I received this email from a Latin America Solidarity Movement listserv. I think it serves important lessons for us about the Venezuelan so called "revolution" what it has failed to do and also how revolutions work with Native peoples who may not want our version of "progress" and "modernity" I remember thinking of the movie "The Last Samurai" about how modernity is not always supported by everyone in society. As revolutionaries we must learn to respect those differences. Remember what happened in Nicaragua? Where the Sandinista government ruthlessly repressed the native Miskito Indians. Also recall how the Ho Chi Minh Vietnamese "Communist" (read state capitalist) guerillas oppressed the northern native Indian tribes as well. These tragic episodes must not be repeated.
This is an important lesson because if we truly have respect for sovereignty and other peoples way of living, we need to respect Native American ones that may differ from our own.
Note: With full appreciation of the urgency of the native struggle
described below, and concerned for the danger inherent in their
isolation from wider communities of resistance, the Indigenous
Solidarity Working Group of Rising Tide North America is organizing a
support project to help raise funds for an indigenous delegation from
Venezuela to participate in the Zapatista / "Other Campaign"
Intergalactic Gathering in Chiapas, Mexico, December 31-January 2,
2006, to help connect their indigenous Venezuelan communities with
others also fighting government repression and neo-liberal development
policies that threaten to destroy their land, and eradicate their
culture.
We Are Native Venezuelans,
And We Want To Continue Existing As We Are.
Our words summoning Help with our independent struggle to Defend our
Land, to realize our Right for self-determination, to Unmask and Defeat
the neo-liberal, genocidal energy policies of the "Bolivarian
Revolution."
Written by Wayuú (native Venezuelan) professor Jose Angel Quintero with
the Commission of Venezuelan Indigenous Peoples in Defense of the Land,
representing Wayuú, Barí, Yukpa, Pumé, and Pemón indigenous Venezuelan
nations
Translated from Spanish by Rising Tide North America
We Are Native Venezuelans,
And We Want To Continue Existing As We Are.
Part 1.
Venezuela: A country of fabricated identity.
Until very recently, our country Venezuela was seen by the world to be
a nation whose main offerings on the international stage earned us the
reputation as:
a) the grand producer of petroleum at a global scale and one of the
principal energy suppliers of the United States;
b) the grand producer of short-stops for the Major Leagues of North
American baseball; and
c) the grand producer of Misses for the Miss Universe beauty pageants.
In other words, until the 27th of February 1989, date of the great
popular rebellion against the "structural adjustment" of economic
measures imposed in our country by the International Monetary Fund,
Venezuela was considered to be a "solid democratic" country, one where
people had in their hearts the "reason" of and the "respect" for the
democracy of the political parties that traditionally traded
governmental powers for over 40 years.
So until that date, the people and country of Venezuela only generated
glances of interest in the eyes of petroleum analysts, baseball scouts,
or fashion magazines. The indigenous communities of the country did not
even exist in the imagination or recognition of the global community.
And since then, the so-called international "intellectual" sectors, all
convinced that the moment of social, political, and economic
transformation has now come, emanating progressively from the
"revolutionary" government of Chavez, have universally disregarded us
indigenous as also representing a point of reference for social
movements in our country.
In any case, this fabricated cultural and economic identity that had
been created for Venezuela not only responded to the commercial,
political and energy needs of those in power, but this false face was
really for us indigenous a non-face, which denied and still continues
to deny us our existence. Adding to this situation of neglect against
indigenous Venezuelans was our "scarce" presence or our lack of
numerical importance, or the lack of importance of our contribution to
the national economy, which is to say the continuation of the false
face that has been made for our country. And now, it has been decided
that we should be completely decimated, denying our right to inhabit
our ancestral territories where we have traditionally lived and where,
at this moment, our struggle is rooted.
We Are Native Venezuelans,
And We Want To Continue Existing As We Are.
Part 2.
The new face: the "Bolivarian Revolution"
The coming of Hugo Chavez's government provoked a sense of hope in a
majority of the national social sectors (including us). The promises of
transformation of our society into a true democracy of participation
and respect, with liberty and dignity for all, were a catalyst for the
social support that we all gave to the government of the so-called
fifth republic.
However, after 8 years of being established, and after instituting the
new national Constitution, we the indigenous communities and a good
part of Venezuelans in general have become aware that the changed
features the new Constitution has given to the country represent
nothing more than make-up to hide the same old wrinkles that our
country still wears.
In our case, the new Constitution clearly states that it cannot afford
us the consideration as indigenous communities in the terms that
international law gives to this recognition. In other words, we are not
given authentic rights of self-government and autonomy inside our
territories: instead we are given small "habitats," where we can
biologically reproduce, but never exercise our political rights.
Further, the new Constitution says that the state and its classes in
power are the true owners of land and of the subsurface, and with this
they reserve the rights to exploit the mineral resources, the
petroleum, the gas, and all the biodiversity that can be found within
our ancestral territorial spaces.
As such, attending to the neo-liberal dictates of Plan IIRSA (the
Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America) and the
recommendations of the World Bank advocating a "territorial
reconfiguration" to make use of Venezuela's "competitive advantages"
and thereby improve the level of national economic efficiency and
productivity, the government of the Bolivarian "revolution" has decided
to come and seize control over these so-called "habitats"- the
territory that we defend as our land.
For the government of the Bolivarian "revolution", its aim is to
legalize the entrance of multi-national corporations onto our land- and
with this, Chavez finds common ground with his worst enemies of the
traditional ring-wing in the country. That is to say, by taking our
last spaces of survival the government and the opposition concur,
because for either of the two the game is the same: generate foreign
investment and the exploitation of our natural resources for the sole
purpose of generating a "profit"- and it doesn't matter if the
indigenous communities of this country are harmed by these plans.
This is the context of our current struggle. In this struggle we have
been alone until now; because, as we have said before, in these
neo-liberal plans for development, the government of Hugo Chavez and
his opposition are in business together. And the mass communication
networks, both of the government and of the opposition sectors, silence
our words and minimize our actions.
That is why we consider urgent our task to communicate our struggle and
words in as many spaces as possible- nationally and internationally. We
are also aware that the reality that indigenous communities in
Venezuela are living is not a problem that is exclusively our own, but
rather it is a continental reality, and as such we must join our
struggle with the rest of the indigenous communities, who like us, and
in these times of globalization, are struggling to sustain their very
survival and with it the life and liberty of all communities.
We Are Native Venezuelans,
And We Want To Continue Existing As We Are.
Part 3.
Breaking the silence of our words. Joining our struggles.
The loneliness of our struggle becomes big and heavy, because we have
to fight against the imposed silence of our words and protests in the
mainstream news networks. We've had to fight against the campaigns of
defamation on the part of the mining and oil companies that try to
discredit us and our leaders, and try and take our land by way of
concessions given out by the government of the fifth republic. We fight
against the ignorance of those who merely do not know- but at other
times we must clearly confront the accomplices, the intellectual
sectors, the social movements, and even brother and sister natives,
indigenous blood, in other countries, who have not been able to
understand how it's possible that a government whose main reputation is
its popular discourse against Bush and imperialism, and at the same
time, internally, yields to the appetites and impositions of imperial
multi-national corporations, including those that the Bush family has
stock and interest in; capital. And if that wasn't enough bitter
ironies, all this comes at the detriment of us, the indigenous- us who
Hugo Chavez publicly says he is "defending."
It is against this enormous contradiction within the government that we
have been struggling against for the last five years- demanding the
demarcation and recognition of our territories, and that it suspend all
territorial concessions awarded to multi-national mining, gas, oil,
lumber, and even tourism corporations that it has signed behind closed
doors and without our consent. But as we've said before, we're not only
up against the government; we also have to struggle against the
government's worst enemies. In the end, it is here with these projects
that government and opposition coincide, and in this sense the
government has shown it is open to continuing the same neo-liberal
plans and politics as before.
All this said, it is a crucial step for us to break the silence of our
words. And now with the opportunity offered by our Zapatista brothers
and sisters, (who with their struggle and the defense of their dignity,
have become for us a point of reference in the sustenance of our own)-
with their invitation to the international gathering/meeting of pueblos
and communities in resistance in Chiapas this New Year, it is a very
important scenario for us and our objective to let others know about
the true reality that people's struggle of Venezuela in general, and
the indigenous communities in particular are going through in these
times.
For this purpose we have prepared a Commission of Venezuelan Indigenous
Pueblos in Defense of the Land, made up of 6 representatives from the
ethnicities: Wayuú, Barí, Yukpa, Pumé, and Pemón- and accompanied by a
group of non-indigenous allies, to be present at this Intergalactic
Gathering, to express our voice and words, and to join our struggle
with all the peoples and communities who will be present there.
However, to attain these goals we have to find the financial resources
necessary so that these compañ[email protected] representatives can make their
journey from Venezuela to Mexico. In this endeavor, we present this
document you are reading, accompanied with a list of expenses, so that
any organization, social movement, or personalities with good hearts,
who are friends to our struggle, may collaborate with us and take on as
your own our struggle to break the silence of our words that aim to
defend our territories, our liberty, our dignity and autonomy.
If you are able to contribute to our efforts to bring our delegation of
Venezuelan indigenous brother and sisters in resistance please contact:
Cristian Guerrero- guerrero(@)riseup.net
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org
"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us." Leo Tolstoy
"In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it." Peter Kropotkin
