediate repressive response from landowners in the region, backed up by expanded paramilitary forces. In 1975, landowners founded the Cauca Regional Agrarian Committee (CRAC), which, with the support of local authorities, repressed indigenous political organizing with impunity over the next decade. By 1978, 80 CRIC leaders had been assassinated, (Note 66) and by the end of the 1990s, over 400 Colombian indigenous leaders had been murdered by landowners, guerrillas, or drugtraffickers. (Note 67) Violence between Indians and landowners was compounded by the expansion of armed insurgencies in the 1970s. The oldest guerrilla organization in Colombia, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), bases its operations in the Cauca. Indian communities became the target of violence on the part of guerrillas trying to force the Indian organizations to support the insurgency, and the military and police, who believed the Indians supported the guerrillas. Official harrassment following the state of siege declared by the government in 1978 included ordinances against travel and political organization activities, as well as the incarceration and torture of Indian leaders. (Note 68) In order to protect themselves from the spiralling violence, in the early 1980s Cauca Indians formed the QuintRn Lame, an armed organization, to defend the communities and their leaders. (Note 69)

Democratization

By the 1980s, pressure had developed to redistribute political power and expand the hegemony of the negotiated two-party alternating system of elite rule. As in Brazil, "the process of constitutional reform opened a space into which issues about ethnicity and nationality could be thrust." (Note 70) President Virgilio Barcos Vargas (1986-1990) pursued a policy of decentralizing and de-concentrating political power in Colombia, building on the plans of his predecessor Belisario Betancur (1982-1986). The first direct mayoral elections were held in 1988, and plans were made for a constitutional assembly in 1990, charged with reform of the 1886 Constitution. (Note 71) Participants represented the various political parties, as well as the armed insurgencies with whom the government was trying to negotiate an end to hostilities. As a result of a decade of organizing at the regional level, Indians were elected to two seats in the 70-seat Constitutional Convention, in addition to the one granted to the QuintRn Lame, which had been negotiating a peace settlement with the government. (Note 72) The two indigenous seats were held by leaders of ONIC and the Indigenous Authorities of Colombia (AICO), together representing 40 local and regional organizations. In addition to the official delegates, a delegation of 36 cabildo governors from Tolima and Cauca, along with representatives of several indigenous and campesino organizations in those departments, attended sessions of the Constitutional Assembly in June of 1991. (Note 73)

The Constitutional Assembly coincided with the Indian organizations' preliminary planning meetings for the quincentennary. The 500 Years of Resistance Campaign was officially launched at an international meeting in Bogot( in 1989. Publicity surrounding that conference helped to generate sympathy for indigenous peoples in Colombian society immediately prior to the constitutional reform.

The provisions protecting indigenous culture, territories, and rights that the Indian delegates were able to secure in the July 4, 1991, Constitution are truly revolutionary. Article 176 created a Special Electoral District (CEE) for two indigenous seats in the 102-seat senate. Under Article 286, indigenous lands are recognized as Indigenous Territorial Entities (ETIS) and indigenous communities are granted a range of autonomous powers to define their own development strategies, choose their own authorities, and administer public resources, including local and national taxes. (Note 74) According to Jesds Avirama, a leader of the CRIC, the Indians were able to play such a prominent role in the constitutional process due to the disarray and disunity of the union and popular movements, the devolution into violence of the armed groups on the left, and corruption and division within traditional parties. The indigenous movement demonstrated greater unity and organizational cohesion than much larger sectors, and was seen as the only "clean" sector that could present a political alternative. (Note 75)

The Indigenous Social Alliance (ASI) was created in 1991 to contest the first elections following the reforms and unites indigenous with peasant, black, and urban organizations, primarily in the Andean region. It also incorporated demobilized members of the defunct QuintRn Lame. (Note 76) The ASI differs from the other two indigenous organizations in its policy of solidarity with non-indigenous groups. In 1992, three different indigenous lists were put forward for the senate and chamber of deputies elections: two, representing ONIC and AICO, ran under the special Indian district, while the ASI competed in the national race. As a result of the unexpected success of the ASI, in 1992, Indians were elected to three rather than the two constitutionally mandated seats in the senate, and five Indians won seats in the lower chamber. Once in congress, however, because of their small number in the senate, and to the political inexperience of the indigenous representatives, they have not been able to accomplish as much as they had hoped. (Note 77) According to one of the first Indian senators, Gabriel Muyuy Jacanamejoy of ONIC, their work was also hampered by the lack of resources necessary to travel around the country and consult with indigenous communities. (Note 78)

Following the exhilarating success of the 1992 elections for the indigenous movement and the attention given indigenous issues during the quincentennary year, the movement hit an impasse. Electoral participation became, in the words of a past ONIC president, "one of the worst headaches that the indigenous movement in Colombia has endured." (Note 79) Eight different indigenous lists contested the 1994 elections, with three registered in the special Indian district, and five registered as parties in the National Electoral District, reflecting the many splits within an indigenous movement that represents a population of at most 700,000 persons. According to Palma and GutiJrrez of ONIC, the vote is split even within particular ethnic groups, voters do not know for whom to vote, and abstention is high. As a result, in 1994, only two Indians won senate seats. Although literacy was removed as a voting requirement in the 1930s, high abstention among blacks and Indians, because of their remote location and the low presence of the civilian state in rural areas, persists. This is not unusual, however, given a total abstention rate of 70 percent for the 1994 congressional elections. (Note 80)

Mobilization of Black Organizations

Black activists also mobilized to influence the constitutional reform process. In the Cauca and on the Pacific Coast, indigenous organizations often worked to defend their land rights in conjunction with black communities, whose traditional lands also suffered increasing incursions in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, an urban elite of students and graduates on the Pacific Coast began to self-identity as black. Cimarr\n, the National Movement for the Human Rights of Black Communities in Colombia, was established in 1982 from a study group founded in 1976 by university students. The name evokes the cimarrones, runaway slaves of the colonial era, who the organization promotes as the heroes of Colombian blacks and a symbol of black resistance. It also invokes U.S. heroes like Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. (Note 81)

While deriving inspiration from the U.S. civil rights movement, Pacific Coast organizations also were influenced by the development of the Indian movement in this region and in the nearby Cauca, where black and Indian communities lived in close proximity. In the 1980s, the two ethnic groups struggled over land and natural resources as colonization and development was encouraged by the government on the Pacific Coast as part of a national strategy to cultivate trade ties in the Pacific. Noting the success of the indigenous movement in mobilizing national support networks and achieving land victories, the black movements consciously set about to emulate the agenda and rhetoric of the regional and indigenous movements. They never achieved the success of the Indians, however, due in part to the far lesser financial and logistical support they received from national and international actors. (Note 82)

Immediately prior to the Constitutional Assembly, black activists established the Coordinator of Black Communities (later, Organization of Black Communities), which advocated the type of rights for which the Indian organizations were lobbying. No black delegate was elected to the Assembly, due to a lack of financing, a split vote, and the "weak politicization of blackness in general." While both indigenous delegates elected had black advisors, blacks complained that the Indians ignored their alliance once the negotiations began and restricted their proposals to Indian issues, denying the status of blacks as an ethnic group. (Note 83) According to Carlos Rosero, a member of the Special Commission of Black Communities negotiating the implementation of the constitutional reform, black communities lack the strong and enduring organizations of indigenous communities; those that exist tend to be coopted by traditional political forces. This is the result of a history of unity among black communities based on isolation from the larger society which declined following the penetration of the state and economy in the Pacific Coast riverine region in the 1980s. (Note 84)

The 1991 Constitution gave lesser (though significant) recognition of black culture and collective rights. The collective property rights of traditional black communities occupying state lands in the Pacific region, or those similarly situated, were recognized, discrimination outlawed, and a presidential advisory board for blacks established. The law implementing the land rights legislation, promulgated in August 1993, also provided for two seats in the lower chamber for the traditional black communities. Following the signing of the constitution, blacks angry with the lesser deal they received relative to the radical gains by the Indians participated in a wave of black protest, commencing with sit-ins in the Choc(. (Note 85)

International Actors and Events

In September 4-6, 1992, the Continental Campaign, "500 years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance," met in Bogot( and issued a manifesto to the Colombian people, calling on supporters throughout the country to demonstrate against the planned official quincentennary celebrations. (Note 86) In October of 1992, tens of thousands of Indians in the Cauca staged a massive march to Popay(n. On October 9, public forces evicted 10,000 protestors from a section of the Pan-American highway near RRo Blanco, where transportation had been paralyzed by the march for 3 days. (Note87)

The most important international supporters are the human rights organizations who monitor and publicize the abysmal human rights situation in Colombia, and the development foundations of foreign governments (e.g., Canada, Sweden, the United States), which have supported economic development or leadership and human rights training by Colombian indigenous organizations. Environmental organizations have perhaps been their least influential in Colombia, where the heart of the Indian movement is in the highlands, and where the local political culture and level of acculturation of indigenous leaders has provided the movement sufficient resources to stand on its own. While blacks have derived inspiration from ideas and events in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean, they have achieved virtually no direct financial support and have few contacts with blacks in the Spanish-speaking world. Recently a series of international conferences and exchange visits sponsored by the Chicago-based Organization of Africans in the Americas has attempted to create stronger links among isolated black communities, but their efforts affect a tiny minority and they have had no impact on the capacity of blacks to mobilize themselves at the local or national level.

In the beginning, private foundations and national NGOs made an important organizational and resource contribution to the Indian movement. According to Jesds Avirama, the goals of those organizations have since diverged from those of the indigenous movement, particularly with respect to environmental organizations, which fail to take into account the development needs of indigenous communities and focus on the Amazon or Pacific Coast, ignoring Indians in less ecologically interesting areas. In addition, indigenous leaders resent the behavior of some non-Indian activists who present themselves to outsiders as the Indians' representatives and who become involved in divisive internal squabbles. (Note 88) Thus, currently, national NGOs are not very important to the political vitality of the Colombian indigenous movement. (Note 89)

CONCLUSION

In both Brazil and Colombia, democratization and the active political engagement of organizations were at different times both independent and dependent variables. The democratization process was a major impetus to the political organization of ethnic groups, which were able to secure unprecedented rights and autonomy under new constitutions. At the same time, the vibrant ethnic organizations that emerged in the 1970s to protect land rights participated in the 1980s to enrich the plurality of voices opposed to the status quo, helping to enlarge the political rights and informal participation of excluded groups. The idea of the oppressed but undaunted and visually exciting Indian captured the national imagination and helped to reshape national identity as both countries were swept up in the energy of dramatic political change. (Note 90)

In both countries the most important catalysts to the creation of indigenous organizations and the consolidation of a unified national political movement were attacks by national elites on indigenous land tenure rightsCeither through forced invasion of Indian territory or proposals to change protective laws; and the opportunity to codify new indigenous rights in national laws and constitutions. In Colombia, participation in the first elections following the constitutional reform inspired indigenous political activity, but interest in electoral participation dropped precipitously in the next elections. In Brazil, constant efforts by elites since the 1988 constitutional reform to roll back indigenous rights and prevent the implementation of land demarcation is the main focus of activity among indigenous communities and their supporters.

The timing of the emergence of indigenous groups does not support the theory that indigenous political activity was motivated by dissatisfaction with citizenship rights. In its formative stages, the CRIC rejected an approach that emphasized citizenship rights in favor of a strategy stressing the recuperation of the communal land rights enshrined in Law 89 of 1890 (still in effect)Cdespite the fact that this law equated Indian civil rights to that of minors and included other demeaning language. (Note 91) As Marta Teresa Findji explains with regard to the Indigenous Authorities Movement in southwest Colombia, the protagonist of indigenous movements is not the citizen, but the community:

At the core of the Indigenous Authorities Movement's struggle is the defense of the concept of community as a guiding cultural model and an alternative to the citizenCthe plain, dispossessed individual of the large, crowded cities, who is invited to 'participate' in a power actually held by others. (Note 92) In short, indigenous peoples do not seek merely the creation of pluralist government institutions but, rather, seek the transformation of the state and society into a pluricultural democratic model, based on collective and communal rights and incorporating spheres of ethnic autonomy. Thus, the correlation between the democratic transition and the rise of ethnic organizing must be analyzed with care.

In Brazil, the indigenous movement, though clearly led by indigenous leaders and communities themselves, was profoundly dependent on national human rights organizations and international environmental NGOs in the face of a juggernaut of conservative opposition to indigenous land rights. The relationship between Colombian Indians and international actors has been less important than in Brazil. The heart of the Colombian indigenous movement is in the Cauca valley, an area of lesser interest to northern environmental groups. The Cauca provided a superb leadership base, blending a history of autonomous Indian cabildo government over a significant land base, with a history of acculturation among a sector of the Indian population with the education and political sophistication to form a collaborative partnership withCrather than a dependency onCnational nonindigenous actors. While in Brazil international pressure has been crucial to prodding the national government to codify and uphold indigenous constitutional rights, in Colombia, international pressure had a neglible impact on the political gains made by indigenous organizations.

International events were important to mobilizing and sustaining the energies of indigenous communities in both countries, but different events were crucial for each. The 1992 UNCED conference was the most important for Brazilian Indians, being located in Brazil and stressing the relationship between indigenous rights and protection of the environment. In Colombia, the 500 Years of Resistance Campaign was most influential in creating a positive image of indigenous people and culture in indigenous communities, in the media, and in society at large. Both national movements have gained sustenance from multiple contacts with their counterparts in neighboring countries, with the Colombian Indians better able to take advantage of such opportunities for networking, because of their speaking of Spanish (as opposed to Portuguese or an autochthonous language), and their proximity to vibrant movements in Ecuador and Panama, and the cheaper and more direct air and bus travel possible from Bogot(.

It is impossible to conclude from this study the relative impact of external versus internal variables on the success of indigenous politics. It can be assumed, however, that the intensity and breadth of indigenous ethnic identity among the native population of Colombia and Brazil was instrumental in the survival of this population as a distinct cultural group for centuries under the most adverse conditions. The impact of identity can be demonstrated in part by looking at the lesser achievements of much larger black populations in Brazil and Colombia, who were less able to take advantage of the democratic opening or to forge inter-American networks of solidarity. Explanations for the failure of black organizations to form and thrive under similar conditions of repression, forced assimilation, and economic, social, and political marginalization, generally highlight problems in the black community in these countries. Scholars cite the difficulty of defining or identifying an extremely heterogeneous population that is not accustomed to perceiving itself in ethnic or racial terms, the sheer multiplicity of terms describing varying shades of blackness and browness, and state and elite policies that enforce a notion of racial democracy or a national image of a singular mixed-race ideal.

Another factor that may be important in explaining differences between black and Indian political action is the differential legal status between the two populations. Some abolition blacks have had no special legal status or state programs created for their protection or benefit. On the other hand, Indians in Brazil and Colombia and the majority of Western Hemisphere countries have, since the conquest, had their ethnicity institutionalized formally in a series of colonial-era decrees, special constitutional articles, and government agencies. While much of this legal detritus is archaic and demeaning, the precedent it set of special status for Indians provided the foundation of indigenous political strategy.