Friday 28 August
2008, San José, Costa Rica
VENEZUELA:
Yukpa Indians Clash with
Ranchers and Soldiers
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS (IPS) -
"The army's rifles
should be used to
protect Venezuela or its
people, not to fire over
our heads," Sabino
Romero, the young deputy
"cacique" (chief) of the
Yukpa community of
Chaktapa, complained to
reporters, describing
the behaviour of the
armed forces in the
northwestern mountains
of Perijá, near the
Colombian border.
His grandfather,
97-year-old José Manuel
Romero, died on Jul. 22
of injuries inflicted by
hired thugs who
descended on the elderly
man's community at a
time when it had been
left unguarded. They
knocked him to the
ground and kicked and
beat him, according to
Yukpa witnesses.
The thugs are presumed
to be in the employ of
local ranchers, in
particular the Vargas
family, which has
connections with
military commanders,
according to activists
from groups that support
the indigenous people.
Several estates owned by
the Vargas family are
claimed by the Yukpa as
part of their ancestral
lands, and have been
occupied by the
indigenous people.
The dispute was made
known to the public by
Romero and three other
young Yukpa activists
who travelled to
Caracas. Underlying the
conflict is the
systematic theft of the
ancestral territories of
the Yukpa, Barí and
Wayuu peoples, by cattle
ranchers for their
present use, and for
future extraction of
coal, phosphates and
other minerals,
anthropologist Lusbi
Portillo told IPS.
"In fact, 28,000
hectares of Yukpa lands
were given in concession
to Corpozulia (the Zulia
State Development
Corporation) with a view
to mining for
phosphate," Portillo,
the head of the
environmental
organisation Homo et
Natura, told journalists
in Caracas, alongside
the indigenous
delegation.
The Wayuu, the largest
indigenous community in
Venezuela, with 300,000
members on the
Venezuelan side of the
border and another
200,000 in Colombia,
together with the Yukpa
and Barí peoples, have
been battling coal
mining and the
extraction of other
minerals in their
territories for several
years.
The Wayuu ancestral
lands are located in the
northern part of the
Sierra de Perijá
mountain range, while
the Yukpa and Bari
traditional territories
are in the central and
south-central areas of
the Sierra.
The Perijá mountain
chain runs roughly north
to south between the
Maracaibo basin to the
east and the higher
Sierra Nevada de Santa
María mountains (in
Colombia) to the west,
which separate the
Perijá range from the
Caribbean sea. The
Sierra de Perijá forms
part of the
Venezuela-Colombia
border.
The entire length of the
Perijá mountain range is
rich in coal deposits,
which are intensively
mined on the Colombian
side of the border at
Cerrejón and elsewhere,
producing more than 40
million tonnes of coal a
year. On the Venezuelan
side, three mines
produce about 10 million
tonnes a year.
"The core of our
proposal is that the
government should
permanently cancel the
mining concessions, or
that parliament should
revoke them. We want the
indigenous territories
to be demarcated, with
the participation of the
indigenous communities
and their allies, and we
want plots of land
(owned by non-indigenous
people) to be bought (by
the government) as
necessary, so that they
can live in peace,"
Portillo said.
Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez addressed
the issue last Sunday on
his weekly talk show,
Aló Presidente. "We
stand with the
indigenous people, with
the Yukpa," he stated.
"No one should have any
doubt: between the
landowners and the Yukpa,
the revolutionary
government is with the
indigenous people."
The president instructed
his ministers to find a
solution, "and if
necessary, we will
compensate the
(infrastructure)
improvements made by the
ranchers" in order to
give the land back to
the Yukpa, he said.
Interior and Justice
Minister Ramón Rodríguez
was charged with
investigating the death
of the elderly José
Manuel Romero.
A few years ago, groups
of Yukpa, together with
members of the Barí
community, came down
from the Sierra de
Perijá mountains where
they had been subsisting
on unproductive land in
miserable conditions for
over half a century, to
occupy idle land on
cattle ranches on the
plains between the
mountain range and Lake
Maracaibo.
"We are not invading the
ranchers' lands, but
recovering land that
used to belong to our
grandparents. We came
down to farm on the
plains, so that our
children do not die in
the mountains," said
23-year-old Daisy
González, an activist
from the Yukpa community
of Guamo.
In the 20th century,
prospecting for oil and
the advance of the
cattle ranching frontier
drove local indigenous
groups up into the
mountains. The 1999
constitution provides
for the demarcation of
their territories, but
although this has been
done in other remote
areas of the country, it
has not yet happened in
Zulia.
The Yukpa belong to the
Carib language group,
and number over 10,000,
distributed in 164
communities. The people
from some of these, like
Chaktapa and Guamo,
located on the banks of
the Yaza river, 650
kilometres west of
Caracas, have laid claim
to a dozen estates, and
have occupied portions
of several of them,
leading to clashes with
ranchers.
Government commissions
have sought to mediate
in the conflicts, and
the National Guard was
mobilised to prevent an
escalation of the
violence, while
university students and
activists of the
National Association of
Free, Alternative and
Community Media (ANMCLA)
are waging a campaign in
favour of the indigenous
peoples' land rights.
The Yukpa's land
occupations "threaten
the country's
territorial and food
security," because the
area produces 100,000
litres of milk a day,
said Rubén Barboza, the
head of the Maracaibo
Lake Basin Ranchers'
Federation (FEGALAGO).
The plains to the west
of Lake Maracaibo are a
centre of meat and dairy
production.
But attempts to reach an
agreement have fallen
flat. Some ranchers are
demanding that the
indigenous people be
evicted before they will
set down at the
negotiating table, while
the Yukpa from Chaktapa
and Guamo complained
that Indigenous Affairs
Minister Nicia
Maldonado, who belongs
to a native group from
the country's southern
Amazon region, only met
with them for 15 minutes
but spent seven or eight
hours with the ranchers.
The security forces
threw up a security
cordon around the Yukpa
communities and are
regulating access. On
Aug. 23, dozens of
students from the
Bolivarian University
and young activists from
community media and the
government radio station
decided to break through
the cordon to bring
supplies of medicine and
food to the indigenous
people.
But the young people
were stopped near
Machiques, the nearest
town, and prevented from
going further. Tensions
rose as heated
discussions took place
in the middle of the
rural roadway, and Yukpa
people arrived to demand
that their allies be
allowed through.
At that point, soldiers
fired shots in the air
and dispersed the people
with tear gas. A young
man from one of the
solidarity groups was
hit on the head, causing
bleeding, and was
arrested together with
three young women who
were giving him first
aid.
Echoing Sabino Romero,
Yukpa activist Mary
Fernández complained
"they cannot use weapons
of war against us. The
army's duty is to
protect us, because we
only want our land, so
we can live in peace,"
she said.
Fernández also said that
the four young
indigenous people who
travelled to Caracas to
argue on behalf of the
demands of their people
"did so because the
'caciques,' our chiefs,
have been threatened
with death if they step
outside of their
communities, by the
thugs hired by the
ranchers; everyone in
the Sierra de Perijá
knows that."
Over the past few
decades, there have been
increasing numbers of
contract kidnappings and
murders in the state of
Zulia, and especially in
its capital, Maracaibo.
Activists like Portillo
have received death
threats, and he said
there was collusion
based on common
interests between
ranchers, military
commanders, and "the
strategist behind this
whole policy aimed at
favouring the long term
interests of
transnational mining
companies: General
Carlos Martínez, the
head of Corpozulia."
Portillo said these
interests are shared by
local authorities of the
National Land Institute
-- which is responsible
for carrying out
demarcations of
indigenous land -- and
the regional military
commander, General
Gerardo Izquierdo. "The
army in Machiques is
divided into two
factions: the
revolutionaries (Chávez
supporters), and those
who are aligned with the
paramilitaries," he
said.
Minister Maldonado said
the "demarcation of land
for the 164 Yukpa
communities is 70
percent complete," but
Portillo and the four
young Yukpa emissaries
remain unconvinced. "The
lines on the map drawn
by the president in
Caracas are one thing,
but the result of
negotiations between
power factions when the
lines are drawn on the
ground in Perijá is
quite another," said the
activist. |
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