INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THEIR BATTLE FOR LIFE

Abstract

One of the basic principies of a more just social development scheme in Our America must begin with the acceptance of its pluralist cultural and ethnic identity, of which the indigenous people are the most complete expression. Oscar Arze Quintanilla, a Bolivian anthropologist who directed more than a decade ago the destinies of the Interamerican Indigenous Institute, tells us in this essay about the struggle realized by these people defending their own cultures, their means of life, and their natural environment, from an institutional perspective as well as from that of independent organizations.