The U.S. feared that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) would help Indigenous Peoples assert their right of sovereignty over their lands and resources, according to cables released by the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks. The cables also reveal an almost obsessive preoccupation on the part of the federal government with Bolivia’s democratically elected President Evo Morales and the indigenous leaders who admire him and oppose laws opening Native territories to oil, mining and logging companies.
Wikileaks’ file dump on the Internet in late August of hundreds of thousands of unredacted classified diplomatic cables has given the world more insights into the way the U.S. conducts its international affairs, painting a picture of politics, secret sources, and intrigue worthy of the Elizabethan court.
On January 28, 2008, the American embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, sent a cable to the State Department with the subject line “Bolivia; Repercussions of UN DRIP, ” concerning Morales’ signing of the Declaration into Bolivian law on November 7, 2007. This worried the U.S. embassy. “The new law contradicts existing land laws, and therefore will be subject to judicial interpretation when it begins to be cited in legal cases,” the cable says. The General Assembly adopted the Declaration in September 2007, by a vote of 144-4 with 11 abstentions. The U.S. was one of the four countries that voted against the human rights document for Indigenous Peoples.
Even more worrisome was the fact that Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party, which won an overwhelming majority in the 2005 elections (and would do so again in 2009 and 2010) had included indigenous rights in a draft national constitution. The constitution “closely mirrors the UN Declaration text, granting indigenous Bolivians rights to land and renewable resources on that land, rights to a share in the benefits of non-renewable resources, rights to be consulted on any law that ‘might affect them’, rights to self-governance, rights to participation in all levels of government, and prioritized rights to state benefits,” the cable says. “If the draft constitution passes, it would take precedent over other Bolivian laws and could therefore carry more weight in judicial interpretation when it contradicts existing land laws. Although most indigenous leaders seem to view the UN Declaration as a ‘feel good’ document that will give them more inclusion in the public sector, some leaders are citing the Declaration in support of concrete aims like self-governance and control over land and resources.” The “post,” meaning the embassy, promised to “watch for further developments, particularly with regards to property rights and potential sovereignty or self-rule issues.”
The cable was signed by former U.S. Ambassador Phillip Goldberg, an appointee of former President George Bush. Bolivia expelled Goldberg in September 2008, accusing him of spying and fomenting civil unrest “that threatens not only the country’s first indigenous Indian president, Evo Morales, but the unity of the nation itself,” according to the Telegraph. The U.S. denied Morales’ allegations. “Without fear of the empire, I declare Mr. Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador, ‘persona non grata’,” Morales said.
Another released cable, with the subject line “ ‘Evo Morales is Our President’: The Anti-System Project,” reveals the U.S. government’s deep-seated and almost obsessive fear of Bolivia’s popular indigenous leader. The cable was sent from the embassy in Lima, Peru, to the State Department on June 26, 2009. This cable also reveals the U.S. government’s fear and loathing of the growing trend toward socialism, which it characterized as “the anti-system movement,” in several South American countries including Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and anxiety that it would undermine the U.S.-backed multinational corporate takeover of indigenous lands and resources, which the cable refers to as “the pro-growth model.”
Despite Peru’s recent “economic success,” the cable says, “anti-system radicals” could take “political advantage” of the “persistent endemic poverty and social inequality, the absence of state from large swaths of national territory, and clumsy, sometimes jarring public action when the state does intervene … to undermine Peru’s progress, weaken the government and lay the groundwork for a more systematic assault on the pro-growth model. Public and private statements by the diverse and not necessarily unified leaders of the anti-system movement paint a compelling portrait of their real aims, which can be summarized in the words of one Peruvian indigenous leader that ‘Evo Morales is our President.’ Foreign participation in this anti-system movement, including from Bolivia, is real but maybe not as central as some analysts maintain.”
The “jarring action” referred to a tragic encounter in early June, 2009, just weeks before the cable was written in which 23 police and at least 10 civilians in Bagua in the north of the Amazonas region died in clashes that had turned violent after months of protests by the indigenous Awajún people, also known as the Aguaruna, who had risen up against former President Alan Garcia’s policy of giving contracts to private companies for oil, mining and logging on their lands without prior consultation.
While the embassy cable describes Peru as “a regional good news story,” citing it’s sustained, solid economic growth, burgeoning trade and foreign investment,” it also concedes that Peru’s real agenda” has not overcome the country’s endemic poverty. “If poverty rates have fallen to below 40 percent,” the cable says conditionally, “a politically significant number of Peruvians continue to live in precarious conditions with close to 20 percent of the population at or near subsistence level.”
The cable also notes the uneven distribution of wealth, with most of the poverty found in indigenous regions which are “not coincidentally” also the areas where the state is virtually absent and anti-government sentiment and political instability are greatest, the cable notes. “One of Garcia’s closest political advisors told us the President’s principal frustration relates to the institutional dysfunctionality (sic) and inefficiency of the state apparatus at all levels, which undermines the transition from political vision, plan or marching order to real progress on the ground,” the cable says without naming the informant.
The cable reveals that the embassy monitored indigenous leaders, including Miguel Palacin, the leader of a pan-Andean indigenous group based in Lima, who organized “parallel anti-summits” against the European Union and Latin America and Caribbean summits in 2008.
“Tellingly, Palacin’s office displays Bolivian flags and a presidential portrait of Evo Morales. Palacin recently told us he sees Bolivia as a model for Peru, and that indigenous people consider Morales ‘our president’,” the cable says, as if Palacin had tried to conceal his admiration for Morales. The cable noted Palacin had told the embassy his goal was to “overhaul” Garcia’s pro-growth cabinet and procure “property titles for all indigenous land (hinting that once this had occurred there would be no land left for private development), and ultimately to write a new constitution incorporating language from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
By coincidence, just days after Wikileaks released the cables on August 30, Peru’s new President Ollanta Humala, who was elected in July, signed a law requiring energy and mining companies to consult local communities about projects on their lands. Humala said the law will give voice to the country’s Indigenous Peoples. “We want to make sure … that they are treated like citizens, not like little children who are not asked about anything. This represents an important step,” he said. The law does not give communities the right to veto projects.