Paso suspected the reason for this neglect, and it became clear when one health official told Paso that he was not fit to wash dishes in their office because he was an indigenous Quechua speaker, an ethnic group at the bottom of the social order in the scenic region of Cusco. Paso was so discouraged that he almost believed him.
"I was lost," says Paso, now 37, married, and the father of three young boys. "I did not know what culture I belonged to."
Racism, and the discrimination it breeds, erodes the self-respect of the highland indigenous people of Peru. They turn away from their culture and slowly drop their traditional ways of living and working that are so well suited to the Andes. As a result, indigenous people are among the poorest in the country. Paso could see it around his village: farmers like him were not following their traditions of helping each other in their fields; they were poor and ashamed of their culture.
To get some perspective, Paso visited the Centro de Bartolomé de Las Casas, known by its initials CBC, because he had heard on the radio that it was running a bilingual education program designed to help indigenous leaders like him reconcile their place in Peru, learn about their human rights, and develop skills to represent their community with government officials. He joined the program and began learning to read and write in his own Quechua language as well as in Spanish, and he is now more confident in his ability to function in his own indigenous world and the official, Spanish-speaking culture of Peru.
With grants from Oxfam America, CBC had just finished a year-long consultation with Quechua-speaking community leaders and had jointly developed a curriculum designed to help young leaders value their own culture while operating in Peru's modern, post-colonial culture. "We have created a way to help people see they are part of one culture, but they recognize the other," says Nicolette Velarde, an anthropologist at CBC. She says this helps the community leaders create a "dialogue of respect and recognition of one culture with the other."
"Both are valuable," Velarde says. "I am different from you, you are different from me, but there is dialogue and respect."
After developing the curriculum, CBC is now in the midst of training its first group of leaders, which included Paso and 30 others from Cusco and Apurimac.
One of them is Guillermina Mamani Huamán, 53, a mother of four and grandmother of seven. She had a similar experience to Paso's the first time she visited the city of Cusco, 15 years ago. "It was the first time I ever left my village ... Every time I think of it I get emotional," she says, sitting at her loom, staked out on the ground on the banks of the Mapuche River rushing past her father and sister's house.
Huamán went to Cusco to ask a government agency for help in marketing artisan products, but, over the course of four days, she was repeatedly denied the courtesy of even a short consultation. She struggled to find her way in the city, unable to read the street signs, frustrated by her illiteracy, and discouraged by her confrontation with institutionalized racism.
Indigenous women get little help from government agencies whose mission is to assist them. And indigenous women have special problems, even within their own culture, in that men do not always respect the work they do in their homes, and artisan women find that their handicrafts do not fetch a very high price. Huamán intends to learn how to better promote indigenous artisanry and build respect for the work of women. "We need to value fairly what we produce," she says. "This traditional way of weaving is the fruit of our culture, and every weaving has its own character—each woman puts in the way she sees the world."
Paso and Huamán and all the other leaders are planning how they will use their newfound knowledge and leadership skills. Paso is planning to run for public office so he can better represent his community and ensure it gets the schools, health care, and clean water it deserves, without forsaking its cultural identity.
Huamán wants to continue her work to promote the handicrafts produced by women in her community so that they can be more financially independent. "I want to help women educate their children," she says while weaving next to the rushing river, "so they can read and write, and not face the discrimination that I have."
]]>"In the past, indigenous people, especially those from the lowlands in Bolivia, lived in [conditions of] slavery, without any knowledge of their rights. This was mostly in the era of the rubber boom, when their ancestral lands were taken from them and they were forced to work in the rubber fields. Later on, during the era of the creation of large ranch estates, or haciendas, they also worked 14-plus-hour days, were whipped, and died trying to escape. Some of them were able to escape and hide out in inhospitable lands with little water. But in these places they were able to maintain their culture, like in the case of the Chiquitanos of Lomerio.
"The law in Bolivia, as well as the constitution, didn't recognize their rights. For example: The Agrarian Reform law of 1953 referred to them as forest people living like savages and required them to have a legal guardian in order to gain access to land. The concept of indigenous identity was totally unrecognized. The state, which was motivated by mono-cultural, integrationist, and colonialist ambitions, failed to recognize the indigenous people. To gain access to lands they were required to form a peasant union. Then they could get individual parcels of land of 50 hectares (about 124 acres) per family, which ignored the collective vision of land tenure of the indigenous people. Up until the 1980s, indigenous people were prohibited from walking on the sidewalks. They were referred to by the derogatory term, paicos.
"So they decided to organize themselves as an indigenous community starting in 1985, to demand their rights. Foremost were the right to dignity, and the right to their land. That was fundamental to them—as they said, 'without land there is no life.' They said that their land was the key to life for the indigenous people, and that it would allow them to recuperate and once again value their cultural identity. In 1990 the indigenous movement convened an historic march in Bolivia, called the First Indigenous March for Land and Dignity. This marked the movement's emergence from the underground, to make its demands known. And the Chiquitanos participated in this.
"The Chiquitano people have consolidated their territory, and have gone from being excluded by the state to being recognized by it. Now the local authorities treat them equally. There is still some discrimination, but now indigenous people occupy local positions of power. Never before were there indigenous mayors; now there are. There are senators, representatives in the constitutional assembly, and congressional representatives. It's not enough, but there has been some progress. For example, in the constitutional assembly there are four indigenous members, two of whom are Chiquitanos. There is more work to be done, but now the lowland indigenous people are represented. That, along with the consolidation of their territory, gives them more security; they can access more local power and exercise their rights.
"In 1889, indigenous people from all over the country were taken to work on rubber plantations. The Tacana Indians were taken from north of La Paz to the rubber forests. And here in Santa Cruz the indigenous people were captured and taken. They tell stories of how they'd be invited to big parties, where they'd be given alcohol and told that they should go work the rubber, that there was a boom and that they'd be paid well. Some accepted and went. Others went as indentured workers. On their way to the barracks they weren't given anything to eat, some even died in jaguar attacks.
"Men and women worked there, some as young as 12. They tell stories of how they were forced into couples to have children to satisfy the need for workers. They were given one piece of clothing to use year round and they worked all day long. If they didn't come back with what the boss had ordered they would be whipped by the foreman. Many died trying to escape. There is one place everyone calls 'the tragedy,' because an entire family of indigenous people who attempted to escape was killed there.
"After the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th century, the estates, known as haciendas, became the new development model in the country. But they were very traditional, feudal style haciendas, where everyone worked for the owner. They produced sugar cane and yucca, which was taken from the communities and sent to Santa Cruz to be sold on the national market. Indigenous people worked 15-, 16-hour days, they were whipped, and there was forced labor. There was also indentured servitude in which you were hired and your basic needs were provided for. They gave you clothes and you could have dried meat, lard, and salt. They wrote down in a book everything you took and at the end of the year the owner balanced the books. Many couldn't read or write, but they were told, for example, 'your work has earned you 100 pesos, but you spent 200 pesos at the company store and so you owe me 100 pesos.' So they'd have to stay and work another year for free—you'd never work off your debts.
"When the Agrarian Reform Law was passed in 1953, stating that land belonged to the people who worked on it, there was an article of the law that was very important to the indigenous people: It prohibited forced labor and slavery. In the western highlands the indigenous people took over the haciendas and the law was applied quickly. But in the eastern lowlands it was a long time before the law was applied. It wasn't until 1965 that people started leaving the haciendas and some owners refused to let the workers go saying that they were indebted to them. So the government had to intervene and it wasn't until nearly 1970 that they were able to form new communities and assert their identity."
]]>Charupá does not seem particularly worried, as he is used to the uncertainties of raising cattle. Moreover, he is confident about the long-term prospects of his community: in June of 2007, the president of Bolivia announced that the Chiquitano people had successfully completed all legal requirements to attain title to a vast area of Santa Cruz's eastern forest known as Monte Verde.
The indigenous people took advantage of an agrarian reform law passed in 1996 that allowed them to claim "original community territories" known by their Spanish initials as TCOs. The Monte Verde TCO has immense significance for the Chiquitano people. Their ancestors were moved out of Monte Verde in the 1700s by the Spanish and relocated to communities run by Jesuit priests. Chiquitanos were enslaved on haciendas and eventually forced to tap rubber trees in the early 20th century. The area near Charupá's village is part of San Antonio de Lomerío, a place of refuge for escaped slaves. Their descendents organized groups to work on the legal claim for their territory, while illegal logging decimated their forests.
It took more than a decade of hard work and sustained Oxfam support for the Chiquitano people to achieve their goal. Oxfam helped three local organizations, in Lomerío, San Javier, and the village of Monte Verde to coordinate their work and collaborate with the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (known by its Spanish initials CEJIS) to get the technical training to gather satellite positioning data on the TCO borders and investigate 158 land claims by ranchers and other nonindigenous people trying to grab a piece of the territory. Only a small number of these claims were legitimate, and it was only through the legal support, technical data, and satellite photos gathered by the community members and CEJIS that the Chiquitanos could defend their claim from these interlopers, some of whom were using forged documents.
Violence has been a continuous threat to the Chiquitano people for the last 200 years. Individuals forced into slavery were murdered if they tried to escape, and later when the ancestors of escaped slaves in Lomerío organized to win back their territory, their leaders were intimidated and attacked. "We heard of incidents in other communities where entire families had been pulled out of their houses and hung by their wrists under trees," Juan Soqueré, leader of the indigenous Chiquitano community in San Lorenzo said.
Opposition to the land investigations and the legal process from civic committees, representing nonindigenous business and ranching interests opposed to the indigenous people, became violent. When the land investigations exposed fraudulent claims, there was a strong reaction. One of the worst incidents involved Leonardo Tamburini, now 41 and the director of CEJIS. In 2001 while investigating one fraudulent claim, he was kidnapped.
"They beat me so badly they almost killed me," Tamburini said. "They put me in a pick-up truck, and took me to the Cattlemen's Association headquarters in San Javier—which is next door to the church. They had me there for about an hour. There was a cattlemen's congress going on, and they paraded me around the patio of the restaurant, all beat up and bloody, saying 'This is what we do to the people who want to take our land away from us.'"
Tamburini refused to sign a document recognizing the cattlemen's claim to half the territory of Monte Verde, and after the mayor of San Javier intervened he was released. "They didn't accomplish what they wanted," he said.
Juan Soqueré said that gaining the legal title to Monte Verde has brought peace for the Chiquitano. "There are no more threats. And those that threatened us before have left the territory, and now we are all calm, living in peace."
There are 33 communities, comprising roughly 5,000 people living in or near the Monte Verde TCO. They are now looking to the future and envisioning the best ways to manage and enjoy the roughly 3,830 square-mile territory.
Lorenzo Charupá says such planning will be essential for the future. "We are deciding together what areas are for crops," he says. "We are setting aside areas for grazing, hunting, and to preserve trees. We have a map showing all the different areas and what we will do there. Everything has its place."
José Luis Rivera, president of the indigenous organization of San Javier, says they have several ways of making more money:
With the legal title in hand, the community has the confidence to make proposals to development organizations that might have otherwise been reluctant to support agricultural projects on lands the community did not legally own. "These institutions will have no doubt we can do these projects on our own land," Rivera says. "We have the right to our land and can respect our culture."
Outside Rivera's temporary office, his compañeros are building a new office to replace the one burned down by thugs last December. The walls are up, and the smell of sawdust mixes with the wood smoke and cooking scents from a nearby restaurant. Pablo Solis Chuviru, 57, is looking at the new building and reflecting on the struggle to gain the legal title to Monte Verde and what it means for the future for his small village, Turuxnapez, which means "Heaven's Door" in the local Bésiro language. "I hope we can hunt and fish, and use our trees in an orderly way," he says, resting in a chair in the winter sun. "Now we are using a forest management plan so that our children will benefit from the forest. This is the future for them; they can see the fight we won. For them it is a treasure."
]]>At 39, he’s content there—even if he doesn’t have enough money to build his animals a shed to protect them from the cold and snow. That will come in due time, he says. For now, he’s focused on another project that has helped to make his life in these remote mountains a little more secure: the field of barley growing on a steep slope near his hut.
That barley, soon to be harvested and carefully stored in a giant pit not far from the field, represents a lifeline for the 100 head of alpaca from which Gonzalez and his family make their living. The nutrient-rich grass will help tide his herd over should severe cold and snow damage their pasturelands again, as it did—with devastating consequences—in the winter of 2004.
With the help of Oxfam America and its local partner, Asociación Proyección, herders in this rugged region of southern Peru have learned how to seed and harvest small plots of barley and oats at an altitude some people thought was just too high to yield a productive crop. They were wrong.
“Two-and-a-half years ago we came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” said Arturo Rivera Vigil, the field coordinator for Proyección. Today, small patches of deep green barley and oats dot the mountain plains, a buffer against future disasters.
“It has changed all of their lives,” said a translator, speaking for Gonzalez.
“The most important thing now is they can harvest and save the grasses for when the wind and snow hit,” said Simon Quispe Chipa, the mayor of nearby Caylloma, who has been supportive of the program. “Before the project, they couldn’t do anything to save the grasses.”
With the help of the two agencies, villagers planted a total of 110 hectares—about 272 acres—with barley. Family plots are more than half an acre in size—large enough to produce sufficient fodder to help sustain their animals through the roughest weather between May and September. The yield was about 23 tons per family. And since the first successful season, the families and the wider Caylloma community have been buying the seeds themselves, without the assistance of the two agencies.
The mayor has stepped in to help. Shoving open the door to a storage room in the Caylloma town hall—about a three-hour drive from Chiosiri—he showed off a huge stack of sacks. They bulged with barley seeds, filling the air with a sweet, earthy smell. The local government has been buying the seeds in bulk at a low price and selling them at cost to community members.
But it’s not just the barley that is helping to keep the region’s alpaca herds strong. Oxfam and Proyección have also been working with the community on restoring and expanding 272 acres of swampy natural pastures on which the livestock grazes.
By digging a series of narrow channels at a slight slope, villagers have fed water down into the pastures, allowing them to thrive and expand--with the help of clover they also planted.
Speaking through an interpretor, the mayor, Quispe, emphasized the importance of these simple, but vital projects.
“He knew how important it was to have shelter and improve the planting and seeding,” said the interpretor. “He knew that people living here didn’t have a chance to get a better quality of life, and felt strongly the people should improve their lives where they live.”
]]>In a place where there is no electricity to run a pump, where llamas instead of trucks transport many of the goods, and where most people rely on a local spiky grass for their cooking fuel, gravity is the free and super-abundant energy source that is now powering Simon Ccalachua's sprinkler. And beneath the arc of water it sprays, a new growth of hardy rye grass is now sprouting—the guarantee that Ccalachua's alpacas will have the nourishment they need.
Here in Jachaña, a small hamlet in the district of Caylloma, Oxfam America and its local partner, Asociación Proyección, have launched a pilot project aimed at helping poor herders find ways to improve their resources so they can better withstand the hardships of mountain living—the cold, the snow, the remoteness. The sprinkler systems—there are now three scattered around the district—are part of a larger program that has helped 355 families in the area with everything from veterinary services to the production of high-altitude barley for their animals. The effort is part of Oxfam America's strategy to help Andean communities adapt to climate change, some signs of which are already apparent.
"They used to rely on nature and now they know how to work on channels and sprinkling," said a translator, summarizing the benefits for Ccalachua. "Before this project, the mortality of the animals (was very high). Now the mortality is 3 to 10 percent".
Using the resources at hand—a mountain spring and the pull of gravity—the agencies worked with Ccalachu to irrigate about two-and-a-half acres of his sloped, rocky land. Well-watered and well-fertilized (naturally, with alpaca droppings), a pasture that size is big enough to keep 20 alpacas happily nourished, said Arturo Rivera Vigil, the field coordinator for Proyección. The trick is to fence off portions of the pasture after the animals have grazed, allowing the grasses to recover. By the time the herd completes a full rotation, the grass where they started will be ready to eat again.
The system has a number of benefits, said Rivera. The robust diet the animals get encourages them to produce more wool. Instead of one or two pounds of wool, each alpaca can produce between two and four pounds—which in turn means more income for herding families. Keeping watch over the animals in a fenced pasture is a great deal easier for a herder than following them high and low as they roam freely looking for natural grasses, added Rivera. And the mechanism is easy fairly easy to construct: A small reservoir above the field, lined with plastic, is connected it to a pipe running down the hill. With the twist of a valve, the reservoir opens and the water gushes down through a pipe, shooting through slow-spinning sprinklers set in a line across the field.
The only stumbling block is cost. The price tag on each of these sprinkler systems is $1,625, and that doesn't include the cost of the machinery used to help dig the small reservoir.
"That's why (Caylloma) City Hall has to get involved," said Angel Chavez, an Oxfam America humanitarian officer who has worked on the project. Using tax dollars, local government needs to help support these kinds of projects, he added.
That's what the people of Jachaña want too—more sprinklers like the one Ccalachua has. A few pipes hooked to a few small reservoirs could go a long way toward improving the resilience of these mountain families. And though life at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level can be hard, there is no other place some herders can imagine living.
"There is no pollution. The water is nicer. And we have open fields," said Timoteo Ccalahua Quispe.
This activity is part of Oxfam America's adaptation strategy on climate change in Andean communities where already there are some signals of the climate change effects.
]]>It’s the kind of place Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, are working in now—at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level in air so thin that newcomers lose their breath and no other aid agencies have the fortitude to venture.
The place is the district of Caylloma, and the people who live here are alpaca herders. Oxfam’s mission is to make sure that when trouble does come—as it has in the past and surely will again because of the changing weather patterns families in these Andean hamlets are already grappling with—they will be prepared to cope.
Three years ago, after a severe cold snap wiped out tens of thousands of llamas and alpacas across Peru’s southern highlands, Oxfam and Proyección joined forces to find a way to prevent a repeat of the suffering people experienced then. Their proposal—a form of disaster risk reduction—included a range of self-help ideas, a smattering of technology, and the most important tool of all: planning.
Today, acres of barley now grow on the slopes—a buffer against food shortages for livestock. New adobe sheds with metal roofs stand in some of the coldest mountain pockets, offering critical shelter for alpacas that had none before. Gravity-fed sprinklers irrigate enclosed pastures of rye grass, guaranteeing a steady source of nourishment for animals. And a handful of radio towers dot the district, connecting far-flung hamlets with the world at large.
Simon Ccalachua, who lives in the little village of Jachaña, put it this way. Without this project, nothing would have changed for him and his family. They had no choice but to accept what nature brought, good or bad. If the cold came, their animals died. But now, armed with new ways of growing the grasses their alpacas need and a way to shelter them, families like Ccalachua’s can overcome the troubles nature brings—on their own.
For Arturo Rivera Vigil, a field coordinator for Proyección, the importance of equipping people with tools to solve their own problems was a lesson he learned the hard way, and one he vowed to share with Caylloma.
Working in another region of Peru during a different emergency, Proyección decided that the best approach would be to provide direct aid to the families in need. So the agency purchased vast quantities of dried alfalfa to help feed the livestock on which those families depended. But that commodity was in short supply because of the emergency, and instantly, its price nearly tripled. Nevertheless, Proyección moved ahead with its plan, delivering tons of alfalfa to the troubled communities. But when the supplies arrived, Proyección learned there was no place in which to store it all.
“We realized we weren’t teaching anything to the communities,” Rivera said. When the cold snap paralyzed Caylloma, Proyección and Oxfam decided to take a longer-term approach—and find sustainable solutions to the problems rather than offer a temporary fix.
But that decision required a new way of looking at the situation: Could there possibly be things communities could do to prepare for disasters at such high altitudes?
“The typical thinking was people living up so high were so remote and had their own culture and own system of raising animals,” said Rivera. “No one thought they could help them, and no one thought anything could grow up that high.”
Proyección and Oxfam proved them wrong.
“We came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” Rivera told a crowd during a recent ceremony at the Caylloma town hall honoring the project’s high-altitude accomplishments for 355 families. “Three years later, here we are.”
Oxfam and Proyección have helped Caylloma take solid first steps towards addressing a problem that is all too familiar to poor people living in precarious places around the world: When something goes wrong in their environment, they suffer the most.
Cataclysmic events—deep freezes, drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—only turn into disasters when people get caught in them and have few means for managing the consequences. That has been the case in the Caylloma district.
From the hamlet of Chinosiri, for instance, it’s an all-day walk down to the town of Caylloma for help. When the storm hit, assistance didn’t arrive for a week. In sturdy, four-wheel trucks, it’s a three-hour drive from Caylloma to Chinosiri along a rutted track that snakes in hairpin turns up the sides of ridges and back down through streams.
Even at the end of the summer the weather at this height is harsh. Thunder rolls over the mountain plains as hail ricochets off the stony ground. At higher elevations, snow blankets the thin pastures.
Far from one another stand tiny dwellings, made of stone or adobe with thatched roofs. Inside, small fires burn. There is not a tree or bush in sight for fuel, so families make do with dung and Ichu, a spiky grass that livestock will only eat when it’s young and tender.
Widespread poverty across the region means that beyond elementary school, there are few opportunities for learning. Students determined enough to attend one of only two high schools in the province wrestle with a good deal of hardship in pursuit of that dream. The son of Jose Gonzalez Condo, now in his second year of high school, walks four hours to get there in the morning, and another four to return home at the end of the day.
For Gonzalez, the effort his son is making is worth every step: An education will give the boy the tools he needs to live a better life—not necessarily far away in a city, but right here in Chinosiri, perhaps.
With the uncertainty that lies ahead for herding families in Caylloma, education is an important asset and it has been a component of Oxfam’s and Proyección’s disaster risk reduction program. For example, the agencies have produced a series of colorful guides on storm alert systems, the construction of livestock sheds, and improving the use of water resources.
Lately, families have begun to worry about shifting patterns of rain that are affecting the growth rate of the grasses on which their animals feed. The rains are supposed to fall in November, but for the past two or three years, they haven’t come until January, stunting the progress of the grasses. That in turn prevents them from dropping their seeds to start a new round of growth before the May ice season arrives.
Having the means to cope with the consequences of those changes—stores of barley, irrigated pastures—will go a long way toward easing the hardships people would otherwise face. And that explains the enthusiasm with which the mayor of Caylloma has embraced this disaster risk reduction project.
“A project like this can be applied to the whole province,” said Simón Quispe Chipa, the mayor. “This project has been a real motivation for the whole town.”
]]>"Caylloma. Caylloma. Caylloma," he says into the mic, and over the airwaves, not slowed for a moment by mud or steep ridges or gushing streams, comes the scratchy answer—accompanied by a big mayoral smile.
This is Chinosiri's new radio, one of four Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, have installed in remote mountain hamlets around Caylloma following a devastating cold snap and heavy snow three years ago. The storm lasted five days, dumping nearly three feet of snow in the highlands, paralyzing families of alpaca herders who make their living there, and killing the grasses on which their precious animals feed. In some of the remotest communities, help didn't arrive for 10 days.
Now, for the 70 families living close to 16,000 feet above sea level in Chinosiri, calls for emergency aid can be broadcast instantly. And on the receiving end, storm alerts, picked up via the new radio, may soon give residents of the hamlet and their far-flung neighbors a chance to get ready.
"We can keep communications with authorities both ways," says Jaime Condori Inca, Chinosiri's 27-year-old radio operator whose job it is to establish contact twice a day—at 7 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.—with the world far below his hamlet.
The radio network is part of an early warning system that is helping 355 families scattered throughout the Caylloma district prepare for future emergencies.
Training has included the compilation of a list of natural signs—much like a farmer's almanac—that could indicate a pending change in weather. What can you expect when the sky is pink in the afternoon? Frost. If you should hear a sheep bleating at night, snow is surely on its way. And about that black lizard: its color announces plentiful rain. But if the lizard is white, the rain may be in short supply.
Gleaned from generations of herders' experiences with the harsh conditions in the Andes, the list now appears in a colorful training guide published by Oxfam and Proyección and distributed widely among Caylloma residents. But as weather patterns begin to shift—during the last three years, for instance, November rains didn't come until January—mountain families need new ways of understanding their environment. And that's where the radio comes in.
With it, Condori can send details about daily changes in the local weather to a national repository that collects meteorological data as part of a long-term tracking initiative. Caylloma is working with the Meteorologist National Services and the ministry of Agriculture on the project. Environmental details are gathered with the help of a small weather station—a sturdy white box with a thermometer mounted inside—that stands just behind the radio hut. It's checked daily and the temperature, along with noticeable precipitation, is carefully recorded on a chart next to the radio.
Across the highland plains, in the hamlet of Jachaña, sits a second radio, which in turn connects with another in Chinosiri and with a fourth one in the Caylloma town hall. It's here that Proyección has a small emergency operations center equipped with a computer, a printer, first-aid supplies, and a list of all the relevant radio frequencies.
Small though the radio network may be, it represents a major step forward for Caylloma—and is testament to the commitment of the entire district. Families arranged, for instance, to carry parts of the Chinosiri weather station up the mountainsides on the backs of llamas.
"The people from every community got involved," said Danny Gibbons, Oxfam America's communications officer in Lima. "They shared the burden."
Additionally, the radio network has helped people communicate about other emergencies such as health crises and alpaca rustling as well as improved coordination among different levels of government.
]]>According to an Associated Press story, President Correa publicly pledged government support for the case, which began nearly 10 years ago in the United States and was thrown out on appeal in 2003. Since then the court in Ecuador has been conducting judicial inspections of polluted areas, gathering evidence a judge will use to make a decision, possibly in the next year.
During the same week, indigenous leaders representing the people affected by the pollution in the Orellana and Succumbios region of Ecuador attended the annual meeting for shareholders of ChevronTexaco in California. Humberto Piaguaje, a leader of the Secoya indigenous people, called for the company to resolve the case and help clean up the environment. "We want you to give us back our lives," Piaguaje said. "We want you to let us live in peace and harmony with nature. We want you to repair the damage so that our children do not have to continue suffering."
Oxfam America has supported the Amazon Defense Front's legal case for nine years, and assisted in the creation of the Assembly of Delegates of Communities Affected by Texaco, a community-based organization that has ensured those most directly affected by the pollution have a voice in the legal strategy.
"We think it is positive that President Correa has declared his support of those affected by pollution in the Lago Agrio region," said Javier Aroca, who coordinates programs related to indigenous rights for Oxfam America in South America. "We consider this is a signal that the government is interested in investigating and sanctioning those who are responsible."
"It is important to remember that the people affected are demanding compensation for almost 10 years now," Aroca said. "The pollution has affected the health of indigenous peoples and peasants... there have been cases of skin diseases and cancer. Furthermore, the lands are not as productive as they used to be, which has affected the agricultural economy. From our point of view, the government of Ecuador should support the affected population to complete the legal procedures, which are very expensive."
A win for the Amazon Defense Front in this precedent-setting case could change the landscape of the oil industry, and further establish the rights of communities to be compensated for negative social and environmental effects of oil operations.
]]>We were there, together with Angel Chavez, one of Oxfam America’s humanitarian officers, to gather stories about Oxfam’s work with alpaca herders. They had suffered serious losses in 2004 when a severe winter storm killed many of the wooly creatures that are the backbone of the local economy. So vital are these camel cousins to the well-being of the families scattered across the mountains that many of the shelters they have built for the animals are superior to their own mud-brick and stone homes.
The income from alpaca wool—softer than cashmere when it’s cleaned, spun, and woven—feeds and clothes families, buys them medicine, and helps cover the occasional extraordinary expense. Without the few hundred dollars herders earn each year from the sale of the wool, life in these barren, thin-aired mountains would not be possible for them. And for many, it’s the only life they have ever known, helping to account for Peru’s position as the world’s top producer—by far—of alpaca wool.
About 80 percent of the wool now on the market comes from this South American country; Bolivia produces another 15 percent; and the rest comes from a smattering of countries including Australia, Switzerland, and England. So you would think, given Peru’s dominance in the industry, that the work of these Caylloma herders would guarantee their families a measure of security. Not so.
There, at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level, nothing is certain: The cold kills, and changing weather patterns are robbing the region of the rain it needs for mountain pastures to grow. Life is hard, and people are very poor.
Oxfam’s work with Proyección has been to help Caylloma herders find ways to buffer themselves against future disasters by improving pastureland; planting barley to serve as an emergency reserve for their animals; and developing an early alert system, including the installation of a simple radio network—all at an altitude that has scared off just about every other aid group.
“Nobody has worked at this height,” said Rivera. “No one wants to come up here. Only us.”
There’s a reason: To reach Caylloma’s remote communities requires a degree of energy that would exhaust a lesser field coordinator and his team. But for Rivera, that challenge—and the need that is so evident among the families of this rugged terrain—is the inspiration that repeatedly draws him up the steep slopes to Chinosiri, Jachaña, and a handful of other hamlets.
From Arequipa, a city in southern Peru where Proyección has its offices, the drive in a pair of heavy-duty pickup trucks to the town of Caylloma took us about seven hours through rain, hail, and snow on a rutted mountain road—and that was just the first half of the journey. Following a night’s rest, we left at 6 a.m. for the three-hour climb to Chinosiri, the belly of our truck scraping the ruts as we inched around hairpin turns and splashed through streams carving gullies in the dirt track.
The snow was falling in fat, wet flakes, blanketing the mountains in white, when Rivera, in the truck ahead, pulled over and jumped out, signaling that this—of all high and remote spots—was just the place for a group picture.
“Beautiful!” he said, surveying the vast emptiness around us: no trees, no bushes, no dwellings—only mountains and more mountains with sharp rocks underfoot.
It wasn’t until I scrambled up the slippery bank to where Rivera and Chavez were already standing in the snow that I realized just how hard the work in Caylloma could be: Without the sea-level amounts of oxygen I was used to, a few quick steps at 15,748 feet high left me breathless and exhausted. Puffing hard, I slipped back down the embankment and into the truck, grateful to be sitting once again, and marveling at the stamina of my colleagues. Could I do this, like them, on a regular basis? Could anybody?
Rivera had already answered that question: No.
The air at the end of this Andean summer was cold and damp, and all of us in the pair of trucks were bundled in just about every stitch of clothing we had brought. I had on two shirts, a sweater, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket, a down vest, a windbreaker, thick wool socks, and a wool cap—just enough to keep the chill at bay.
So I was surprised to see, beyond the steamed windows of the warm truck, two boys hiking hard and fast through the mud on a slope of pasture: They had only sandals on their feet—no shoes, no socks to keep the cold away. They’re boys, I thought, and that’s what boys do: tough things.
But as we bounced along, there were others—men, women, children—all wearing sandals in the frigid air. And as the clouds swept across the sky, occasionally unleashing a shower of cold rain, some of the mountain dwellers hardly seemed to notice, and simply wrapped themselves tight in their woolen blankets and ponchos.
Jose Gonzalez Condo, who has lived all of his 39 years in the tiny community of Chinosiri, explained that he and his fellow villagers are used to the mountain weather and its variable conditions. Chinosiri is home, he said, and he likes it.
But as weather patterns have begun to change—the rains are coming late, which in turn delays the growth of pasture grasses and threatens the health of herds—raising alpacas at this altitude has become increasingly difficult, said Gonzalez. And in the recent past, there was no way to get the word out about challenging weather conditions—be they drought or cold waves—unless someone made the 30-mile trek down to Caylloma to ask for help. The only way to get there is on foot, and the walk takes a day.
Chinosiri’s new two-way radio, installed by Proyección in February, has connected this remotest of villages to the outside world. And with that connection has come the sliver of hope that a way of life for the 70 families there—and for more than 3,400 rural residents scattered across the Caylloma district—is now more secure.
]]>A woman in her 30s looked up from the floor, directed her gaze at me, and spoke. "Señorita," she began respectfully, yet ready to speak her part. "These projects you have helped us with are good. We are growing fish, and our gardens are healthy. But, a real concern to me is education. After completing the 6th grade here in the community, where will my children go to study?" She explained that she does not want to send them away to boarding school, but that she wants them to be educated "so that they know who they are, and what they can do." She proceeded to ask us to help them build a school.
This is a big request. I had to explain that Oxfam is not in a position to build schools in every rural Amazonian village. And once built, they need to be staffed with properly paid teachers. Schools also need books, desks, chalkboards, qualified teachers and to be maintained—every year. Funding a school from outside the community can be risky. A well-meaning donor could cover some construction and other costs. But as the years go by, if there is no viable local structure to foster education, who will be responsible for the school?
However, I continued, the people of Sensa have a basic right to quality education for their children, and we would consider supporting their efforts to claim that right in collaboration with the communities farther down the river. This would involve organizing these communities, and forming allies with others outside the Urubamba river valley. In this way they could reach out to the local and national government, who are responsible for education, and advocate for decent schools that will endure.
The contrast between the poorest indigenous people in Peru and the fantastic wealth in timber, gas, and minerals coming from their lands is stark. While the local government builds fancy offices for itself down the river in Echarate with oil and gas money, villages like Sensa, where the resources are extracted, have no electricity, telephones, or health clinic.
The indigenous people in these villages do not always understand their rights to a fair portion of these revenues in the form of basic services like health care and education. And if they do, they may not have the means to verify that they are getting their fair share. They usually lack the skills and political connections to hold accountable a government that has never shown it is open to the concerns of its native peoples.
"You do not want to be beggars, saying 'We are poor, give us money. Take care of us,'" said my colleague Igidio Naveda, himself an indigenous person from the Andes of Peru and a passionate, highly experienced program officer.
"No—you are indigenous people," he continued. "You have your culture, your traditions; you love your land. You have rights and need to demand them and ensure that they are met. And your lands: these are your home. Would you walk into someone else's home and take their things, leave a mess, disrespect the place? You should demand that the loggers in the area, the gas companies, the government workers respect your rights, and knock at the door before coming in. You need to lay out the rules and make them follow them."
Heads were nodding and people began to speak to one another in their Yine language. The group became animated, some laughing, others speaking intensely, gesturing as they sat at the wooden tables.
We concluded the meeting soon thereafter, inviting a new and more ambitious funding proposal from them, developed together with the chiefs of the other three nearby communities that had participated in the current project. A proposal like this would show that the community is moving to the next level of organization: The villagers will need to coordinate the project with other communities, and create effective ways to encourage the local government to meet its obligations. They will also have to address the illegal logging and other threats to the environment coming from outside the community.
From my perspective, last year's project was a success. It helped indigenous communities manage their local biodiversity and begin to increase their food supply. That, in turn, served as a catalyst for them to become organized and collectively determine their priorities. This greatly strengthens their control over local development efforts, and increases the likelihood that new projects they pursue will succeed.
Although they may lack the advocacy skills needed to get the government to meet its obligations to educate their children immediately, we know the right organizations that can train them. Once people know their rights and are educated, they are better able to hold their leaders accountable. This knowledge and sense of empowerment can never be taken away. It is one of the best investments you can make, because it helps people learn to solve their own problems—they create a vision for the type of future they want for their village, set their own priorities, and make sure that they are met.
Hoping to reach the next community before dark, we excused ourselves from the welcoming community of Sensa, slipping down the muddy river banks to our canoe, with children trailing us on all sides, teasing each other and, laughing, no doubt at the spectacle of the four outsiders that had come to visit. The sun had moved sideways along the river and the tree tops were shining with a golden light. As the first mosquitoes of the evening reached us in our boat, we pushed off and continued downstream, eager to see what the next community had to say.
]]>On December 15th, a delegation of Chiquitano people engaged in a protest on a main road in the area was attacked by an unknown number of people traveling to a meeting in buses. When the bus passengers encountered a road block created by the protestors they attacked them with sticks, stones and some small arms. Fifty people were injured as the indigenous people attempted to defend themselves.
That same day, the offices of indigenous organizations in the towns of Concepcion and San Javier were attacked, and several of their leaders received death threats, causing them to flee their homes. The Indigenous Central Committee of Concepcion said in a press release that 100 people attacked and destroyed the office shared by several indigenous groups there, destroying computers, cameras and other electronics, office furniture, and two motorcycles before burning the office and all files. No one from the indigenous organizations was injured in this attack.
Details of these attacks were released by the Indigenous Central Committee and the Coordinator of Ethnic People of Santa Cruz (CPESC), the Organization of Chiquitano Indigenous People (OICH), and three other organizations. The indigenous groups denounced the organizers of the attacks, mostly political and business leaders from the area objecting to the work of indigenous people's organizations to gain legal title to their ancestral lands.
Oxfam America funds the work of the OICH and CPESC groups, which are organizing the legal titling of indigenous lands in the Monte Verde region of eastern Bolivia and promoting the human rights of the indigenous peoples there.
This recent wave of well coordinated attacks on indigenous people in eastern Bolivia is just one in a series over the last several years. Bolivia has seen immense disparities between the indigenous majority (close to 80 percent of the population) and tiny elite that controls most of the natural and other resources of the country. The status quo seems likely to change under the current presidency of Evo Morales, who has demonstrated sympathies with the indigenous majority. In the first few months of his administration, he has nationalized the oil and gas industry, removed several obstacles that had slowed down indigenous land claims for decades, and agreed to re-examine fundamental clauses in the national constitution with a particular eye to the way that resources are shared across the population.
"These actions show a complete lack of respect for the human rights of indigenous people," said Gonzalo Delgado, director of Oxfam America's program in South America. "We express our solidarity with our partners in Bolivia, and hope that those responsible for these attacks will be brought to justice."
]]>For that reason Oxfam America's duty is clear: We and our project partners must help reform government policies, laws, and social injustices that deny people the right to live a decent life. We do this by providing funding, training, and the moral support people need to make real, substantive and transformative changes. The courageous and visionary people who do this work are setting out to build a movement for social justice—and Oxfam America is one of the few organizations to which they can turn for the help they need.
]]>My grandmother told us that we were many, many Secoyas, between the Rio Napo and Putamayo, near the frontier with Colombia. We must have been over 8,000 there?
At the time of the Spanish conquest many people died from measles and mumps. And even when my grandma was a little girl, she had to escape into the jungle to avoid such terrible diseases. She said that nobody came to help them; people were dying in their houses, like chickens.
Then came the rubber boom. The rubber producers held the Secoyas as slaves. Many Secoyas drank poison to liberate themselves from the indignity of forced labor. Others fled deeper into the jungle.
After all this dislocation the Secoyas regrouped in about 1970. We were only 120 people. And those remaining 120 people, along with their children and grandchildren, were the ones who had to endure the impact of the oil companies. And of those 120, I was one.
This is to contextualize what is happening today. These 120 continue to suffer. Two [just] died of cancer, and eight years ago more people died of cancer. So we wonder, for those 120 native people and their descendants, if our days are numbered too; if some sickness will take us instead of a natural death. This is to say that life is uncertain now.
The oil companies have had a significant cultural impact, especially on our territory. How we used to live—naturally, that is—is no longer natural. We are experiencing the impact of many other cultures, especially from [modern-day migration]. Before we didn't need money because we had everything we needed. There were animals and fish; there was fruit, and medicines. Everything was found in the forest. But now we must go out to buy everything.
We also need to buy notebooks and school supplies. We are now surrounded by school walls in order to learn. The education beforehand for the Secoyas began at four in the morning. The elderly people in the community worked with the young people, teaching them weaving. They also told stories, legends, which taught respect for older people.
Though we agree that education should take place in the classroom, we are not in agreement that the only thing that should be taught is what the government decides should be taught. We see that we are not educating ourselves and our children in the way that our ancestors taught us. In that sense we are losing our culture. Now the youth doesn't know about our legends and our stories and our customs. And this is why now, through our own bilingual education, we are trying to reintegrate our own values, our own cultures, and our own traditions into our education.
Another great impact is on the environment. For example, we no longer have animals because one step behind the oil companies came the colonists. And every time the colonists found an animal they had to shoot it, they had to kill it. [The animals] withdrew farther and farther away. And now we no longer have territories in which we have everything we need around us; in which we can go from one side to the other. Everything has its owner. Now there are other communities—Shuar communities and Kichwa communities—which were ours before. This is a reduction of our territory. Right now we're enclosed and circumscribed by different pacts. There is one pact with the oil company; the African palm company [harvesting hearts of palm]; the colonists; even other indigenous people who have migrated here from their ancestral homes in other provinces.
What has really damaged us is the pollution in the rivers. This is really the worst part, along with the contamination in the air and the earth itself on which we cultivate our plants and our food. These are the terrible effects that have been visited upon us.
Although we talk about remediation, I think it will be difficult to repair what has been damaged. I think perhaps we will never be able to, because even though we might repair the natural environment, modern society is here among us—on our doorstep—and we will never be able to repair that.
We have seen many new sicknesses that we didn't see in our people before. We the Secoyas knew how to cure ourselves when those sicknesses were natural sicknesses. But now, with these unknown diseases, not even the best healer among us knows how to cure them. I think if we don't now have people who really know how to cure those previously unknown diseases, if we don't resolve this case against Texaco, then the very few Secoyas that remain—about 400 of us—will lose our culture and we may be finished off by sickness or disease. Or for other reasons we will disappear bit by bit. This is what I can tell you about the impact of the oil industry on the Secoya people.
Yes there is a hope for us, in the way that we have been organizing around Texaco because the Sionas, Secoyas, and Cofanes, we are the ones who have lived here in Sucumbios. We are the original owners of these territories and we have seen all of the damage that has been done here. So we organized through some friendly organizations—they came and told us about human rights—before we knew nothing about human rights. And through friends and allies the Sionas, Secoyas, Cofanes, and Kichwas started to organize in order to bring justice to this case.
We, as one part of the affected people, believe that since we have already waited 10 years [while the case languished in the United States courts]; we could wait and continue another 10 years if necessary. This is our priority. People are saying: "If we don't get this resolved, what are we doing? If we can't drink the water from our traditional sources—then what?"
So we are newly united since the case has been presented in a court here, and now we are just waiting for the judge's decisions. We are assisted by Oxfam America and other people. We feel we are engaging in common work to ensure a future for the people who are in danger of disappearing.
We can't waste time being sorry about what has happened. We have to be able to defend and exercise the same rights as Spanish-speaking mestizo people do in our own territory.
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