Strategies and new directions

Strategies and new directions

In the face of land scarcity and unequal access to land, the community of Jambaló has recently begun to reevaluate its current territorial organization. It is generally recognized that this concerns both the question of the future status of foreign tenure institutions and the issue of the uneconomical allocation of land resources in certain parts of the resguardo. The past two cabildos (since 1999), largely made up of a new generation of young community leaders, have ventured to start talking about an internal redistribution of land; a subject so sensitive to the Páez that former, more conservative cabildos (consisting of older people) never dared to enter upon it. Although many people now seem to endorse the view that the unequal access to land is a problem that needs to be addressed, questions as to when, how and to what extent an actual redistribution should take place remain a divisive point. At any rate, an undertaking of this kind would in some localities at least entail the dispossession of land that has not been put to productive use for an extended period of time, a prospect which has led to resistance – still often silent – from the families that possibly have to bear the consequences. In view of lurking conflicts, it remains to be seen to what extent a territorial reorganization is in fact a feasible goal.

Whatever happens in this respect, given the fact that 65 percent of the resguardo inhabitants is under 25 years of age, redistributive measures are not likely to bring a permanent solution for the problem of land scarcity. In an effort to find new arable land for large sections of the population, the cabildo is therefore also trying to expand the communal territory by claiming land outside the borders of the actual resguardo. Pursuant to the new agrarian legislation (Law 160 of 1994 and additional decrees), the Colombian state (Incora) is obligated to enlarge resguardos of indigenous communities in case the amount of arable land is insufficient for their economic and cultural development or the fulfillment of the ‘social and ecological function’ of their property (Decree 2164 of 1995, art. 1.2.). Up till now the land claims of Jambaló – as those of many other indigenous communities in the Cauca department – have not been met, however, due to the limited available land (vested interests of agro-industrial companies), bureaucratic negotiation procedures and a lack of state resources set aside for this purpose¹ (Jimeno et al. 1998: 310-311). The situation is furthermore complicated by the fact that Jambaló is completely locked in by other resguardos. This means that a possible future acquisition of land will not form an integrated whole with the rest of the resguardo, making a resettlement of certain groups of families unavoidable – something which is already taking place in other resguardos, most notably among the Guambianos (Arango & Sánchez 1998: 171).

With regard to the cultivation of illicit crops, the cabildo has continued to express its disapproval, but it is incapable of counteracting these practices as long as it cannot offer an economic alternative. During the 1990s, it has initiated several small-scale economic projects, or so-called ‘micro-enterprises’, in an attempt to provide employment for (near) landless families and increase the overall economic viability of the community. These include a fruit orchard and tree nursery, yogurt factory and trout farm, among other examples. For the most part, however, these initiatives are not very productive and in some cases have proven to be outright failures. To an important extent, these disappointing results can be attributed to a lack of financial resources for making the investments needed to get the enterprises off to a good start. Since the 1991 Constitution, state support for the economic and social development in Andean resguardos has been minimal, despite the 1992 Jambaló Agreement. Practically the only financial resources allocated to indigenous communities are the yearly transfers of tax revenues, which began pouring into resguardos in 1994 (pursuant to Law 60 of 1993 and additional decrees). However, due to the limited magnitude of these transfers and because of the large and partly fixed number of areas of public spending, in Jambaló these revenues leave only little room for investment in projects for community development². But apart from a deficient cabildo budget, the failure of the micro-enterprises is also due to a lack of interest on the part of community members, who often seem to hedge their bets on the more readily available benefits of individual poppy and coca growing (see also Field 1996: 110 ff.).

At this meeting, organized in May 2000 in the indigenous community of San Martín de Amacayacu – a place of symbolic significance because it is situated both in the resguardo and in the national park –, the representatives of the several government agencies came to recognize, at least nominally, the right and authority of the cabildo mayor in locally managing the forest. Furthermore, the parties reached agreement on some of the points under contention, particularly about their respective obligations with regard to the control on and monitoring of forest exploitations in the areas under different legal regimes. However promising this outcome might seem from a legal perspective, in the months subsequent to the meeting there was not much reason to believe that ‘on the ground’ things had really changed. Although forest exploitations in the resguardo had officially stopped, in the ‘state-owned’ lands they were carried out just as before, and it seems that particularly the social struggle for control over natural resources in the Puerto Nariño area has continued on pretty much the same footing.

The resolutions adopted by the Ticuna, Cocama and Yagua of Puerto Nariño ensuing the formation of the cabildo mayor, as well as a recently drafted Plan de Vida, clearly reveal that it is not the aim of the indigenous community to stop or rule out the commercial exploitation of timber or other natural resources in the resguardo, but rather to appropriate this exploitation for the benefit of a social and economic development that is in accordance with its own norms and values.

Since the relocation of their forest settlements towards the banks of the principal waterways in the beginning of the 1970s, indigenous families (lineages) have increasingly sought to produce surpluses of subsistence crops for the sale on local and regional markets in order to increase their overall standard of living. Yet there are strong indications that, under present conditions of increased local pressure on natural resources (due to population concentration), this transition has affected the long-term stability of existing patterns of swidden-fallow management, in some localities with loss of self-reliance as a result. In addition, insecurity of prices and demand and high costs of river transport have not particularly made the market-directed production of perishable food crops into a success. Recent ecological research in the Puerto Nariño area (Hammond et al. 1995: 350) suggests that a limited and controlled commercial exploitation of tropical cedar may provide a far more sustainable solution to integrating market-strategies with a subsistence-driven economy.

However, for the indigenous community to be able to effectively take control of the timber exploitation within its territory, it will first need to face up to several critical problems. First of all, it has to make sustained efforts to further build the necessary organizational capacity and unity (social cohesion) within the resguardo. Among other things, this will involve the sorting out of remaining problems of authority and coordination between the cabildo mayor and the curacas menores of the various (multiethnic) sub communities, as well as easing existing tensions between the family elders of the villages and a much younger generation of new community leaders. Secondly, as none of the indigenous groups in the resguardo (yet) has the financial means or technical capacity to independently conduct logging operations, the cabildo mayor has to break new ground in entering into some kind of profit sharing exploitation venture with nonindigenous licensees and/or the associations of – again predominantly nonindigenous – woodcutters in Puerto Nariño and Leticia (Amapuna and Amalec). Thirdly, and most problematically, community authorities have to change their adversarial attitude towards the – admittedly, highly corrupt – agency of Corpoamazonía, on which it formally depends for the issuing of logging permits (Roldán 2000: 55), and turn it into some kind of cooperative relationship. Given the disadvantaged position the indigenous population has in terms political power, experience and networks in the face of influential timber merchants from Leticia and elsewhere, this might in fact prove a formidable challenge.

The case studies of Jambaló and Puerto Nariño provide us with an impression of indigenous peoples’ experiences with self-government in Colombian resguardos and illustrate some of the typical problems and dilemmas they face in the domain of natural resource management, economy and development. Often these problems are, in one way or another, related to the functioning of indigenous institutions of communal resource tenure, which are paramount in the economic organization of indigenous communities, forming the basic point of orientation for their members’ resource management practices and economic activities, among themselves as well as in relation to outsiders. Taking a historical perspective, both cases point out that these problems, many of which are the result of conditions of oppression and exploitation during the pre-1991 political order, show a remarkable continuity under the new constitutional regime. This would seem to indicate that in Colombia the implementation of the recognition of communal resource tenure – as a fundamental part of any arrangement for indigenous territorial autonomy – has failed to address many of the problematic internal and external conditions under which these social institutions operate.

In Jambaló, as in many other small, colonial resguardos in the southwestern Andean region, problems are created first and foremost by a rapidly decreasing availability of arable land as a result of a steady growth of the resguardo population. This situation is exacerbated by the simultaneous existence of state-imposed cooperative tenures and private individual property next to the indigenous communal tenure regime. Under these internally pluralist conditions – a legacy of the indigenous land struggle of the 1970s and 1980s – the cabildo has to compete with these landholding entities and individuals over allocation rights regarding the scarce and unevenly distributed lands of the resguardo. At the same time, due to their age-long participation in regional economic structures, indigenous farmers – like other Colombia peasants – have seen their livelihoods been severely affected by the enduring economic crisis in agriculture. A key problem in their attempts to maintain economic viability appears to be their exclusion from access to agricultural credit, as financial institutions generally do not accept usufruct rights to communal lands as collateral for loans. This inhibits them from purchasing key agricultural inputs needed for an intensification of land use practices. Thus unable to find the means of production within the confines of the legitimate economy, many families have started to opt for the illicit cultivation of drug crops to the order of local guerrillas and drug trafficking agents.

In Puerto Nariño, one of the many large and newly created resguardos in the Amazonian region, problems are to a considerable extent related to the small size and territorial dispersal of a highly fragmented and multiethnic indigenous community that has no tradition of centralized authority. While local tenure arrangements are generally working on a village level, the various subcommunities included in the resguardo still have difficulties in working out a new structure of supracommunity political organization that fits this (nonindigenous) property category and enables them to effectively prevent outsiders from illegally extracting natural resources from their communal forests. Ironically, this community’s own aspirations to increase its standard of living with a limited commercial exploitation of forest resources – now or in the future – threaten to become frustrated by national public regulations with regard to environmental protection and sustainable resource utilization. Moreover, in the Amacayacu National Park, which is partly superimposed on the resguardo, the constitutionally mandated participation of the indigenous community in the administration of the protected area seems doomed to fail amidst an institutional environment that is characterized by widespread corruption (political clientelism). Until now, functionaries of regional state-environmental agencies like Corpoamazonía appear to be following their own (secret) agendas and have shown to be very reluctant to relinquish their administrative powers to local indigenous authorities.

The cases of both Jambaló and Puerto Nariño clearly illustrate how indigenous communities have difficulties in reproducing their economic organization and underlying institutions of communal resource tenure, on the one hand because of unsettled problematic internal (material and social) circumstances and, on the other, because of unfavorable or persistent oppressive-discriminatory characteristics of the wider economic and political structures in which their economies and distinctive social institutions are embedded. These findings thus draw attention to the fact that the social significance of a constitutional recognition of indigenous territorial autonomy to a considerable degree depends on how the state – in this case that of Colombia – follows up on this recognition by developing statutory legislation, concrete policies and institutional reforms that create the necessary conditions for indigenous peoples to be able to truly exercise their right to self-determination (Van Cott 2000: 270). With regard to conditions internal to indigenous communities, such legislative and policy-making efforts should therefore be aimed at protecting their territoriality and guaranteeing them a resource base that is sufficient for the development of their economic and cultural activities, and, at the same time at affirming and bolstering their particular forms of social organization. Regarding relations between indigenous communities, the state and nonindigenous society, laws, policies and institutional reforms should take cognizance of the economically and politically disadvantaged position these communities have in the larger development process and help to constitute an institutional environment in which they can reach alternative development based on their own values, norms (institutions) and aspirations, as well as on a more effective participatory engagement in larger economic and political structures and processes. Over the past ten years, however, government steps to devise or implement these kinds of ‘remedial-constitutive’ measures (Anaya 1996) have been scant and exhibit mixed outcomes at best.

The most important legislative projects having a direct bearing on the (economic) situation of indigenous communities are the Law of Resources and Transfers (Law 60 of 1993) and the Law of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (Law 160 of 1994). While Law 60 was to provide indigenous fiscal autonomy by securing constitutionally mandated resource transfers to resguardos, its execution under Decree 1386 of 1994 has generated much controversy. One issue is that nonindigenous mayors have been appointed as intermediate recipients of these funds, which is forcing indigenous authorities to negotiate development projects with often-corrupt municipal offices. Moreover, in many cases indigenous communities have difficulties in making effective use of their shares of state revenues since they received little or no training in project planning and management prior or subsequent to the implementation of the decree (Roldán 1997: 241). Law 160 of 1994 has been widely criticized, particularly by peasant unions and indigenous organizations, for its failure to effectuate a rapid and extensive redistribution of land or otherwise improve the living conditions of the masses of rural poor. Instead, the agrarian reform is proceeding by droplets as land negotiations are largely left to the forces of the market (Avirama & Márquez 1994: 92; see also Ochoa 1998). Equally, Decree 2164 of 1995, which further elaborated Law 160 for indigenous communities, has not been able to bring a solution to the land shortage in Andean resguardos or put an end to land encroachment and illegal exploitation of natural resources in resguardos of the Amazonian and Pacific Coast regions (Roldán 1997: 242-243).

In addition to this statutory legislation, in 1995 the government launched a special four-year ‘program of assistance and ethnic strengthening for Colombia’s indigenous peoples’ – as part of the National Development Plan 1995-1998 – elaborated in a document of the National Council for Economic and Social Policy (CONPES No. 2773). This program, which basically was a continuation of a line of indigenous policy initiated in 1980, established that during four years 2 percent of the national budget on social and environmental spending was to be allocated to the indigenous population (including state funds for resource transfers and agrarian reform measures directed at resguardo communities however). Among other things, it made provision for co-financing projects for increasing levels of agricultural production in indigenous communities (by way of the Indigenous Rural Development Fund) and signaled the need for alternative credit facilities that should enable indigenous farmers to substitute illicit drug crops. Furthermore, the policy document assured indigenous participation in activities aimed at the exploitation, management and conservation of natural resources in indigenous territories and promised training in public administration for indigenous authorities (Jimeno 1995: 165-167; Arango & Sánchez 1998: 62-63). Ambitious as it may have been, according to experts the CONPES program failed to produce any tangible results since it never came any further than a mere enunciation of – vague and incoherent – intentions, lacking a clear definition of responsibilities of the various ministries involved (Roldán 1997: 248; see also Cortés 1996). Moreover, the General Office of Indigenous Affairs (Dgai) of the Interior Ministry, which was responsible for the coordination of the program, is said to have adopted a strategy of working directly with individual communities and groups, thereby marginalizing national and regional indigenous organizations in the process (Van Cott 2000: 90-91).

The CONPES program was not continued nor evaluated by the 1998-2002 (current) administration. Except for a decree related to the consultation – not participation – of indigenous peoples in the management and exploitation of natural resources (Decree 1320 of 1998), there have not been made any significant legislative or policy-making efforts with regard to the implementation of indigenous peoples’ economic and political rights since 1998 (pers. comm. Roldán, March 2001). This is indicative of the emergence of a conjuncture less favorable to indigenous peoples’ rights, which can be appreciated against the backdrop of a state that from the mid-1990s onwards has become increasingly distracted by more pressing problems, such as continuing economic recession and a related strong increase in guerrilla and other forms of political violence. This development underscores the uneasy relationship between the recognition of indigenous autonomy and the neoliberal economic reforms that have accompanied its implementation (Cortés 1996; Roldán 1997). Although political liberalization and its concomitant schemes of democratization and decentralization were among the most important forces that opened up opportunities for an increased recognition of indigenous authority, this recognition has remained confined to the lowest administrative level, while regionally and nationally indigenous peoples continue to be excluded from meaningful participation in decision-making on public policy directly affecting them (Ibid.; see also Van Cott 2000). Concurrently, the state has reduced public spending and has withdrawn from antipoverty and social investment programs (like CONPES, but also in the countryside in general), leaving indigenous communities and their fragile economies extremely vulnerable to the pressures and potentially disruptive influences of the free market and global economy – the effects of which can clearly be discerned in the cases of Jambaló and Puerto Nariño.

Drawing this (indefinite) conclusion, however, is not to say that the 1991 Constitution and subsequent legislation have been irrelevant to indigenous communities. This is not the case because the social significance of the constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights (as group rights), most inclusively exemplified by their right to territorial autonomy, also is determined by the degree to which indigenous communities themselves succeed in appropriating and making use of these rights to develop solutions to their problems and further their demands. These practical implications of the new legal framework on the local level refer to what Merry (1995: 14) has called the ‘constitutive effect’ or ‘culturally productive role’ of law: the fact that law and legal processes influence the construction of social and cultural life. In the case studies of Jambaló and Puerto Nariño, we can clearly see this constitutive effect of law when taking a closer look at the ways in which new indigenous legislation is entering into these communities’ strategies to solve their organizational problems by adapting, to varying extents, their characteristic cultural patterns and social institutions to a changing (social, economic, political and legal) situation, a process which has been referred to as ‘ethnic reorganization’ by Nagel and Snipp (1993: 204).

In Jambaló, the affirmation and extension of the legislative, administrative and jurisdictional powers of indigenous authorities in the 1991 constitution has consolidated cabildo authority and has given new impetus to a process of community organization that was initiated at the end of an episode of indigenous land struggle. Within this framework, the cabildo and community have recently embarked on a difficult process of territorial reorganization, which is aimed at reestablishing a more unified and coherent communal tenure regime as well as questioning equity aspects of past land allocations. Simultaneously, Law 60 of 1993 and elements of state indigenous policy are being used in restructuring economic activity, though until now – for reasons noted above – with moderate success. In so far as constitutional rights, statutory laws or specific agreements (i.e. Jambaló Agreement) have not been implemented or materialized, Andean indigenous communities, amongst which Jambaló, are deploying these legal norms as resources in claim-making mobilizations against the state and its agencies. For example, during a highway blockade in La Piendamó in June 1999, indigenous communities led by Cric declared a “state of social, cultural and economic emergency of the indigenous peoples of the Cauca department”, demanding government compliance with Law 160 of 1994 (Agrarian Reform) and official norms regarding indigenous participation in the design and implementation of indigenous policy, as well as socioeconomic investment and special credit facilities for indigenous communities. Of late, Jambaló and 11 other Páez resguardos increasingly participate in a federative Association of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Cauca (Acin), established pursuant to Decree 1088 of 1993 (regulating the creation of this kind of association), both to more effectively defend themselves politically and to jointly work out proposals for the substitution of poppy and coca cultivation with culturally appropriate socioeconomic development alternatives.

In Puerto Nariño, the practical implications of the new constitutional order are maybe even more apparent. If the formation of the resguardo in 1990 (pursuant to Law 30 of 1988) had already aroused a ‘new indigenous conscience’ (Jackson 1996), political reorganization of the Ticuna, Cocama and Yagua population was really set off by a growing awareness of the mismanagement of tax revenues by municipal authorities (violating Law 60 of 1993) and, even more so, by the discovery of uncontrolled timber exploitation by uninvited guests. Defending the community’s recently acquired territorial rights with assistance of legal advisers from Onic, new indigenous authorities in the shape of the cabildo mayor have been successively invoking constitutional rights and statutory legislation (PC Art. 329, Law 21 of 1991 and Decree 1320 of 1998) to take up position against Corpoamazonía, a corrupt state-agency which had thus far been able to arbitrarily act like a state within a state. Although this has considerably increased political awareness within the community, the struggle for control over natural resources in the resguardo and adjacent state-owned lands still continues. In 2000, several curacas of the Cothué-Putumayo resguardo (to the north) were seeking alliance with the cabildo mayor of Puerto Nariño as they also had reported illegal timber exploitations in their communal territory. Together, they established the Association of Indigenous Cabildos of the Trapecio Amazónico (Acitam) to jointly fight for the recognition of their authority and elaborate indigenous proposals for the co-management of the Amacayacu National Park.

While these are clear examples of promising ‘constitutive’ or ‘culturally productive’ effects of indigenous legislation and rights among Colombia’s indigenous peoples, the focus on ethnic reorganization in this paper is not meant to deflect attention from drawbacks or potentially ‘destructive effects’ of the new constitutional regime – such as internal fragmentation of indigenous communities and organizations as a result of new economic incentives (most notably Law 60 of 1993) and political opportunities, or the intrusion of the state and its ideology into indigenous communities’ internal affairs through their integration in a larger political system (Padilla 1995) –, nor to obscure the persistence of the highly asymmetrical power relationship between indigenous peoples and the state. Nonetheless, although enormous challenges remain to the achievement of indigenous peoples’ territorial autonomy and self-determination, there is reason to hope for positive changes in the future, because, in the words of Roque Roldán (1996 in Van Cott 2000: 255), even “in the worst case scenario, where [the state ignores or attacks] the new constitutional vision, the new rights continue to interact with and nourish the heightened political consciousness and organizational capacity of social movements in the post-constitutional conjuncture”.