Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Participatory Development:  The Experience of the World Bank in Latin America¨*

By Shelton H. Davis, The World Bank

A.                 Introduction

Indigenous peoples have historically been the poorest and most excluded social sectors in Latin America.  They have not only faced serious discrimination in terms of their basic rights to their ancestral property, languages, cultures and forms of governance, but also in terms of access to basic social services (education, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, housing, etc.) and the essential material conditions for a satisfying life. These conditions of extreme poverty and material deprivation—what might be best described as a denial of the fundamental social citizenship rights of indigenous peoples—are widespread throughout Latin America and have recently come to the attention of international development agencies, such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the various bilateral development agencies.  The denial of the basic social citizenship rights of indigenous peoples have also been a growing concern of scholars, journalists and others concerned with social conditions in Latin America.^[1]

            In the aftermath of the national protests and aborted military coup that led to the resignation of Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahaud in January 2000, for example, the Washington Post carried an article titled,  “Indians Showed Political Muscle in Ouster of Ecuadorian Leader.”  While the article focussed upon the increasing power of the indigenous movement to influence national politics in Ecuador, it also highlighted the increasing economic poverty and social marginalization of that sector of the population.   Noting that over 90 percent of the country’s 12.4 million people had some Indian blood, it stated that the 10 percent of the population that are white control over 50 percent of the nation’s wealth.  Annual per capita income in Ecuador, according to the article, is $1600, but among Indians it is has stagnated at about $250. “Indians generally,” the article stated, “inhabit Ecuador’s highlands, the least developed area of the country, with the fewest enterprises, the lowest level of public services and the deepest sense of alienation.”^[2]

            New York Times reporter Larry Rohter writing from the highland town of Latacunga in the aftermath of the late January political changes made similar observations.  Rohter noted that the one-third of the Ecuadorian population that is Indian and mainly lives in the rural highlands are treated as “second class citizens, deprived of economic and educational opportunities, with their languages and cultures ridiculed for even longer than Ecuador has been a nation.”  The recent economic crisis has been particularly damaging for the indigenous population, with inflation rates having risen to 60 percent over the past two years and with the country’s currency having lost 67 percent of its value against the dollar in 1999 and another 20 percent during the month of January.  One expert was cited as claiming that a “process of pauperization” has taken place in the countryside over the past decade that has particularly affected the well being of the indigenous population.  Indian leaders, interviewed by Rohter in the Latacunga marketplace, complained that their “villages were the last to receive electricity, water, telephones, and sewers,” that the terms of trade for their products (mainly potatoes and other agricultural commodities) have worsened and that, as a result of the government’s austerity measures, successive administrations have reduced support for bilingual education in Quechua and other indigenous languages.^[3]

            At least two investigations carried out by the World Bank in the months previous to the January 2000 protests corroborate in much more systematic fashion these journalistic accounts of increasing social and economic deprivation among Ecuador’s large indigenous population. The first is a qualitative study called Consultations with the Poor in Ecuador done in preparation for the World Development Report 2000 and carried out by a team of Ecuadorian social researchers contracted by the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department at the World Bank and released in August 1999.  The report noted that studies conducted by the World Bank in 1995 and the United Nations Development Program in 1996 demonstrate that there is a clear tendency towards the increase of the impoverished population in both rural and urban areas of Ecuador; that Ecuador has one of the highest indices of wealth concentration in Latin America; that areas of high concentration of poverty are correlated with areas inhabited by indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian populations; and, that there has been growing frustration among the poor population leading to increased juvenile delinquency, gangs and urban violence.

             Based upon household interviews with poor men and women, as well as a series of focus group discussions with local officials and organizations working with the rural and urban poor, the report found increasing pauperization and declines in well-being as a result of the country’s persistent financial, economic and political crises. It also found lack of faith in the efficiency of government institutions and services, and general malaise among the poor population in terms of the capacity of the state to respond to the country’s crisis and to provide basic health, educational and other social services.^[4]

            A second report, prepared in November 1999 by the Human and Social Development Group of the World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean Region, is titled Crisis, Poverty and Social Services in Ecuador. The report notes that Ecuador had entered the current crisis with some of the worst inequalities and lowest per capita income in the Latin America region.  Ecuador’s already high levels of poverty and income inequality have worsened in recent years with the number of poor having increased by almost 19 percent between 1995 and 1998.  Over the same period, the Gini co-efficient of income inequality has increased from O.54 to 0.58 and the bottom fifth of the population’s share of total consumption has decreased from 5.3 to 4.3 percent.  Poverty is particularly extreme in rural areas, among the indigenous population and among children, especially those who live in extended households.

             Particularly troublesome, according to the November 1999 report, are the effects of both recent natural disasters (i.e., the El Nino phenomena) and the “unprecedented macroeconomic crisis” which have increased the vulnerability of the poor population, especially pregnant women and children. Even more troublesome was the government’s incapacity to respond to the crisis.  As a result of shrinking public resources, social sector expenditures in 1999 were expected to decline by 15 percent in health and 21 percent in education from what they had been in 1998.  “The Government,” the report concluded, “faces stark choices and cruel tradeoffs. Poverty and inequality have increased since 1995 and continue to worsen. In the short-term, the poor and vulnerable groups require improved protection from declining incomes. In the medium-term, both social protection and basic social services need strengthening. If inequality and poverty are to decline in the future, the poor will require significantly improved access to basic health and education services of higher quality.”^[5]

            While the Ecuador situation is particularly dramatic as a result of the continuing economic and financial crisis, the situation of poverty is general among indigenous peoples throughout Latin America.  Throughout Latin America, indigenous peoples live in conditions of extreme poverty, are systematically excluded from access to basic social services, and are not being provided with the conditions to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by globalization and the opening up of their respective national economies.   The following essay looks at some of the recent studies of indigenous poverty in Latin America, the new models of “participatory development” being introduced to respond to indigenous poverty, some of the political obstacles in the way of implementing these models, and some of the future challenges posed in the struggle against indigenous poverty.  While the essay draws heavily upon on the experience of the World Bank, some of comments made may also reflect those of other international agencies involved in promoting the social and economic rights of indigenous peoples in Latin America.^[6]

 

B. Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Social Capital

            In 1994, two World Bank economists George Psacharopoulos and Harry Patrinos published a study titled Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis. [7]  The study, based upon an analysis of household survey data from four countries (Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru), found that indigenous people are more likely than any other social group of a country’s population to be poor.  A person was considered to be “poor” in the Pscacharopoulos and Patrinos study if his or her income was less than $2 per day.  While the incidence of poverty is high throughout Latin America, it was found to be particularly severe and deep among indigenous families, whether they lived in remote rural areas or on the fringes of the region’s growing cities, and no matter how they were identified (e.g., by language, self-identification, place of residence, etc.).  In Bolivia, where data came from an urban household survey, more than half of the sampled population  (52.6 percent) was poor, but nearly two-thirds (64.3 percent) of the indigenous population was poor. In Guatemala, over 65.6 percent of the sampled population was poor compared with 86.6 percent of the indigenous population.  In Peru, 79.0 percent of the indigenous population was poor as compared to 49.7 percent of the non-indigenous population; while, in Mexico 80.6 percent of the indigenous population was poor as compared to only 17.9 percent of the non-indigenous population.^[8]   

            These poverty statistics are correlated with a striking lack of access to essential social services. For example, in Peru, indigenous people are more likely to become ill than non-indigenous people, but they are much less likely to have access to or consult a physician. Perhaps as a result of poor initial health conditions or neglected treatment, the duration and severity of illness are greater among the indigenous population.  The proportion of indigenous people hospitalized in Peru is almost twice that of the Spanish-speaking population. Although the average cost of both hospitalization and medicine is less for indigenous people, only 57 percent of indigenous people purchase medicine for their illnesses, as compared to 81 percent of the non-indigenous population.

            The Psacharopoulos and Patrinos study also indicated that there is a strong correlation between lack of schooling, being indigenous and being poor.  The indigenous population possesses considerably less schooling at all levels from primary education through secondary school and universities.  The comparative statistics on literacy and schooling between indigenous and non-indigenous persons are particularly revealing:

·        In Guatemala, the majority of indigenous people (most of them speakers of Mayan languages in their homes) have no formal education and of those who do, the majority have only primary education. On the average, indigenous people have only 1.3 years of schooling and only 40 percent are literate.  Mayan-speaking children, if they do attend school, are more likely to repeat grades at the primary level and are more likely to drop out of school altogether.

·        In Bolivia, the schooling levels of indigenous individuals are approximately three years less, on average, than those for non-indigenous individuals.  The differences are even greater for indigenous females, suggesting that they are the most disadvantaged group in Bolivian society. 

·        In Peru, non-indigenous individuals have 20 percent more education than do indigenous individuals. Not only is the indigenous population less educated and less literate than the Spanish-speaking population, but it also lags behind in terms of training.  Differences in educational levels of indigenous and non-indigenous individuals are substantial. Only 40 percent of indigenous heads-of-households have education in excess of primary schooling.  In contrast, 41 percent of Spanish-speaking heads-of –households have some secondary school education, and 22 percent have some post-secondary education.  But, only 6 percent of indigenous heads-of-households have some post-secondary education.

·        Finally, in Mexico, access to formal education for Indians has expanded in recent years but educational levels remain significantly higher in areas with non-indigenous as compared to indigenous populations.  Illiteracy continues to be a serious problem of some states, especially those such as Chiapas, which have relatively large numbers of indigenous people.  The rate of illiteracy increases for both males and females as the percentages of municipio indigenous population rises.  The disparity, however, is greatest in the female sub-sample where the illiteracy rate is more than four times greater in the “high” indigenous municipio category than in the “low” one.  In addition, the gender disparity in the illiteracy rate increases as the indigenous percentage of municipios increases.  Overall, school enrollment rates are much higher in non-indigenous areas than in indigenous ones.

            Beyond their implications for the economic welfare of the indigenous individuals and families involved, the Psacharopoulos and Patrinos study argues that these statistics indicate a series of lost opportunities for the national economies in terms of the development and use of these countries’ human capital.  Economic and educational policy makers, the authors conclude, could help indigenous people to improve their general household incomes and economic opportunities by strengthening their human capital.  Policies to reduce the educational gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous persons, such as bilingual education programs that are demonstrated to decrease significantly school dropout and grade repetition rates and to improve student achievement, could make a large dent in earnings potential and lead to considerable declines in poverty among indigenous peoples.  They can also contribute to the wider productive performance of the region’s national economies and lower the social tensions in their polities.  The World Bank and other donor agencies are currently financing several indigenous education programs, in countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.^[9]

            Since the publication of the Psacharopoulos and Patrinos study, the World Bank has financed several other studies that deepen our understanding of the nature and scope of indigenous poverty in Latin America.  One of these studies was a national poverty assessment in Peru, which compared household survey data on income, consumption and access to human services among poor Peruvian families (both urban and rural and disaggregated by region) from 1994 and 1997.  This was a period in which there was relatively robust economic growth in Peru, and in which poverty rates—especially severe consumption poverty—showed a decline from 19 to 15 percent. Yet, poverty among speakers of indigenous languages, and especially in the Sierra and Amazon regions, was found to have increased rather than decreased during this period.

             The Peru poverty assessment found that the native-language speaking, indigenous population was 29 percent more likely to be poor than the Spanish-speaking population in 1997 as compared to 24 percent in 1994.  School attendance figures for children from native-language speaking families were significantly below the national average, and children from indigenous families were found to be more than twice as likely to be malnourished as children from non-indigenous families. In 1997, nearly 60 percent of the extreme poor in Peru were native language speakers.  The native-speaking Peruvian population, in other words, had been “left behind” by the economic growth and welfare changes that had taken place in the country between 1994 and 1997.^[10]

            A second study carried out in Panama (a relatively high per-capita income country) in 1997 found that indigenous peoples while comprising only 8 percent of the country’s total population made up 19 percent of the country’s poor and 35 percent of the extreme poor. Poverty rates, which in some indigenous areas were as high as 95 percent, were particularly severe among the Ngobe-Bugle (the largest indigenous group in Panama), followed by the Embera-Wounan, and the Kuna. They were also correlated with high malnutrition rates among children, and lack of access to basic services such as schools, health clinics, water and sanitation, electricity and other basic services.^[11]  

            As part of the Panama poverty assessment, a special survey called the Social Capital Qualitative Survey (SCQS) was carried out in order to identify and measure the social capital among both rural and urban poor communities.  Following studies by the political scientist Robert Putnam, social capital was defined in the SCQS as “features of social organization such as trust, norms and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated action.”  One of the major findings of this study was that “social capital” (as measured by the presence of various forms of community organizations and associations both traditional and modern) was much higher in rural indigenous communities than in other poor communities, whether they were rural or urban.   This strong tendency to form community associations, the report argued, was one of the major assets of the indigenous communities and could serve as a critical factor in combating poverty among indigenous peoples if combined with sound social policies and a willingness of government to work with indigenous organizations and communities to raise their incomes and productive capacities.^[12]

            In summary, there is nothing inevitable about the poverty faced by indigenous peoples.  Large-scale investments in education, targeted at indigenous people and tailored to their specific linguistic and cultural characteristics, could play a significant role in equalizing the income-generating characteristics of indigenous and non-indigenous populations and improve their productive success in both market and non-market activities.  At the same time, investments in the strengthening of the social capital of indigenous organizations and communities could play an important role in revitalizing what have become moribund rural economies. The combination of increased investments in human and social capital, based upon new participatory methodologies and a respect for indigenous cultures and identities, is at the heart of current strategies to combat poverty among indigenous peoples.  In the remainder of this essay, I shall highlight some of the lessons learned by the World Bank in promoting such indigenous development in Latin America.  At the same time, I shall describe some of the obstacles (many of them political in nature) in the way of such development and the challenges that the World Bank and other multilateral institutions face in their future operational activities and investments in attempting to alleviate poverty and promote economic development among the region’s large indigenous population.

 

C. Participatory Approaches to Indigenous Development

            Perhaps one of the major lessons of the past decade is the recognition on the part of international development agencies that indigenous peoples need to be provided with the enabling conditions, technical skills and financial resources to participate actively in the planning and implementation of their own development.  This idea of indigenous or “self-development” (sometimes referred to as “ethno-development” or “development with identity”) is recognized in and is a central tenet of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries.  Article 7 of ILO Convention 169, for example, states that “the peoples concerned shall have the right to decide their own priorities for the process of development as it affects their lives, beliefs, institutions and spiritual well-being and the lands they occupy or otherwise use, and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development.” The same article goes on to state that, “In addition, they shall participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of plans and programs for national and regional development which may affect them directly.”^[13]

            When the World Bank drafted its Indigenous Peoples Policy in the early 1990s (Operational Directive 4.20, issued in September 1991), it had in mind these provisions of the ILO Convention.  The Operational Directive states that “The Bank’s policy is that the strategy for addressing the issues pertaining to indigenous peoples must be based on the informed participation  [italics in original] of the indigenous people themselves.”  Such participation, the Operational Directive goes on state, shall include  “identifying local preferences through direct consultation, incorporation of indigenous knowledge into project approaches, and appropriate early use of experienced specialists as core activities for any project that affects indigenous peoples and their rights to natural and economic resources.”^[14]

            Other parts of the same directive call for the preparation of Indigenous Peoples Development Plan (IPDPs) for any World Bank-financed project that affects indigenous peoples. These plans should be prepared in a “culturally appropriate” manner and be “based on full consideration of the options preferred by the indigenous peoples.”  They should take into account “local patterns of social organization, religious beliefs and resource use” and “should support production systems that are well adapted to the needs and environment of the indigenous peoples.”  Mechanisms should be included in such plans for the “participation by indigenous peoples in decision making throughout project planning, implementation and evaluation;” and, where indigenous peoples have their own representative organizations they should be used as “channels for communicating local preferences.”   The directive also mentions the willingness of the World Bank to provide technical assistance “to strengthen relevant government institutions or to support development initiatives taken by indigenous peoples themselves.”^[15]

            Since the issuing of this policy, nearly 100 World Bank-financed projects have been identified as affecting indigenous peoples in the Latin America and Caribbean Region.^[16] This is about one-sixth of the regional project investment portfolio for the period 1992 through 1999.  The vast majority of these projects are in the Environment area (many of these are Global Environmental Facility-funded projects in the biodiversity conservation area) and in the Rural and Social Development fields (approximately 48.5 percent of the identified projects); or in Human Development (approximately 30.3 percent of identified projects in the fields of education, health, and social protection). Interestingly, some of the more conventional World Bank-financed projects in transport, electric power and energy, mining and industry no longer form a major part of the regional investment portfolio affecting indigenous peoples, especially as the financing of these projects are increasingly assumed by the private rather than the public sector in Latin America.

            The portfolio analysis also shows that the largest number of World Bank-financed projects affecting indigenous peoples are in Central America (30.9 percent) and Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru (24.7 percent), with somewhat smaller numbers of projects in Brazil (11.3 percent), Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela (11.3 percent), Mexico (10.3 percent), Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (7.2 percent), and the Caribbean (4.1 percent, mainly Belize and Guyana).

            As for the types of interventions included in these projects, 52 percent have been identified as having special IPDPs or strategies for indigenous peoples as required under Operational Directive 4.20; 17.3 percent have some type of mechanism for indigenous peoples participation but no formal development plan or strategy; 10.2 percent have a special indigenous component (e.g., a land regularization component) financed under the project; 9.2 percent are  “stand-alone” Indigenous Peoples Development Projects; and, 11.2 percent have no specified intervention on behalf of indigenous peoples.

            The so-called Indigenous Peoples Development Projects are perhaps the major innovation of the World Bank’s Latin American and Caribbean Region in the past few years.  These projects, which are prepared and implemented directly with indigenous peoples organizations and communities, began with the preparation and financing of two natural resources management projects—a Community Forestry Project in the southern state of Oaxaca in Mexico and the Sierra Natural Resources Management Project in Peru. They were followed by the preparation and financing, in cooperation with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), of the Ecuador Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian Peoples Development Project (PRODEPINE is the acronym used for the project in Ecuador).  Recently, the World Bank has also approved what is called a “Learning and Innovation Loan” (LIL) for an Indigenous and Afro-Peruvian Peoples Development Project in Peru and similar projects of this type are currently under preparation in Bolivia and Argentina and being considered in Panama and Honduras.^[17] Almost all of these projects contain components or mechanisms by which small-scale productive, natural resources management, or social infrastructural projects proposed by indigenous organizations, cooperatives or community groups are financed under the project loan. 

            Several lessons have emerged from these early experiences in promoting and investing in indigenous people’s development in Latin America. Perhaps, the most important of these lessons is that it is nearly impossible for multilateral institutions to support the economic development of indigenous peoples at the community level without an adequate national policy framework that recognizes the existence of indigenous peoples, their collective land rights, and their unique linguistic and cultural characteristics.   For such initiatives to be effective, national policy frameworks also need to provide for some degree of autonomy for indigenous peoples and their organizations in terms of their participation in local development planning and decision-making.  Fortunately, as a result of the political initiatives of indigenous peoples themselves, there has been a virtual legal revolution in many Latin American countries in terms of the constitutional recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and, in some countries, those of other traditionally excluded or marginalized ethnic groups, such as people of Afro-Latin American descent.  In some countries, such as Bolivia and Colombia, indigenous peoples have also benefited from more general processes of democratization and decentralization with increasing amounts of central government development resources being allocated to local-level indigenous councils, municipal governments and communities for purposes of physical infrastructure and social investment in the often remote areas where indigenous peoples live (e.g.. the construction of rural roads, schools, health clinics, water and sewage systems, etc. have increased significantly in many countries in recent years).^[18]

            Second, the World Bank and other multilateral institutions have found it necessary to invest heavily in the strengthening of the capacity of indigenous organizations and communities to plan and manage their own development initiatives.  The idea of such pre-investment in capacity strengthening arose from discussions that indigenist specialists at the World Bank, the Inter- American Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Fondo Indigena in La Paz had with several leaders of indigenous organizations at the time of the launching in 1993 of the International Decade for the World’s Indigenous People.  Beginning in 1994, the World Bank in collaboration with the Fondo Indigena and Chile’s National Corporation of Indigenous Development (CONADI) assisted in the organization of the first of these training and capacity- strengthening courses with a group of Mapuche indigenous organizations in the southern city of Temuco and later with a group of Aymara and Atacameno indigenous organizations in the northern city of Arica. Subsequent training courses were held in Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Argentina, Guatemala, Colombia, and Panama.  These courses were financed by a regional Institutional Development Fund (IDF) grant facility at the World Bank and a Swedish Government Trust Fund administered by the World Bank’s Environment Department.  Usually, the training courses were organized as partnerships between government agencies responsible for indigenous affairs or social development and indigenous organizations. The content of the courses focussed upon specific themes such as the philosophy of indigenous or ethno-development, methods of project preparation and implementation, basic accounting and project management skills, project monitoring and evaluation, forestry and natural resources management, and the legal rights of indigenous peoples. The trainers or facilitators for such courses often came from indigenous organizations themselves, and attempts were made in several cases to field test the lessons learned in such courses through hands-on experiences in indigenous communities.  To date, two evaluations have been conducted of the over-all training program both of which indicate strong demand and reception on the part of the participating indigenous leaders and organizations, as well as important lessons learned by participating government agencies.^[19]

            A third lesson, discovered in the preparation of the first Indigenous Peoples Development Projects, is the need to systematically incorporate specific participatory mechanisms into project designs tailored to the specific political demands and social and cultural contexts of indigenous organizations and communities.  At the national level, some of the new World Bank-financed projects contain special joint decision-making mechanisms (what might be termed “power-sharing arrangements”) that enable representatives of indigenous organizations to participate on an equal footing with government agencies in the preparation, management and evaluation of project activities.^[20]

            Perhaps, the major experience that the World Bank has had to date with such joint decision-making bodies between indigenous organizations and government agencies is represented by the Project Coordinating Committee (Comite de Gestion) set up during the preparation of the Ecuador Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian Peoples Development Project.  The Coordinating Committee contained three representatives of indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian organizations and three representatives of the Ecuadorian government, as well as an Executive Coordinator (in this case an indigenous professional) representing the Project Technical Unit.  Working out the ground-rules of the Project Coordinating Committee, and ensuring the autonomy of the Project Technical Unit, has proven to be one of the major challenges of this project.  Recent experience indicates that the early thought and negotiation time given to such joint decision-making procedures has proven crucial in the capacity of this project to withstand various national political changes that have taken place in Ecuador over the past few years.^[21]

            At the same time, in both this and other Indigenous Peoples Development Projects, methodologies have had to be developed for ensuring indigenous participation at the regional and local levels within countries.  For example, in all of the stand-alone Indigenous Peoples Development Projects (including the forestry and natural resource management projects in Mexico and Peru), regional indigenous organizations (many of them organized as cooperatives or other types of indigenous farmer organizations) play an important role in managing funds, providing technical assistance, and mobilizing local communities for purposes of economic development, natural resources management and other community-based activities.  At the local-level, new participatory diagnostic and planning techniques have been developed for ensuring that indigenous communities actually participate in and take ownership of the local-level development process.  Such community participation and ownership, it has been found in other World Bank-financed projects, contribute to transparency and accountability in the use of project funds and provide the necessary social basis for the sustainability of project activities at the local level after such project funding ends.^[22]

            Two additional points are also worthy of mention in relation to these initial projects addressed specifically to the development priorities and needs of indigenous peoples. One, is the relatively limited amount of attention placed to date on the participation of indigenous women in these World Bank-financed projects.  In part, this lack of gender sensitivity in project design has resulted from the traditional gender biases of international and national development agencies and programs, as well as from the dominance of men in the leadership positions of many of the most influential indigenous peoples organizations in Latin America. However, given the key role that indigenous women play in the transmission of indigenous languages and cultures, as well as the already mentioned more limited access of indigenous

girls to primary and secondary education in many Latin American countries, more attention needs to be paid to gender issues in all aspects of project design, implementation and evaluation. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the recently approved Indigenous and Afro-Peruvian Peoples Development Project contains specific performance indicators for measuring the number of indigenous and Afro-Peruvian women and women’s organizations that are actively involved in project implementation. The afore-mentioned Ecuador Indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian Development Project is also financing a special study of how to more strategically incorporate a gender perspective into all aspects of project activities.^[23]

            A second and final point concerns the role that indigenous knowledge and culture has played in these projects.  While the World Bank specialists who have assisted in the preparation of these projects are aware of the need to strengthen indigenous cultures and identities as part of the development process, only limited operational attention have been addressed to these issues in project design.  In some projects, funds have been set aside for the financing of community and inter-community cultural activities such as handicraft promotion, festivals and fairs, the identification of archaeological and historical sites, the production of audiovisual materials by indigenous artists and communication specialists, indigenous radio productions, and the like.  However, much of this cultural promotion to date has been done in an ad hoc fashion and there have not yet been techniques developed for assessing either the state of cultural resources and knowledge within indigenous communities or for measuring the effects of development interventions on cultural assets and identities. Much more work also needs to be done on the intellectual property rights of indigenous communities, so as to ensure the protection of their cultural and historical patrimony in the face of growing commercial interests and the expanding global economy. Work in these cultural areas is fundamental if the whole notion of “ethno-development” or “development with identity” is to become a reality rather than merely a form of discourse for mobilizing resources on behalf of indigenous organizations and communities.^[24]

 

D. The Politics of Indigenous Participation

            In preparing and accompanying the implementation of these new Indigenous Peoples Development Projects, specialists in the World Bank and other multilateral institutions have become more aware of the complex political (as opposed to purely operational or technical) factors which influence attempts to promote greater participation of indigenous peoples in the development process.  These political factors, in turn, affect the capacity of the World Bank and other multilateral institutions to truly influence the processes of poverty reduction in rural and indigenous areas of Latin America.

            As historically discriminated against and socially excluded populations, indigenous peoples have largely been at the losing end of the development process.  Most national development policies and programs tend to exploit indigenous land and labor for the enrichment of other social groups or regions, and seldom take into account the cultural needs and aspirations of indigenous peoples themselves. Even when attempts are made to provide for indigenous participation and to give indigenous organizations and communities some degree of control over development programs and resources, powerful political and economic interests can subvert the original intent of such programs creating in their wake social frustration, turmoil and resistance on the part of the so-called beneficiaries of such projects.

            Even prior to the release of Operational Directive 4.20, when the World Bank was financing several regional development projects in lowland South America which contained so-called “indigenous peoples components”, there were experiences that indicated that the implementation of the new policy based upon a more participatory approach to development would face political problems and conflicts.²⁶

         One of the earliest examples of these problems was the history of the Indigenous Peoples Component of the Bolivia: Eastern Lowlands Natural Resources Management and Agricultural Development Project which was approved by the World Bank’s Board of Directors in 1990. The purpose of the Indigenous Peoples Component was to provide land tenure security and other services to several Ayoreo and Chiquitano Indian communities in the Eastern Lowlands of Bolivia, particularly in a new area of agricultural colonization and soy bean cultivation in the Department of Santa Cruz.  Originally prepared in a highly participatory manner by the regional Indian federation (CIDOB) in collaboration with a non-Indian technical assistance group (APCOB), the indigenous component sought to increase the capacity of the recently-contacted and increasingly pauperized Ayoreo communities to determine their own development priorities. It intended to do so by strengthening the development planning capacity of a newly created regional Ayoreo organization.  From the beginning, however, the component encountered implementation problems. These resulted not from any technical inadequacies of the design of the Indigenous Peoples Component, but because of the regional political context in which the project was embedded.

            The precipitating event for these problems was a protest march by CIDOB calling for more indigenous control over forestry resources in the Eastern Lowlands. Carried out in the aftermath of another highly publicized protest over forest concessions by indigenous organizations in the Beni region, a dispute broke out between CIDOB and CORDECRUZ, the regional development corporation, which served as the implementing agency for the overall project.  In the midst of the dispute, representatives of CORDECRUZ publicly denounced CIDOB in the regional and national press and called for the transfer of the administration of the Indigenous Peoples Component to its own institution rather than, as in the project description and loan agreement with the World Bank, keeping it under the control of CIDOB. 

            In a series of highly charged meetings between representatives of CIDOB and CORDECRUZ, the World Bank Project Manager and indigenous specialists attempted to resolve these differences (some of them which had a history even prior to the protest march over the forest concessions) between the regional Indian federation and the regional development corporation.  In the end, however, CORDECRUZ assumed control of the indigenous component.  In the aftermath of the unsuccessful negotiations, the entire design of the component was changed with more control given to a new implementing unit in the regional development corporation and with the Indian federation playing a minor role in its implementation. At the same time, the Ayoreo formed into different factional groups (some of them allied with CIDOB and others with CORDECRUZ), and this led to internal disputes and accusations within the Ayoreo communities about misuse of funds and over access to resources and services provided under the component. A detailed description and analysis of the history of the Eastern Lowlands Indigenous Peoples Component written by one of the key actors in the original design of the component paints a picture of false hopes, frustrated plans and generalized social disruption all carried out in the name of regional development, sustainable resource management and indigenous participation.²⁷

            Even where governments have a rhetorical commitment to social participation on the part of indigenous and other rural populations, there may also be attempts on the part of state agencies to use such participation in order to co-opt rural and indigenous organizations into broader national or provincial political processes.  As is well known, processes of decentralization in Latin America have had a mixed record, providing both greater autonomy in development decision-making and resource control to local governments, NGOs and community organizations, while at the same time providing opportunities for more clientalistic relations on the part of provincial, departmental or municipal authorities.  This is particularly true in federal systems, such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where elected state-level or provincial governments now play an important role in the allocation of development funds and resources.  In some countries, where opposition political parties have begun to gain a stronger foothold in the countryside, decentralized development assistance can be used to either capture or marginalize indigenous and other rural organizations.

            One of the major challenges faced by international development agencies committed to both decentralization and social participation is how to ensure that development resources and services are allocated in a transparent and efficient fashion for purposes of poverty alleviation without being used for electoral and other political purposes.  In almost all cases where World Bank and other multilateral development agency funds are dispersed through decentralized mechanisms (e.g., the recent generation of Social Investment and Municipal Funds in Mexico and Central America) the possibility exists of such political capture and co-optation. Indigenous organizations who, in many countries, have recently become a significant force in local municipal and national elections are not immuned from such political capture, nor are they protected from being marginalized or excluded from development assistance if they maintain an autonomous stance vis-à-vis the larger political and electoral system.²⁸

            Politics may also play an important role in the relations among indigenous organizations at the national level, as well as in the relations between these organizations and local indigenous communities.  In most Latin American countries today there are a diversity of indigenous organizations, some of them organized into secondary regional organizations and national-level federations or confederations.  A number of these organizations are also linked internationally to sub-regional (e.g., the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, COICA) and international bodies (the former World Council of Indigenous Peoples and the various hemispheric networks set up to protest the 500 Anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas or to participate in the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People).  The social roots of these various indigenous organizations differ greatly in terms of their geographical (highland versus lowland), ethnic (large versus smaller ethnic and linguistic groups), religious (Catholic and evangelical) and political (sindicalist, left-wing political party, etc.) affiliations.  They also differ in terms of their leadership styles, modes of organization, and degree of participation and representation of local affiliates or communities. Such organizational diversity, within a context of national and local electoral politics, by its very nature creates problems of political competition and these can easily be reflected in struggles for control over development programs and resources.  Much of the drama of recent politics in Ecuador, for example, has been acted out on a smaller and albeit more limited scale in the struggle for control by different indigenous organizations (or factions within such organizations) of the World Bank and IFAD-financed PRODEPINE project. And much of the effort of the World Bank and IFAD task team responsible for the supervision of the project has by nature needed to deal with the implications for the efficient functioning of the project of these political differences among the indigenous organizations.

            Finally, it has become clear from experience that some of the recent World Bank-funded projects which have tried to link the concerns of indigenous and Afro-Latin American organizations and communities may have exacerbated rather than reduced inter-ethnic tensions and rivalries. This has been the case, for example, in the initial implementation stages of the Colombia Natural Resources Management Project, one of the first natural resources management projects funded by the World Bank after the issuing of Operational Directive 4.20.  Responding to the demands of both Afro-Colombian and indigenous organizations, the World Bank has been supporting a collective land titling program for both indigenous and black communities along the Pacific Coast as part of a broader forestry and natural resources management project.  The collective land titling program is based upon new legislation arising from the 1991 reforms in the Colombian Constitution; and, it included during the preparation stage fairly systematic social and legal assessments of the land tenure situation of both indigenous and black communities in the Pacific Coast region.  It also included funding for the setting up of a series of Regional Committees, organized by the government’s Social Solidaridad Network (Red de Solidaridad Social) in order to create consensus between the various government agencies participating in the Natural Resources Management Program (the Environment, Interior Affairs and Agricultural Ministries, the latter including the Agrarian Reform and Colonization Institute) and the participating indigenous and black organizations over the nature of the land surveying and titling processes. ²⁹    

            As the land titling program began to unfold, inter-ethnic conflicts began to emerge between the indigenous and black organizations. Many of the black organizations felt excluded because earlier government agrarian reform programs had recognized and titled indigenous reserves (resguardos) without taking into account the land and natural resource rights of black communities.  At the same time, following the passage of a new law recognizing the collective land rights of black communities along the Pacific coast (Law 70 of 1993), indigenous organizations felt marginalized and unattended by the regional agrarian reform authorities.  As survey teams began to demarcate lands claimed by black communities, indigenous communities began to protest that their own lands were being invaded and not being taken into account in the survey operations.  Finally, after numerous meetings and protest letters to the project authorities, the agrarian reform institute and the World Bank, an Action Plan was formulated to respond to the land titling needs of both the indigenous and black communities and changes were made in the regional agrarian reform authorities.  Recent evaluations indicate that these initial problems of inter-ethnic conflict within the collective land titling process are now being resolved. However, some of these problems could have been avoided if there was a more realistic assessment on the part of the project authorities and the World Bank staff responsible for the project of the potential conflicts between the various ethnic and racial groups along the Pacific Coast.  The project would have also benefited from more up-front social analysis of how national and regional politics (including the escalation of violence in the area) could potentially have affected the land-titling program proposed for the region.

            In many World Bank project documents, politics is seen as a “risk” which can determine the success or failure of a Bank-funded investment operation.  Increasingly, social development specialists in the World Bank are seeing such political factors not only as risks (in a conventional investment banking sense) but as the institutional contexts in which development operations by their very nature take place.  While the Bylaws of the World Bank do not permit its staff to intervene in the political processes of the countries where it provides assistance, there is no reason why these institutional factors of a political nature should not be analyzed and taken into account in the design of World Bank-funded operations.  This is especially true of projects which are intended to benefit the poor, and where there is an increasing commitment on the part of the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies to government transparency and accountability and the participation of the poor in development operations. One would expect in the future that such institutional assessments, taking into account the broader political context in which development interventions occur, will be a standard aspect of international assistance programs including where appropriate in those programs dealing with indigenous peoples, Afro-Latin Americans and other traditionally poor and socially excluded groups.  

 

E. Challenges for the Future

            In this essay, I have provided a broad overview of the current work being done by the World Bank in supporting the participation of indigenous peoples and their organizations in development projects in Latin America.  I have argued that this work must be seen within the broader framework of the poverty reduction work of the World Bank, and its attempts to improve both the human and social capital of the indigenous poor. Much of this work is based on the premise that indigenous peoples, if provided with adequate capacity-strengthening, technical assistance and financial resources, can become the central actors in a self-managed process of economic development.  This is especially true in those countries where there are strong indigenous organizations at the national, regional and local levels who are taking the lead in defining their own agendas for purposes of development.  At the same time, I have stressed that these efforts to promote indigenous development are not without their own challenges and problems. These include, among others, the need for more active participation on the part of indigenous women in all aspects of development planning; the need for greater focus on the role of indigenous knowledge and cultures (including issues of intellectual property rights) within the local-level development process; and, the need to assess more realistically the political obstacles and challenges to such self-managed development.  In essence, the past decade—which opened with the Rio Conference on Environment and Development, the 500 Years of Resistance Movement, and the launching of the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People—has been one of great learning both for indigenous peoples and the various international donor agencies which have attempted within their own spheres of influence to provide them with support.  What, though, are the future challenges posed for these agencies as they enter the new millennium?

            First, I think there will probably be much greater attention in the years ahead to the development needs and priorities of both rural indigenous communities (mainly farming and agro-pastoral communities in the highland regions and recently sedentarized, horticultural, hunting and fishing communities in the tropical lowlands) and to those of the growing numbers of urban-dwelling indigenous populations.  Although official statistics are lacking, it is noteworthy that recent studies in the Andean region and Mexico indicate that the urban indigenous population may be growing—as a result of displacement and migration from the countryside—much more rapidly than the rural indigenous population. While birth rates among indigenous peoples in rural areas remain relatively high, there has also been a corresponding out-migration of indigenous peoples from rural to urban areas over the past two or three decades.  In the cities, indigenous peoples often settle together in enclaves with others persons from their home villages or regions.  They also often establish new types of associations which create linkages and flows of people, resources and symbolic meanings and identities between the countryside and the city.  Specialists in the World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean Region’s Social Development Unit, working in collaboration with various regional scholars, are beginning to analyze these urban trends among the hemisphere’s indigenous population. They are also seeking operational ways of dealing with questions relating to poverty reduction, urban service delivery, and the resurgence of indigenous ethnic identity in many of Latin America’s cities, especially in the Mesoamerican and Andean regions.             

            A second challenge, which will need much more attention in the years ahead, is how to improve the entrepreneurial capacity and competitiveness of indigenous businesses, whether they are collectively, family or individually owned.  Some recent experiences indicate that indigenous businesses or productive organizations (e.g., cooperatives) have been able to respond to new opportunities provided by increasing commercial openness and globalization (e.g., witness the rise in recent demand in Western Europe and North America for organic coffee much of it grown and marketed by indigenous farmer organizations in Latin America). There are also examples of indigenous businesses or productive organizations having suffered from increased competitiveness (e.g., the sudden rise and then decline in markets for indigenous artisan products in places such as Otavalo in Ecuador).  The ability of indigenous businesses to take advantage of globalization and not be undermined by it will in large measure depend upon the capacity of these organizations to improve their own entrepreneurial and managerial skills and to adapt to new circumstances and opportunities. These include the increasing use of the Internet and other modern information technologies for purposes of trade and commerce.  Many indigenously owned businesses in Canada and the United States are making this adaptive transition; and, in the future, one would expect greater attention given to building up the entrepreneurial and other capacities of indigenous businesses on the part of both indigenous organizations and international agencies working in Latin America.

            Thirdly, there will need to be much more cooperation among international agencies—including joint planning and finance—if the support of indigenous development initiatives are to be effective in achieving the goals of reducing poverty and promoting self-managed development.  For a number of years, the World Bank has formed part of a network of international agencies concerned with indigenous development issues in Latin America.  These agencies include the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Labor Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Pan-American Health Organization, and the Fondo Indigena.  After a period of inactivity, a second meeting of representatives of this Inter-Agency Working Group was held in Washington at the Inter-American Development Bank in March 1999 and a follow-up meeting was held in Costa Rica in May 2000.  For the first time, joint training initiatives are being organized by these institutions.  In April 2000, for example, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Pan American Health Organization sponsored a two-day technical workshop in Washington on “Indigenous Peoples and Social Sector Projects in Latin America.” The workshop brought together agency project personnel working in the human and social development areas with government ministry representatives and various regional specialists (including a number of indigenous professionals) working in the fields of indigenous education, health and social protection.  The purposes of the workshop were to exchange experiences and develop guidelines based upon such experiences for more effectively delivering culturally appropriate education, health and social protection services to indigenous communities.

            Lastly, much more attention in the years ahead will need to be devoted to measuring the actual impact of internationally-financed development initiatives on the lives of indigenous peoples and their communities.  As the current efforts in the area of self-managed or ethno-development go beyond concept and rhetoric to actual project design and implementation, it will be necessary to evaluate the performance and impacts of such efforts both in terms of their capacity to reduce the current widespread poverty which exists among indigenous peoples and to assess how effective such programs are in promoting self-managed and sustainable processes of development, especially at the community level. Many of the standard methods of monitoring and evaluation, as well the indicators used to track and measure the impact of development projects, may not necessarily be relevant in indigenous communities where there is much greater concern with issues of social and cultural disruption (especially among indigenous youth) and the spiritual and ecological balance of their communities.  A major challenge in the years ahead will be for specialists working in international agencies to develop new social development indicators which take into account the great cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity which still exists in Latin America, but which is threatened by past and current models of economic development. Only by factoring such cultural diversity into our models of development, including in our ways of measuring economic performance and social progress, can we expect to create a world free of poverty and social exclusion-- one in which indigenous peoples can continue to maintain their ethnic identities and cultures but have the same social citizenship rights as other members of their respective national societies.