Ring of fire: indigenous communities are erupting along the Andean cordillera, denouncing the impact of new trade deals. Kathryn Ledebur profiles the opposition inside Ecuador and Bolivia

New Internationalist, Dec, 2004 by Kathryn Ledebur

THE old conference hall on the second floor of the cheap hotel in downtown Quito is packed with representatives from Ecuador's indigenous groups. There is a hum of muffled conversation and the smell of wood smoke fills the room and clings to their worn ponchos as they await the arrival of the country's Trade Minister, Yvonne Baki. She's come to explain the advantages of a new proposed free trade deal between the Andean nations and the United States.

A member of Ecuador's euroelite, Minister Baki has been the country's ambassador to the US for years and is a big supporter of trade talks with Washington. When she finally saunters into the hall the contrast with her Indian audience couldn't be starker. She wears a silk blouse and tailored dress pants; her hair is coloured gold. The compact Indian women scattered around the room are garbed in traditional embroidered dress and sport felt hats. Ms Baki's most recent accomplishments include organizing the Miss Universe pageant in Quito last year. Now she's known as Miss FTA for her free trade boosterism.

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Minister Baki tells her listeners that globalization cannot be stopped. You either 'get on the train,' she says, 'or you get left behind.' The Andean Free Trade Agreement can benefit both big business and small farmers in Ecuador, she stresses. But the small-scale farmer must get into the negotiation process because 'it's the rural sector that's most vulnerable'.

'Who will we trade with if not the US?' she asks. 'Brazil, Chile, Peru? We have a trade deficit with each of those. The US is the largest market in the region and must import food to feed its population. We must get in there and get the best agreements possible.' If not, she adds, other countries will cut better deals and Ecuador will be left behind.

She hardly finishes her presentation before she is bombarded with questions from the floor. The people in the room are all members of FENOCIN--the Federation of Indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and Small-scale Farmer Organizations. Of Ecuador's 13 million people, 43 per cent are indigenous.

'How can a negotiating team made up of bureaucrats and business people possibly represent the small-scale farmers and the rural sector?' says one Afro-Ecuadorian leader.

'What will the Government do to provide technical and economic assistance to the rural sector to create an even playing field in order to trade with the US?' asks an NGO representative.

Then from a far corner of the room a mestizo woman loudly interrupts: 'Why are we allowing the US to set the terms? How is Ecuador's unique reality involved in these talks?'

After two days of talks FENOCIN decided not to board Baki's FTA train--at least for the moment. Instead the indigenous group requested that negotiations be stopped 'until the rural sector can truly participate'. They also demanded a new negotiating team to include representatives from groups most affected by free trade--small-scale farmers, small family-based businesses and artisans.

Some 1,500 kilometres to the south, Bolivia shares the same Andean mountain chain with Ecuador. Indigenous people here are also wary of the proposed FTA. Along with other members of the country's poor majority, they have taken to the streets to protest privatization of Bolivian industry and to gain a voice in the economic processes that affect them. Nearly 5 million of the country's 8.3 million people live in poverty, most of them Indians. This despite the fact that Bolivia possesses the second largest gas deposits in South America.

The indigenous community in Bolivia has been demanding self-government for years and much of the arid, windswept plain called the altiplano is under the sway of native leaders. Felipe Quispe, the Aymara leader of the country's main peasant organization, emphasizes that self-determination 'is the only way we can have our own laws and our own territory'. (1) The Aymara make up nearly a quarter of the country's population.

Government repression intensified in 1998 with the US-funded coca eradication programme, Plan Dignidad. The plan forced the Bolivian military into direct conflict with coca growers who were defending their primary source of income. Human rights violations soared as US-trained and equipped soldiers fired against cocalero protesters.

Efforts to replace coca with exotic exports like pineapple, passion fruit and hearts of palm met with generally disastrous results. After years of trying to grow alternatives, campesinos are more doubtful than ever. Says farmer Carlos Huanca from the Chapare region: 'The experts told us we would make money as soon as Argentineans learn to like plantains. But two years have gone by and we are still hungry. We tried to export the crop ourselves and now our community has a debt we can't pay. We don't know how we are going to feed our children.'

The plunder of Bolivia's resource wealth began in the mid-1500s when the Spanish, using forced Indian labour, extracted a fortune in silver from the mountain known as cerro rico, just outside the colonial city of Potosi. The pattern continues to this day--with growing resistance.