"Contemporary Indians and the Quincentenary" by Mac Chapin in "Encounters: A Quincentenary Review" (Summer 1990, pp. 23-27) Spread across my desk is a selection of magazines, newslet- ters, fliers announcing symposia and exhibitions, and books that have sprung up around the Quincentennial celebration. Quite a few of these publications are elegantly produced and pleasing to the eye, an indication that considerable money is behind the collective effort. And much more is promised over the next two years--posters, commemorative coins and medals, postage stamps, cookbooks, collections of music, and exhibitions of art and photography. All of this activity surrounds the celebration of the five- hundredth anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus on an island, somewhere (the debate continues as to precisely where) at the outer rim of the Caribbean Sea. The event itself--the arrival of three small Spanish ships in the New World--was a mere pinpoint in the flow of global history, yet it had profound consequences for all involved, as well as for all who followed. It set off a long and often contorted and tortuous process of mestizaje, or mixture, along biological, cultural, and political lines that has placed a decisive stamp on successive generations of Americans. Many of us are still trying to grapple with the significance of the initial coupling of two worlds and the legacy it bequeathed to its children. This is a time for reflection. And as I look through the publications accumulating on my desk, I see a rich array of images and ideas in the form of scholarly articles, essays, and inspirational pieces written by historians, geographers, ethno- botanists, philosophers, poets, novelists, and diplomats in various guises. What I don't see are articles written by Indians, or any- thing that approaches the range of questions brought to light by the Quincentenary from the perspective of contemporary Indians (as opposed to the historical Indian, who is amply represented). If indeed the arrival of Columbus was an "encounter of two worlds," it seems only fair that we should have a few words from the Indian World--or as an Indian friend phrases it, "the view from the shore." Amid the numerous announcements of financial assistance for all manner of projects, I am unable to find much of anything directly involving living Indians. Of course there are several events being organized for Indians by non-Indians. I see, for example, that someone is sponsoring the Carib Indians of Dominica to build a sixty-foot war canoe and paddle it to Santo Domingo where they will meet with replicas of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. But this is again a simple recon- struction of a historical event. And, of course, planned events of this sort are not the same as events organized for Indians by Indians. The following question therefore arises. Do Indians see the Quincentenary of the arrival of Columbus as an occasion that they would like to commemorate? Put simple, most do not--or would not, if they had any notion that a commemorative ceremony was in the air. For the fact remains that whatever euphemisms we might choose to describe the historic landing, what happened was decidedly a conquest, one that was both swift and devastating. Within the short span of a few decades, large segments of the native population were overwhelmed and placed under the yoke of the foreign invaders. Those who escaped subjugation either lived in inaccessible places when the intruders appeared or were able to flee to remote, generally inhospitable places where they could not be found. What occurred in the areas of contact during the first years was utter havoc. Although the brutality of the conquistadors was clearly a contributing factor to early death tolls, the most implacable enemies of the natives appeared in the form of epidemics. Indians everywhere were decimated by smallpox, chickenpox, measles, tuberculosis, malaria, and yellow fever--diseases that were relatively benign in Europe, but lethal among the Indians who lacked immunity to them. The core area of the Mexica (Aztec) empire in the Valley of Mexico was reduced from between 1.5 and 3 million inhabitants to an estimated 70,000 by the end of the seventeenth century. Some stretches of Central America were swept clean of people by the invisible scourge that followed the Spaniards as they made their way down the isthmus, and everywhere there was a pattern of death and destruction. With the exception of minuscule enclaves in Dominica and Cuba, the indigenous people of the Caribbean have vanished. In sum, during the first hundred years after the "encounter of two worlds," the ragged remnants of the indigenous population of the New World were broken, demoral- ized, and confused. Their political institutions were shattered; their agricultural systems were abandoned; and their self-esteem was destroyed. Most of this story has been well documented by historians, and the occasion of the Quincentenary will give it full play. From their side, Indian activists from various corners of the hemisphere have already begun to raise their collective voice in protest and to cry out for redress. While all of this is appro- priate and even important, however, what concerns me is the apparent lack of interest in the present-day situation of the Indians, the living descendants of the original native popula- tions. These are the children of those who managed to survive the centuries of pestilence and armed violence, slavery, and forced labor. Today they embody a large portion of the richness and diversity of American culture. Yet most of us know next to nothing about why they are or how they go about organizing their lives. THE UNKNOWN INDIAN OF LATIN AMERICA In Latin America alone there are an estimated 40 million people who identify themselves as Indians and after centuries of decline, their numbers have been growing steadily over the last few decades. In some countries, such as Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia, they number as much as half of the total population. At the other extreme, less than one percent of the population of Costa Rica is considered to be Indian. Yet everywhere in the region, whether Indians are found in large groups or tiny minori- ties, they tend to lead quiet, unobtrusive, and often isolated lives. They keep to themselves, and even those who live on the fringes of cities, drifting in and out of the urban landscape, are seldom noticed. They are unknown and unperceived, although they are often physically present in large numbers. Even those Indians who are visually striking--the painted dwellers of the Amazon forest and the exotically dressed women of the Guatemalan highlands--seldom register on us as more than surface images. We don't see them, we know virtually nothing about the way they live, and we have no access to their thoughts. The original inhabitants of the Americas have become invisible, phantoms in their own land. Many Indians in Latin America have chosen, for one reason or another, to avoid "civilization" altogether. They have exiled themselves voluntarily or have been pushed into the rural back- lands by hostile forces. These groups are generally found in areas aptly termed "regions of refuge" by the Mexican anthropolo- gist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran. The "regions of refuge" offer sanctuary to small groups whose communities hug desolate mountain slopes, or are dispersed across rugged, trackless deserts, or are tucked away in the folds of thick tropical rainforests. Subsis- tence in these environments is difficult and niggardly; hardship and deprivation are the rule. The people who inhabit these regions are physically and culturally isolated and live where there are frequently no roads, no schools, and no electricity. Even those Indians who have migrated to urban areas in recent years in search of employment tend to remain isolated. They often squat along the periphery of populated areas, where they eke out a tenuous existence through occasional labor. CENTRAL AMERICA'S INDIGENOUS POPULATION Central America is a case in point. The entire region was largely unknown to the outside world until 1979, when the Sandinistas overthrew Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and a coup in El Salvador initiated what now appears to be an endless march toward chaos. Since then, events in all of the countries of Central America have been featured repeatedly on television screens around the world and Central America political and military leaders have become familiar faces. Numerous books have appeared and much has been written in newspapers and magazines. Our understanding of the region has increased exponentially. Yet at the same time, very few North Americans would be able to say much about Central America's indigenous peoples. A recent map of the Indian population of Central America done by geographers Melanie Counce and William Davidson lists 43 distinct indigenous groups with a total population of close to 3 million people. Other knowledgeable estimates put the total as high as 5 million. Whatever the true figure might be, two complementary facts stand out. First, out of a total population of around 25 million, Indians constitute between 12 and 20 percent of the population. Second, the absolute number of Indians has been growing over the last few decades in almost every country. The map also shows that the majority of Central America's Indians are living in two discrete and difficult-to- reach areas--the jagged volcanic highlands of Guatemala and the heavily forested Caribbean coast, which stretches from Belize through Panama to the Colombian border. The Indians fled into these refuge areas in colonial times to maintain their autonomy and their own way of life. Over the centuries, they were gradu- ally pushed back and displaced, forced into ever-tighter circles across the densely populated highland areas of Guatemala, or still deeper into the humid jungles of the Caribbean littoral. Until the last few decades of this century, these "hideouts" had remained inviolate to the incursions of outsiders. It is only recently that capitalist development, utilizing new technologies, has begun to destroy the regions' remaining natural resources. In this way, the last remaining stands of tropical rainforest, with the Indians living inside them, are falling before the advance of loggers, cattle ranchers, and swarms of landless peasants. The largest bloc of indigenous people in Central America is concentrated in the highlands and along the northern lowland strip of Guatemala, where between 2.5 and 4 million Indians are divided among 22 different Mayan language groups. They are culturally diverse, and they have been studied extensively by anthropologists, geographers, historians, biologists, and other researchers. Tourists in search of colorful weavings have also been frequent visitors to highland markets over the years. Moreover, accounts of the violence and brutal massacres visited upon the Indians in recent years have been widely portrayed in books, articles, and documentary films. Sadly enough, it must be said that we know something about these people and their strug- gles. But what is to be said of the remaining Indian groups of Central America? Even within their own countries, most of them are not well known. With the exception of the Miskito, who have recently gained notoriety through their skirmishes with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the Kuna of Panama, who have long been studied by anthropologists and photographed by tourists for their colorful native dress, the Indians of Central America generally draw a blank. The Rama, the Sumu, the Garifuna, and the Matagalpa are other, little-known indigenous groups in Nicaragua. In Panama, the Kuna are simply the most prosperous and well-organized tribe among five others: the Guaymi, the Teribe (Terraba), the Bribri, the Embera, and the Wounan. It is common for Salvadoreans to deny categorically that any Indians still exist among them, despite the fact that as many as 500,000 people who call themselves Indians live in that country. Once the sole lords of the region, El Salvador's naturales, as they are called, have been stripped of virtually everything over the centuries. They have lost their native language, much of their native culture, their autonomy, and even their sense of self-worth. They have also lost their lands. Most of them earn a meager living from seasonal wage labor on coffee or sugarcane estates and rent tiny parcels to farm subsistence crops. The only vestige of the old pattern of communal landholding is a single plot of approximately fifteen acres held by the Indian population of the town of Santo Domingo de Guzman in the western end of the country. Two years ago, community authorities divided this plot among the 125 farmers judged to be the most needy in town. Costa Rica's diverse indigenous population of slightly over 20,000 is dispersed about the countryside in small pockets into which they have been inexorably driven over the centuries. They receive limited protection in twenty-one circumscribed reservas indigenas, and several government institutions maintain small, underfunded programs for them. Yet the Indians are largely ignored by Costa Rican society at large. In school textbooks, for example, they make a cameo appearance as pre-Hispanic savag- es, and then they drop out of sight altogether. The Kekchi and the Mopan, two Mayan groups in Belize, live in semi-isolation in the southernmost district of Toledo. The Garifuna, a racial and cultural fusion of Carib Indians and escaped African slaves who speak an Arawak Indian language, live in a string of fishing villages along the coast in the southern half of the country. The Garifuna, in fact, are found all along the coast of Central America, stretching from Belize, through Guatemala and Honduras, as far as Nicaragua. The largest group of Garifuna, approximate- ly 70,000 strong, resides along the northern coast of Honduras. Most of these groups are chronically impoverished and lack such basic social services as health and education. Illiteracy is widespread and even where schools exist, the level of teaching and material support is generally dismal. In Costa Rica, which leads the region with a national literacy rate of over 80 per- cent, the Indian population has an estimated functional literacy rate of just over 20 percent. Many Indians in Central America now speak Spanish as their mother tongue, but they frequently speak it haltingly. And a surprising number of them are limited to their own tongue and consequently seldom leave the radius of their remote communities. INCIPIENT INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS These difficult conditions notwithstanding, the Indian peoples of Central America have persisted. And they have done more than simply persist. As part of a larger trend affecting the entire hemisphere since about 1980, a number of the Central American groups have begun organizing themselves to take a more aggressive stand before the world. Significantly, this incipient movement has been gaining impetus from grassroots activity. In Belize, the Garifuna have formed the National Garifuna Council, and the Kekchi and Mopan Maya have set up the Toledo Maya Cultur- al Council. These organizations are now part of the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP), which also includes newly formed groups from Dominica, St. Vincent, and Guyana. The Cabecar and Bribri peoples of Costa Rica are reviving the tradi- tion of councils of elders (consejos de awapa) as a means of building cohesion in their communities and defending their rights in collective fashion. The Kuna of Panama, who enjoy a long tradition of strong political organization, have been serving as advisors to the Embera, the Wounan, and the Guaymi in their attempt to build organizational strength. Even in Honduras and El Salvador, faint murmurings have been heard from the long- dormant indigenous populations. In El Salvador, Indians went underground in 1932 in the aftermath of a savage massacre of as many as 30,000 people in the western department of Sonsonate where, within the space of a few days, soldiers rounded up and shot all those they could find with "Indian" racial features and dress, including women and children. It is only recently that the National Salvadorean Indigenous Association (ANIS) has emerged in the midst of that country's civil war, and Indian promoters in rural communities of Sonsonate have begun to work, albeit cautiously, with small-scale development projects. Guatemala presents a far more complex and tragic picture. After tens of thousands of Indians lost their lives in the violence that gripped the country from the late 1970s through the early 1980s, community leadership in the highlands was either eliminat- ed or forced into exile. The level of violence moderated tempo- rarily, only to escalate with renewed vigor. Regrettably, many areas of the highlands are still heavily militarized. In this continuing environment of bristling tension and uncertainty, the organization of indigenous people around social or political issues has been severely curtailed. LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES While the needs of the region's indigenous people are numerous, one issue stands out as primary and immediate--protec- tion of their land and natural resources, both of which are disappearing at an alarming rate. All Indians have seen their territories shrink over the centuries in the face of white and mestizo expansion, and the demographic explosion of the past fifty years have made their situation critical. Landless colo- nists everywhere are pushing into Indian lands, carving out farms and cattle ranches. As the colonists push from the outside, population pressures from within the Indian territories fuel a growing concern to establish, stake out, and gain collective legal title to their own homelands. Coupled with the tenure issue is the recognized need to explore alternative, sustainable agricultural systems. The Indians of El Salvador have been campaigning, with partial success, for communal lands at the community level, working through that country's agrarian reform program. In Honduras, the Miskito, Sumo, Garifuna, and Pesch peoples have banded together in an organization called MOPAWI (an acronym derived from Miskito words meaning "Development of Mosquitia," the region where they live) to secure legal title to their lands before they are overrun by colonists. The Mopan and Kekchi Maya of Belize are petitioning the government to establish a Maya homeland of 500,000 acres in the heart of the territory they inhabit. In Panama, the three major tribal groups--the Kuna, the Choco (Embera and Wounan), and the Guaymi--have had relative success negotiating with the government to gain semi-autonomous homelands under federal jurisdiction, called comarcas. The Kuna received legal rights to their homeland, the Comarca de San Blas, in the 1930s, yet over the past decade have found it necessary to carry out formal surveys and patrol their territory's borders against incursions from cattle ranchers and peasant subsistence farmers. The Embera and the Wounan were granted a joint territo- ry of more than 4000 square kilometers in the Darien region in 1983, and they are now working to consolidate their political control of the region. The Guaymi have not fared so well. They live in remote settlements dispersed throughout the hills and valleys of northwestern Panama and are politically fragmented. Their efforts to secure a legally recognized homeland have thus far been blocked by private and government forces with economic interests in the area. As the various indigenous groups begin to organize, communi- cation among these groups has brought them together to discuss common problems and possible strategies for survival. In Novem- ber 1989, the Kuna organized the First Interamerican Indigenous Congress on Natural Resources and the Environment. More than seventy Indians from seventeen different countries, ranging from Canada to Argentina, were present to discuss the themes of land and the management of natural resources. For many of the partic- ipants, this was the first time they had left their countries. Simply meeting other Indians, many of whom they had never heard about before, and talking with them about their problems and projects, their dreams, and plans for future action, was a rare experience. Several of us were present at this event as observers. We were all impressed with the sense that the Indians, the original inhabitants of the land and now guardians of some of the last remaining patches of standing nature, are fighting on the ground the same battle that conservationist groups are fighting through the media and with financial campaigns. With such a convergence of interests, could not an alliance of some sort be forged? INDIAN PEOPLES AND QUINCENTENARY As the activities of the Quincentenary unfold, there is considerable talk of the richness and diversity of native Ameri- can culture. This is indeed true. The aboriginal cultures have contributed more to the variegated patchwork of national and regional identities found in the Americas than many of us real- ize. The surviving Indian cultures continue to provide variety and richness to mankind as a whole, as well as security, beauty, and meaning to the individual groups that possess them. Yet many of these cultures are as fragile as a bird's egg before the advance of the modern world. In recent years, scientists have been telling us about the necessity of maintaining the planet's biological diversity. Cultural diversity is no less important. As it diminishes, the lives of all of us become more impoverished. As the forests disappear across the tropics, so do the cultural groups that reside within them. We are thus losing both biological and cultural diversity simultaneously. The occasion of the Quincentenary brings with it the oppor- tunity to reflect on the present condition of the Indian people who have tenaciously endured five hundred years of colonization. The first step in the reflection process should be consideration of the long-overdue task of discovering who these people are and what they think about this world we inhabit together. They need to be given both a voice and a vote. They need support in their efforts to organize and protect their lands and their resources. They need to be given the freedom to determine the course of their own lives and to maintain their own cultural configura- tions. Above all, they need to be accorded the status of equals. It will only be when some of these things come to pass that the Indian peoples of the Americas will perhaps be able to view the "encounter of two worlds" in a less tragic light. Permission granted by publisher.