Despite the marginalization, discrimination, oppression and exclusion to which we have been subjected by the dominant sectors that control political, economic and military power, we, the indigenous peoples and nationalities, have succeeded in recuperating the political space usurped in 1492 in order to question and expose the social injustice and economic exploitation, the inefficient and decrepit legal-political and administrative system, as well as the anti-democratic character of state power and its institutions.
The political objectives of the indigenous peoples and nationalities aim to guarantee the fulfillment of our specific rights and propose the harmonic and balanced development of all of society in a context of peace and full democracy, for which we call upon all political and social sectors that coexist in the present territory of Ecuador to participate actively and creatively in the solution of the grave problems that have historically oppressed us.
The indigenous peoples and nationalities, after five centuries of colonialist and republican oppression and exploitation, have reached the following conclusions:
1. That the struggle of the indigenous peoples and nationalities has become an alternative political force at the national and international level, recognized by international bodies and society in general.
2. That the "Indian problem" in Ecuador is not only an educational, ecclesiastical and administrative problem as the dominant sectors claim, but is fundamentally a structural, economic-political problem, and therefore a national problem, and solving it requires the effort of all of society.
3. That the existing bourgeois state, the successive governments, the church and the religious sects, the political parties, the public powers and legal organs are instruments of the dominant sectors for keeping the indigenous peoples and nationalities, and all social sectors, subjugated, impeding our political participation and denying our historical individual and collective rights.
4. That the Uni-national Bourgeois State, hegemonic its legal- political and economic nature, is exclusive, anti-democratic, repressive and pro-imperialist.
5. That we, the indigenous peoples and nationalities and other social sectors, prostrate and relegated to an inhuman standard of living and submitted to the cruelties of exploitation and oppression, have a single path for solving our multiple national problems, and that this is the decisive struggle for political and economic liberation and the construction of a participative New Multinational Nation.
6. That Ecuador is a multinational society in formation, and that we must develop it taking into account the interrupted processes of development of the indigenous peoples and nationalities, which is why we propose the establishment of a multinational and multicultural state.
7. That the fundamental principles of democracy - equality, liberty, fraternity and social peace - have not be fulfilled in Ecuador, and that for this reason, only the multinational state and the nationalities will guarantee their application and vigor.
8. That the resistance of the indigenous peoples has been a determining factor in the strengthening and political development of the nationalities, constituting the base for the transformation of the structures of the current system imposed by the dominant sectors and the construction of the new society.
9. The economic, political, social, psychological and cultural remnants of the colonial era, as well as the Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism fomented by the dominant sectors that impede the development of the indigenous peoples and nationalities and society in general, must disappear to give way to the establishment of a new economic order and the new multinational state.
We, the indigenous peoples and nationalities, after long years of resistance and combative struggle, have organized to put an end to five centuries of oppression, misery and poverty; and we have as our primordial objective the building of an alternative multinational state and the installation of a multinational, democratic government attentive to the interests of all the nationalities that make up Ecuador and guaranteeing the material and spiritual well-being of the family, the community, and society in general.
Our struggle transcends isolated demands. Our struggle proposes to solve the deferred problems of the land and territoriality, industrialization, unemployment, underemployment, housing, education, health, and the terrible social and human results of discrimination and racial segregation.
Our goal is not the simple taking of power or of government, but the transformation of the nature of the existing hegemonic, exclusivist, anti-democratic and repressive state and the building of the new, humanist multinational society. Our struggle is a frontal option against the economic, political and ideological capitalist system, which is hegemonic, repressive and slave-like, both nationally and internationally, and impedes the self-determination and the economic and political independence of the indigenous peoples and nationalities and the other social sectors of Ecuador.
Our struggle aims to reestablish the collective political and economic rights denied by the dominant sectors through all institutional means, or exhausting that, the final recourse of self-defense permitted by international bodies and the existing constitution; for such a purpose, the liberating process demands the mutual effort of all the exploited and oppressed sectors of the country.
Historical knowledge confirms the integral humanism practiced by the indigenous peoples and nationalities, which is still alive in the nationalities that have survived the exploitation, genocide, ethnocide and the dehumanized subjugation of Western civilization.
Consistent with our past and present, we maintain the integral humanist principle in our interpretation of man-nature-society; to obtain better conditions for individual and collective life, we therefore propose the construction of the new multinational society.
Our integral humanism defends, respects and affirms the rights of all life as the sustenance of the spirituality, thought and knowledge of the indigenous peoples and nationalities
Communitarianism is the form of life of the indigenous peoples and nationalities, based on reciprocity, solidarity and equality; that is, a socio-economic political system of a collective character in which all its members actively participate.
The communitarianism of the indigenous peoples and nationalities has been adapting to external economic and political processes, has been modified but has not disappeared, and lives and is practiced among the indigenous peoples and nationalities.
The model of the society we propose is a communitarian society. The bases for the construction of the new multinational nation will be family-personal property, communitarian self-managed property, multinational state property and mixed forms.
The new multinational state will be charged with harmonizing these types of "property" with the principal purpose of obtaining the economic, political, cultural, technological and scientific equality of the indigenous peoples and nationalities and other nationalities, guaranteeing the satisfaction of the material and spiritual necessities of all of society, and making possible the development of humanity and the conservation of nature.
Our democracy is sustained in the respect for human rights, the individual and collective rights of the peoples, the freedom of thought, respect for beliefs and religiosity, and the peace and social justice practiced by the indigenous peoples and nationalities.
Multinational communitarian democracy will give impulse to a reordering of the legal-political, administrative and economic structures that will allow the suppression of the exploitation of man by man and the transformation of the decrepit state institutions that impede the full participation of the indigenous peoples and nationalities, as well as the other social sectors.
The democracy will propose will be anti-colonialist, anti- capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-segregationist, that is, different from the ruling hypocritical representative democratic system.
Multinational communitarian democracy will signify the perfecting of the Ecuadorian nation and state with the purpose of achieving the harmonic and balanced development of the indigenous nationalities, the Afro-Ecuadorian people, and the different social sectors, as the current form of political organization, the uni-national state, does not express the multinational reality of Ecuador.
Multinationalism proposes the equality, unity, respect, reciprocity and solidarity of all the nationalities that make up Ecuador. It recognizes the right of all nationalities to their territory and internal politico-administrative autonomy, that is, to determine their own process of economic, social, cultural, scientific and technological development, to guarantee the development of their cultural and political identity, and thereby the integral development of the nation.
The real multinational Ecuadorian nation will be built and consolidated on the basis of equality, the recognition of specific rights, and the indissoluble unity of the nationalities.
To guarantee the full exercise of the rights of the nationalities, to consolidate and reaffirm the unity of the multinational nation and plant democracy, peace and liberty, the new multinational state will be constituted as the sovereign, independent and democratic expression of the nationalities, protected in the new political constitution of the multinational state.
Unity is necessary because the existing uni-national state does not recognize the specific rights of the nationalities and moreover because the hegemonic sector has been encharged with isolating, dispersing and dividing us.
The recognition of diversity guarantees unity and allows the coexistence and fraternal and solidary interrelationship among peoples and nationalities which guarantees the establishment of the multinational state and the construction of the new nation.
The unity of peoples and nationalities is counterposed to the hegemonic power of the existing legal-political and economic order imposed by the dominant sector.
The unity of nationalities is based upon the recognition and respect for the rights of each nationality, without distinctions of any kind.
Unity in diversity will guarantee the construction and consolidation of the Ecuadorian nation, to which the multinational state should give impulse, with the participation and commitment of all nations until economic, political and social development is attained in the context of mutual cooperation, reciprocity and equality.
Self-determination is the right of the nationalities to freely choose and exercise their own political system and model of socio-economic development in a territory fully defined in the context of the new multinational nation.
Multinational sovereignty will substitute for the exercise of existing sovereignty, which is based on hegemonic interests and the instruments of the dominant sector, in order to impose the power and political will of the indigenous peoples and nationalities, which will safeguard the interests of all the multinational nation.
In the exercise of its sovereignty, the multinational state will be vigilant for the political and economic rights of the peoples, nationalities and the multinational Ecuadoran nation before the group of nations in the international context in order to strengthen peace, cooperation, equality and solidarity.
We indigenous peoples and nationalities condemn all forms of colonialism, neocolonialism, discrimination and racial segregation, military intervention and all types of economic blockades. We recognize the right of all peoples to free themselves from these oppressive systems.
C O N A I E
CONFEDERACION DE NACIONALIDADES INDIGENAS DEL ECUADOR
INTERNET: ccc@conaie.ec OR ccc%conaie@ecuanex.apc.org UUCP: cdp!ecuanex!conaie!ccc
P.O.Box: Casilla 17171235, Quito, ECUADOR.
Direcci' on: Los Granados 2553 y 6 de Diciembre, Quito, ECUADOR.
Tel' efono: (593-2) 248930 TeleFax: (593-2) 442271
Translated by Michael Pearlman
XTL00003@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu