1.1 Our Situation

We exist before Nation-States, with our own culture, identity, territory, Cosmo vision and spirituality. Before the European invasion, there was more than 2.000 peoples with an approximate population of 7’000.000 people. Currently, as a result of colonization and other external facts, 390 peoples live with a population of 2’779, 478, in a geographical extension of 10’268, 471 Km2, distributed within the nine countries of the Amazon Basin.

The Amazon occupation in the different appropriation stages has been characterized by the lack of knowledge of our most elemental rights. History has recognized that the disappearance of many of our peoples is linked to aggressive colonization processes and due to the exploitation of natural resources, as well as due to new diseases brought upon by foreign agents, over which we have had no defense whatsoever. The economic globalization, consequence of market policies that are extending throughout the planet, impose cruel processes of environmental and human exploitation, whose consequences are the progressive inequity, violence, war and growing misery.

The massive investment of the States and private firms in the “development” of the Amazon has generated irreversible socio-cultural changes for us. These aspects have obligated us to create a wide organized movement at the national and international level, taking advantage of our own talents. During these 22 years of public life, we’ve strengthened the inter-organizational strategies for ourselves, in a common effort of defense of our rights to territory, natural resources, identity, ancestral wisdom, spirituality, with the greatest heritage inherited from our ancestors, which have been transmitted and lent to new generations. Currently, 80% of us have organizational connections, mainly counting with Federations that link us onto a network of local, regional, national and international organizations. As a planning and collective tool, we are currently in the process of elaborating our life plans as short to long run planning guidelines. We have started with our own fundraising programs, so as to count with our future autonomy and sustainability, both of our grassroots organizations, federations and COICA. These collective efforts are made so as to effectively guarantee our territorial rights and our self-determination.

Today, we are not alone in our ancestral territories. Our territories are today rather considered like islands and little by little they are loosing their potential and some of us have come to live in other environments and diverse realities. In this way, our situation is the following: (i) indigenous communities and populations living in urban centers and in spaces that do not directly receive any social benefit from the State for being inhabited by indigenous people; (ii) peoples and communities living near cities, which are influenced by market pressures and on the need of materially-manufactured products. In cases where indigenous peoples still hold their territories, they are surrounded by farms or by colonizers and are loosing the diversity of their products, which makes it impossible for them to work on agriculture and on other benefits granted by the jungle; (iii) indigenous peoples which inhabit in territories far from urban centers, who keep connecting to agriculture, recollection of fruits and other products of the jungle. Today, we deal with great interests, we are harassed everywhere and limited to respond to so much pressure; and (iv) indigenous peoples who are not connected or that are found in “voluntary isolation”, which should be protected through access and conservation of natural resources guarantees, from which their lives depend on. (5) These peoples are the strongest of us all, since they keep on affirming their identity to maintain their freedom, however in their territories, there are resources that are being watched by powerful economic groups, while their souls rest in the eyes of religious people.

We are millions of peoples and through our organizations, such as COICA, we defend all the spaces that we interact, our ancestral and collective wisdoms, since they represent the stone where our continuance as peoples is based upon. Within it rests the collective memory that has allowed us to interact with nature that surrounds us, forming one whole unity. Additionally, in it rest our wisdoms, knowledge, biogenetic resources, and cultural manifestations, which have enabled us to have the opportunity to reach human and environmental sustainability for centuries until now. Our material and spiritual wealth are fundamental tools for the maintenance and improvement of our life conditions and welfare. COICA, inspired by the great teachings of our ancestors, defines the Amazon Indigenous Agenda as its action strategy, as its arrival and departure point where comprehensive policies meet, elaborated from the experiences found in our member organizations, our peoples and our communities throughout the Amazon. It is a process to return to the “maloca”, with which we have acquired through the interaction with other cultures and from our aspiration.

Our efforts to make ourselves be understood, especially before Nation-States’ governments, have been hard and distressful. Concerning our rights, at the international level, we have participated in global discussions on environmental issues during the last 20 years, such as the Earth Summit (Rio/92) and other fora such as the Agreement on Biological Diversity (ABD), in the World Organization on Intellectual Property (WOIP), in the Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations, in the Inter-governmental Forest Forum (IFF), in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climatic Change (CMNUCC), in the Kyoto Protocol (KP), in the World Summit on Sustainable Development (CMDS/UNDP) and in the Bio-security Protocol of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), in the Organization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (OACT), in the Development Fund of Latin America and the Caribbean’ Indigenous Peoples, in the Chiefs of States Summit and of Governments, of the Organization of American States (OAS) and other spaces of our collective interests.

Regardin the evaluation of our actions, an important step in this process has been the establishment of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs, which works at a high level within the United Nations on our most relevant issues. However, we keep on confronting new aggressions that have interests on the bio-diverse heritage of the Amazon Basin, invasions in our territories and the looting of our wealth.

We do not oppose to development, neither to research nor to the discovery of new alternatives for the continuance of humanity, however, we do want our ways of living to be respected, as well as our socio-cultural biodiversity, our wisdoms and our existence. In this sense, the concept and practices of the so-called “sustainable development” don’t adequately include the ancestral vision that we’ve ancestrally practiced, at the material and spiritual level, in a profound synchrony with nature. Therefore, the way in which “development” is currently being handled by Western civilization is not sustainable. It is rather a market system of human and environmental exploitation. Human and environmental sustainability must be the horizon to which the policies and actions of our representatives, of governments and firms, of cooperation agencies, of churches and NGOs must be aimed at, having as a goal, the elimination of poverty and not only its reduction (6).