Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

78 The Sirionó in Bolivia
With the improvement of the road from Trinidad to
Santa Cruz in 1987, Ibiato became more accessible
and, despite Jack Anderson’s efforts, direct contact
with the outside world became inevitable. Leadership
in the community began to change as outside
contact increased and literacy became more important.
The average age of leaders dropped by 10
years. This new group of cultural brokers was
more worldly-wise but less knowledgeable about
traditions and the local environment. The older
chieftains were relegated to an advisory Council of
Elders, while the younger generation took over the
Sirionó Council and revamped it with a more formalized,
functional structure.
Today the community is governed by this council,
which consists of a president, vice president,
secretary of minutes, secretary of communication,
secretary of land affairs, secretary of organization,
corregidor, sub-alcalde (vice mayor), and
the Council of Elders. Only the president and
the secretary of land affairs are empowered to
speak formally for the Sirionó. But the corregidor
and the vice mayor have roles to play as representatives
who report to the federal and state
governments, and the municipal government,
respectively. Now that the Sirionó territory is its
own municipal district (#12) eligible for funding
under the new Law of Popular Participation, the
Sirionó have created an independent watchdog
committee to monitor proper use of the funds.
The Sirionó are also represented in the network of
Bolivian indigenous organizations, starting with
the statewide CPIB (Center for Indigenous People
of the Beni) and CMIB (Center for Indigenous
Women of the Beni). These in turn are affiliated
with the national umbrella organization CIDOB
(Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia),
which in turn is represented in the multinational
COICA (Confederation of Indigenous Organizations
of the Amazon Basin). Through these
organizations (or directly if needed), the Sirionó
can receive counsel from lawyers hired by CEJIS
(the Research Center for Social Justice). As a
result of these contacts, the Sirionó have learned
to make their collective voice heard, especially
when political action is required. For example,
when the government seemed to drag its feet on
including indigenous territories in the new agrarian
reforms of INRA in 1996, the Sirionó participated
in a CIDOB-organized protest march from
Santa Cruz to La Paz.
Bolivia’s indigenous people have begun to assert
themselves in the electoral arena also. During
the last elections indigenous candidates won
local offices and even Senate seats in La Paz
under various party banners. At the national
executive level, however, the results were discouraging
for the indigenous rights movement.
The prominent leader Marcial Fabricano, a
Mojeño from Trinidad, ran for vice president on
the ticket of MBL, the country’s fifth-largest
political party. Unfortunately the slate lost quite
badly, even in Ibiato, which did not turn out to
support an indigenous leader. The roots of political
patronage run deep, and the Sirionó traditionally
have had closer ties through one of Jack
Anderson’s sons to another party, the MNR,
which had won the previous election.
A key player in helping negotiate terms with the
outside world has been the mission school, which
has played a dual role in Sirionó life. On one
hand it has probably helped erode the accumulated
knowledge of the traditional culture. On
the other it has conferred the powerful tool of
basic literacy. Fortunately this missionary enterprise
was bilingual and avoided the pitfalls of
replacing a native oral tongue with the Spanish of
mainstream society. In the 1960s, missionaries
Perry and Anne Priest of the Summer Institute of
Linguistics (SIL) began giving Sirionó a written
form by translating the Bible. They educated a
few youths at the SIL compound in Tumichuqua
before moving their translation work to Ibiato,
living in the village for months at a time. The
Priests supported education in both Spanish and
Sirionó, and paid teachers’ salaries. Later they
arranged for the teachers to be given government
positions. Today the school has five grades.
Like Bolivian rural education in general, the
quality is not high but nearly 95 percent of
Ibiato’s children attend school. 2 The young people
that these missionaries trained are today’s
Sirionó leaders and educators. Without these
missionaries’ early efforts to educate the Sirionó
in the national language while preserving the
Sirionó language, the community would not be
learning to handle its own affairs today.
The missionaries also brought Western medical
care and a dependence on commercial pharmaceuticals.
Anne Priest ran a daily clinic to treat
the Sirionó, who faced serious epidemics of
measles, mumps, and assorted influenzas.