Across the U.S. Borders

These are newsgroup postings and newspaper stories ...there's a lot of text here so I've forgone adding graphics. These will change semi-regularly, to provide an update on political issues of interest in Indian Country. You may also want to check some of the links on the Native American Links page for more information.

Canada Welcomes Nunavut
c. Canoe 3/31/99

Invisible line to change Canada forever

Premier-designate, Inuk attorney Paul Okalik shakes the hands of supporters after his election by the Nunavut Territory legislative assembly Friday, March 5, 1999 in Iqaluit, Northwest Territories. Okalik will begin his duties as the first premier of Nunavut when it officially becomes an independent territory on April 1, 1999.

IQALUIT, N.W.T. (CP) -- It's an invisible line running through trackless tundra, but at midnight next Wednesday night it will change Canada forever.

When the boundary marking the new northern territory of Nunavut comes into effect April 1, the people of the eastern Arctic will begin to assume control over their own destinies after working toward the goal for 20 years.

"It's a real challenge for us as a people to solve our own problems," says Paul Okalik, the soft-spoken 34-year-old Inuit lawyer who will become the new territory's first premier.

For southerners, the effect will be more subtle but no less profound -- change the North and you change the nation, says Graham White, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

"So much of the Canadian psyche is tied up in the North," he says. "Most of us never go there, but it's really part of how we think about the country."

The creation of Nunavut will also change how Canada is seen around the world.

For weeks, the territorial capital Iqaluit has been visited by foreign reporters eager for the Nunavut story -- so many that a local school proposed soliciting donations from visiting TV crews.

International media from Japan to France to Brazil are expected for April 1.

Nunavut has been created to satisfy the terms of the 1993 Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, signed 20 years after the Inuit began to document their traditional claims to the land.

It also comes in response to a 1982 plebiscite in which northerners voted 56 per cent in favour of dividing the Northwest Territories into two separate entities.

Nunavut will cover a vast chunk -- 2.2 million square kilometres -- of the eastern Arctic. That area, about twice the size of Ontario, has only 25,000 people.

The problems it faces are daunting.

The unemployment rate is about 22 per cent. Per capita income averages about $11,000. Almost half the residents have no higher education than Grade 9.

Economic development and infrastructure exist mostly in optimistic planning documents. Outside of Iqaluit, where a publicly funded building boom has opened up construction work, government jobs are often the only ones around.

ÊMore than 90 per cent of Nunavut's $620-million budget will come from Ottawa and the territory's leaders acknowledge it will be a generation before it is self-supporting.

Running two territorial governments instead of one will cost federal taxpayers $95 million a year, in addition to one-time costs of $150 million.

The best hopes for Nunavut's future lie in the resource industries. The territory has proven deposits of lead, zinc, copper, gold and diamonds.

Fisheries for arctic char, shrimp and scallops are growing. So is tourism, as word spreads of Nunavut's unspoiled national parks and abundant whales, polar bears and caribou.

Most agree that giving the Inuit -- who comprise 85 per cent of Nunavut's population -- the opportunity to run their own show is their best chance.

"One of the phrases you hear all the time (from Inuit leaders) is 'We can't possibly do any worse,'" says White. "The experts flying in from Toronto and Edmonton haven't worked."

Self-government, goes the hope, will translate into self-confidence.

That's something that Okalik, who fought through teenage alcoholism and illiteracy before finding the strength to turn his life around, understands better than most.

"There was always doubt," he said. "It was difficult."

Nunavut will also overcome its problems, says Okalik.

"For the first little while, we'll need support," Okalik has said. "But eventually, we can be contributing to this country. A lot of us are contributing now."

Frequently asked questions about Nunavut

What is it? Nunavut will be a new territory, like the Northwest Territories or Yukon. It includes everything east of a line stretching from the Manitoba- Saskatchewan boundary to the Arctic coast facing Greenland. At 2,242,000 square kilometres, it's twice the size of Ontario and four times as big as France.

What does it mean? Nunavut is Inuktitut for Our Land.

Why are we doing this? Northerners want the split. A 1982 plebiscite on division passed with a 57 per cent majority across the North. And in 1992, about 85 per cent of Inuit who voted approved the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, which promised to create Nunavut in exchange for their giving up aboriginal rights to traditional lands. Most argue that the N.W.T. capital of Yellowknife is as far away from Baffin Island as Edmonton is from Quebec City -- too distant to govern effectively.

Who lives there? About 25,000 people, roughly 85 per cent of them Inuit. Nunavut has a birth rate more than twice the Canadian average, and roughly 9,500 of its people are under the age of 15.

Who pays? Creating two territories out of one will cost federal taxpayers an extra $95 million a year, in addition to one-time costs of $150 million. More than 90 per cent of Nunavut's $600-million budget will come from Ottawa. Northern leaders say it will be a generation before Nunavut is self- sufficient.

What are people concerned about? Jobs: unemployment is about 22 per cent and roughly one-third of the people are on welfare.
Education: about 42 per cent of the population over 15 has no schooling past Grade 9 and only six per cent have a university degree.

Cost of living: With a per capita income of about $11,000 a year, prices are up to twice as high as in southern Canada. A loaf of Wonderbread in Iqaluit costs $3.

What's the weather like? Northern winters are nine months long. Average January temperature is -30; average July temperature is 15. April temperatures start to rise above freezing.

Canadians Celebrate New Territory

.c The Associated Press By DAVID CRARY 4/1/99

IQALUIT, Nunavut (AP) -- A new flag rose Thursday in the Arctic as Nunavut, the self-governing territory of Canada's Inuit people, celebrated its birth with fireworks, festivals and vows to surmount the daunting challenges ahead.

The historic day culminated more than 20 years of often arduous negotiations between federal authorities and the Inuit, who make up 85 percent of Nunavut's 25,000 people. The final result is Canada's biggest-ever aboriginal land claims settlement and the first major change in its map in 50 years.

"We have demonstrated to the world what we can accomplish,'' said Paul Okalik, the 34-year-old lawyer elected by his fellow legislators as Nunavut's first premier.

"We achieved this through peaceful negotiations, without civil disobedience, without litigation,'' he told political leaders and Inuit elders at a 90-minute ceremony. "We the people of Nunavut have regained the control of our destiny and will once again determine our own path.''

Okalik, a veteran of the land-claims negotiations but a newcomer to politics, will govern a territory as big as Western Europe, carved out of the eastern 60 percent of the Northwest Territories. Its Inuit majority is admired for perseverance and generosity, yet plagued by serious social problems and heavily reliant on federal funding.

With Okalik, Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other dignitaries looking on, young military cadets unfurled the new territorial flag. It depicts the North Star in one corner and an inuksuk (eee-nook-shook) -- an Inuit guidepost made of stones -- in the middle.

"Through the centuries, they have guided you across the snow to your homes,'' said Canada's governor-general, Romeo LeBlanc. "You are the closest people to the North Star. And your courage and your values are a light and a lesson to others.''

Chretien noted that he encouraged moves toward Inuit self-determination three decades ago when he was Indian Affairs minister. He took that post not long after the federal government alienated many Inuit by forcing them to resettle in designated villages and pressuring their children to attend church-run boarding schools which often suppressed Inuit culture.

"Fifty years from now, school children will be reading about this day in their text books... when we, together, redrew the map of Canada,'' Chretien said. "Canada is showing the world, once again, how we joyfully embrace our many peoples and cultures.''

The nationally televised ceremony was opened by three elders who blessed the new territory and punctuated with entertainment by Inuit performers. An eight-member troupe danced and chanted to the beat of hand-held drums, and five women demonstrated the ancient art of throat singing, which produces haunting sounds through special breathing techniques.

Later events included a fiddle-and-accordion festival, a rock concert by Inuit heavy-metal band Angava, and a community feast featuring caribou brochette, raw fish and musk ox.

Nunavut's official birth came at midnight, and a few minutes later fireworks lit the sky over the new capital of Iqaluit (eee-kah-loo-eet). The flares illuminated the ice covering Frobisher Bay and startled dozens of local sled dogs into a chorus of frenzied barks.

"It's like New Year's Eve,'' said Hannah Nutarak after watching the fireworks with her two sons.

Daniel, 4, "was a little scared,'' she said, but Joey, 9, was proud about Nunavut's birth.

"It will be different now, and better,'' Mrs. Nutarak said. "There will be more jobs.''

Nunavut means "our land'' in Inuktitut, the Inuit language which will be one of the territory's three official languages along with English and French. Fifteen of the 19 new legislators, who were sworn in Thursday morning, are Inuit.

Separate ceremonies were held to swear in Nunavut's three judges and establish a Nunavut division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Mounties, responsible for law enforcement throughout Nunavut, have a checkered history in the region and have acknowledged that some of their past actions were insensitive to Inuit values.

"The RCMP is learning about the importance of respecting different cultures, about the power of spirituality and of the need to listen,'' said the Mounties' chief commissioner, Phil Murray.

Amazon alliance protests patent on sacred plant

By FRANK DAVIES c. Miami Herald March 31, 1999

WASHINGTON -- A shaman, or healer, of the Cofan tribe in the Amazon Basin, bedecked in azure blue cloth and beads, stepped up to a window in the U.S. Patent Office Tuesday with an unusual petition: He wants a patent revoked that was issued 13 years ago on a strain of plant used in sacred rituals by indigenous peoples.

To members of those tribes, the plant known as ayahuasca is the "vine of the soul'' in the Quechua language. Boiled and consumed as a thick tea, it has a powerful hallucinogenic kick that shamans have used for centuries in religious ceremonies.

To a coalition of environmental, legal and Amazon groups, Plant Patent 5751, issued to a U.S. businessman for exclusive use of one variety of the plant, is a threat to the tribes, a misuse of patent laws and part of a disturbing trend.

But to the California man who holds the patent, which is "gathering dust in a drawer,'' the controversy is overblown and has unfairly focused on him. Loren Miller said Tuesday his patent doesn't affect the use of ayahuasca in the Amazon, but has led to threats against him in Ecuador.

And an official with the Patent Office, Howard Locker, said the patent was issued in 1986 for 17 years of exclusive use of a distinctive strain of the vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, found in a cultivated garden.

David vs. Goliath?

The groups petitioning the Patent Office sought to portray the dispute as a group of indigenous peoples struggling against federal bureaucrats and "bio-prospectors'' searching for natural compounds to make and market new medicines for pharmaceutical companies.

The shaman from Ecuador, Querubin Queta Alvarado, joined five other tribal members at an unusual press conference. Under the chandeliers of a Marriott Hotel meeting room, they chanted and swayed in feathered headdresses, demonstrating part of a ritual somewhat comparable to Christian communion.

One leader of an Amazon group, Antonio Jacanamijoy, imbibed a thick liquid substitute for ayahuasca. The real thing is not allowed in the country because of its hallucinogenic properties.

"You can't take the plant without spiritual guidance, because it's so strong,'' said Jacanamijoy, a leader of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). "It is more powerful than coca, and could be used the wrong way.''

In his petition, Jacanamijoy said that "commercializing an ingredient of our religious and healing ceremonies is a profound affront to more than 400 cultures that populate the Amazon.''

A stark comparison

Melina Selverston, director of the Coalition of Amazonian Peoples, put the issue in stark terms: "Some of the [shamans] ask how we would feel if someone patented the Christian cross.''

A senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law said the dispute raised issues of "moral considerations in patent law'' and questioned whether the patent should have been issued for a plant that is so "widely found in a cultivated and uncultivated state."

"This is something to be shared and respected, not privatized,'' said David Downes. "This raises serious issues about intellectual property rights.''

Miller, the patent holder, said the controversy has been misconstrued. He was reluctant to talk because he said he had been threatened by members of COICA in Ecuador. A group affiliated with COICA participated in the kidnapping of two U.S. citizens in Ecuador several years ago.

In an interview with The Herald in 1996, Miller said he had traveled to Ecuador, consumed ayahuasca and was intrigued by its medicinal potential and pursued the patent, which he never used. He has a one-man company -- International Plant Medicine Corp. in Palo Alto.

He pointed out Tuesday that ayahuasca is offered for sale by several companies on the Internet.

Locker, the patent examiner, said someone can receive a plant patent by demonstrating they invented or discovered and then asexually reproduced a distinctive variety of plant.

"We don't get one of these petitions very often,'' added Locker, who said it would be reviewed.

Indigenous Literature of the Americas

(Guatemala City, July 27-30)

The 2nd Congress of Indigenous Literature of the Americas (el Segundo Congreso de Literatura Indigena de America) will be held in Guatemala City, July 27-30, 1999, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture & Sports of Guatemala and the Cultural Association.

Papers will be accepted from indigenous writers, preferably those who have published in their native languages, but also from literary critics, academics and researchers from all countries. The principal topics will be:

Indigenous literature of the Americas Poetry Prose, narratives, stories, fiction Oral tradition, including myths, legends, fables, oral history Indigenous world view and culture in literature Form and content of indigenous literature Methodology and techniques of indigenous literature Anthropological aspects of indigenous literature Publishing and publishers Libraries, archives, indigenous writers' organizations Cultural and language politics in the Americas Schools and literary currents in indigenous literature

For further information contact:

Gaspar Pedro Gonzalez, Coordinador General Asociacion Cultural 12 calle 10-27, zona 1, Guatemala, Guatemala, C.A. tel: 232-1107 y 232-0125 fax: 230-0591 y 232-2023 e-mail: lacade@pronet.net.gt

Indians Protest for Aid in Manitoba

.c The Associated Press 4/6/99

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) -- Scores of Indian protesters demanding more economic aid for their reservations scuffled with a police riot squad Tuesday at the Manitoba Legislature.

Police used pepper spray in an attempt to repel the protesters, and arrested six on charges of mischief and assaulting an officer. Five other protesters were detained briefly, but broke free when fellow demonstrators let them out of a police cruiser.

The protest coincided with the opening of the legislature's spring session. It was organized to press demands for more jobs and public-works projects on Manitoba's Indian reservations.

Mayan Pupils Allowed to Wear Traditional Attire

c. REUTERS 4/8/99

GUATEMALA CITY -- In a victory for Guatemala's Mayan Indians, education officials said Wednesday that two students could wear traditional dress after a school threatened to expel them for refusing to wear its uniform.

"This is a very important precedent that will encourage other Mayan students to exercise their rights to express their ethnic identity," said Rosalina Tuyuc, a Mayan congresswoman for the opposition Democratic Front for the New Guatemala.

Claudia Tux Tum, 17, and Virginia Guadalupe Toj, 22, two Quiche Mayan women, had been warned by school officials in the mountainous western city of Quetzaltenango, about 65 miles west of Guatemala City, to wear the school's uniform or face expulsion. The students refused and some teachers barred them from classes.

But Education Minister Arabella Castro, under pressure from Mayan groups, ordered faculty members from the Western National School of Commercial Sciences on Monday to allow the students to attend all classes in their traditional dress, saying the measure discriminated against the women's ethnic identity.

Ms. Tuyuc, who wears her traditional Kaqchikel dress in Congress, said that many Mayan students across Guatemala face similar bans against wearing traditional clothes in the schoolroom, but that most abide by the rules for fear of retaliation or falling behind academically.

Senior education officials said they regretted the incident and that it never should have happened.

Since long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the Americas in the 15th century, Mayan women have worn the colorful embroidered blouses called huipiles as a badge of identity.

But for centuries Mayans have suffered from poverty and discrimination at the hands of Guatemala's minority European-descended population in this country of 11 million.

Under the 1996 peace accords, Guatemalans will vote on May 16 in a referendum on a package of 50 constitutional reforms. These include recognition of the rights of Indians to speak Mayan dialects and wear traditional dress.

The accords ended 36 years of civil war between the Government and leftist rebels, in which an estimated 200,000 mostly Mayan peasants were killed.

Rebels in Mexico Retake a Town Hall Seized by Police

By JULIA PRESTON c. New York Times 4/9/99

MEXICO CITY -- The Zapatista rebels, in a bold challenge to the government, sent more than 1,000 unarmed followers Thursday to retake the town hall in an Indian village in Chiapas state only one day after they were ousted from the building by the state police.

At noon, three columns of rebels, their faces covered with their hallmark black ski masks, marched into the cobblestone square in San Andres Larrainzar, in the Indian highlands of Chiapas and confronted 150 state police officers in riot gear who were guarding the town hall.

Witnesses said the Zapatistas were empty-handed, not even carrying sticks or stones. But they battered several police cars with their fists and shoved the policemen to move them away from the building. No injuries or arrests were reported.

A state government communique said that the police had withdrawn to the edge of the village "to avoid a confrontation with furious demonstrators who pounded on their vehicles and shouted slogans at them in an obvious attempt to provoke violence."

State officials said they were seeking arrest warrants for the Zapatistas who damaged the police cars.

After 10 months of tense standoff in Chiapas, the Zapatistas moved to reassert their claim to the village, which is a central political symbol because it was the site, in 1995 and 1996, of peace talks between the rebels and the government that produced the first and only peace agreement for Chiapas.

Six months later the Zapatistas pulled out of the talks after the government sought to renegotiate some terms.

Last year the government staged military operations to break up several Zapatista-run townships. The last one, in June, ended in a shooting battle with Zapatistas in which at least eight people were killed.

Opposition forces occupied the mayor's offices in San Andres Larrainzar in December 1995 after Zapatista supporters won an election conducted according to Maya Indian custom that was not recognized by state elections officials. Since then the Zapatistas have boycotted all other elections, so candidates from the governing party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have won the mayor's post by overwhelming but not representative majorities.

A Zapatista mayor was nominally presiding in the town hall over what the rebels called an "autonomous township." But since the government cut off all public funds to the rebel mayor, the Zapatista administration had been virtually paralyzed for months.

On Wednesday, in an operation without violence or arrests, 300 state police officers recaptured the town hall, expelling the only two Zapatistas who were there, both security guards.

The police installed an Indian mayor elected by the PRI faction, Marcos Diaz Nunez. Thursday Diaz withdrew along with the police and entered a police complaint against the rebels.

The state government asserted that most of the Zapatista protesters were from other townships, not San Andres Larrainzar. But a rebel leader who gave his name only as Benjamin said most of the demonstrators came from a nearby village that is a Zapatista stronghold.

In a speech before the Zapatista crowd, Benjamin accused the Chiapas governor, Roberto Albores Guillen, of "cowardice and bad faith" and of trying to provoke bloodshed between Indians.

Most of the rebels withdrew by midafternoon, leaving a contingent of several hundred to guard the mayor's office.

Indians Caught in Colombian War

.c The Associated Press By JARED KOTLER 04-10-99

POPAYAN, Colombia (AP) -- Anger is brewing on the sprawling Indian reserves that blanket misty Andean ridges rising above this whitewashed colonial capital.

The somewhat surprising targets of the discontent are leftist rebels who having been fighting for decades in the name of Colombia's poor and oppressed.

Once respected in this historically combative western region, where fierce Paez Indian warriors fought a 100-year war against Spanish conquerors, Colombia's guerrillas are now considered a danger.

Indian leaders say increasing rebel incursions on the reserves are sowing violence, disrupting traditional life and drawing peace-seeking native groups into a 34-year civil war they want nothing to do with.

"What indigenous people want is to have their territory, to live peacefully, and not to be bothered,'' said a Paez activist, Jose Domingo Caldon. "For the guerillas -- and for the state security forces as well -- that concept is a hindrance.''

At a statewide assembly of tribal authorities in late March, Indian leaders agreed to present complaints to top rebel leaders, the military and government peace negotiators.

"We can't sit passively before the actors of war and peace, because the Indian territories are being converted into battlefields,'' said Caldon, who is a member of the Regional Council of Indigenous People of Cauca, whose capital is Popayan.

At a preparatory meeting held on a former rich man's estate north of Popayan, now part of the 7,500-acre Ambalo reserve, Indian leaders ticked off grievances against guerrillas active in the region.

Paez official Camilo Eider Fernandez said 300 heavily armed rebels from the largest insurgent group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- have set up camp on his group's reserve and are ignoring elders' pleas to leave.

"As long as the guerrillas are here, we all become military targets. We're between a rock and a hard place,'' said Fernandez, who fears the army will view his community as FARC collaborators and take reprisals.

Rebel recruitment also has Indians upset.

Alirio Morales, a Guambiano leader from the Quizgo reserve, said 10 Indian teen-agers from the area were recruited by FARC rebels in February, only to be slaughtered two weeks later in a firefight with soldiers.

The youths, ages 13 to 18, were sent out "like cannon fodder,'' Morales said. "They hadn't even learned how to handle a rifle.''

Similar complaints are levied by embattled Indian groups in other regions of Colombia. Only the culprits are often not the rebels, but rather army units and rightist paramilitary groups who battle them for territory and popular allegiances.

Blanca Lucia Echeverria, the top Indian affairs aide to the national human rights ombudsman, said all sides are now using Indian reserves as battlefields, threatening or killing leaders suspected of aiding the enemy, and recruiting young Indians -- often by force -- as soldiers, messengers or spies.

"As the conflict escalates indigenous people are getting dragged down with it,'' said Echeverria, whose office reported that 63 Indian leaders were assassinated in 1997 alone.

In one case, she said, FARC guerrillas killed 15 members of a tiny Indian tribe in southern Caqueta state, the Koreguaje, after accusing them of aiding rightist paramilitary groups.

Many Colombians were not surprised when an FARC rebel unit recently killed three U.S. social activists working near the Venezuelan border with the U'wa, a tribe fighting to keep oil companies off its lands.

"It was nothing new,'' said Sen. Jesus Pinacue, a Paez leader who is one of Colombia's two Indian senators. "What's new is that they attacked American citizens.''

The Indians under heaviest attack at the moment are the Embera-Katio, a tribe of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Cordoba and Antioquia states. United Nations monitors in Colombia say that since July, rightist militias and the FARC have killed and tortured Embera-Katio leaders, burned homes and forced dozens of families to flee.

Underlying many of the conflicts are the armed groups' desire to control key corridors and valuable resources located on or near Indian reserves.

"We are in strategic locations -- militarily, politically and economically,'' said Rosalba Jimenez, a Sikuani Indian who heads the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.

The growing harassment of Indians is a setback for a country regarded as a leader in South America in protecting native minorities. It has about 80 tribal groups estimated to encompass more than 700,000 people out of a total population of nearly 40 million.

Colombia's 1991 constitution made Indian languages official, set aside seats in the legislature for indigenous people and ratified perpetual Indian ownership and broad governing authority over reserves that cover nearly a fourth of the country's land.

More than 80 percent of Colombia's Indians now live on 479 self-managed reserves, which stretch across much of the Colombian Amazon and large pockets of its Andean highlands and Caribbean coast.

After Colombia's government begrudgingly accepted centuries-old Indian demands, indigenous groups and Marxist guerillas trying to take power increasingly have gone their separate ways.

The trend is clear in Cauca, home to nearly a fourth of Colombia's Indians and where in the 1970s indigenous groups and Marxist guerrillas were loosely allied. At the time, police working with big landholders killed Indian leaders by the dozens.

Indians in the region even had their own guerrilla movement -- Quintin Lame, named after a revered Paez Indian who led rebellions early in the century. The group laid down its arms in 1991 as the new constitution was being approved.

Today, Indian leaders say the struggle for their people's rights and welfare is long-term and nonviolent. Many look condescendingly at the rebel movements that have been fighting since the 1960s.

"The guerrillas can talk about 40 years of struggle,'' said Alvaro Morales Tombe, an elected mayor from the Guambiano tribe. "We're talking about more than 500 years.''

Paramilitary activity on rise in Mexico's Chiapas

c. Reuters 4/13/99

MEXICO CITY, - Paramilitary groups like the one that massacred 45 Indian refugees in 1997 are growing in force in Mexico's violence-torn state of Chiapas, a congressional peace mediator alleged on Tuesday.

Chiapas, an impoverished and politically polarised state on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, is home to the Zapatista guerrilla movement, in which local Indians support an armed rebel force hidden away in the jungle.

Since the Zapatistas launched their pro-Indian movement five years ago, right-wing paramilitary groups have sprung up to counter them.

The paramilitary groups support local landowners and officials. Just three days before Christmas in 1997, paramilitaries dressed in black massacred 45 unarmed refugees -- most of them women and children -- who supported the Zapatistas.

"There is a recruitment campaign that is very dangerous,'' Gilberto Lopez, a leftist legislator and president of the congressional mediating team called Cocopa, told Reuters.

"In same areas of Chiapas they are forming numerous training camps for paramilitary forces,'' he said.

More than 100 people were arrested following the 1997 massacre, including some local government officials. Survivors complained that they had reported paramilitary training before the attack but were ignored by authorities.

Cocopa is one of the four parties involved in the peace process, in addition to the Zapatistas, the government and the local Roman Catholic Church.

But peace talks broke down more than two years ago, leaving the Chiapas conflict to fester. Although the rebel uprising lasted but 10 days and killed 150 people, hundreds more people have died since then in related political violence.

Lopez of Cocopa said he would raise the paramilitary issue before the entire Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Congress).

"Tension in the conflict continues, but Cocopa has to exercise restraint in its statements,'' Lopez said. "The situation could lead to more confrontations.''

The Zapatistas are seeking autonomy for indigenous people throughout Mexico, but the government claims they want Indians to virtually secede from the country.

Sechelt Signs Tentative Treaty for Land, Money

c. AP 4/16/99

SECHELT, British Columbia (AP) -- A Sechelt elder sang a traditional song to her ancestors as the British Columbia First Nation signed a tentative treaty for land, cash and resource rights.

About 400 aboriginal and non-native people gathered in a cedar longhouse in this coastal community to hear speeches from politicians, elders and others who hammered out the historic deal with the British Columbia and federal governments.

Federal Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart said the treaty will reconcile past obligations to the 1,000-member band as it joins other aboriginal groups that have negotiated treaties elsewhere in Canada.

The agreement-in-principle marks the first time treaty negotiations were conducted under the six-year-old British Columbia Treaty Commission.

RPT - Indian land negotiations in Canada clear hurdle

By Allan Dowd c. Reuters 4/16/99

SECHELT, British Columbia, April 16 - The settlement of Indian land claims in western Canada took a small but symbolic step forward on Friday with the signing of the first tentative treaty for an urban area.

The agreement in principle between the Sechelt Band, Canada and the province of British Columbia was hailed as an example of how negotiations can settle the land disputes that have cast a cloud over the region's economy.

"That's our rights. That's our land claim," Sechelt elder Theresa Jeffries said as she waved a copy of the agreement to the crowd of about 300 people gathered in a modern tribal long-house on Sechelt's outskirts.

Negotiators hope to finalize the agreement by the end of the year.

The tribe -- which also spells its name Shisha'lh -- has about 1,000 members. Its traditional land base along the coast has had to face rapid non-Indian population growth with the expansion of Vancouver -- about 50 kilometers to the south.

The tentative agreement calls for paying the Sechelt C$42 million, giving them treaty rights to a small amount of land with resource rights to its massive gravel deposit. Band members will gradually lose their tax-free status.

The issue of land rights has been left unresolved in British Columbia since the mid-1800s when Europeans and Chinese began to arrive in the region. Provincial officials refused to even discuss the issue with aboriginal groups until the 1970s.

"You are showing the way to the rest of the province that it can be done," Premier Glen Clark told the ceremony.

The province's first modern-day treaty was initialed last summer with the Nisga'a Tribe, but unlike the Sechelt the Nisga'a territory near the Alaska panhandle has few non-Native members.

Non-Sechelt residents in the community of about 8,000 people said they generally supported the agreement. "I think it is a good idea that everything is finally getting settled," said Jennifer Braun.

Business and political leaders have complained that the uncertainty caused by unresolved land claims has weakened British Columbia's economy - which is highly dependent on logging and mining.

More than 40 tribes and bands are negotiating claims for land areas ranging from unpopulated mountain ranges to downtown Vancouver.

The Nisga'a treaty has run into political and legal opposition. It is awaiting approval by the British Columbia Legislature and Canadian Parliament, although it was overwhelmingly approved by the Nisga'a people.

Clark and others said they expected the Sechelt treaty will face less opposition, in part, because people in more populated southern British Columbia are more familiar with it than they were the Nisga'a treaty process.

Officials have expressed optimism of also reaching tentative land claims agreements later this year with the In- Shuck-Ch/N'Quat'qua Indians in Pemberton and the Ditidaht First Nation, on Vancouver Island.

Zapatista rebels call for meeting of supporters

c. AP 4/18/99

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) -- Zapatista rebels are calling for a meeting of supporters from throughout Mexico to discuss the results of a nationwide referendum.

In a statement issued late Saturday night, the Zapatista National Liberation Army said the meeting would be held May 7-10 in La Realidad, a remote village in southern Mexico that serves as the Zapatistas' unofficial capital.

Rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos said the gathering would discuss the results of a Zapatista referendum held across Mexico on March 21.

The Zapatistas claim that 95 percent of the 2.5 million people who participated expressed support for their position on Indian rights, though the wording of the referendum made ``no'' votes unlikely.

The rebels are trying to build support for their version of a plan for greater Indian rights. The government claims it has reached an agreement with the rebels, but has worded its version in a way that gives somewhat less autonomy to Indian communities than does the Zapatista version.

US Grants Asylum to Mexican Soldier

By MICHELLE KOIDIN c. Associa ted Press 4/19/99

EL PASO, Texas (AP) _ A former Mexican army captain has been granted asylum after contending he would face persecution in Mexico for refusing to kill captured Zapatista rebels. The ruling, issued last month by Immigration Judge Bertha A. Zuniga, allows 30-year-old Jesus Valles-Bahena, his wife and their child to remain in the United States. ``We're very happy for Mr. Valles because I believe this did in fact save his life,'' said their attorney, Carlos Spector. ``Politically speaking, I feel that it's going to have an impact within the debate of human rights in Mexico.'' A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., said Monday he had not seen a copy of the decision and could not comment. In her ruling, Zuniga said that two human rights reports and the testimony of an expert witness show there is good reason to believe that the Mexican military has tortured and killed Zapatista rebels. Valles-Bahena testified before Zuniga that he was ordered to execute people who were captured and suspected of being Zapatista rebels. The family now lives somewhere in the United States but not in Texas, Spector said. They left for the United States in 1994. The Zapatista National Liberation Army began a short-lived uprising in January 1994 in Chiapas to demand greater rights for Mexico's Indians. Peace negotiations with the government have been stalled since 1996.

Indians smeared with warpaint protest

c. AP 4/22/99

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Indians clad in loincloths and smeared with warpaint on Thursday protested President Hugo Chavez's failure to halt gold mining in Venezuela's Amazon rain forests.

Chavez, a former coup leader who took office in February, promised during his campaign to reverse a 1997 decree that legalized gold and diamond mining in the pristine Imataca rain forest in southeast Venezuela.

But Jose Luis Gonzalez, a leader of the Pemon tribe, said Chavez has approved mining projects, including one at Las Cristinas, the site of what is believed to be one of the largest gold deposits in Latin America.

About 60 Indians protested outside Congress Thursday, including two Yanomamis who walked into Congress to present legislators with a letter outlining their complaints. The Yanomamis are one of the last Stone Age tribes on earth, though their culture has been hurt in recent years by contact with modernity.

Canada Regrets Indian Student Abuse

.c The Associated Press By MATT KELLEY 4/24/99

PHOENIX (AP) -- Canada has apologized for abuses of students in its system of boarding schools for Indian students. Darlena Watt is angry that the United States has not done the same.

"We had more boarding schools, more missionary schools, than Canada ever had,'' said Watt, a Colville tribal council member who attended the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma in the 1960s. "Whatever happened there, you can triple it and it was a reality in our schools.''

The idea of issuing an apology for boarding school abuses hasn't come up in Congress, said Senate Indian Affairs Committee spokesman Chris Changery.

In Canada, a flood of lawsuits and a royal commission's report "created an environment that absolutely demanded that action be taken,'' said Shawn Tupper of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

In the United States, Indians themselves are split over whether an apology would be a good idea.

Peterson Zah, a former Navajo Nation president who attended the Phoenix Indian School in the 1950s, said: "The United States owes an apology to the Indian people that were damaged by the boarding school system so they ended up alcoholics or total failures.''

"What point would an apology be?'' countered Claudeen Bates-Arthur, a Navajo attorney who attended a Methodist boarding school. "It would sound good. It would make everybody feel better, but sometimes those kinds of words allow people to say, 'We apologized. Let's get on with things.'"

Brazilians Accused of Genocide

.c The Associated Press By MICHAEL ASTOR 4/24/99

ITAJU DA COLONIA, Brazil (AP) -- It took only a little cajoling from the campaign workers to persuade Sonia Muniz to get sterilized. She was poor, they told her, and the congressman was doing her a favor by helping her limit her family size.

"I didn't want to do it,'' Muniz mutters, barely louder than the wind whipping by the deserted Indian Protection Service post in this northeastern village.

But she went anyway.

"They made me. They had my name on a list,'' says Muniz, a woman who never went to school and didn't know her age without consulting her identity card.

So Muniz, a Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae Indian and mother of four, had her fallopian tubes tied at a hospital owned by Roland Lavigne, a doctor and congressman famous around here for providing free women's health care in exchange for votes.

In the months leading up to Brazil's 1994 congressional elections, hundreds of women, both Indian and non-Indian, were sterilized at hospitals owned by Lavigne in this backwoods district about 430 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

Unlike Muniz, most of the tribe's women, with an average of three children per family, welcomed the sterilization operation and returned the favor by casting votes that helped Lavigne win re-election.

Sterilization wasn't an issue -- until last May.

Then a health census revealed that all but one of the 10 women of childbearing age at the Baheta village, a cluster of shacks spread over 42 dry, rocky acres, were sterile as a result of Lavigne's offers. The situation was little different at the nearby village of Caramaru.

Tribal leaders say 58 Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae women were sterilized in the months before the 1994 elections and three others were sterilized during the 1998 campaign. The leaders claim the future of the 1,800-member tribe is in jeopardy -- and call Lavigne's action genocide.

"The real issue here is land,'' says Alcides Francisco Filho, 44, the chief at Baheta. "Lavigne is allied with the big ranchers who are occupying our land. Free sterilizations mean only one thing -- fewer Indians -- and that's better for them.''

In 1991, the Brazilian government recognized 133,000 acres as belonging to the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae. But court challenges by settlers have kept them confined to about 5,000 acres.

Today, the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae and settlers live in a virtual state of war. Fifty-one Indians have died in land-related conflicts since 1982.

The Indians' genocide charge touched off a furor in the national press, and federal police and prosecutors are conducting investigations. Lavigne didn't return numerous calls asking for comment, and his staff members are testy about the sterilization issue.

"As an American you have no right to protest the treatment of Indians after what you did to your Indians,'' said Lavigne's chief of staff, Lila Eickhoff.

Lavigne has had his share of legal problems. After the 1994 campaign, one of his two hospitals was shut down after a federal audit found he was charging the government for surgeries that weren't performed.

Auditors found evidence of similar practices at the second hospital but kept it open because it was the only one in the city. Lavigne called the charges "politically motivated'' and later transferred the hospital's ownership.

For last year's campaign, he moved his operations into a $170,000 truck converted into a mobile medical center that distributed health care, including sterilizations.

Many residents see Lavigne as the real victim -- a well-meaning if unorthodox politician getting picked on by Indians with political and legal savvy.

"Lavigne is providing medical care to women who need it,'' says Cristina Alves, a housewife. "Even if he is using federal money to do it, I don't care. At least he's giving something to the community.''

What Lavigne offers isn't new. Women in rural areas have a hard time getting to cities, where birth control pills and other health services are available at federally financed clinics.

"Lavigne is only the most notorious of the politicians who trades sterilizations for votes,'' says Luiz Chaves a lawyer for the Indigenous Missionary Council, a Catholic Church-related group that is investigating the Indian leaders' charges. "It's something of a tradition in the region.''

Chaves says it will be hard to make genocide charges stick. But because sterilization was illegal in Brazil until 1996, Lavigne could be charged with committing bodily harm, Chaves says.

Lavigne's defenders point out the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae in the past have made alliances with opposition political groups. Eickhoff even contends that the Indian leaders weren't real Indians but rather "caboclos,'' a Brazilian word for mestizos.

After years of intermarriage, few Pataxo look very Indian. Although the tribe still performs rituals, the last Indian who spoke the language died last year.

That may be why they get little sympathy from the locals, who often are no better off. Many may have an Indian ancestor but no land they can lay claim to.

For years, the Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae have pushed their land claims patiently through Brazil's courts. Their leaders remain confident the tribe's land will eventually be returned, but they have little hope Lavigne will be punished.

"We know that nothing's going to happen to Lavigne,'' says Chief Wilson Jesus de Souza. "But at least we hope that by raising the alarm now, not he or any other politician will ever do it again.''

Peru's Native Language Still Spoken

.c The Associated Press By MONTE HAYES 5/15/99

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru's Amazon Indian languages may be in danger of extinction, but street vendor Teofilo Quispe speaks an ancient tongue that is the language of millions in this Andean nation.

"Si, senor, Quechua is the language of my people,'' Quispe says as he weighs potatoes for a customer at his sidewalk stall.

Quechua, the vox populi of the Inca empire, is still widely heard almost 500 years after the arrival of the Spaniards. It is spoken by a third of Peru's 23 million people and by 5 million people in neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia.

"I'm optimistic about its future,'' says Juan Carlos Godennzi, the government's director of bilingual education, noting more people speak Quechua today than when the Spanish arrived, due to population growth.

Quechua-speaking highlanders who migrated to Lima over the last 30 years have helped to balloon the capital's population from 1.8 million to 7 million.

Their poetic language has put an Andean stamp on Lima, a city founded on the Pacific coast by Spanish conquistadors as their center of power in South America. Quechua filters through the shouts of peddlers at street markets. It drifts out of shacks in poor barrios in the melancholy tones of the traditional "huayno'' music of the highlands.

Outside the major market towns in the central and southern Andes, Quechua is often the only language heard. But like other Indian languages, it is under pressure as Peru modernizes.

Younger people and migrants to the cities often try to conceal their Indian roots to be able to advance in a modern society. The European-descended elite scorns Quechua speakers as ignorant and socially inferior.

"The parents speak Quechua, but they try to talk in Spanish in front of their children so they won't learn Quechua,'' says school teacher Isabel Rojas.

The school where Rojas teaches includes Quechua lessons as a way of building students' pride. But she says parents often object to their children learning the language.

"It is of little use,'' says Edolia Salcedo, a street peddler who migrated to Lima 15 years ago speaking only Quechua but now is fluent in Spanish.

"You can use it only in the little, far-away towns where everybody speaks Quechua,'' Salcedo says. "It won't earn you any money.''

Last Inuit Group Reaches Land-Claim Agreement

c. AP 5/10/99

ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland (AP) -- Labrador's 5,000 Inuit received a $255-million land and self-government package Monday, 22 years after filing their claim with Ottawa.

The announcement of an agreement-in-principle was met with both joy and sadness by some Inuit -- the last Inuit group in Canada to reach such a deal.

The agreement, reached between the Inuit, Ottawa and the Newfoundland government, must first be ratified by members of the Labrador Inuit Association this summer.

The exact boundaries of the land-claim area will then be defined before a final agreement is reached, possibly within 12 to 18 months.

Some highlights of the tentative deal include getting 6,320 square miles of Inuit-owned land within a larger 29,008-square mile settlement area that's about 20 per cent of Labrador. The Inuit central government will oversee education, health and social services and get benefits from developers of natural resources on Inuit-owned lands.

Marcos emerges from Mexico jungle after 28 months

By Jesus Ramirez c. Reuters May 9, 1999

LA REALIDAD, Mexico, - Enigmatic Zapatista leader Subcommander Marcos has emerged from the Mexican jungle for the first time in more than two years to denounce what he said was the government's desire for conflict and not peace in Chiapas.

Smoking his trademark pipe and wearing a black ski mask, the head of an uprising five years ago to demand Indian rights opened a meeting on Saturday night in the rebel village of La Realidad.

The government "decided to make war and abandoned all real commitment to dialogue and a peaceful solution to the conflict,'' Marcos told around 1,200 Zapatistas, unionists, teachers, students and human rights activists gathered in the highlands of the poor, southern state.

The surprise appearance of the commander of the bloody revolt on New Year's Day 1994 was the first since January 1997, and dispelled rumours he had died or fled Mexico.

Marcos and his Zapatista rebels have been holed up in the Mexican jungle on the border with Guatemala since 10 days of bitter fighting in January 1994.

The meeting in La Realidad, 125 miles (200 km) from the Chiapas city of San Cristobal, was the second such encounter since November and was called to discuss a non-binding plebiscite on Indian rights held by the Zapatistas in March.

The government had decided to let the encounter go ahead so long as no foreigners or armed rebels took part.

On the road to La Realidad, the military set up at least four roadblocks. Every car passing through was searched. Soldiers video-taped and photographed their occupants and jotted down license plate numbers and names.

In his appearance, Marcos said some 2.85 million people of a nation of 96 million voted in the rebels' nationwide referendum and overwhelmingly endorsed giving Mexico's 10 million Indians special constitutional rights.

They also agreed the government should respect a peace deal struck with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in February 1996 in the town of San Andres Larrainzar.

Marcos, who was cheered and flanked by commanders Moises and Tacho, read a document called "The Zapatistas and Newton's Apple.''

In it, he blasted the government, opposition parties and financial markets for pursuing the "rotten apple of power'' as the 2000 presidential elections approaches.

President Ernesto Zedillo, Marcos said, was "the chief of the ridiculous,'' while the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has held unbroken power since 1929, was "a band of criminals.''

He said the conservative opposition National Action Party was "trapped in pragmatism,'' divided between those who sought deals with the government and those who wanted to oppose it.

As for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Marcos said it moaned it was "a victim of conspiracy but forgets its most painful blows come from within.''

The EZLN military commander noted the Mexican economy was doing well, boosted by strong inflows of foreign capital into its stock market, which has risen some 40 percent this year.

"The rapacious and migratory birds of international financial capital have come back to roost in Mexican lands. but it will only be for a moment,'' he said.

"The economic bubble, which is filling the Mexican financial rats with such enthusiasm, is inflated by money that expects to multiply itself, with no regard for the debris its profits will leave behind tomorrow.''

After his appearance, Marcos vanished back into the Chiapas jungle.

Guatemala Votes on Indian Rights

.c The Associated Press By ALFONSO ANZUETO 5/16/99

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Former leftist guerrillas lined up alongside Indian farmers to vote Sunday in a referendum that could grant official recognition to Guatemala's 24 Indian ethnic groups for the first time.

In the hours after polls opened, turnout among Guatemala's 4 million registered voters appeared low, even though the debate leading up to the vote polarized Guatemala and pitted its Indian majority against those who fear the reforms could give Indians special privileges.

Under Spanish rule and after independence, the use of the Mayan Indian language Quiche was forbidden in Guatemalan schools. Peasants were forced to change their Mayan names, and even their traditional dress.

Their religion was viewed as witchcraft, and the use of medicinal plants and other Mayan traditions were forbidden by the conquerors.

Sunday's proposed changes seek to undo that systemic discrimination. Congress would have to consult Mayans before passing legislation that may affect them; Mayans would have rights to access sacred ground; and government education, health care and judicial services would have to be available in indigenous languages.

Also at stake in the referendum are proposals that would strengthen civilian control over police forces long treated as an extension of the army, limit presidential powers, make federal officials more accountable to Congress, and guarantee money for an ill-supported judiciary.

"I voted so that thieves would get the punishment they deserve,'' said Tomas Calel, at a polling place in the city of Chichicastenango, about 95 miles west of Guatemala City.

The referendum's proposals are part of peace agreements signed in 1996 between leftist rebels and the conservative government that put an end to the country's 36-year civil war.

Despite the vote, many adults in Chichicastenango went about their daily Sunday routines of going to church and shopping instead of showing up at polling places.

"Abstentionism has become a structural problem, it is a historical problem that we are not going to solve with a few elections,'' said Rodrigo Asturias, a former guerilla leader who now heads a leftist political party and is voting for the first time since his group laid down its arms in 1996.

Guatemalans Nix Indian Recognition

By ALFONSO ANZUETO .c The Associated Press 5/17/99

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Indian leaders Monday blamed poverty, weak political organization and divisions left by 36 years of civil war for the defeat of a ballot measure that would have given Guatemala's 24 Indian groups official recognition.

The proposed constitutional reforms were part of peace agreements signed in 1996 between leftist rebels and the conservative government, ending the civil war.

Under the proposed ballot measure, Congress would have been required to consult Indian groups before passing legislation affecting them. The groups also would have been ensured access to sacred ground and government services would have to provided in indigenous languages.

Guatemala's largely Mayan Indian groups saw their languages forbidden in Guatemalan schools for centuries under Spanish rule, and even after independence. Peasants were also forced to change their Mayan names and their traditional dress.

Leopoldo Mendez, a priest of the traditional Mayan religion and a community leader, said the measure was defeated because many Indians living in poverty were focused on meeting basic needs, not supporting the initiative. He also blamed a lack of time to inform people about Sunday's vote in their native languages.

"The war has left its wounds. People are discouraged, and we don't know how to lift ourselves out of it,'' Mendez said.

Voters also rejected proposals to strengthen civilian control over police forces, limit presidential powers and bolster the judiciary.

Only 18.5 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the referendum. The vote heightened tensions between the country's Indian majority and those who feared the reforms would give Indians special privileges.

Largely conservative opponents of the measures claimed the reforms would cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mexico Rebel Leader Denies Reforms

By MICHELLE RAY ORTIZ .c The Associated Press 5/20/99

LA REALIDAD, Mexico (AP) -- The leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels has dismissed election reforms by the ruling party, saying an upcoming presidential vote will not be any more democratic. Whoever the victor, he said, his movement would continue to push for Indian rights.

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has decided for the first time to hold primaries to select a candidate to run for president in July 2000 elections, instead of following the tradition of having the incumbent -- in this case President Ernesto Zedillo -- pick his successor.

In a rare interview with a foreign reporter, the Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos said Tuesday that Zedillo was just trying to appear that he is expanding democracy -- while the system will still allow his political machine to control the choice of nominee.

The man seen as Zedillo's personal pick, former interior secretary Francisco Labastida, got a boost Wednesday when two potential opponents, Veracruz Gov. Miguel Aleman and Social Development Secretary Esteban Moctezuma, announced they would not run in the Nov. 7 primaries.

That leaves two other major challengers: Tabasco state Gov. Roberto Madrazo and former Puebla Gov. Manuel Bartlett, who is also a former interior secretary.

Marcos, wearing his trademark black ski mask and holding an AR-15 assault rifle on his lap, said Zedillo's free-market cadre within the PRI is determined to put a like-minded candidate in place rather than an old-style populist favoring big government, which would describe most of the other contenders.

The president is also under pressure to keep differences between the two PRI factions from exploding -- as many Mexicans believed happened in 1994 when PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated at a campaign rally.

"The main goal is not to choose a candidate, but to choose one without bloodshed,'' Marcos said.

Marcos said his Zapatista National Revolutionary Army will continue to make the same demand of the next president -- greater justice for Mexico's poor Indians.

"Our demands will not change,'' he said. "The attitude of the Zapatistas toward this new head of federal government will be the same regardless of which political party it is.''

Latin America Briefs

c. AP 5/23/99

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Justice officials are investigating a federal lawmaker whose hospitals sterilized 54 Indian women in exchange for votes, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The tubal ligations were conducted at hospitals owned by Roland Lavigne during the 1994 congressional campaign, the Folha de Sao Paulo reported.

The paper quoted Lavigne, a physician from the northern state Bahia, as saying he no longer owns the hospitals and no longer practices medicine.

The hospitals were in Itaju do Colonia, a remote district 430 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro, the paper said.

The 54 women, members of the Pataxo tribe, have an average of three children per family and are believed to have welcomed sterilization. In return, they cast votes that helped Lavigne win re-election.

Justice officials launched an inquiry after a health census revealed that all but one of the 10 women of childbearing age at several Pataxo villages were sterile as a result of Lavigne's offers. Tribal leaders claim the future of the 6,000-member tribe is now in jeopardy.

Mexico Rebels' Masked Chief Defiant

.c The Associated Press By MICHELLE RAY ORTIZ 5/24/99

LA REALIDAD, Mexico (AP) -- More than five years have passed since he blazed into view, leading a band of Indian rebels armed more with anger than with weapons but who still unsettled all of Mexico.

Subcomandante Marcos demanded the government give greater respect to the peoples who originally inhabited the land. Then he agreed to a truce, and stepped back as peace talks took shape, sputtered and finally stalled in 1996.

Marcos occasionally emerged from the tangled jungles of Chiapas state with often offbeat statements before slipping back into obscurity. His movement, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN, suffered a similar fate, with public attention dwindling.

But after more than two years' absence, Marcos resurfaced this month at an Indian rights gathering in the remote hamlet of La Realidad, his familiar curved pipe peeking through his black ski mask.

Last week, he gave a rare interview to The Associated Press, to declare that the Zapatistas are still waiting for justice, that their movement has not died.

He pointed to a nationwide "consultation'' in March in which 3 million people participated, the May 7 gathering of 2,000 people he attended in La Realidad, a meeting of 3,000 in the Chiapas city of San Cristobal last year.

``Why do these things happen if the EZLN is only a media phenomenon, if the EZLN is only an empty shell, if the EZLN depends on the figure of Marcos?'' he said.

It is clear that support for the movement still exists -- but also clear that the charismatic Marcos is the Zapatistas' most igniting force.

The government says Marcos is former university professor Rafael Sebastian Guillen, a leftist intellectual who set off into the mountains in the mid-1980s to found a guerrilla movement. Marcos has refused to discuss his identity.

Marcos' masked image is made larger than life on T-shirts and posters. In person, he is almost petite, and speaks calmly and softly. His brown eyes, flecked with blue and green, narrow when he makes a point. Bits of gray dot the beard showing through his mask. He wears a wedding band, having recently married an Indian woman.

The faded military cap he wore into the wilderness 15 years ago is mended with black thread. The red bandana he has worn since the Jan. 1, 1994, Zapatista uprising is hardly more than shreds.

Despite his disappearances from the public eye, Marcos remains in close touch with the outside world, monitoring current events over television and radio, looking for chances to use his sense of humor to poke fun at politicians, even following the Oscar race.

"The cultural life'' is what he misses most, Marcos said -- that and walnut ice cream.

Asked his favorite film genre, he quipped: "El porn -- anything more than XXX.'' Then he said he likes all types of movies and saw most of the Oscar nominees on video. The last movie he saw: ``You've Got Mail,'' with Tom Hanks and "the precious Meg Ryan.''

Life in the jungle has its advantages, he said. 'You don't have smog, traffic jams, high crime rates or sexual harassment -- all that is suffered by a tall, handsome, good-looking guy like me.''

The humor is part of the personality that still catches the popular imagination.

This village of 800 people fell still when Marcos rode in on his chestnut-colored horse, Lucero. Children hushed their playful shouting, and adults respectfully stayed away from the huge ceiba tree where Marcos sat in the shade, an AR-15 assault rifle on his lap.

La Realidad -- Reality -- reflects the reality of life for many of Chiapas' Indians. Far from the attention of policy makers in Mexico City, it is a collection of poor clapboard shacks, dirt paths and outhouses.

The town's power generator is turned on only for special occasions. Women wash clothes on rocks in the river and cook rice and beans over wood fires.

Improving the standard of living for Indians like those of La Realidad remains one of the Zapatistas' central demands, Marcos said.

"It is not possible that in Mexico there be a sector of the population living as if in Switzerland and another sector of the population -- 10 million people -- who live as if in prehistory,'' he said. "We believe it possible that this country go forward together.''

The government must also give Indians an active role in shaping policy, especially matters affecting them, he said. For example, he said, each community should decide how to run their local economy.

But Marcos contends the government would just as soon destroy the Indians because their homes "are seated on top of petroleum and uranium deposits.''

"The fundamental proposal of the government is to disappear these communities, disappear them because they are rebels and disappear them because they are Indians,'' he said. "They (Indians) do not see the earth as merchandise ... but as history, as culture, as magic, as religion.''

He pointed up to the ceiba tree, which Mayan Indians believe gives a community life.

Life abounds in the jungled hills surrounding La Realidad. It hides the Zapatista rebels and is home to the countless insects that crack the still darkness with their electric hum.

It also hides from sight the approaching military convoy that rumbles through town twice every morning. Each time, soldiers stare blankly at a pair of European women -- sympathizers of the Zapatistas -- recording military movements. Men perched atop the Humvees videotape and photograph the women. A military reconnaissance plane flies in low overhead.

That foreigners still come to Chiapas to join the Indians is another sign the movement is strong, Marcos said. They are attracted by the Zapatistas' message that Mexico must be allowed to be diverse, that dignity be given to Indians as well as to women, young people, gays and lesbians and the unemployed -- "all those who are treated as Indians in society.''

Foreigners, though, do not give financial or military aid to the rebels, as some in the government have alleged, Marcos said.

"What bothers the government is that there are witnesses from other countries'' who will see any abuses, he said. "In a globalized world, it is now difficult to do something since the world is watching.''

He laughed at the government's other suggestion that Zapatistas buy arms with marijuana profits, saying that if it were true they'd have better weapons and supplies. He insisted the movement is supported by Indian communities.

The future of "Zapatismo,'' he said, is strengthening connections with the public and building the movement as a social-political force. Increased public support will pressure the government to fulfill agreements made in the peace talks and to abandon violence, he said.

Meanwhile, Marcos will wait in the jungle. He said he is prepared to spend the rest of his life there, even if a political settlement is reached, because the Zapatista uprising angered vested interests.

"It seems that what happened will not be forgotten easily. In this sense, I see it as unlikely that Marcos will be able to leave,'' the leader said, referring to himself in the third person.

"And he's fine here. But meanwhile, put in a movie theater and ice cream shop -- and send some walnut ice cream.''

Latin America Briefs

c. AP 5/31/99

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- President Alberto Fujimori said Monday that Peru had relaunched the sale of its vast Camisea natural gas fields in the Amazon jungle, 10 months after oil giants Shell had Mobil pulled out of the project.

Fujimori has called the $2.4 billion Camisea development the ``project of the century'' for Peru that would power this poor South American nation's economic growth into the 21st century. Camisea is the largest natural gas field in the Americas.

Royal Dutch/Shell and Mobil Corp. pulled out of the project due to differences with the government over the sale and marketing of the gas. Industry analysts said that rising projected costs and a lack of secure markets for the gas had also taken some of the luster off the project.

Camisea is located 310 miles southeast of Lima amid some of the world's most biodiverse jungle and primitive Indian tribes. It has proven reserves of 13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Indians flee as Mexico army enters Chiapas village

By Jesus Ramirez c. Reuters 6/5/99

NAZARETH, Mexico, - Some 300 supporters of Mexico's Zapatista rebels were forced to flee into nearby mountains after more than 1,000 troops took over their village in southern Chiapas state, witnesses said on Saturday.

Soldiers, and state and federal police fired teargas and shot bullets into the air when Tzeltal Indians tried to stop them from entering the village of Nazareth, some 124 miles (200 km) from the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez, on Friday.

A convoy of 34 military vehicles, six public security trucks and 20 state and judicial police vehicles took part in the operation, in the Chiapas highland district of Ocosingo.

The community is a base of support for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which staged an armed uprising against the government in 1994 in a bid to win improved rights for Mexico's nine million Indians.

A ceasefire has largely held since the 10 days of fighting ended, but peace talks have broken down and rebel sympathisers accuse the army of mounting a low-intensity war against them.

"Instead of dialogue, the government has sent soldiers,'' said an Indian interviewed on a mountainside about a mile (two km) from the village.

"We don't have anything to eat, nor anything to cover ourselves with; we have neither food nor clothes,'' added another villager wearing the Zapatistas' trademark ski-mask.

"We want the army to withdraw from our village. We are not going to be able to last long under these conditions.''

The troops entered the abandoned houses and spent the night camped around the village school.

The troops will stay "until I receive instructions from my superiors,'' said the general leading the operation, who identified himself only as F. Rivas.

Similar incursions have taken place in the nearby villages of Censo, Betania and San Jeronimo Tulija in the past month, inhabitants said, adding several Indians and two priests had been arrested.

Armando Cruz Hernandez, a deputy director with state justice officials in Chiapas' Highland Zone, said the troops were investigating reports that Zapatista guerrillas were blocking roads higher up in these remote, coffee-growing mountains.

"It is not true that there is a Zapatista roadblock here. That is just an excuse to invade our lands,'' said a man who identified himself only as Felipe, leader of the self-declared autonomous Zapatista community of Francisco Gomez.

Congressman Defends Meeting

.c The Associated Press By JARED KOTLER 6/4/99

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A U.S. congressman on Friday defended his decision to meet with a Colombian guerrilla group that the Clinton administration severed contacts with in March after rebels killed three Americans.

The rendezvous Thursday between Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., and a senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, drew sharp criticism from conservatives who oppose U.S. contacts with the rebels.

"When you go to seek peace you're not talking to your friends,'' Delahunt said following the four-day visit in which he also met with government and army officials, clergy, and human rights groups.

"I thought it would be an opportunity to express our concerns and my vision of what is critical to move the peace process along,'' he told The Associated Press by phone after returning to his district.

Some said the trip would do more damage than good.

"Every time an American official meets with the FARC in any way, shape, or form, they're handing the FARC a political victory,'' said Jack Sweeney, Latin America analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

The State Department cut off contact with the rebels after a FARC unit abducted and executed three American activists who were in Colombia on a mission to help the local U'wa Indian tribe. The Americans were seized in eastern Colombia on Jan. 25 before being shot to death a week later just across the border in Venezuela.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Robert Schmidt said Friday that Delahunt's trip was a "strictly private visit'' that the State Department had no role in arranging.

Leading congressional Republicans oppose the direction of peace talks begun in January to end a 35-year civil conflict. They say President Andres Pastrana is making naive concessions to the 15,000-member rebel army.

Delahunt, who traveled with a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, and aides from six Democratic and one Republican congressional office, denied he was being soft on the FARC -- which finance its operations by protecting the drug trade in areas it controls.

He said he told senior FARC commander Raul Reyes the rebels should distance themselves from drug trafficking and turn over to authorities the rebels who killed the American activists. Pastana's peace envoy, Victor G. Ricardo, helped arrange and was present at the meeting, Delahunt said.

Patagonia tribe's last survivor dies

BY GABRIELLA GAMINI c. The Times of London June 7, 1999.

THE last survivor of a nomadic tribe, sighted by Charles Darwin on his travels in Patagonia and described by him as "savages" who walked barefoot on snow, has died. Anthropologists in Argentina said that the 56-year-old woman, Virginia Choinquitel, had been the last full-blooded member of the hunter-gatherer Ona tribe, whose habits Darwin described in The Voyage of the Beagle.

"This woman was the only Ona left. With her death, they have become extinct," said Father Jos

* Zink, a Roman Catholic priest in the city of Ushuaia, where the woman was raised by nuns. The last Ona man died in 1995.

The Ona lived for thousands of years in the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost land mass of the American continent. Their roots in the island can be traced back 9,000 years. They gave their name to Patagonia's "Land of Fire" after Darwin's diary described the Fuegians huddled around fires.

On sighting the Tierra del Fuego shore on December 17, 1832, and while anchored in the Bay of Good Success, Darwin noted: "These Fuegians are a very different race from the stunted miserable wretches farther westward and seem closely allied to the Patagonians of the Strait of Magellan."

About 300 Ona were counted by the Argentine authorities in a census in 1965, but by 1970 their numbers had dropped to ten.

Brazil tells Indians: "show me the money"

By Joelle Diderich c. Reuters 6/10/99

BRASILIA, - The new president of the Brazilian government's Indian foundation says he wants indigenous tribes to start paying for themselves after years of relying on government hand-outs.

"We are talking about the use of natural resources, managed as much as possible by the communities themselves in their own interests, in order to meet their basic needs," Marcio Lacerda said in an interview with Reuters.

Pending the approval of Congress, Indian communities would switch from their traditional subsistence economies to running sustainable businesses on reservations, some of which are potentially rich in minerals such as gold, copper and iron.

Under Lacerda's plan, the Indian foundation, a federal agency known by its acronym FUNAI, no longer would provide basic services such as health and education to indigenous tribes.

But he said the agency would continue to defend the rights and interests of the tribes, which account for 350,000 of Brazil's total population of 160 million.

The proposal already has run into opposition.

Officials from nongovernmental organizations say they fear Indian reservations whose lands have been protected until now will fling open their doors to unscrupulous loggers and miners in order to survive.

But Lacerda insisted in the interview conducted on Wednesday that the idea is not to let unbridled capitalism run riot in the vast expanses of Brazil's largely untapped Amazon rain forest.

"Naturally these communities cannot be abandoned to their own luck to compete in a market for which their culture is not suited," Lacerda said.

"It's as if you let an indigenous community compete on the Chicago exchange, or on the Amsterdam bourse, or compete with (billionaire international speculator) George Soros for example. What do you think would happen?" he said.

But the tribes may have little choice. The Indian foundation is broke and has debts of $3.8 million to small suppliers.

Its 1999 budget, initially pegged at $44 million, has been cut to $17 million as part of a sweeping government fiscal austerity plan designed to pull Brazil back from a currency collapse in mid-January.

In FUNAI's dilapidated headquarters in Brasilia, the paint is crumbling and office desks are crowded with antiquated telephones.

Some of the foundation's 48 regional outposts have been forced to suspend basic services.

Indian tribes demanding better health care or the demarcation of their land have kidnapped several FUNAI officials in recent months to protest the cuts.

All this has made for a bumpy start for Lacerda, a career politician who took over FUNAI in February following the death in a plane crash of the organization's previous president, Sullivan Silvestre.

Last week, he was forcibly marched out of his office by a group of Indians from the Xavante tribe who were upset about his administrative style. After a 15-hour negotiating session, he was escorted right back to his desk in a gesture of reconciliation.

Lacerda said the clashes came with the job.

"If I recognize the right to organization, the autonomy of the indigenous community, I have to accept any kind of protest," he said. "It's an exercise in mutual understanding, in respecting differences."

Indian Women's Group Sues Canada

.c The Associated Press 6/16/99

OTTAWA (AP) - An Indian women's organization filed suit against the federal government Tuesday, contending that newly passed legislation jeopardizes the rights of women obtaining divorces.

"Native women are the only women in this country that do not have any protections or family laws (on Indian reservations),'' said Marilyn Buffalo, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada.

Her group says many Indian women are made homeless by divorce because tribal governments usually honor the husband's claims to property ownership.

The group's lawsuit challenges a bill adopted by Parliament last week that gives 14 Indian communities sweeping powers to expropriate reservation lands for community use, draft land codes and divide matrimonial property in a divorce.

The act is expected to extended to other Indian communities as agreements are made with federal officials.

Ms. Buffalo's organization says the act fails to include any provisions to help women and their children during a divorce.

The bill has been hailed by the government and major Indian groups as a major step on the road to native self-government.

The 14 affected communities have 12 months to draft their own rules that must treat men and women equally, said Kerry Kipping, an Indian Affairs Department official.

Learning Among the Ruins

.c The Associated Press By HUGH A. MULLIGAN 6/16/99

AT SEA ABOARD TSS STELLA SOLARIS (AP) - It was a heaven-sent, brochure-promised, glorious day in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not a cloud in the sky. Hardly enough wind to churn up a whitecap or the stomach of a queasy passenger. In our bow wave, flying fish by the hundreds skipped across the turquoise waters in an iridescent arc, fleeing the menacing fin of a hammerhead shark.

Yet the decks of the Stella Solaris were strangely deserted. No one was about, save for a sailor chipping paint and a late-rising couple seeking the solace of hot bouillon after greeting the dawn in the discotheque. No sun-worshippers by the pool, no bridge players in the card room.

Where was everyone?

Down in the theater, deep in the bowels of the ship near the anchor chain, listening as a team of lecturers headed by historian Daniel Boorstin held forth on the mysteries of the Mayan civilization.

After a siesta-inducing lunch, most of the 465 passengers forsook the inviting deck chairs and crowded into the lounge to hear anthropologist Rebecca Storey of the University of Houston discourse on the human skeletons exhumed at the Copan ruins in Honduras.

The next day almost the entire passenger list and a goodly segment of the cruise staff piled into 11 buses for a 3 1/2-hour ride to ruins at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Here the mythic ``feathered serpent'' would descend the north face of the great pyramid on the day of the vernal equinox, as thousands of enraptured Mexicans cheered and beat tin-pan gongs.

One best comprehends the impact of 11 tourist buses in a row by viewing the line outside the women's room at the first pit stop. Yet in the name of culture, there were few to complain.

Going to sea to get learned rather than sunburned is one of the fastest-growing segments of the cruise industry. Travelers no longer just transit the Panama Canal. They absorb its history and details of shipping and lock maintenance from experts like historian David McCullough.

Sailing up the Amazon or off Australia's Great Barrier Reef or in the path of St. Paul's journeys across the Mediterranean now means more than postcards and boring the dinner guests with slide shows. These are opportunities for in-depth exploration and on-site learning at graduate level under the guidance of expert lecturers.

The trend toward cruising as a cultural quest parallels the rapid growth of Elderhostel, a nonprofit organization that arranges educational voyages for seniors that take in everything from Antarctica to Zanzibar. Harvard, Fordham and many other universities now have their own alumni travel and study programs, using faculty members as guides and lecturers.

Even Club Med, former purveyor of ooh-la-la topless sand and sea vacations, now enlists poets, authors and editors to provide cultural enrichment at some of its sun-kissed villages around the world.

In 11 days aboard the 18,000-ton Stella Solaris, flagship of Royal Olympic line, the seagoing scholars visited other Mayan temples, pyramids and sacred wells in Belize, Honduras and Guatemala.

Accompanied by vacationing university lecturers, they debarked at obscure ports, off the beaten tourist path, where loading bananas onto container ships sustained the local economy more than duty-free shopping.

The faculty without exception found their shipboard audiences more attentive and better informed than the cream of their college classes.

"Older passengers in particular, 50 and above, have an intense hunger to cruise someplace and learn something, instead of just eating themselves to death in the dining room,'' said Dr. Anthony Aveni, author and professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University.

Eager late-learners kept the faculty on its toes long after classes were out. Aveni was out on deck every evening explaining the phenomenon of the green flash caused by the sun sinking into the sea. And later, sometimes arrayed in the tuxedo that is de rigueur on formal nights, he was on the darkened lido deck pointing out the constellations to those passing up the midnight buffet.

"Retired people have not retired their brains. They want more out of life than just recreation,'' said planetarium scientist and NASA consultant Ted Pedas, who launched the concept of astronomy-theme cruises more than two decades ago. Cruise lines at first were cautiously reluctant to market enrichment over entertainment, but many have since come aboard and seek out big-name professors as eagerly as they do top cabaret acts.

In addition to pioneering annual Equinox cruises to the Mayan ruins, Pedas in 1993 organized a Mediterranean voyage to view the Perseid meteor shower. He now serves as project coordinator for Royal Olympic ships, which fly the Greek flag.

Come August, like a fleet admiral, Pedas will dispatch five ships into the Black Sea to witness the last complete solar eclipse of this millennium. Astronaut Scott Carpenter heads his lecture team. Dozens of competing cruise ships will be deployed along a 70-mile wide band stretching from Land's End, England, to southeast Turkey to catch the Aug. ll solar eclipse.

Why would so many travel so far to chase two minutes and five seconds of total daytime darkness?

"An eclipse is much more than a learning experience. It's a celestial event that Europeans have been waiting four decades for. Not since 1961 has the shadow of the moon touched their continent. In North America this will not occur again until the year 2017,'' said Pedas, who has been fascinated by solar eclipses since first seeing darkness at noon when he was 12 years old.

"Ships at sea are the best observation platforms for a solar eclipse,'' he enthused. ``They have access to immediate weather information, can maneuver into the best viewing position and enjoy 360 degrees of visibility, from horizon to horizon, unimpeded by dust or light pollution from land. Camera nuts will have a filming frenzy, and everyone will want to drink up knowledge, then some of the captain's champagne, when the sun shines again.''

With water, water everywhere but few on deck to care, the thirst for knowledge among our shipmates approached the cravings of Coleridge's parched 'Ancient Mariner.''

Five times as many passengers flocked to Dr. Boorstin's closing lecture as attended the final jackpot session of "Snowball Bingo.'' The shuffleboard tournament had to be canceled for lack of interest - actually, because of greater interest in learning the Mayan alphabet.

Even the Romanian magician who could cough up a dozen pingpong balls was spotted between floor shows reading up on magic and blood sacrifices among the tribes of the Yucatan.

Jailed Protestants Freed in Mexico

.c The Associated Press 6/18/99

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) - Local officials have released 13 Protestants who were arrested after they angered villagers by trying to build a church in the southern state of Chiapas.

The Protestants were jailed Tuesday in Mitziton, 10 miles southeast of the state capital, San Cristobal de las Casas, and turned over to authorities in neighboring Flores Magon, where they live. They were released Thursday after negotiations between government officials and local residents.

Many residents of the two communities see their unique mixture of Catholicism and traditional Maya Indian beliefs as crucial to their culture's survival. Hundreds of people had demanded that the Protestants be expelled from their communities.

The Protestants said they were ordered to leave the area and were threatened with death if they return.

"We are not afraid. We have the right to build our temple and we demand that our right to worship be respected,'' said Carmen Diaz Lopez, one of the group.

Tens of thousands of Protestant converts - and some Roman Catholics - have been expelled from their Chiapas villages, often with violence, over the past 20 years.

Colombian Shaman Now `Fashionable'

.c The Associated Press By JARED KOTLER 6/21/99

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Taxis honk on the avenue below and venetian blinds block the glare of street lamps in the midtown loft where urbanites gather for a ritual until recently practiced only in the Amazon jungle.

Candles and incense are lit, and the disciples take seats as an aging Indian medicine man starts hissing, spitting, chanting and stabbing at the air with a dried branch.

One by one, jean-clad men and women kneel before the shaman in his striped poncho, parrot-feathered crown and boar's tooth necklace. Each downs a cup of bitter brown tea, then awaits its psychedelic effects to set in.

When a middle-aged schoolteacher begins shaking with fright, the healer rustles the branch in her face. For good measure, he spits a mouthful of licorice-flavored "firewater'' over Beatriz's curled-up body.

"I scared away the evil spirits,'' explains Antonio Jacanamijoy, the 78-year-old shaman from the Inga tribe of Colombia's Amazon, later explains.

For decades, intrepid westerners trekked to the Amazon to find the reclusive men who made yage (ya-hey), the tea brewed from a jungle vine, Banisteriopsis Caapi. Anthropologists, botanists and drug enthusiasts braved the wilds for the drink also known as ayahuasca (eye-ah-wah-ska).

Beat generation writers Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs published a book, The Yage Letters, about their often-frightening episodes under yage's influence in Colombia and Peru in the 50s and 60s.

Nearly a half-century later, the shamans are reaching out to the West, taking their healing rites to urban living rooms. In Bogota, they've built a following among artists, intellectuals and professionals as well as some doctors who believe in the tea's potential for treating maladies.

General practitioner Fabio Ramirez takes patients regularly to a shaman and has become the medicine man's apprentice. He calls yage a "great catalyst'' capable of helping people see emotional problems at the root of their illnesses.

"It's not a panacea. It's a great tool,'' Ramirez said.

Users claim yage gives them visions, of jungle cats and technicolor landscapes.

Colombia's leading news magazine, Semana, has declared the shaman-led yage sessions a Bogota "fashion.'' Among those taking it with Beatriz one Saturday night were a publicist, a medical intern and Andrea Echeverry, the nose-ringed lead singer of Aterciopelados, Colombia's top rock group.

For many of its new urban groupies, the weekly sessions may prove just a temporary fad. For the shamans - mostly elderly men spending months on end in a foreboding metropolis - they are a matter of personal and cultural survival.

"They saw their culture was dying, and some of them thought it was time to open up and change this and accept white men as apprentices for the sake of preserving yage,'' said Jimmy Weisskopf, an American journalist writing a book about the subject. "Otherwise, it will die out,'' he said.

Weisskopf traces the cultural threat to oil exploration and the cocaine trade, which opened up communication to once-remote Amazonian communities. Exposed to modern life, younger Indians began losing interest in folk medicine and rituals.

Paradoxically, members of Colombia's establishment began to embrace native cultures.

In 1992, the anthropology department at the National University hosted the first-ever lecture by a shaman, or "Taita,'' former Bogota mayor Antanus Mockus said.

"The Taita said he'd been told in a dream to go out and proselytize,'' recalled Mockus, the university's president at the time. Mockus took yage twice that year.

Jacanamijo charges $15 a person for yage sessions in Bogota where up to 30 attend, and hands out business cards proclaiming himself "The King of Botany.''

"If you want to make money you have to go where you can get it,'' says Jacanamijoy, who treats poor patients for free in his depressed southern homeland.

Shamans using yage have spread beyond South America, holding frequent sessions in California, Colorado and the southwestern United States, said Dr. Andrew Weil, the U.S. alternative health guru, who tried the beverage in Colombia during the 1970s.

"There's tremendous usage of it in North America,'' he said.

But with side effects including severe vomiting and diarrhea, yage isn't likely to spread as a street drug.

"For some people the experience is too strong,'' said German Martinez, a 33-year-old publicist who, like many yage enthusiasts, calls the bodily purging a vehicle for opening up the mind. Many people try it just once, he said.

Jacanamijoy, who began as his grandfather's apprentice at 15, is convinced yage helps him diagnose and cure diseases.

Though the drink's purported health benefits are unproven scientifically, UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Charles Grob thinks it is worth studying.

"We might learn more about how to treat depression and other mood disturbances,'' said Grob, who led a 1996 study that found enhanced mental functions among users in Brazilian religious cults.

In a recent paper, however, Grob warns that patients on anti-depression medications could suffer tremors, convulsions, loss of consciousness and even death if they consume yage.

Chilean Indians intensify fight for rights

By Chris Aspin c. Reuters 6/24/99

SANTIAGO, - Chile's Mapuche Indians, whose ferocious fighting kept Spanish conquistadors out of their tribal territories for three centuries, are on the warpath again to recover lands and greater autonomy.

Leaders of 900,000-strong race plan to return Thursday -- the start of the Mapuche New Year -- to windswept southern Chile after a frustrated 25-day march to Santiago and after being denied a meeting with President Eduardo Frei.

A multi-party group of legislators backed the Mapuche cause on Thursday, proposing a constitutional reform bill.

Francisco Huenchumilla, a legislator from Frei's Christian Democrat Party, said the bill would give indigenous people three seats in the Senate, the upper house, and 10 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

"These legislators would be elected by the indigenous people by popular vote, by all the indigenous races of the country,'' Huenchumilla told reporters.

The proposal included creation of a separate Indian parliament, with budget powers and controls over the indigenous affairs, Huenchumilla added.

Frei on Wednesday sent two deputy government ministers to hear the Mapuche complaints which indigenous leaders took as a snub and an example of the low priority that two consecutive democratic governments have shown them.

"Not receiving us has closed all possibility of dialogue, which does not leave us any other option but to continue fighting, more forcibly, for our rights,'' Aucan Huilcaman, a Mapuche spokesman, told reporters.

"Battles are ahead for lands in our territories because the Mapuche race has not been conquered,'' Huilcaman said. "We will return to the south with all the force of history to expose the the racism of the state.''

Having their land claims rejected and the encroachment of the forest industry and highway construction into their tribal territories have sparked increased frustration.

Aside from the march, disenchanted Mapuches have also seized private farms in prime agricultural areas -- occupations that have often turned violent when authorities have demanded forced ejections.

But the main Mapuche gripe has been with the government. Leaders argue Frei, and his predecessor Patricio Aylwin, have not fulfilled election promises of returning ancestral lands to the native population.

The Mapuches played an important role in the country's return to democracy in 1990 after 17 years of military rule -- but the support was in exchange for the recognition of basic rights, including land and the recognition of their special culture, identity and language.

Indigenous policies under the iron rule of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in a military coup in 1973, were based on assimilation into national society, with little respect for Indian culture or identity.

Since the return of Chile to democracy, the government has acquired isolated tracts of land and handed them over to indigenous communities but has been restricted by limited funding.

Mapuche leaders say the land presented to Indian families has been insufficient. Mapuches demands have swollen to establishment of their own parliament and greater autonomy from the central government.

The Mapuches are by far the largest indigenous race in Chile, although there are Aymara indians in the desert north and the Rapa Nui indigenous race on Easter Island, a Chilean possession 2,350 miles west of Chile in the Pacific Ocean.

Argentina's Mapuche tribe seeks self-government

By Mayra Pertossi c. Reuters 6/25/99

BUENOS AIRES, - Argentina's Mapuche Indians, seeking a semblance of self-rule after centuries of domination, have proposed forming their own parliament although it was unclear if the provincial government will allow it.

"We believe that for democracy to really exist, the Mapuche people need to be represented properly because the provincial legislature and Congress do not represent us,'' Jorge Nahuel of the Neuquen Mapuche Confederation told Reuters on Thursday.

On Thursday, the start of the Mapuche New Year, nearly 36,000 Mapuches from 42 communities in Neuquen province submitted a proposal asking the provincial government to create the Meli Wixan Mapu or a Mapuche parliament. Mapuche means "people of the land'' in their native language.

"This parliament will be separate from the provincial legislature and its goal will be to represent the Mapuche community,'' Nahuel said. "It will have eight members and an exclusive mandate to legislate for the Mapuche society.''

It was unclear what sort of consideration the proposal would get from the provincial government.

All of the parliament's proposals would have to be approved by the legislature, the Mapuche hope their parliament will also be able to veto laws it considers contrary to its interests.

Living mostly along the snow-capped Andes Mountains of southern Patagonia, the Mapuches have been largely driven into poverty since the arrival of Spanish explorers, subsisting on herding, picking fruit and making arts and crafts.

Argentina's "Dessert Campaign'' in 1880 devastated the population, killing some 15,000 Mapuches, and the community has since been slowly pushed south into the provinces of Neuquen, Rio Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz.

In neighbouring Chile, leaders of the Mapuche community there began a march back south on Thursday after being denied a meeting with President Eduardo Frei. Chile's Mapuche also want greater autonomy and more representation in the government.

Nahuel said the proposed parliament in Argentina should not be a parallel entity to Neuquen's legislature but a link "to exercise some control ... over matters that concern us.''

"We want to make real the constitutional acknowledgment of our people. That is, that we have existed prior to the creation of the Argentine state,'' he said.

There are about 1.5 million indigenous people in Argentina, with the Mapuche in the south and the Kolla, Guarani and Kechua in the north.

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