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Bolivia

Isolation

In South America's Gran Chaco, voluntarily isolated indigenous groups are still dodging the rampant development of the region, and with good reason: those that have already come out have found that even greater isolation awaits them.

Land and Resources

With a population estimated at 40 to 50 million and with 400 identified ethnic and linguistic groups, indigenous peoples represent approximately 10 percent of Latin America’s population. Although their demography varies from state to state (in Bolivia and Guatemala indigenous people constitute the vast majority of the population, while in Venezuela and Brazil they represent approximately 1 percent of the total population), indigenous peoples throughout the region share a common experience: social and economic discrimination.

Review: The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America

The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America is a collection of seven separate country case studies and is the result of a 2003 conference at Cochabamba that discussed the diversity of indigenous struggles throughout the region. The subject countries are Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change Drafts Indigenous Peoples Declaration

Date: 05/10/2010

World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, organized by the Bolivian government, was held in Cochabamba, Bolivia April 19-22, 2010 as a response to failed climate talks in Copenhagen during the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP 15) climate meetings in December 2009.

The conference's objective was to provide an alternative platform for civil society and governments to discuss climate change issues, and specifically to produce proposals for new commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and projects in the lead up to the next UN climate negotiations sch

World Peoples’ Conference On Climate Change: Indigenous Peoples Declaration

Date: 05/10/2010

Mother Earth can live without us, but we can’t live without her.
We, the Indigenous Peoples, nations and organizations from all over the world, gathered at the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Earth, from April 19th to 22nd, 2010 in Tiquipaya, Cochabamba, Bolivia, after extensive discussions, express the following:


We Indigenous Peoples are sons and daughters of Mother Earth, or “Pachamama” in Quechua.

The Current State of International Law

Largely as a result of their own advocacy at the international level, indigenous peoples are now distinct subjects of concern within the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and other international institutions. Through their efforts over the last three decades especially, indigenous peoples have been able to generate substantial international sympathy for their demands.

Indigenous Leader Elected President of Bolivia

In the election of December 18, 2005, Bolivians made history, as 54 percent of the country’s voters chose Evo Morales, the Aimara leader of the combative coca-growers’ unions. “500 years of campaigning and popular resistance by indigenous people has not been in vain,” Morales said at his inauguration.

Bridging the Gap

During the first United Nations International Decade on the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004), there were a number of positive developments for the world’s indigenous peoples. Many countries adopted legislation concerning land, resources, culture, language, education, justice, intellectual property rights, and in some instances, legal pluralism, autonomy, and self-governance. In 1989, just before the decade began, the International Labor Organization adopted Convention #169 on indigenous and tribal peoples, and since 1996 the U.N.

Water Law and Indigenous Rights in the Andes

    In Andean countries, widespread protests over violations of traditional rights have resulted in
    creative reform proposals to secure indigenous water rights and water system management.

 

For Rosa Guamán, indigenous leader in the Licto district in Ecuador, as for most campesinos and indígenas in the Andean countries and in Latin America, water rights express more than just the access to a crucial resource.

Politics in the Andes

Politics in the Andes, a series of social science essays, presents a unique comparative analysis of the ongoing research of several international authors in five Andean countries- Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia- a region rarely examined by scholars. Three main issues of concern for the region are brilliantly examined: social movements and the struggle for identity, conflict and violence, and democracy and political change.

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