A legacy of neglect

IT HAS TAKEN half a millennium for the indigenous people of South America to emerge from the margins where they had been shunted off by the colonial invaders. But in recent decades, thanks to an increasing awareness among the international community, these long forgotten people have regained their voice. It is in this spirit that the Brazilian Government's decision, in response to protests, to prune the scale of official ``celebrations'' to mark the 500 years of the arrival of the white coloniser on the continent will be welcomed by those agitating for the basic rights of the wronged, deprived natives. The Brazilian President, Mr. Fernando Henrique Cardoso's action reflects a sensitivity to native feelings that had been absent for centuries. Despite progress toward greater assimilation in mainstream life in the last few decades and the ``concessions'' that have been wrung out of the ruling class, the natives are still second class citizens in most of Latin America which came under the Portuguese and Spanish invaders.

The dwindling population of the natives sees the arrival of the colonisers as a disaster that led to the desecration of its sacred lands. The whites' claim to have discovered the continent is also now being vigorously challenged by the indigenous people who cite accumulating archaeological evidence of a flourishing native civilisation. Machu Pichu amid the Andean mountains in central Peru is testimony to the ingenuity of the Incas whose vast empire and civilisation were destroyed by the Spanish invaders. ``Our ancestors were here long before. The only thing that the whites did was steal the lands from our people and destroy the forests,'' says Davi Yanomami, chief of a tribe in Brazil's northeastern State of Bahia where is located the most African of the country's towns much like Manaus, the most (American) Indian. Davi led a protest by a few thousand Yanomamis inhabiting virgin Amazon forests in Santa Cruz Cabralia where the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral first set foot on April 22, 1550. Awareness groups have organised rallies in other centres, including Rio de Janeiro, and in other countries on the continent.

The last century saw the collapse of all the major empires and with them disappeared empire builders. The legacy they have left is a doubtful legacy, at least a mixed one. If Asian countries like India have cause to celebrate some of the institutions and practices that remain after colonialism receded - English education, for example, and the liberal democratic edifice that has stood the test of time - there are others that are less valuable. The focus has recently fallen on the so-called losers of history, whites whom the colonial powers brought with them and who stayed on not out of choice but because they had nowhere else to go. This minority has often found it difficult to assimilate itself and been longing for ways to return home. There is a third category which is a dominant feature of Latin America. Almost unknown, mostly because of the geographical divide, is the continuing legacy of neglect of the natives. There is now widespread acknowledgement that the Latin continent's native population was mercilessly exploited by the colonising whites. In these five centuries, theirs has been a story of callous neglect by the rest of the world. Things may change as the indigenous peoples find their voice and decide to give expression to it. But the road ahead is long and the journey arduous.

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