11 October 2011 | Interviews | Negotiations on the Guidelines on Responsible Governance | Resisting neoliberalism
519 Years Later
Jorge Stanley, of the Cuna people from Panama talks at the FAO negotiations
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The representative of indigenous peoples of the Americas said in Tuesday’s demonstration outside the FAO headquarters that after 519 years since the European colonization in America, the communities are still unprotected in their rights to land.
Flags of La Via Campesina, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty and messages on land grabbing and peasant agriculture as the real alternative to the global food crisis decorated the “Circo Massimo” in Rome, outside the FAO’s headquarters.
A demonstration gathered delegates of Panama, Canada, India, Sudan and Senegal, who spoke with the media about their motivation to participate in the final talks around the Guidelines on land tenure and the use of other natural resources that are taking place in Rome.
Jorge Mani Stanley emphasized that the leaders and communities are persecuted by agribusiness corporation without their being any protection from the state.
“For this reason we are here at the FAO, discussing with governments, so that they recognize the indigenous peoples and peasants’ rights to our own forms of development, of government and to our self-determination”.
As this regards he said many of the projects promoted by corporations in rural lands do not have the free and informed consent of the native communities.
