QUOTES
The
indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity,
or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this
is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized
as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture
in which they have to live their own faith.
The
indigenous peoples are emerging with an awareness of their identity.
Today
in America as in other parts of the world we see a model of a society in which
the powerful dominate. They marginalize and they go as far as to eliminate the
weakest before the homogenization caused by this system of globalization. Through
providence we have the taking of conscious cultural identity. As such the church
has a special mission to be the defender and promoter of a culture of life. This
culture of life assumes a preferential option for the poor, opposes or puts the
globalization of solidarity in opposition to the globalization of the markets.
It makes itself a voice for those who have no voice; denounces all violence, all
racial discrimination; walks beside those condemned to the land, those that are
displaced; is a promoter of integral development in the construction of peace
in the search for justice and liberation. This culture of life is what is expressed
as a service of hope. This urgency exists in this precise moment in which the
indigenous person, conscious of being a subject to their own history, will not
opt for a church that submerges them in a conflict where they have to live their
faith being aware of expressing it within a dominant culture.
we
also now have consciousness that poverty is not a result of a lack of education
or of drunkenness or of non-participation by indigenous people but rather that
it is the social structures that cause that lack of education and that lack of
participation and the poverty of indigenous people.
despite
the homogenization that globalization tries to impose on.us, we are seeing a rise,
an increased awareness of cultural identity.
we
begin to see solidarity between the first world and the third world in the understanding
that this world can be changed, that we can build a better society if we work
together and that another world is possible and necessary. Two very positive points
of the moment we're living in. The first is that despite the homogenization that
globalization tries to impose on.us, we are seeing a rise, an increased awareness
of cultural identity. That despite what's happening externally and what's being
imposed, we are becoming more in touch with our cultural identity around the world.
The second positive is this growth, this unprecedented growth of international
solidarity working for a better world. These two things mean that we're working
for change now, not in the very long term but in the near term future and we'll
begin to see those changes. And on the third level, the final level, we're all
becoming aware that we have a role to play in the two other levels, whether it
be through political involvement, political engagement, participation and community
group participation in fair trade initiatives. We have a role to play in those
levels, but more importantly, we need to realize that we have a role to play in
overcoming our own discrimination which is sometimes very subtly held but that
we do need to overcome it and see our indigenous peoples as brothers and sisters,
not because we are legally mandated to do so, but because we genuinely see them
as our brothers and sisters in the struggle for a better world.
