DESC-ARUANDA Network: 10 Years of Supporting the Fulfillment of Rights for the Reconstruction of Good Living of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America

Abstract

Contemporary changes in the context of the indigenous communities’ life directly affect the fulfillment of its economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). The intensification of local violence, the lack of alternatives for survival, and the historical pressure for land and resources, coupled with the inadequacy of social security systems and state health and education, gave way to the conformation of the ESCR-NET-ARUANDA, in 2004, as a space of self-education, aimed at favoring the community’s good living, through the strengthening of the peoples’ voice and the intercultural dialog. Since 2008, the DESC ARUANDA/CEG/A platform is part of the humanist working process of the CEG/A, and it conducts student investigations to consolidate the power of local resistance, strengthening its social movements which are clamoring for the preservation of cultural and ecological diversity of their lands and territories. In the historical Latin America context, it is possible to consider that the greatest conquest of the social movements is the consolidation of networks that feature the biopolitical power of the multitude (Negrini, 2004), generate changes in the local imaginary, and open channels of sustainable continuity toward the reconstruction of future self-determined individuals, in intercultural relations for the reconstruction of life as a whole.