June 22, 2005

COBAN, Guatemala/GENEVA – Life for local communities in El Estor municipality, some 320 kilometers from Guatemala City, involves a constant struggle for improved environment and better health in an area where mining companies are exploiting the land and other natural resources. The Maya-Q'eqchi people are concerned not only about the government's granting of mining licenses to private companies without consulting them, they worry about the long-term impact of such development-oriented activities. The companies and government talk of job creation for the residents of this humid region, but the people's daily struggle also involves dealing with water pollution, soil degradation, toxic effects on human health and life, and on the communities' cultural life.

Through the Department for World Service (DWS) regional program in Central America, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) is encouraging Indigenous communities like the Maya-Q'eqchi to advocate for their rights as citizens through projects that empower them to oppose the exploitation of mines and privatization of health care; promote the preservation of the natural environment; and defend their cultural rights as Indigenous People. In El Estor, a local LWF partner Madre Selva, in collaboration with the lobby group, Friends of the Lake Association, has managed to suspend petroleum explorations that had started in Guatemala's largest lake, Lake Izabal, which is a source of food for the local people.

El Estor was one of the communities visited by participants in a recent LWF regional consultation focusing on citizenship, interculturality and prophetic diakonia, and the importance of these concepts, especially in the LWF's emergency and development work. Those who participated in the field trips described their experiences as unforgettable lessons learnt from the Indigenous People about defending their own culture and nature.

Full Citizenship in Latin America Limited to Some Population Groups

The 60 participants in the May 23-27 consultation in Coban, Guatemala included mainly DWS field program staff and staff from the LWF Geneva headquarters, as well as representatives of local churches, partner organizations and related agencies. The discussion subjects were approached from a conceptual, political and ethical point of view. While citizenship was underscored as the full realization of all human rights, it was underlined that it also embraced the full belonging to a political community with all rights and duties, and maximum participation in all its decisions.

In Latin American countries, participants heard, full citizenship was always limited to a small group of the population: white, European descendant, male and urban. Indigenous people and African-descendants, women, peasants and young people were considered second class citizens. This caste or colonial situation was still in place today. Globalization on other hand, did not help in overcoming the exclusion and oppression of minorities, even though it facilitated the building up of worldwide relations and alliances, including movements of social change.

Therefore, building truly inclusive societies and achieving the goal of full citizenship was not an easy undertaking. There may be tensions between defending some presumably universal values from Western, Christian and enlightened tradition*including human rights*and the need to take different cultural particularities seriously, as Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, director of the LWF Department for Theology and Studies explained.

The participants also discussed the different positions in the relation between socio-economic equality and cultural affirmation: the "integrationist" position on one hand, promoted the socio-economic integration of the Indigenous population, while the "culturalist" view point advocated autonomy and self-determination of the Indian peoples, possibly neglecting the integration of multicultural states and socio-economic equality.

As participants reflected on the personal aspect of citizenship they stressed the need to "understand that we ourselves, our culture, our beliefs, our values are part of this structure, and have to become part of the agenda for change." Changes in the external structures should go hand in hand with an internal change of values, they said.

They challenged the LWF to raise global awareness about people's right to full citizenship by creating guidelines that would help people realize their cultural recognition and aspirations. The consultation was organized by the LWF/DWS Central American regional program that covers Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Lutheran World Information