SCENARIO
Evo Slaves in times
By James O'Donnell
In the Bolivian Chaco, near the border with Argentina and Paraguay, about 600 families currently living Guarani under conditions of contemporary forms of slavery. Says so, with all the letters, a report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), released today.
course the Bolivian Chaco is not the only place on earth, or the region, even in Bolivia, where slavery is practiced. According to the International Labor Organization, Latin America and the Caribbean, the incidence of forced labor victims is 2.5 per thousand inhabitants. But the case of the Bolivian Chaco is perhaps the most blatant and premeditated, or merely the best documented. According to the commission, the practice of slavery in this area have been ongoing more than a century, "the passivity of regional and international authorities."
What is striking is that four years of the most progressive in the region have not been able to reverse this situation. It is the government's first indigenous president in Latin America, and emerging symbol of the political struggles of social movements. Undoubtedly a government committed to the rights of indigenous peoples, which carries out the most radical land reform throughout the region.
This government has failed to end slavery in their own country, and create conditions for the Bolivian Chaco Guarani people can survive with dignity. Not that I did not try.
The IACHR report details the series of initiatives taken by the government of Morales for the Chaco Guarani, but also how various factors and actors conspire against such measures to make them slightly less than useless, and in some cases counterproductive to the interests of its intended beneficiaries.
put it wrong and soon the slave enclaves are located in territory controlled by the opposition. For that reason, the interest of landowners to maintain the status quo claim merges with the autonomy that the opposition used to obstruct the government's reforms.
Lined after the cause of opposition, farmers resist by force any attempt by the government to check abuses in situ and redistribute land for the Guarani. The situation is complicated because these farmers also form part of the political elite that governs the region. As the presence of the Bolivian state in the Chaco is almost zero, are those farmers who control the administration of justice and security.
The Commission noted that this control extends to the movement of the inhabitants of the region because most roads are crossed by gates with lock and chain, because the landowners claim them as their own. And
all this adds to the racial factor. The slaves are all Guarani and their patrons are all white. This in a country which has just approved a multi-national Constitution that recognizes the autonomy of indigenous peoples.
According to the IACHR, the practice of slavery in the Chaco were encouraged for decades by the Bolivian government, which stripped indigenous people of their land to give to big landowners. Land reform in the 50s, which transformed the whole country, went almost unnoticed in the Chaco, where the local elite managed to preserve its privileges.
"Indeed, the reform in some respects strengthened economic and political power of farmers in the Chaco, which had strong links with the ruling party, "says the report. "The Guarani were forced to submit to the conditions imposed because they had no access to their own territory, which would enable them to sustain themselves."
Without land in the poorest region of South America's poorest country, the Guarani were forced to undergo miserable payments in exchange for endless days. "Working hours are usually over 12 hours a day, and in many cases are assigned to perform a specific job must be completed on the day of slaughter, which normally is unenforceable. Guarani man Itacuatía community narrated that: "When I was a kid, I got up to go to work at three in the morning because before the bell was to work at that time '... Other witnesses confirmed that the payment they received was minimal and the treatment they received was degrading, "the report said.
That regime inevitably leads to indebtedness and submission. "The debt situation is generated through registration with the patterns of their workers in a notebook where they record their name, their activities, the advances made in kind or money given in return to work developed. This notebook is the only document to perform the 'arrangements' that are made, and in almost all cases workers are owing to the employer. This creates obligations to future work, a situation that can be lifelong and even passed down from generation to generation, "says the commission.
In this situation, corporal punishment and child labor are common, the commission found: "During the visits in 2006 and 2008, the Committee noted and even heard testimony related to events Guarani physical abuse by 'lashed' (lashes), burning their death of their crops and animals as punishment for 'disobedience'. In the words of a man Itacuatía, 'they treat us with sticks and whip ... we always knew whip, maltreat. These acts of violence have always existed '. "
All this would be reversed with the coming to power of Evo Morales. This government passed in 2006 an agrarian reform law by which the slave estates should be confiscated and handed over to indigenous peoples. But when the technicians of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in the Chaco were presented to the land reclamation, were beaten to death by ranchers.
also came INRA to fail in two cases in favor of the Guarani. INRA's decision was supported by the Land Court created by the new Constitution to settle land ownership disputes. But the landowners appealed the decision of Land Court to the Constitutional Court, authority also included in the new Constitution. As the Constitutional Court has not yet been constituted, the disputed land still in the hands of plantation owners and slavery-like practices continue.
The low level of literacy of the Guarani and the difficulties they face in accessing justice services are another obstacle that the government has not yet been solved. In 2007 Morales signed a decree to release a plan to improve health, education and access to justice in the Bolivian Chaco, but it is an action whose results can be seen in the medium term.
The Prosecution of the region is shown permeable to the political influence of farmers. Just opened an official investigation into the practice of slavery after a scathing report of the Commission in 2006. But in that investigation the prosecutor entered the estate accompanied by local politicians and questioned their presence to victims. As in these conditions intimidating no one dared to say a peep, the prosecutor concluded that all landowners pay salary and bonus and gave a dignified treatment of employees. The case was filed.
According to the report published this week, the Morales administration's policies to reverse the practice of slavery in the Chaco had the unintended effect of dividing and weakening the Guarani. Some went to the farms and formed independent communities, which subsist in squalid conditions. Others stayed on the estates of their own volition, others were in exchange for the payment of alleged debts, others wanted to leave but could not, others were driven by wanting to organize.
"According to various sources, many Guarani were expelled by the landowners as a result of process consolidation taking place in their respective areas and in retaliation for their participation in the Guarani People's Assembly. The Commission received testimony indicating that the situation is very precarious Guarani expelled because no place to live and grow where the minimum to ensure their livelihood, "says the report.
At this juncture, given the balance of power to expropriate land from farmers slave and return them to the Guarani, Evo Morales should send the army to invade the Chaco, which is equivalent to burning the country.
The alternative is to set clear policies and institutions to allow act, even though many of these institutions are co-opted, colonized, malfunction, do not exist or are only on paper. Morales seems to have chosen this path, longer and more uncertain, depending on the national interest.
Meanwhile, everything is as it was then for the slave families in the Bolivian Chaco. Or perhaps worse, by the brutal response of farmers to the government's reform measures. And slaves known even in times of Evo.
------------------------------------------------ -------------
writes: Carlos Thomas Temoche You change
LO QUE ANDES ANDES , THEATRE OF THE ANDES IN THEATRE FESTIVAL FINAL UCSUR. Applause
foot, at the end of his presentation, he reaped the cast Bolivian Teatro de los Andes, which first arrived in Lima thanks to the efforts of UCSUR Festival. The final party closed the V Festival yesterday, Saturday 24 April in the beautiful auditorium Rosa Alarcon of the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos. "Does it hurt?" Is the name of the assembly, which probably will also happen to its successful Bolivian president Evo Morales, the pebble in your shoe that means the presence of slavery in the Chaco, a document attached, sent gently by Carlos Espinoza. The work was premiered in 2007, in Sucre - Bolivia. The text and the address is César Brie. The excellent actors, first class, are Achirica And Danuta Zarzyka Lucas, this fine actress also assumes the completion of a stunning scenery with Christmas lights that simulate a boxing ring. The music is by Lucas. Resolved in a single act, in 15 rounds, a prologue and an epilogue, where the issue is domestic violence in a couple and their children. everyday scenes, not only happen in Bolivia, where the actors convey the dominant ideology of violence as a legacy of all ages. Everything begins with an angelic marriage to the rituals of these times, that of "till death do us part" works as they themselves are separated after fights, insults, physical and psychological abuse. In fact, the woman bears the brunt and is tossed like a rag by the burly husband, who is worse than emolientero lemon. Paradoxically, the images are beautiful and very poetic. They built - through generating words - these textures and then placed the texts. A significant accumulation grotowskiana task. Cores are concatenated with dramatic pictures that hide the technique with great masters. The elements are protein, two chairs and a table is sometimes shelter trench throne, gallows, coffin, etc. It is a masterful assembly techniques grotowskianas with male Andean tradition. They call it the theater of humor and memory. Show strongly telluric where tenderness camouflaged aggression, is the triumph of thanatos - sometimes - the spouses are victims, some perpetrators to their own detriment, to the coyote in the roadrunner. The disappointment for us as spectators invade the empathy we dissociate, but are also behaviors that we have. Here there is no Aristotelian catharsis, crossing the looking-glass and we looked terrified of the perversions that may lead to erroneous human behavior Finally, we say that changes in political order - economic in Bolivia, no sufficient to change the behavior of the people. The group aims to kill ideologies that destroy love and tenderness. Want to end archaic and despair behaviors impeding promising future. Teatro de los Andes, has established a proposed professional aesthetic Bolivian identity and flavor. They say the old utopias wrecked in Latin America, but the Bolivian drama register the individual as an archetype in outline, in colloquial language and teaches us that if the reality changes, the couple must also change.
A Viada all, we're going to Huanuco
0 comments:
Post a Comment