The ANDEAN-AMAZONIAN SOCIO-POLITICAL REALITY

The global situation I found myself immersed in the jungle of Bolivian Chapare bore the indelible mark the History had imprinted over the centuries; the following comments reflect my own experience, by the time of my journey through that region, at the beginning of the 90ties.

The rural population mostly indigenous has historical and cultural roots in the heart of the ancient Inca Empire of Tawantinsuyu, meaning in quechua language Empire of the four corners or cardinal points; it stretches along the spine of the Andes from Venezuela to Chile and its fate was the annihilation during the Spanish conquest.

Multiple varieties of natural resources belong to the biodiversity of the Andean-Amazonian region, which is a reserve tank for all the planet, with a potential of incalculable value for economic development and ecological stability.

In fact the population, at full title owner of such resources, is pushed down to the lowest level of manpower, without any return from their management and use, as in a new enslavement.

Regarding the global problem of land and agriculture, as almost all over Latin America, it seems to be going on a kind of  … intra-continental colonization, with underhand strategies, undermining the premises and promises of the development based on native resources.

The work-in-progress mechanism is likely a marginalization of the rural population by national and international circuits, through quite patent plans, aimed at reducing market network, with the deterioration of the products in the very production areas, because of inadequate marketing systems, followed by logistical and social isolation, increasing the production costs and reducing the already meager profit margins, often even non-existent.

In this context the characteristics and barriers are related to each particular environment, but they flow into a final similar situations: in fact in the valleys and highlands is more common to find Andean ethnic groups, rooted in their peculiar culture, rich and well structured, albeit caught into an identity crisis as it happens to many ethnic minorities, because of external interferences, international pressure and migration to urban areas.

The terrestrial and fluvial Amazonian regions are the setting of several indigenous groups, different from each other for a myriad of uses, customs, language and social organization, mainly  hunters and fishermen, continually at risk for the deleterious impact on their ethnic survival of the interferences of diverse realities, with an intercultural approach not always respectful of the specific peculiarities.

The Andean migration towards the regions of the Amazon has further troubled the social, political and cultural situation of disorder, turning an apparent tropical paradise into one of the most emblematic faces of a non-geographic but socio-cultural South in the immense continent of the excluded, reduced to poverty, because of the impossibility of autonomous and sovereign management of their native resources, inter alia in regions geopolitically strategic and rich of natural resources.