Bolivia blog 4: Inauguration

This morning saw the inauguration of the People’s conference on climate change and mother earth rights. A crowd of thousands massed, a mixture of people from across the five continent of the world, creating a quilt of colour between indigenous dress and flags raised high as people awaited their host, Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of (what is now called) the ‘plurinational’ state of Bolivia, in spite of having one of the largest indigenous populations in Latin America. 

The crowds gathered under the sweltering sun in a vast auditorium, to the sounds of indigenous music from around the world, from the Maoris of New Zealand to Indian American tribes from Alaska, alongside indigenous music from across Latin America. This was interspersed with the voices ‘representatives of the people’s of the world’, people from social movements from across the five contents who conveyed their messages to the crowds, all strongly echoing the concept of the rights of Mother Earth; the concept that human rights cannot be met independently from the rights of our planet, that was submitted to the UNFCCC process in Copenhagen. Alongside this, the other common theme was a strong critique of the model of neo-liberal capitalism that has been so destructive to the lives of people across the world. So far, these have been the constantly repeated themes in Tiqipaya, the small town a few miles outside Cochabamba which is home to the ‘cumbre’ (conference).

“In Africa, the environment is our life,” declared the African representative from Nigeria “Now I’ve seen the beautiful land of Bolivia I see why you love mother earth…climate justice is the way forward, and by mobilising we can resist this destruction and save this world. We reject false solutions like market solutions because the market is causing the problems of the world.”

Next, the representative from Asia – the coordinator of a collective called India Climate Justice – came to the stage “In India, the land has always been considered for centuries as a mother.” He continued by alluding to the importance of recognising the inequality within countries as well as between them “Ninety percent of the people of India have not contributed to climate change, and are getting organised to say no to this destructive paradigm of development coming from the north…we feel we are standing at a new point in history because at no point in earth has a people decided that they would unite across countries to pit mother earth first. We must grab this time, and challenge the neo-liberal systems that are being pushed by the capitalist system.”

Evo’s arrived to cheers that in the UK are generally reserved for film stars and boy bands. He walked amongst the crowd before taking to the stage, and opening with a call of “Planeta o Muerte!” (Planet or Death). “Without equilibrium between people, there will be no equilibrium between humans and nature” said Morales, as he condemned the failure of Copenhagen “Copenhagen wasn’t a failure for us, but a failure for the developed countries” without which, he went on, we wouldn’t be here at this conference. Whilst Bolivia’s economy is still riddled with contradictions, with much of its income still coming from a destructive extractives industry, much of what Morales said still rang true. He spoke of the need to recognise the indigenous knowledge that the industrialised world has forgotten, lifting up products from the rich world and comparing them with their indigenous alternatives, whilst explaining how so much of what comes from the ‘developed’ world is so much more destructive not only to our planet, but also to our health. “The people are part of the earth, from here we are born, and to here we will die.”