This article focuses on the role of indigenous personnel in the Ecuadorian armed forces from a sociological perspective. Indigenous representatives of the armed forces is a unique feature of the Ecuadorian Army and perhaps a model for other Latin American and Caribbean nations who can benefit from the special skills and perspectives these individuals bring to the security environment, particularly in remote areas of Latin American countries that have a small presence of government representatives.
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To commemorate the 20th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and US Southern Command published an edited collection of essays, Twenty Years, Twenty Stories: Women, Peace, and Security in the Western Hemisphere, that reflect the inclusion of women across mission areas including cyber, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. This book elevates the voices of talented women and men working in defense and security across the Western Hemisphere and highlights Perry Center alumni.
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This presentation analyzes the subject of secession, establishing its characteristics and proposing, as a hypothesis, that these theoretical considerations could be taking shape in the Bolivian reality of today. The author makes a qualitative assessment of the country's most serious problems as a function of the aforementioned hypothesis. The presentation seeks to identify the underground forces undermining territorial cohesion in Latin America today, and emphasizes ethnoindigenism as an explanatory variable. The author utilizes historical examples of secessions in other parts of Latin America, and in Bolivia itself, with the idea of establishing similarities and differences with the case under study. The objective is to demonstrate that centrifugal dynamics have already taken shape, which are currently having repercussions on the stability and governability of this regional space and which, put into a comparative perspective with empirical evidence, could be irreversible in nature.
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The United States has largely sat on the sidelines during the more than a decade of Latin American indigenous peoples' efforts to fully participate in their countries' political and economic life. Meanwhile, the growing political space created by the Indian movements appears to be dominated by radicalized forces united by anger and opposition to the United States. In at least one case, in southern Mexico, militant Islamicists reportedly use a shared hostility to Western, Judeo-Christian ideas and identity to recruit disaffected Indians to their cause. The importance strategic thinkers now give to "failed states" and "ungoverned spaces" suggests that Native Americans can and should be full partners in efforts to improve their standard of living and to deny terrorists and organized crime sanctuary in or near areas where they live.
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An analysis and discussion of the struggles and demands of indigenous peoples for autonomy, in the countries of Latin America, must rise above predictions of disaster. It must avoid the chronic temptation to classify this influential trend as a potential threat to nationhood that must be addressed decisively by reducing or eliminating the demand. The present work discusses a potential future crisis between Chile and Argentina if the Mapuche demand for one people, one territory becomes established and develops forcefully on both sides of the Andes. What is known as the Mapuche Conflict could become a bi-national variable. It must be recalled that this area contains significant numbers of Mapuche communities on both sides of the Andean range. If it intensifies, the actors in the crisis, in addition to the Mapuche, will be two states with not a few disputes in their history since independence from Spain. We still have unresolved border issues and other significant, and recently expressed, misunderstandings and differences of a serious tone. In the event of a nationalistic-type Mapuche Conflict, these differences could lead to a crisis in border relations in which the two sides could find themselves in highly disparate positions regarding the "what," "how," and "when" to do and in benefit of whom to act, as occurred and continues to occur in many other matters, including indigenous issues, beginning with ILO Convention 169 that Argentina signed six years ago and Chile has refused to sign.
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