Communities which identify themselves as traditionally indigenous today find themselves fighting to preserve their distinctiveness from modern conglomerate companies attempting to consume their natural resources and culture. This is a world-wide phenomenon as a result of globalization, and these “primitive groups”’ last resort is to attempt communicating agency and identity through revolution. In the upper Amazon region of Ecuador outside of Tena, there are 17 small communities that exemplify indigenous revolution against the oil company Perenco through indignation, violence, and external communication. This thesis attempts to interpret activism as communication, discussing the specific case study and comparing other contemporary and historical records of revolutionary movements, to better understand the fact that communicating individuality is a persistent factor with indigenous societies. It will begin by examining historical factors and records of how these particular Andean peoples of Incan ancestry found themselves contemporarily titled “indigenous” (Point 1), followed by constructing globalization theory within the context of the impact it has had on these groups (Point 2), attempt to understand the present-day connection between the corporate world and native rural society (Point 3), and finally dissect the case study in Ecuador to determine the communicative aspects of identity while comprehending the direction this unparallel relationship is moving towards as innovation continues to pervade even the most rustic corners of the globe (Point 4).
(Point 1) Andean communities of ancient ancestry without European background were not considered “native” or “indigenous” until the conquistadores arrived in America de Latina. (Insert definition of “indigenous”). Since the arrival of the Europeans, Latin America, particularly in the areas where fully-sedentary societies existed (i.e. Mexico and the Aztecs, the Andean region with the Inca, and Guatemala and the Maya), was infected by foreign disease, greed, and subjugation of labor. Those native peoples of Latin America who were not dead from disease or war found themselves as either machines of labor to mine silver and gold or of reproduction.
(Point 2) According to Jo-Marie Burt and Philip Mauceri, “Since the early 1990’s, the Andean region of Latin America has been the most unstable and violent area in the hemisphere. “ (1) They continue, “The intensification of guerrilla, paramilitary and drug violence in Colombia has raised the specter of the regionalization of a conflict that has persisted for decades. The weakness of political parties has strengthened the hand of the military elsewhere in the Andes, most notably in Peru, where democratic institutions were systematically undermined during the Fujimori administration. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez’s caudillo-style government used executive powers to curtail and control the power of other governmental institutions, while in Ecuador the chronic inability to forge and maintain a governing coalition has resulted in weak governments, a presidential impeachment, and Latin America’s first successful coup d’état in over a decade.” (1) These continuous issues and persistent difficulties can be attributed to the ongoing infestation of poverty within these countries, and as globalization continues to spread innovation and withhold technology and capital from these depleting regions, the economic and political tensions will only increase. Indeed globalization is the spread of modern nationalistic features outside the borders of a developed country. Globalization calls into consideration the nature of work as it entails innovative technology, creating an inherent hierarchy amongst people around the world: those who need not work physically have the ability to use machinery, machinery produces surpluses of products in shorter amounts of time, therefore those who find necessity in working physically are of less value economically and socially within the globalized realm. Earnest Gellner writes, “In the agrarian world, most men worked with their muscle. In industrial society, physical work is virtually unknown, and there is simply no market for human brawn. What passes for manual work generally presupposes the capacity to read instructions and manuals. The garage mechanic, who may lose social standing because his work involves dirtying his hands, is in fact paid not for the use of physical strength, but for understand and handling of quite complex machinery. In brief, what passes for manual work presupposes a level literacy and sophistication which must often be well above that of the professional scholar of the agrarian age.” (28) Essentially the phenomenon of modernism spanning outwards to become globalization creates subordination between one way of life over the other, creating a substantial difference between past and present. It is necessary to understand the globalization through innovation has completely changed indigenous peoples in their ethic of work, their social standings within Latin American society and globally, their economic and political status as a culture, and generally with the degradation of their livelihood. Basically, the indigenous peoples continue to fall rapidly behind economically as modern society continues to flourish, creating dissention from developed powers, to the governing state of developing countries, and finally to the struggling native peoples.
(Point 3) The corporate world has directly impacted indigenous communities, whether through imposing upon the governing state to deter from local economy towards labor and capital for global companies, or by simply purchasing natural resources and harvesting them personally through eco-destruction within the property of different indigenous groups, without giving consent to the state to sell their land. The Huoarani tribe of Amazonia Ecuador is one that exhibits extreme violence if they are to find intruders on their land without permission. There have been reports of murdered missionaries, oil representatives and oil drillers on Huoarani land, simply because they were there. (Examine film and give specific details of relationship).
(Point 4) A similar situation was discovered also within Ecuador: a group of 17 communities outside of Tena which was directly studied by students under Dr. Timothy Smith of Appalachian State University’s Anthropology department, including myself, to examine the impact of the oil company Perenco on these various communities, the actions they underwent to express indignation of the company and state’s actions, and to hypothetically determine the future of these indigenous peoples. (Look at journal entries and audio recordings from the field study).
