Bolivia legaliza la justicia indígena
miércoles, 9 de junio de 2010 - 11:47 GMT
La cámara baja del Congreso boliviano aprobó una ley que les da a los pueblos indígenas el derecho a administrar justicia de forma autónoma y según sus propios valores y costumbres.
La medida hace efectivo uno de los principales cambios contemplados en las reformas constitucionales aprobadas por un referéndum en enero de 2009.
La nueva Carta Magna define a Bolivia como un Estado plurinacional y les otorga más poder a las 36 comunidades indígenas del país.
Según el gobierno boliviano, la mayor parte de la población indígena percibe a la justicia ordinaria como corrupta y racista.
La oposición, sin embargo, teme que la medida pueda estimular castigos colectivos como linchamientos y lapidaciones, que se han vuelto más comunes en los últimos años.
Sólo el mes pasado, cuatro policías fueron linchados en una comunidad andina, que justificó el acto en nombre de la justicia comunitaria. Las autoridades aún están buscando a los responsables.
Problema de competencias
La polémica en torno de la justicia indígena ha sido muy similar a la que precedió a la aprobación de la nueva Constitución.
El borrador de la Carta Magna, refrendado en una votación popular, fue aprobado en asamblea constituyente en ausencia de la oposición.
Lo mismo ocurrió en esta oportunidad en el Congreso con la promulgación de la Ley del Órgano Judicial.
Al mismo tiempo, aunque la discusión sobre las reformas estuvo centrada en el tema de la reelección presidencial, en su momento algunos críticos también afirmaron que las nuevas disposiciones podían generar conflictos de competencias con las autoridades ya establecidas.
Ése fue también uno de los principales reclamos de la oposición a la nueva ley, que no establece si la justicia indígena se aplicará sólo en el caso de delitos menores, como disputas por tierras, o también en crímenes como el homicidio y el narcotráfico.
El Congreso tiene, sin embargo, un plazo de 180 días para aprobar otra norma, la de de "deslinde jurisdiccional", que deberá precisar los campos de acción de las justicias ordinaria y comunitaria.
Los indígenas de los 36 pueblos originarios de Bolivia pasarán del reconocimiento constitucional puro y simple a la participación efectiva en todos los niveles del poder estatal y en la economía.
Esto ha llevado a algunos opositores a señalar que la nueva Constitución creará ciudadanos de primera y de segunda y que los de primera serán los indígenas.
El proyecto constitucional establece:
• Todo un capítulo para los derechos de las naciones y pueblos indígena originario campesinos.
• Una cuota de parlamentarios indígenas, por circunscripciones a definirse por ley.
• La justicia indígena originaria campesina, en el mismo nivel que la justicia ordinaria.
• Un Tribunal Constitucional plurinacional, lo que obliga a elegir miembros de este tribunal del sistema ordinario y del sistema indígena.
• Un órgano electoral plurinacional, en el que los indígenas tendrán representación a través de los vocales.
• La autonomía indígena originaria campesina.
• Un modelo económico social comunitario basado en la visión indígena.
• Derechos de los indígenas sobre el uso del agua.
• Propiedad exclusiva de los recursos forestales de su comunidad.
• Derecho a la tierra comunitaria e indígena. http://www.bbc.co.uk/spanish/specials/1224_referendo_boliv/page2.shtml
Tradicionalmente, nos han enseñado que los primeros habitantes de América entraron en el continente atravesando el estrecho de Bering doce mil años antes dé la llegada de Colón. Se daba por supuesto que eran bandas reducidas y nómadas, y que vivían sin alterar la tierra. Pero, durante los últimos treinta años, los arqueólogos y antropólogos han demostrado que estas suposiciones, igual que otras que también se sostenían desde hacía tiempo, eran erróneas. En un libro tan asombroso como persuasivo, Charles C. Mann revela conclusiones tan novedosas como que en 1491 había más habitantes en América que en el continente europeo; que algunas ciudades, como Tenochtitlan, tenían una población mayor que cualquier ciudad contemporánea de la época, además de contar con agua corriente, hermosos jardines botánicos y calles de una limpieza inmaculada; que la prosperidad de las primeras ciudades americanas se alcanzó antes de que los egipcios construyeran las pirámides; que los indios precolombinos de México cultivaban el maíz mediante un procedimiento tan sofisticado que la revista Science lo ha calificado recientemente como (la primera hazaña, y tal vez la mayor, en el campo de la ingeniería genética); o que los nativos americanos transformaron la tierra de forma tan completa que los europeos llegaron a un continente cuyo paisaje ya estaba modelado por los seres humanos.
There are hundreds of (Native) American languages spoken in the Americas. Most of them face extinction. Many of them however, are in a state of revalidation with, for example, the help of modern technology. Unlike television, the internet provides an excellent opportunity to create your own (education) programs. Besides these programs, communication methods like msn, facebook, twitter, and others, give people the chance to communicate in their own languages in a “modern” way.
Internet also gives the opportunity to tell others about certain issues. To give information. This post is about the (Indigenous) languages of the Americas. As said above, there are hundreds of them. Nobody knows exactly how many. There are however some areas that can be considered “language hotspots”, like the North American West Coast from southern Alaska all the way to the US-Mexican border. Another one is the western part of the Amazon basin, where Brazil borders Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Southern Mexico is a third one.
To make this a lot easier, six important languages are presented here. Two from North America (Canada/US), two from Central America (Mexico/Guatemala), & two from South America (Peru/Paraguay).
North America
The Cree peoples today live in Canada, from Labrador to Alberta and the Northwest Territories. Their language belongs to the Algic languages, one of the most widespread language families in North America (from coast to coast). It is Canada’s largest indigenous language and spoken by roughly 100.000 people. Because they live in such a large area, the language (and it’s native name) varies from place to place. Still, these differences are not large enough to consider them separate languages. Plains Cree (the most Western variant, primarily spoken in Alberta and Saskatchewan) is called Nêhiyawêwin by its own speakers.
Some Cree variants are written with the Cree syllabics, as shown here:
The most famous Cree word (although propbably from another Algic language) is the word Muus (ᒨᔅ in syllables) which is the name for the animal Europeans call Elk (from Swedish: Älg). Although it is the same animal, the Europeans in North America borrowed the native word and nowadays, in American English, it is known as Moose.
This is how it sounds (Plains Cree): an exercise in putting together a wee play dramatizing experiences many Cree have had with their language...
Ok, well... Let's go on! The next one is the Navajo (Navaho) language. There are almost 300.000 Navajo people and most of them live in the North American Southwest (on the Navajo Nation, by far the largest Indian Reservation in the United States with +/- 26.000 square miles/67.000 square kilometres. That is about the size of West Virginia and almost the size of The Netherlands & Belgium combined).
They call themselves Diné, and their language Diné bizaad. The Navajo language is a Na-Dene language (Southern Athabaskan group), like the Apache languages. Most Na-Dene languages can be found in western Canada. How the Navajo (and the Apache) people came in what today is the North American Southwest is not known although most scholars think of a migration from the north, around AD 1000.
The language itself is written with the Navajo alphabet, which is based on the roman alphabet with some modifications. This alphabet has some 85 letters and although this may sound a lot, it only means that every sound has its own letter. The system is completely phonetic, unlike, for example, the English spelling system. The English alphabet uses only 26 signs (letters) but the (standard) English language has at least 44 sounds. Besides that, there are almost 70 ways to spell different English sounds. That's the reason why so many people say they find English very difficult even if they can speak it quite well.
Two famous examples are:
Be, see, sea, Caesar, field, people, ceiling, key, machine
Food, rude, fruit, blue, to, two, shoe, group, through, flew
Here's an example of the Navajo alphabet (it's the first part of the wikipedia article on the Navajo people):
And this is how it sounds like (lessons via youtube!):
Central America
The biggest language (more than 1,5 million speakers today of which +/- 200.000 in the US) in Central America is the language of the Aztecs, today mostly known as Nahuatl (pronounce as: Nawatl). It is also known as Aztec, Mexicah (The Mexican language), and, for a lot of its speakers: Macehualtlahtolli (pronounce as: mah-seh-wal-tlah-tol-lee), language of the common people/the farmers.
It is the main language of the Uto-Aztecan language family which spreads from Idaho in the US in the north to the country of El Salvador in the south. Nahuatl was not only the language of the Aztecs, it is also likely that it was the language of the mighty power before them (the Toltecs, around AD 1000), and the language of a lot of different (and/or) independent city-states (like Tlaxcallan) at the time the Spaniards arrived.
Nahuatl had its own script. A script that looks very much like picture writing (some people even called it a form of proto-writing because they only saw pictures), but has, in fact, a lot of phonetic signs (syllables) in it which, until this day, still aren't completely deciphered. An example:
Nahuatl was also the lingua franca in Mesoamerica (ancient Mexico, Guatemala, and neighboring regions) the language used by traders. Spanish accounts tell that it wasn't only in use in Mexico, but that it was even used by people as far south as Panama. It also seems likely, since the Mesoamericans traded with people in the North American southwest, that people knew how to speak (or at least could communicate in it) it in what today is the US.
Because it was that important, the Spaniards recognized its position (in 1570 Spanish king Philip II made it the official language of New Spain/Mexico). That's the reason why it didn't collapse with the fall of the Aztec empire. On the contrary. Under the nominal Spanish rule, it even grew. Nahuatl speaking peoples from down south Mexico moved and established colonies in what today is Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. They even, together with the Spaniards, crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived in the Philippines where their Nahuatl language influenced Tagalog, the national language of that country (like the word tianggê, market, from the Nahuatl word tianquiztli). Although the script was replaced by the latin alphabet in the 16th century, the language florished and until the late 18th and early 19th century, most Mexicans (whether they were spanish or native) spoke Nahuatl, not Spanish. It was only in 1770 that the Spanish empire called for the elimination of the indigenous languages. From that time onwards the real hispanization of Mexico took place, something that became even more a reality with the independence of Creole governed Mexico (1821) when a real repression of the native languages started. Today, the Mexican state recognises (and officialy stimulates) Nahuatl and the other native languages within its borders.
This is how it sounds like
The second Central American (and Mexican) language here, is a Maya language. Most people think there's only one Maya language and only one Maya people. But this is not true. In Guatemala alone there are almost 25 different Maya peoples, all with their own language. The Mayan languages are often completely different from each other and speakers of the two biggest ones (the K'iche' language in Guatemala with approx. 1 million speakers, and the Yucatec language with approx. 800.000 speakers) cannot communicate with each other in their own language.
The language presented here is Yucatec Maya (Màaya T'aan), the language of the Yucatec peninsula.
The Maya script is the most famous of all Mesoamerican scripts. Just like others, it was a mixed system with syllabic signs and logograms. The oldest text so far was only recently found and dates to +/- 300BC. In the so called "Classic Period" (AD 250-900), it was extensively used by the mighty kings in the lowlands of the Maya area. Although there are many Maya languages, only one (or perhaps a few) were used for the script. Finally, only a few texts are left from the time just prior to the arrival Spaniards. Four books and a few inscripions in stone. Most books were burned by the Spaniards but the script was in use until at least 1697 when the last independent Maya city state (Tayasal, present day Guatemala) was conquered. Today, Maya people (children and adults alike) are learning to write again with their own script. Just like the Nahuatl language however, the Maya languages (most of them) never died out and weren't persecuted by the Spanish empire before 1770.
oldest Maya writing
Classic Period writing & one of the four surving books (the codex Dresden) of the period just before the Spanish arrival
South America
South America has the most native languages and also the biggest ones in terms of speakers. The absolute leader here (and in the entire hemisphere) is Quechua, the language of the Incan Empire. There are many variants of the Quechua language and scholars don't agree how to call them. Some speak of different languages, others of dialects or groupings. It seems quite save to say that there are three clusters. One, Southern Quechua (the language spoken in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile en southern Peru, which is also the language of the people in Cusco) is known as Runa Simi (People's Tongue) to its more than 5 million speakers. The other big one is Northern Quechua (mainly concentrated in Ecuador and the Amazonian lowlands of northern Peru), is known in Ecuador as Kichwa Shimi, and has about 3 million speakers. The third one is a lot smaller, and a lot more different than the other two. It is commonly known as Quechua I, Waywash or Quechua Central. The last name shows its geopgraphic position, in between northern and southern Quechua. There are probably less than half a million speakers.
