Ecuador, 2015. Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Though they put the bullet here, though they put the rifle there, I must cry out wherever I want. I must keep fighting. To live, in freedom in this life”. –Dolores Cacuango (1881-1971), fighter for peasant and indigenous rights.
Why do indigenous communities rise up? Because they feel diminished, marginalized, their dignity offended. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui says “The issue of dignity is so fundamental for Andean oppression, that the same word expresses ‘oppressed’ or ‘oppression’ and ‘to exploit’, which in Aymara is only one word: ‘to make small’. And such is the issue of human dignity, that is, all that diminishes human dignity (be it a bad salary or bad treatment), diminishes you as a person… It is for that reason that people rise up. The people don’t rise up because of the productive forces… Also, in Quechua the word ‘to step on’ is the same as that used for ‘to oppress’. One has to put one’s life on the line, there’s no other way.”[1]
