"Everyone wants to speak on our behalf but no one listens when we speak for ourselves," said Mr Juan Manuel Peralta, Paraguay's sole indigenous senator, speaking at the closure of the 13th meeting of the Indigenous Parliament of the Americas, (PIA) in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. "We've had enough of mediators, we can read and write," he added, criticising the excessive influence of non-governmental organisations which act as "parallel governments", dispensing foreign aid and volunteers to communities in Latin America.
Since Ms Rigoberta Menchu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and worldwide protests soured the 500 year celebrations of Columbus's journey to the Americas, indigenous peoples have enjoyed (or suffered) renewed attention, the target of health and education projects which have done little to reverse destruction of their lifestyle.
The indigenous parliament brings together Indian deputies and senators from Canada to Chile in a hemisphere-wide effort to promote legislation and consciousness about Indian-related issues. Since the parliament first met in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1988, the 21 members (varying as delegates are voted in and out of their own nation's parliament) have added a new and urgent task to their work, "protecting the identity of Indian peoples within the new global economic order".
As free trade agreements redraw political, cultural and social boundaries throughout north and south America, Indian peoples have been forced to abandon their lands, emigrate to the cities or, as the Yanomani discovered in Brazil this month, retreat into the wilderness in the face of environmental disaster. "What the government really wants us to do is to give up being Indian and join their nation on their terms," said Mr Jesus Jimenez, Venezuela's only indigenous national deputy. Mr Jimenez painted a picture of despair among Venezuela's Indian population, as disease and malnutrition continue to ravage their communities. "The parliament offers us a chance to get to know each other, but not much more," he added.
While Indian peoples are to be found everywhere throughout the continent, only in Guatemala and Bolivia do they form a majority. In Venezuela there are just 500,000 Indians left, 1.5 per cent of the population, with 12 per cent in Mexico.
"The real problem is that the Indian legislators are generally elected through traditional party structures and must follow the party line on policy," said Mr Francis Hernandez, permanent secretary to the parliament. The conclusions of the Asuncion meeting confirmed this conservative tendency, as legislators condemned ongoing environmental destruction, demanded access to land and justice, but stopped short of criticising the power structures of which they are now a part. Mexico's delegation consisted of deputies and senators belonging to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the oldest one-party state in the world, with 70 years of uninterrupted rule. Mexico is currently the scene of the hemisphere's most pressing Indian crisis, as the PRI prepares a military assault on the indigenous Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.
PRI delegates kept any mention of this Mexican conflict off the parliament's final resolutions.
In sharp contrast, a Bolivian delegate, Mr Evo Morales, spoke out against state repression of coca farmers in his country and secured a parliamentary demand for reparation to families affected by the violence. Mr Morales is an independent Bolivian legislator who was declared a "bandit" by the current president and former dictator, Mr Hugo Banzer.
Mr Lorenzo Muelas, an outgoing Colombian senator, said: "I have spent the last four years trying to prevent the repeal of Indian rights which have never even been implemented."