This is a moment in time when many indigenous peoples of the world believe they will ascend in influence and their way of life will be more prevalent again. For this reason, the recent gathering of indigenous peoples from across the globe at Tiwanaku, in Bolivia, to celebrate the inauguration of President Evo Morales, is particularly significant. Entering his second term as the country’s first fully indigenous Aymara head of state for hundreds of years, he won a staggering 63 per cent of the vote.

In a traditional ceremony at the ancient archeological site of Tiwanaku, Juan Evo Morales was attended by four ‘abuelos’ — two men and two women who are more than a hundred years old each. President Morales is now proposing a programme of ‘communitarian socialism’ and in April he is convening a conference on the rights of Mother Earth. Seeking to blend the old with the new, Evo, as he is popularly known, is striking a balance between the traditional and the modern.

For the Aymara people, 2010 is seen to be more important than 2012 — the year the Maya regard as the pivotal moment of change. An ancient Andean people, the Aymara’s culture dates back to the Tiwanaku civilisation, which lasted two millennia. It stretched from Colombia in the north, to Argentina in the south and east to west from the Pacific coast to the Brazilian Amazon.

Like the Maya, Hopi and many other indigenous cultures, the Aymara have a different way of observing the passage of time than we who use the Gregorian calendar. They count 4,000 years as one ‘Sun’. Five such Suns — 20,000 years — make one ‘Cosmic Sun’. Each period of 500 years has a particular character. The last began in 1492, with the Aymara foreseeing a period of extreme individualism and the descent of the indigenous. 1992 was the beginning of a new cycle — a Pachakuti, as they call it. This is a time of more community-oriented living; a critical stage for humanity where the old structures from the previous 2000 years are vanishing.

Aymara Elders refer to an awakening of a new genetic code in humanity, which will begin expressing itself in 2010. Simultaneously, this year, other Elders will hold meetings in Tibet, Africa, Australia, Nordic countries and at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, among other historical places.

Photo: the Aymara are a native ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America. The flag, known as the Wiphala, consists of ‘rainbow squares’ quilted together. It is used as the pan-indigenous flag of Andean peoples in Bolivia, but it has also been adopted by other Amazonian groups.