INT. WOMEN'S DAY-ECUADOR:Indian Women-Still a Long Way to go

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY-ECUADOR:
Indian Women - Still a Long Way to Go
Kintto Lucas - Inter Press Service News Agency

The growing number of indigenous women mayors, legislators and even government ministers in Ecuador show the strides made towards attaining political and social leadership roles, but the majority of Indian women have not yet felt the effects of that progress.

QUITO, Mar 7 (IPS) - The growing number of indigenous women mayors, legislators and even government ministers in Ecuador show the strides made towards attaining political and social leadership roles, but the majority of Indian women have not yet felt the effects of that progress.

Foreign Minister Nina Pacari, a Quechua Indian, said ''Our participation has been gradually consolidated in the local communities, in the 'uprisings', in indigenous organisations. Now Ecuador must get used to seeing indigenous men and women who do not lose their identity or their commitment to the groups they represent, in decision-making positions,'' Pacari told IPS.

Around 3.5 million of Ecuador's 12.5 million people are indigenous, belonging to 11 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Quechua, who inhabit the country's highlands as well as the eastern Amazon jungle region.

Ecuador's indigenous movement is considered the best organised in Latin America.

Since 1996, indigenous people in this impoverished Andean nation have won posts in national elections through the Pachakutik- New Country Plurinational Movement, made up of Indians as well as environmentalists, women's groups and other non-governmental organisations.

Pacari's story is a case in point. Born in 1961 in Cotacachi, in the northern province of Imbabura, she became a lawyer, and served as director of land and territories in the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

In 1997 she was named chair of the National Council of Planning for Indigenous and Black Peoples, which was created to design specific state policies for those ethnic groups. In November of that year she was elected as a member of the National Constituent Assembly, which drafted the constitution that was adopted in 1998.

After being elected to the legislature in 1998, she was designated second vice- president of Congress that same year, a post never before held by an indigenous person.

''This is a historic event for the indigenous movement, because no Indian, and much less an Indian woman, has ever held any ranking post in parliament,'' Pacari said on that occasion.

''Ecuador is not accustomed to seeing an indigenous woman in the leadership of such an important body of authority as the legislature,'' she added.

President Lucio Gutiérrez, a former army colonel who took office in January, also named another indigenous woman, Rosa Rodríguez, to his cabinet, as deputy minister of social welfare.

''Women have won increasingly important spaces in the struggle to create conditions of equality and develop full participation in the economic, political, social and cultural life of the country,'' said Rodríguez, an expert on gender and development issues.

But that progress has not yet been felt by most of the country's indigenous women, said the deputy minister, who has done extensive research on participation and citizenship among indigenous people in Ecuador from a gender perspective.

''In a continuing context of exclusion, the situation of indigenous women in Ecuador has been marked by two-pronged discrimination: ethnic and gender-based, and the strides made in participation in the public sphere have not yet been felt by the majority,'' she argued.

To illustrate her point, she noted that a full 53 percent of indigenous women are illiterate -- a major obstacle to their representation and participation in the political system.

But despite their limited access to formal education, women have played a key role in preserving and transmitting the ancestral knowledge of traditional Andean cultures, she underlined.

''It is largely through us that native languages and cultures have been handed down from generation to generation. Indian women are the germ of cultural resistance and preservation. An interesting item of information in that regard is that a majority of bilingual educators in this country are women,'' said Rodríguez.

According to Vicenta Chuma, the coordinator of the Dolores Cacuango School of Women Leaders, indigenous women have been the originators of many native traditions, customs, stories, social norms and other aspects of the cultures of the peoples of Abya Yala (the Americas).

''In our ponchos, we have resisted change and maintained the language and culture that the Quechua nation has developed over hundreds of years,'' said Chuma.

The indigenous leader, who was recently appointed to a diplomatic post in Peru, said that in the past, women and men shared leadership roles in indigenous communities. ''Evidence of that is that our gods are both male and female,'' she added.

In Rodríguez's view, that relationship between men and women began to change when the ways of the western world were introduced, and women began to be limited to the domestic sphere, losing the possibility of participating in community decision- making processes.

But ''When men started migrating en masse to the cities in the 1970s and 1980s (in search of work), indigenous women once again assumed a greater role in community organisation, in the councils fighting for land and water rights, in production, and in education,'' said Rodríguez.

However, indigenous men themselves often stand in the way of women's access to elected posts.

''In Guamote (in the central province of Chimborazo), we women leaders have been preparing ourselves since 1984 and have been involved in the political process since then. However, there are still some men who do not recognise our contributions, our thinking,'' said indigenous city councillor María Naula.

But ''Like Dolores Cacuango said, indigenous women are like the grass of the highlands, which always grows back even if it is torn up,'' said Indian leader Blanca Chancoso, the coordinator of the World Social Forum in Ecuador, referring to one of the most outstanding indigenous women in the history of Ecuador.

Cacuango added that ''We will sow the grass of the highlands around the world.''

In the first few decades of the 20th century, Cacuango and Tránsito Umaguaña founded the country's first trade unions of rural workers, and the first Quechua-Spanish bilingual schools. They also took part in the creation of the Ecuadorean Federation of Indians, the first nationwide indigenous association. They were both persecuted and jailed for their activism.