Browsing by Author "MacDonald, Theodore"

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The OXY-U'Wa Case: Colombia
(1998) MacDonald, Theodore
"In April 1995, the Colombian newspaper El Nuevo Siglo reported that U'wa Indians were threatening to commit mass suicide. They would do so, some leaders said, if the oil company Occidental de Colombia (OXY) carried through with its plans for oil exploration in the Samore Block, which included U'wa lands... National and international interest in and support for the U'wa situation grew exponentially... "This complex array of interests and actors, however, led largely to increasing levels of acrimonious public debate and produced an impasse among the principal stakeholders. Given the importance of the case, insofar as it affected the rights of indigenous people as well as the national economy, and in view of the difficulties encountered in holding productive discussions among the parties involved, the Ministry of Foreign Relations deemed it necessary to seek outside help in finding options and making recommendations to resolve the conflict. This paper reviews that process and, in doing so, suggests that a focus on common property rights can serve as a means to approach the management of broader, more complex conflicts, in Colombian and similar areas."
Shifting the Lens of Common Property in Lowland South America: Community-Based Forestry and Indigenous Politics in the 1990s
(1995) MacDonald, Theodore
From Introduction: "Initial thinking for this paper developed as part of an set of interdisciplinary (social, economic and biological) workshops focused on current problems community-based forestry projects in the Amazon and Yucatan regions of Latin America. The meetings were hosted by the University of Wisconsin's Latin American Studies Program, the Land Tenure Center, the Program on Conservation Biology and Cultural Survival. "My main question, expanded on the management problems and arose from field observations over the past 5-7 years, was: "Paralleling a series of community-based forest management projects which suggest local peoples' inability to manage or sustain common resources, why do we now hear strong indigenous proclamations regarding rights to large tracts of land and natural resources throughout the Amazon Basin and part of lowland Central America as well? "I will argue that problems associated with community-based forestry illustrate political strategies more than technical or administrative failures to manage common property. On the contrary, indigenous peoples are first seeking to redefine the territorial unit of discourse with regard to common property. These projects reflect the changing indigenous politics toward land rights. They also shed light on innovative, non-violent strategies to alter historical patterns of inter-ethnic relations and conflicts. Part of that process involves their efforts to redefine land and resource rights. In brief, the situation illustrates a broad indigenous movement toward political and economic parity as an antecedent to the "institutionalization" of common property management."