BY BLANCE ARISMENDI
Cecilia stood in front of a seated crowd, both her hands gripping the microphone. With a broken but firm voice, Cecilia Moyoviri told her audience ”If this road is constructed, we as Indigenous people, along with our cultures, traditions, relationships with Mother Earth and ways of life will perish forever.”
Cecilia is an Indigenous leader and lifelong resident of the Isiboro Sécure National Park Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), a large protected area that is doubly recognized as a national park and indigenous territory. In 2010, President Morales announced the construction of a highway that would cut through the center of the TIPNIS. This project would connect two strategic regions in the country and advance Bolivia’s economic development. In addition, the highway would facilitate service delivery to the 12,500 indigenous residents that inhabit the TIPNIS.
The subject of the highway became a matter of national controversy that reached its peak in 2011. Opposition from TIPNIS residents resulted in mass mobilizations that culminated in police confrontations, leaving 7 dead and hundreds injured. Graphic footage of police officers repressing the mobilization at gunpoint shocked the public, ensuing national indignation. President Morales agreed to cancel the project and signed the protection of the territory into law.
But in 2018, the President backtracked and put the highway project back on the national agenda. This time, he informed the public that a consultation process conducted with TIPNIS residents resulted in 80% approval from communities in need of improved infrastructure. Other government officials rallied public support for the project highlighting local indigenous support.
It is at this juncture that Cecilia felt compelled to publicly denounce the tactics of disinformation employed to manufacture the 80% local approval quoted by the President. According to Cecilia, numerous government representatives surveyed community members under the guise of data collection but used it as a strategy to confuse residents and promote the annulment of the 2011 law that granted the park untouchability. She points out that medical brigades reached out to community members and blackmailed them with health care in exchange for having them sign documents supporting the highway project. Cecilia informed her audience: “We have rejected government doctors because they only came to pick up signatures to falsify our will.” She added, “We are in the resistance, what we are defending (the TIPNIS) is not only for Bolivia but for everyone.”
The controversy sparked once more. A confused nation questioned the environmental impact of bisecting Bolivia’s most biodiverse region. The displacement of indigenous communities, such as Cecilia’s, and questionable consultation process turned the public’s skepticism to distrust. In response, various elected officials asked the Bolivian public: Doesn’t Bolivia deserve to continue its economic and development boom?
Since 2006, Bolivia has experienced the longest period of economic expansion and political stability in its history. The highway project was yet another project that would secure bolivia’s economic competitiveness. Vice president Garcia Linera expressed in an interview: “This project not only maintains economic growth but it will improve the quality of life of our brothers and sisters in the deepest areas of the Amazons.” He then added, “sometimes, as urban dwellers, we forget what it’s really like to live without potable water, electricity and public transport” President Morales added: “We’re not forest rangers, we are a country that deserves to develop.”
And so, the Bolivian public was faced with a dilemma: to defend the TIPNIS or pursue development?
It was a simple question for Cecilia. She traveled all the way from the TIPNIS to tell the wider audience that the choice was clear: Mother Earth. As a vocal community representative of the TIPNIS, Cecilia came to La Paz to create awareness that the government reported indigenous support for the highway based on falsified information and lies.
Often joined by other female community members, Cecilia traveled throughout La Paz for months, seeking partnerships from other advocacy groups, building coalitions with other social organizations and going any platform that would allow her to share her experience. Cecilia quickly became a prominent figure among the many social groups that opposed the project. Her message was clear, the government was not interested in a transparent democratic process, the high would open the door to illegal coca farming and the indigenous communities would be forcibly displaced.
‘I’ve done this all my life” Cecilia says. “The TIPNIS protection is new for people living in the city but for us, it’s been a lifelong battle,” Cecilia concludes.
Living in the TIPNIS
Cecilia will not disclose her age. She looks away smiling when asked. There are no grays in her hair but she confesses that she is a grandmother of two and a mother of five. Cecilia grew up near the center of the TIPNIS, in a community called Mojeno, with limited access to basic services. Cecilia remembers that her grandparents and parents, now deceased, transmitted her community knowledge and warned her that a catastrophe would come to their territories and that she and her brothers should have the courage to defend them. “We want our grandchildren and their children to know the ancient trees, freshwater fish and all the natural wealth that is in the TIPNIS,” Cecilia Remarks.
As a ten-year-old, Cecilia remembers lying down, next to her classmates, in front of a bulldozer that was trying to desecrate the TIPNIS. “Now that we are older,” Cecilia says “ we have more reason to preserve our ‘Big House’ for our children and future generations,” Cecilia continued. Like most TIPNIS residents, Cecilia refers to the TIPNIS as to the “big house” where, despite internal conflicts and climatic setbacks, they can live free and happy, and can access natural resources without major restrictions.
For Cecilia’s family, the main source of income was her rice and cacao plantations. They also hunted animals and fished in the rivers for subsistence. The territory as not only the Big House but also the Pantry, from where residents can take the necessary and sufficient food to feed the families. “In this land, in this territory, we have always been inhabitants from the beginning, our grandparents and great grandparents,” says Cecilia.
But Cecilia also remembers the negative impact that illegal coca farming had in the TIPNIS. Influenced by settlers, many of her neighbors opted to plant coca with the argument that it would be their economic salvation. She quickly learned that the expansion of coca plantations and deforestation were their greatest threats.
Gonzalo Colque, a researcher specializing in rural development and environmental studies, states that coca cultivation at the border of the TIPNIS intensified during the eighties and nineties. although a red line was established to stop the advance, it has been overflowed. The indigenous people of the TIPNIS demanding authorities legal protection for the territory began to organize and stage marches at the local and regional level. But it was not until the 1990 March for Territory and Dignity, a historic mobilization, that the TIPNIS was recognized as Indigenous territory.
Cecilia remembers the numerous marches during those years. At that time, she served as a community representative, which meant that her main responsibility was to secure basic services as supplies for her community. It was a position that she took with the utmost seriousness. Whenever government representatives brought projects or supplies to the territory, she would ensure that her community got their fair share. “Those of us who lived in the TIPNIS through the 90s, remember the fight for the territory,” Cecilia recounts her experience. “The State did not recognize us. They believed that we were still dressed in feathers,” Cecilia concludes.
Although the TIPNIS residents were successful in obtaining legal protection for their territory, creeping by illegal settlers, particularly coca farmers, continued. This continues to be the main fear voiced by TIPNIS residents that the highway project will facilitate the invasion of settlers for the production of coca. “the highway will open the door for coca growers to enter the territory, destroy nature, contaminate the land and water,” Cecilia continued to describe the pattern she continuously watched growing up. “This is why we march,” she adds. “We have suffered, spent entire days in the sun, rain, and cold. Our territory shed blood and brought death. We are defending our territory for all of us and for all of Bolivia.” Cecilia concludes.
Mr. Colque remarks this fear is legitimate. He estimates a loss of 46,000 hectares of forest between 2000 and 2014, within the TIPNIS. Likewise, the Center for Environmental Research indicates that, at the current rate of deforestation, exacerbated by the highway construction, 43% of the TIPNIS forest could be lost. The main cause of deforestation would be directly related to the economic production model of illegal settlers.
From Community Representative to Community Leader
Cecilia lived under threat of displacement and witnessed deforestation first hand. All throughout her life inside the TIPNIS, she saw many communities end up surrounded by settlers and coca growers. As locals lost their land, they began to work as employees of the settlers. Others had to migrate to capital cities to seek employment, forced to adopt another way of life. In some villages, only the elderly remained. Those communities became extinct.
Then, in 2006, Evo Morales Ayma became Bolivia’s first indigenous president. He committed to environmental protection of Bolivia’s natural resources, including green spaces. In 2009, his administration passed a radical bill, The Law of Mother Earth, in which the law granted nature legal rights to life, regeneration, biodiversity, and restoration. A move that was lauded internationally.
“We were so happy,” Cecilia says as she recounts watching President Morales’ inauguration in a crowded restaurant, “we cried because finally, after all the struggle, we had a protector who would legitimize us,” she continued.
But when the President announced the highway project, in 2011, TIPNIS residents knew it was time to intensify their fight to preserve their land once more. This time Cecilia was part of the over 1,000 indigenous TIPNIS residents that marched 360 miles from the Amazon lowlands to La Paz to protest the construction of the road.
“This president wanted to build the road through the heart of the TIPNIS and we did not want that, so we went to the march to ask that the road not be built,” Cecilia recounts her experience. “but we were trampled by military forces, they beat us down,” Cecilia added. The violent confrontations with armed forces that resulted in multiple deaths and the President’s cancelation of the project became the spectacle that shocked the nation. But when the President renewed his pursuit of the highway project, in 2018, it became apparent his administration had never abandoned its commitment to the road but had only changed the political narrative. He stressed that the primary beneficiaries of this project would be TIPNIS residents who were in dire need of basic services and infrastructure. His position revived the bitter controversy that sparked new grassroots resistance to the President’s extractivist development model. It exposed the contradictions of the President’s global championship of indigenous and environmental rights while promoting destructive projects at home.
After a decade of supporting a seemingly pro-indigenous administration, Cecilia felt personally betrayed by the president. She felt that her place in the world was ‘insignificant’ but her responsibility enormous in protecting the longevity of her Big House.
Between 2011 to 2018, the indigenous mobilizations in defense of the TIPNIS opened new scenarios of tension, mobilization, and resistance for the defense of indigenous territories and, ultimately, for the defense of life.
The Resistance Continues
“With this government, we are all divided,” Cecilia said explaining the division this project created in her community. “Not just our organizations but our communities even our families. We just want to live in peace, without threats, without divisions, like before,” Cecilia concluded.
According to Mr. Colque, the conflict over the construction of the road caused divisions and fragmentation among the indigenous organization that represent the TIPNIS Communities. Currently, there are two major parallel leadership structures. The first is called the TIPNIS Subcentral, which is made up of TIPNIS residents that oppose the highway project. In 2017, TIPNIS Subcentral elected Cecilia as its vice-president. It is in this capacity that Cecilia traveled to La Paz in the summer of 2018 to meet with environmentalists, human rights advocates and, other social groups to raise awareness and develop coalitions that can prevent the construction of the highway.
The second group is the TIPNIS Subcentral Committee which is also made up of TIPNIS residents but that align with the central government and support the construction of the highway. This fragmented leadership has created a situation that generates difficulties in organic positioning, limits the concretion of advances of its strategic agenda issues related to meeting the needs of health, education, territorial management, economy and production, critical leadership and with capacity for proposals and organizational strengthening.
These organizations of the TIPNIS are divided and weakened. In view of this situation, TIPNIS residents find themselves in gridlock. With the two major organizations disputing the jurisdiction of the territory and the communities. Although the disputes and the conflict between the indigenous organizations are not only the result of dynamics as manifested but also due to the influence of State authorities that have interests in the territory. The representatives of the communities consider that the division of the indigenous organization has deepened with the project of the construction of the road through the TIPNIS. Accusations on both sides have emerged, of receiving perks from the government or external NGOs to push their agendas. In the face of these criticisms, Cecilia responds. “We’ve always defended our territory, but with honor, not being bought.” She adds: ”We do not need it. For years we have lived in the Tipnis and our resistance is the original, we are not bought.”
In this context, the defense of the territory acquires more relevance for the subsistence and persistence of its ways of life, its habitat and the culture of the indigenous peoples. But also, its mechanisms of self-government and resistance practices for the permanence of their ways of life. The territory is constituted, then, in a field of dispute and tension between different visions of production, development, nature, and life.
Mayoviri continues her tireless battle to denounce and promote social awareness of the government actions. During her speech, in commemoration of the International Day on Indigenous Women, Cecilia warned that there is little to celebrate for the women in the TIPNIS who live haunted by the conflict.
“You will excuse me for crying, but for me, it is great pain.” Cecilia began. “The government doesn’t respect us, doesn’t listen to us but We’ll keep fighting,” Cecilia concluded.