The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

confronting genocide of indigenous peoples 73
the situations they face are actually getting worse in a number of areas, particularly
as economic development reaches into the world’s remoter regions (Durning
1992; Hitchcock 1994, 1997, 2000; Bodley 1999).
It is important to note that one of the defenses offered by both government and
company officials to charges of genocide is that the killing of indigenous people
cannot be defined as genocide if it is done for “economic” reasons (Kuper 1985:13).
As one African indigenous leader put it at a March 1996 meeting of the United Nations
Human Rights Commission, “We are killed out of greed.” The poor treatment
of indigenous peoples and the loss of their land has had a series of negative
effects, including reduction of their subsistence base, nutritional deprivation, and
heightened social tensions, some of which are manifested in higher rates of suicide,
as was the case, for example, with the Guarani Kaiowa of Brazil in the late 1980s
and 1990s.
Yet another context in which genocides occur is one that is not normally recognized
in the human rights and environmental justice communities, conservationrelated
violations. In many parts of the world, national parks, game reserves, and
other kinds of protection areas have been established, often at significant cost to
local communities, many of which have been dispossessed as a result. Forced relocation
out of conservation areas has all too often exacerbated problems of poverty,
environmental degradation, and social conflict. In the course of state efforts to promote
conservation, legal restrictions have been placed on hunting and fishing
through national legislation. Such legislation not only reduces the access of indigenous
peoples to natural resources, it also results in individuals and sometimes
whole communities being arrested, jailed, and, in some cases, killed, as has been
the case in Africa and Indonesia (Peluso 1993; Hitchcock 1994). Anthropologists
have documented these situations and have attempted to pressure governments, international
agencies, and environmental organizations to pay more attention to the
rights of people exposed to what in effect is coercive conservation.
Genocidal actions also sometimes occur in situations in which there is purposeful
environmental destruction. That can be seen, for instance, in cases where herbicides
such as Agent Orange were used to clear forests so that counterinsurgency actions
could proceed, as was the case in Vietnam. The so-called drug war, orchestrated in
part by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in countries such as Bolivia,
Colombia, and Peru, has had more than its share of human rights violations, some
of them arising from raids on local communities and the use of chemicals to destroy
coca and marijuana crops. Ecocide, the destruction of ecosystems by states, agencies,
or corporate entities, is a problem facing substantial numbers of indigenous and other
peoples in many parts of the world (Grinde and Johansen 1995).
Activists opposed to the degradation of the ecosystems have had to contend with
efforts by transnational corporations and states to silence them, sometimes violently
(Human Rights Watch 1992; Human Rights Watch and Natural Resources Defense
Council 1992; Johnston 1994; Sachs 1995:19–23). The 1988 killing of Chico Mendez,
the Brazilian rubber tapper who spoke out forcefully against the destruction of the