Le documentaire sera rediffusé sur Arte le 16 octobre 2007 à 17h30 et le 23 octobre à 12h30.
27 sept. 2007
Rediffusion sur Arte
23 sept. 2007
CAMBRIOLAGE DE LA FEDERATION ZAPARA
(source : Indymedia UK)
Auteur : Ivan Noke
Today, September 22, the offices of the Zapara organization were broken into. Computers, files and more were stolen. This break-in comes just as investigations are underway on two recent attacks on the Zapara.
On August 26 Gloria Ushigua and Rosa Gualinga Dahua were brutelly attacked by four men. Two of their attackers have been identified as Nelson Santander Viteri and Juan Carlos Freire, who is a police officer.
One week earlier, in a community in Zapara territory Washu Mucushigua was stabbed in the eye and stomach with a broken bottle. He lost his eye. His wife, Amada, who is pregnant, was beaten badly and kicked repeatedly in the stomach. The Zapara leaders had been receiving threats for months before the attacks occurred. Land is Life has asked the government of Ecuador to provide them with police protection. We have been told that the Minister of Government has ordered the Governor of Pastaza to provide police protection two weeks ago, but so far no action has been taken. Their lives are in danger. Please contact the government of Ecuador and urge them to provide immediate protection for the Zapara leaders.
20 sept. 2007
Diffusion du documentaire au Centre Madrilène des Images
Dans le cadre du festival espagnol "El Ojo Cojo", le documentaire sera projeté le 19 octobre 2007 à 18h00 au Centre Madrilène des Images (Madrid).
12 sept. 2007
SOUTIEN DE ANDRAS CORBAN ARTHEN
(source : EarthSpirit Web)
Auteur : Andras Corban Arthen
Dear friends,
I apologize in advance for any multiple posts you may receive on this subject. I’m forwarding you a very distressing news report and urge you to take prompt action by writing to the addresses listed below. Of the two women mentioned in this article, I personally know and have worked with Gloria Ushigua, the Zápara leader; I’ve found her to be a strong, wise, sincere, deeply-committed, and thoroughly delightful person. Gloria is the daughter of César Ushigua, the last Zápara shimano (shaman) from Ecuador, who died a few years ago. She was taught by her father, and is now completing her training with the last remaining Zápara shaman from Perú.
Gloria Ushigua has dedicated her life to work on behalf of her people, a tiny tribe comprising just a few hundred members who live in isolated villages in the jungles of Ecuador. The Zápara were long thought to be extinct, until a few of them were sent to make contact with the outside world in the hope of securing help so that their families could survive. As a result, the government of Ecuador granted them ownership of their tribal lands, though to the Zápara, the idea that humans could “own” the Earth makes no sense. Despite that attitude, they now find themselves in the difficult position of struggling to retain that ownership as the only way to protect those lands from the multinational petrochemical corporations that want to raze the forest in order to dig wells, and the pharmaceutical conglomerates seeking to gain control of the many rare medicinal plants that abound in the Ecuadorian wilderness.
One of Gloria’s sons was murdered several years ago in retaliation for her activist efforts; now she and her collaborator, Rosa Gualinga, have been directly attacked and almost killed, and remain in dire need of medical help which, being “poor Indian women,” is being denied them. Here is a fairly recent photograph of Gloria and Rosa:
Please contact the authorities listed below --- it doesn’t matter if you can’t do it in Spanish --- to express your support for Gloria and Rosa, and make sure to tell them what country you live in, so they will understand that, truly, the whole world is watching. Feel free to forward this to any others who may also be willing to help.
In the Spirit of the Earth,
Andras Corban Arthen
Director, The EarthSpirit Community
11 sept. 2007
Contribution aux archives du gouvernement argentin
5 sept. 2007
Indigenous women left for dead in Ecuador
(source : Indymedia UK)
Author : Ivan noke
Puyo, Ecuador
Both women are internationally known human rights defenders. Gloria Ushigua is a leader of the Zapara people. Rosa Gualinga is of the Andoas people and works closely with the Zapara. The Zapara are an indigenous people in danger of becoming extinct, with a current population in Peru and Ecuador of approximately 650. Gloria is an elected representative of Nacionalidad Zapara de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (NAZAE), the official representative organization of the Zapara people in Ecuador, which works to promote and protect the lives and lands of the Zapara people. Zapara territory is rich with natural resources, like oil, timber and botanical medicines, and there are varied interests who are trying to exploit them.
In recent years, a group of people who are not Zapara have made several attempts to illegally seize from NAZAE the official right to represent the Zapara people and take control of Zapara land. Several people in this group have been threatening Gloria and Rosa for over a year. In recent months, after NAZAE won a legal victory over the group, these threats have intensified.
On Sunday, August 26th, a woman named Eliza Nango approached Gloria in the street in downtown Puyo. She said that her mother was Zapara and that she had an organization that worked with indigenous communities. She invited Gloria and Rosa to her house to discuss her work and the possibilities of collaboration.
At about 9pm, they were sitting in the patio area outside of Ms. Nango’s house when a man entered the patio, kicked Rosa and sprayed Gloria and Rosa in the face with a large quantity of what appears to have been tear gas. Three other men entered, and the four of them viciously beat Gloria and Rosa with fists, feet and clubs. Gloria was hit on the head with a rock. Witnesses say that the four men threw the two unconscious women into the trunk of a car and sped off.
Gloria and Rosa were found in the middle of the night, still unconscious, in the middle of the road. Gloria's son got them home, where they regained consciousness at around 4am on Monday. Although they have been to the military hospital in Puyo several times, they have still not been given a proper medical examination. Gloria's arm is broken and she has a high fever. They are both in need of medical treatment and a complete examination so that they can know the full extent of their injuries.
Gloria and Rosa identify the first man who attacked them as Nelson Santander Viteri. A witness recognized another of their attackers, a police officer named Juan Carlos Freire. Gloria and Rosa went to the police station in Puyo to file criminal complaints against these men but have been largely ignored.
A reliable and credible witness has told Land is Life that Nelson Santander Viteri told him that the reason for the attack was to kill Gloria. Other indigenous women in Puyo have also come forward to tell Land is Life that they have been beaten by Nelson Santander Viteri in the past. We believe that the two women's lives are in danger.
- express concern for the safety of Gloria Ushigua and Rosa Gualinga, and urge authorities to take immediate and effective action to protect them and ensure that they receive the medical attention that they require.
- call on authorities to order a thorough investigation into this attack, with results made public and those responsible brought to justice.
MAKE APPEALS TO:
Ismael Fabricio Arcos Lopez
Gobernador de Pastaza
Calle Atahualpa y 10 de Agosto
Puyo, Pastaza
Ecuador
Telephone: 03-2885308 03-2885423
Fax: 03-2885457
E-mail: secretariagober@yahoo.com
COPIES TO:
Gustavo Larrea
Ministro de Gobierno
Espejo y Benalcazar
Quito, Ecuador
Telephone: 593 2 2955666
E-mail: gustavolarreacabrera@hotmail.com
Dra. Lourdes Tiban
Secretaria Ejecutiva Nacional
Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades
y Pueblos del Ecuador (CODENPE)
Ave. Garcia Moreno
Quito, Ecuador
Telephone: 593 2 258 1319
Fax: 593 2 258 1559, ext. 109
E-mail: ltiban@codenpe.gov.ec
1 sept. 2007
Sélection au festival du Cinéma Péruvien de Paris
Sélection du documentaire au festival du Cinéma Péruvien et des Peuples Indigènes, qui se tiendra à Paris, au Cinéma des Cinéastes du 14 au 20 novembre 2007.
INTERVIEW WITH A SHIMANO
This article is adapted from Kerin Gould’s doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Davis.
The following interview took place at the United Nations during the 6th Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Gloria Ushigua and her brothers Felipe and Bartolo (respective leaders of the Nacionalidad Zápara del Ecuador and the Federación Binacional de la Nacionalidad Zápara de Ecuador y Perú) were working very hard to have their recommendations heard by the assembly in order to call attention to the threat of encroachment by the oil companies as well as the violent situation with neighboring tribes, exacerbated by the attraction of oil company money. A crucial component of this struggle was that NGO, evangelical, and oil company interests were encouraging other tribes to usurp the Zápara identity in order to gain control of their territory.
Amidst all of this, Gloria Ushigua has been working on a medicinal-plant garden with women from several Zápara communities, developing support for traditional medicine, health resources, an exchange system, strengthening of women’s roles and resources, and revitalization of knowledge. She has also been working to win land rights for her people. In spite of the difficulty and cost of getting from her community to cities like Puyo and the danger involved, she is struggling to formalize the title to their territory as a way to protect the Záparas’ land base and culture for future generations. Her efforts threaten the commercial interests in the area, however, and she is increasingly in danger from people who want her land and its resources. She has received many death threats, and in August four men, including one who may have been a police officer, ambushed her and Rosa Gualinga, sprayed tear gas into her face, beat her with clubs and rocks, and stuffed her into the trunk of their car driving off into the night. She was found the next morning lying in the middle of a road, badly injured. She is now recovering from that assault.
Kerin Gould: How did you begin your botanical and medicinal plant project and how did you organize?
Gloria Ushigua: We used to know all of these medicines. Then we saw Western medicines and the community didn’t want to use these herbal medicines. I said, “What’s wrong with you? We don’t have the economy. Where are we going to get it?” “Oh,” they said, “there is some in the hospital; yes, there they have lots of medicine.” That’s what happens. These days we have to wait a week if someone is sick. And then I said, “You have to make gardens in each community.” “How are we going to live?” they said. “With our medicine, like before!” I said. “We can find clothes, things like that, and we have food already.” And they said, “There are good medicines and lots of good things’, but they aren’t really good.” I said, “Let’s make a big garden in each community.” I spent about three months with them and we finished just a while ago. Now the plants are getting really big. Flowers are blooming.
Do the women sell the plants? Or exchange them?
If a person really needs to they sell them, but among themselves they exchange. They’re united this way. Along the way, the president [of the group] organizes, cleans things up. If somebody’s sick she knows who knows the most should bring that plant [to the patient].
So each is an expert in some plants or has a favorite?
Yes, that’s how it is.
I’m thinking about the division of Záparas across the Ecuador and Peru border. Does this project help unify your people’s knowledge?
Some have the history and knowledge in Peru. The shamanism, they have it in Peru and Ecuador has none. Ecuador has the language, stories, and everything. It’s an exchange to learn all this. That was my idea.
When you envisioned the project, what were your goals?
My vision was this: Those of us who are the carry-overs of shamanism and are learning, we can’t do anything else, because the plants had to be used by only us. Only I can say, “This is what you are going to use. I can do this for you, for anybody who is sick.” And that wasn’t good, I felt, because I don’t live there with them.
Then I said, “Each of you has to learn, but you aren’t shímanos, just people who know [the plants]. I can teach you.” My vision wasn’t about making pills and all that, just using [plants] as is. Like in my father’s time, we had an ayahuasca vine [a hallucinogenic plant], really big, really thick. I don’t know where it came from or what year it appeared. It was thick, really thick, immense, and very ugly. I took it twice, and I was looking at the whole world. And it was speaking a little.
For some projects like this, the very secret part we keep to ourselves. We only talk about it with the Big Teacher and the two younger ones [the Big Teacher, sometimes Old Professor, is her uncle, the shimano who is teaching her and another student]. One place we have, Supayurco, is inside the mountain. When you die you have to live under this mountain, and that lagoon is very green. Before, when I was little, I didn’t know what my father was talking about this. But when I learned it, when I saw, it was different. I went in, and it was a beautiful thing. There were hundreds of different types of animals. And inside of this were my father and my grandfather. There were other people there, and I spoke with them. And that is what the Old Professor [her uncle, the shímano who is teaching her] asks me: “How are you seeing it? Is this thing true or is it not true? Are you only imagining or are you seeing directly?”
There are three of us: two young ones and the elder who is above us. They asked a young man this question, but I don’t think he was at that point, as he began to say things that weren’t real. We have to say what we really see. I tell it the way I see it because I am seeing it. And this secret, one has to keep. The Professor says we have to keep it inside.
So that’s how you make decisions about what plans to make, through ayahuasca?
We also see who is going to die there.
It gives you an idea of what’s to come, right? So for project planning that’s pretty ideal.
It’s real; that’s how we see. How we sit, we look with our own eyes, sitting. The thing that we see, that’s what’s going to happen.
I want to do this with the kids. I want to teach them my way of seeing, not the outsiders’. I want to teach that. They have to learn and share it with the other kids. If I die, I disappear with my way of seeing. Even if they attack you with weapons you have to leave something behind.
In your situation it seems a little dangerous to even talk openly about your values, right?
Very dangerous, yes. Sometimes my friend says, “hide.” She always hides me. I have to lock myself in, and she says, “She’s not here. I don’t know where she is.” It’s embarrassing but people come like that. They look and look and then tell someone to come with weapons and kill me. They don’t care. The police don’t say anything. That’s how it is—a little dangerous for me. It’s very delicate.
How does this garden project represent the values, the thinking, philosophy of Zápara? Your big traditions?
I wanted to achieve all that the shimanos did. I said, “I’m going to learn to take ayahuasca and see. You have to advise me about all that.” My dad didn’t accept my idea. He said, “You are a woman. You can’t take care like men. They’ll surely kill you right away.” I said, “I don’t care if they kill me. I want to learn.” I pestered him and pestered him. So my mom said, “Accept it. She wants to do be that.” He accepted and we both took ayahuasca. Then he told me, “This stays here, but this other thing is for you. You’re not going to toss it out and say you learned this today. Friends will be there for you but not the way you think. These are friends with a different kind of life.” I said I wouldn’t go against that, that it would be my secret. I was seeing that the plant had its person.
How did the participants in this project get together?
It was interesting to them to talk about the things that were being lost. They were, according to them, lost. But they were inside of me, since I went to Peru a lot to learn my father’s thing.
I said, “We are going to grow the plants very mature and well taken care of.” And one woman spoke up and she said, “Why can’t we make medicines? Why don’t you contact a doctor?” I said that if we contact a doctor he would carry off all our plants and we’ll be left empty. They said, “You could send some of the boys, perhaps three boys, to be trained at a doctor’s about how to make medicines. This would be to sell and have some money for ourselves as well, because our lives our changing and it’s going to be different.”
Do you use money more than before?
Yes, because now they attack us, and without money how are we going to pay lawyers? They are crushing us with money, and without money how can we [defend ourselves]? That’s what the lady said. And I said, well, that’s a good idea, but those are very strong words. We can find another way so that we save some of this plant to take care of our territory. They said, “We will have problems with the oil companies and when they come in and we want to kick them out, with what papers are we going to stop them, with what money?”
In all of this, do you talk about traditional stories, your history or origin stories?
Yes. I tell them about Piatsaw—how our god came, how he appeared, where food comes from, all that. I’ll tell you my story of Piatsaw: Piatsaw lived alone. He didn’t have anybody to keep him company. Then he was thinking, “Who am I going to talk with?” So he went to the jungle and spoke with a palm. It was a chambira [a palm], which has lots of thorns. When he struck this chambira a boy came out and said, “Where am I?” And Piatsaw took him home. The boy didn’t even know what food was. The boy began to bother Piatsaw. “Piatsaw, let’s play! Let’s play!” Pitsaw said, “I don’t want to play. Let’s go make the garden.” And they made a really little garden. Then Piatsaw said, “Let’s go back home,” but the boy stayed. He took sticks and went pam-pam-pam. And when the boy came back again something like people came out, but different from people. I think they came out as bones and started to walk around all bent. The boy went running to find Piatsaw to tell him. Piatsaw said, “No! You shouldn’t do that - I have to do that, not you.” The boy said, “I need a mother.” Then Piatsaw said, “Let’s go to the jungle, near some very big trees.” Standing there, the boy said, ‘Come out, woman, come out,’ so a woman would come out for them. That woman was little—not good. They took her home. They spent two days at home and she grew there. Piatsaw took 10 pubic hairs from her and wrapped them in a leaf. He said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ That was Piatsaw’s idea for making other people: from those little hairs came people. He carried them, but he left them with the boy when he went to urinate on the way. “Take this and stay here.” The boy, who was a little bit of a brat, took out those hairs and they took off running as animals. They turned into animals, those hairs. Piatsaw got mad and spanked him on the butt, and he kicked the boy out. Then he went on and reached a little hill. He started to clear it. The boy looked from where he was hiding. “What is he doing with those hairs?” he asked himself. Piatsaw planted each hair, sowing them under the trees, and people came up, different people with families. The boy was scared. Piatsaw went home, and [a little later] the boy came back to tell, ‘People came up!’ Right there Piatsaw got mad and said, ‘Now you are going to fly up to the sky in case they die!” Pshhht, the boy was carried off and disappeared. That’s it.
So, then, plants and people…
We are the same. That’s why we love the plants so much. If you cut them they bleed. They will cry.
ABOUT ZAPARA PEOPLE :
The Zápara people live in the Amazon jungle on the border between Peru and Ecuador in the area currently known as Pastaza, bordering on territories of Kichwa, Huaorani, and Achuar peoples. The Zápara were once one of the most important and populous peoples in the area, with 28 ethno-linguistic groups divided into 217 tribes and a population of 98,500 spread across a vast territory. They are now one of the smallest, with no more than 500 people. The drop in their population is the result of colonization, assimilation, and resource extraction. The neighboring groups, particularly the Kichwa, were converted to Christianity, and there has been great pressure on the Zápara to assimilate, but so far, they have largely resisted. Even so, their traditional ways of life are affected by changes in the society and environment around them.
In the 1940s war between Ecuador and Peru, some of the Zápara community was captured and taken to Peru and could not return until the two countries reopened the borders in 1998. With the opening of the borders the Záparas held a transnational assembly to decide whether to assimilate into Kichwa culture or work on national identity. They decided to unite. Families reunited and began sharing traditional knowledge and revitalizing culture and nationhood, including the Zápara language, which was recognized by UNESCO in 2001 as a “Masterpiece of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity” for its oral traditions and other cultural manifestations.
Meanwhile, oil-companies and other transnationals have been trying to intrude in Zápara territory. While collaborating to stave off this intrusion, today’s Zápara are managing territory according to cultural principles. The Zápara use some 500 plants for food, medicines, woods, craftwork, and decorations. Knowledge of jungle life is detailed, intimate and protocol-laden, and this is reflected in their language. Dreams and the use of ayahuasca, a vine, allow shímanos (medicine peoples) to know how to cure, counsel, predict things to come, and maintain the harmony between the jungle, the spirit world, and humans.
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