CUMBRE CONTINENTAL DE PUEBLOS Y ORGANIZACIONES INDIGENAS 30, 31 de Oct. – 1º de Noviembre 2005. Mar del Plata. Argentina POLITICAL DECLARATION AND APPEAL TO THE ORIGINAL PEOPLES OF ABYA YALA(America) The resistance and reivindication of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas for their territories and identity reaches today every corner of the continent. It confronts the capitalist- neoliberal model, model pretending to impose an imperial project of domination and unlimited plunder. A model with no identity or nationality, but supported by countries trying to reinforce their power and global hegemony: the U.S. and Canada. These are the two actors we identify in an endless conflict: on the one side, an economic model without identity or nationality but with clear responsibles, and on the other, the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala. In this conflict these two central protagonists appear in the 30+ States of Central and South America. A decision has to be made by those States: either to distance themselves from NorthAmerican hegemony or to replicate that policy of oppression and repression within those States. To subordinate themselves to the U.S. or to assert sovereign policies, together with their peoples. In that context, the Canadian Government is supporting an “Indigenous Summit in Buenos Aires ” Argentina, a week befote the meeting of the Presidents of all states of the continent, including Bush. We can not accept this intrusion of the Government of Canada while its transnational companies continue to exploit and pollute our territories and jointly with the U.S. are imposing an inhuman economic globalization. That summit is trying to manipulate Indigenous organizations, in a meeting in Buenos Aires a week before the Presidents’ Summit in Mar del Plata , 300 miles afar, and with an agenda both depolitized and folklorical. Delegates will be unable to go to Mar del Plata. The intention is clear: to divide the Indigenous movement and to separate us from civil society and popular groups going to Mar del Plata to debate the future and to denounce the globalizing policy imposed upon our continent. Once again, U.S. and Canada manipulating, colonizing and controlling the successive Summits. For that reason, we call our brothers of the Indigenous Organizations of the continent not be manipulated by a Summit which will only serve the political interests of the status of the North. Fraternally we invite them to join forces to the Indigenous Summit in Mar del Plata to genuinely deliberate about our future, and from there to send a clear message to governments and civil society. The Chiefs of State of the 34 states will be meeting on November 4 and 5th. in Mar del Plata Argentina, in the IV Summit of the Americas, organized by the OAS. The center of attention in this event – where we cannot be absent – will be the mechanisms for control and exploitation of the wealth of our territories, biodiversity and traditional knowledge. The tools for pillage and destruction will there be honed, lubricating the W.T.O., the differents Free Trade Agreements, the imposition of ALCA, new threats will be created to make more difficult the payment of the fraudulent external debt , and for the militarization of the region to contain and repress resistance, criminalizing our demands and imposing the privatization of the main public services. In all, deepening the existing poverty, inequality, marginalization, and fundamentally, advancing towards the ideological extermination of any cultural position that will put in doubt the hegemony of the Northern countries. That is why we are mobilizing the continent from extreme to extreme. We will come from valleys and pampas, forests and deserts, mountains and snow-caped peaks, for the world to listen. We will be arriving from territories where biodiversity is a way of life, but nowadays terminally threatened unless devastation and sometimesinvasion, are nor reverted. This is not a new struggle. We are taking again and giving full value to the history of the indigenous movement of the whole continent, on the basis of our common history and cultural criteria: First Continental Meeting– Quito, Ecuador 1990 – Second Continental Meeting – Temoaya, México 1993 – First Indigenous Continental Summit, Teotihuacan, México 2000 - Second Indigenous Summit, Abya Yala, Quito, Ecuador 2004. To push forward the impunity we confront, we have the strength and the power our elders and ancesters have given us to venerate and preserve Mother Nature, source of all life. The political, cultural and social institutions we keep are the basis to built a real alternative to so much nonsense. As we are going to face the direct responsibles of our situation, our análisis must be crystal clear: - What is the legitimacy U.S. and Canada have to impose free trade upon the Aboriginal peoples, peoples who have sustained themselves on reciprocity, redistribution and complementarity . - Which ones are going to be the mechanisms and safeguards we are going to implement to guarantee the survival of our peoples in a market world, where power is more and more concentrated and established by macroeconomic powers. - What model for the State are we going to demand, a model where the diversity we represent (cultural- biological and geographic) is established in the same strategic ecosystems where the “competitive” natural resources are located? - How we are going to implement diversity, with our sistems of collective identity, with our institutions legitimized communally, built upon legal principles supported by millennia of development, to confront a model of civil relations based on corruption, clientelism, and the “party-cracies”of the empresarial democracy of the States? - We must subvert the context of centuries of colonization through the OAS system as a regional organization of the UN, in violation of the right of the self-determination of peoples declared by U.N. General Assembly resolution 1514 and 1541 in 1960. Towards that goal, we want to transform the present Nation- States in Pluri-national Status where it will be possible to exercise - Free-determination as Aboriginal peoples, pre-existing the establishment of the modern status. - Control of our territories, which we inhabited by history and by legal rights, in an inalienable, imprescriptible and unembargable way. - Models for our own development based on knowledge and practices that will guarantee our peoples’ reproduction, and nationalities in harmony with our environment, based on criteria for happiness and equilibrium. - Autonomy in political, juridical, fiscal, territorial and cultural spheres Today the challenge is harsh and we shall connect and articulate with those social and cultural movements of the Continent struggling for diversity instead of free competition. With those who resist violence and evictions, displacements from our territories, cultural and physical repression, which continuous to be imposed with impunity. We are working hard to have a meeting of the International Political Committee in Buenos Aires on September 7th , 8th. and 9th. , 2005. Soon, you will receive proper confirmation. All these with the goal to meet in Mar del Plata from October 30th. to November 1st. as Indigenous peoples and organizations MARICIWEU – JALLALLA – KAUSACHUM! Todos Unidos avanzando! AHEAD ALL TOGETHER. Por ONIC – Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia - LUIS EVELIS ANDRADE CASAMA Por – AIDESEP – Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana Perú, HAROLDO SALAZAR ROSSI Por Kus-Kura, Proyecto Ecológico Kan Tan- COSTA RICA José Carlos Morales Por el Comité Inter-Tribal, BRASIL, Marcos Terena Por el Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas –ECMI: Margarita Gutiérrez Por Wara-BRASIL Azelene Kaingang Por Congreso General Kuna, Panamá, Representante Provisional Héctor Huertas Por CIDOB – BOLIVIA, Presidente de Confederación Indígena del Oriente Boliviano, Saúl Chávez Por la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador – C.O.N.A.I.E.- ECUADOR Luis Macas Por Indigenous Environmental Network – I.E.N., ESTADOS UNIDOS, Tom GoldTooth Por TONA TIERRA - AZTLAN, Tupac Enrique ACOSTA Por Abya Yala Nexus, ESTADOS UNIDOS, Nilo Cayuqueo Por Nación Metis de Ontario – CANADA, Tony Belcourt Por el Consejo de Organizaciones Lencas de Honduras, COPINH – HONDURAS, Salvador Zúñiga Por Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras, OFRANEH - HONDURAS. Por Comisión de Juristas Indígenas en la República Argentina – C.J.I.R.A.- ARGENTINA, Dr. Eulogio Frites – Dr. Eduardo Nieva Por la COORDINACION DE ORGANIZACIONES MAPUCHE – ARGENTINA, Jorge Nahuel, Werken – Huilipan Verónica, Werken - Secretaría de la Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Organizaciones Indígenas Lavalle 437 4º ‘B’. (CP 1047) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires – Tel./Fax: 0054 11 4326 2940 E-mail: cumbrecontinentalindigena@yahoo.com.ar