Despite the state propaganda, indigenous Venezuelans suffer serious setbacks in their social and political rights in Bolivarian Venezuela. And their regional allies seem to be looking the other way.
In mid-2010, I had the opportunity to corroborate first hand a complaint about pollution in the territory of the Kariña indigenous community, in the eastern state of Anzoátegui. As a matter of context, the 2011 Census set the Venezuelan indigenous population at 724,592, representing 2.7 percent of the total population of the country. The Kariñas, who mostly live in the states of Anzoátegui, Bolívar, and Monagas, comprise 4.7 percent of the total indigenous population, about 33,824 people. Almost half lived in Anzoátegui, about 16,686 people, concentrated in the Mesa de Guanipa region, Pedro María Freites county, and the villages of Bajo Hondo, Mapiricure, Kashama, and Tascabaña. It is precisely in the latter where the following events took place.
In 2000, the Kariñas of the communities of Tascabaña I and Tascabaña II noticed that torrents of methane gas bubbles began to emanate from the homonymous river, becoming more evident with time. Although the leaks are the product of energy extractive activity, there was no consensus on their origin. One version pointed out to the exploration, during the 1940s, of 35 wells in the area by Exxon Mobil and Texaco.
Another version claimed the problem has a more recent origin. In 1999, the state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) reportedly drilled several wells around the community, which were later sealed but eventually caused the leak. Despite the complaints, no authority had been held responsible. No environmental impact study was carried out to measure the magnitude of the problem or the possible consequences, both for the environment and the health of the community.
However, when we visited both communities we found the situation to be much more complicated than a case of environmental pollution. Far from solving the problem, state-owned PDVSA promoted a process of intervention in the community to divert attention from the smelly bubbles that gushed furiously from the river. As usual in aboriginal communities, the subsistence of the Kariñas is based on the sowing of small plots called “conucos”, taking advantage of the humid lands that surround the rivers.
The only protection measure taken by the state energy company was telling the people to only use the river’s water to wash their clothes. They could no longer sow, fish, or raise animals, the basis of their subsistence system. PDVSA installed water tanks in all the houses, which they filled twice a week. And, in substitution of their customs, they installed a Mercal (a state-run food store) and a Barrio Adentro center (a state-run primary healthcare facility), and promised to complete the construction of bigger health facility and a sports field, as long as the indigenous community remained silent about the strange smell coming from the banks of the river, filling the streets of Tascabaña I and II.
To guarantee silence, PDVSA, which acted as the real power in the area, had favored the election of spokespersons for the “Indigenous Community Councils”, displacing traditional indigenous organizations.
For much less than the incident in Tascabaña, organizations allied to the aboriginal cause on the continent have denounced “cultural genocide”. However, a heavy veil of silence fell over the anthropological damage suffered by the Kariñas at that time. In 2011 the international prices of Venezuelan oil and gas were trading high. And a sector of environmentalists, harsh critics of the extractive rush of the 1990s, had become defenders of PDVSA, as the oil boom allowed “the revolution” to pay for social programs. The rest of the environmentalists, especially those linked to Bolivarian youth movements, was chasing the carrot of the “vertical chicken coops”, “hydroponic crops”, “acetaminophen crops”, or world social forums, held by the administration in Miraflores palace.
The situation in Tascabaña repeated, with some variations, in other territories shared between the extractive industry and the Venezuelan indigenous peoples. One time, the indigenous members of the National Assembly in Caracas, some 200 miles away, had the opportunity to present and discuss a report on the situation.
Deprived of social and political rights
At the end of July 2020, the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) approved a regulation for the selection of the indigenous members of the National Assembly that ended the direct, secret, and nominal election of the representatives of indigenous peoples. In clear contrast with the current electoral regulations, the new provisions create a system of delegates, who will vote on behalf of the communities. According to the new electoral council, indigenous people must organize in “community assemblies”, which must convene and function according to a schedule established by the CNE, and then elect an unspecified number of “spokespersons” who will attend General assemblies in which, by a second-degree vote, they will elect their representatives to the National Assembly on behalf of their community, according to their circuit. Voting would be done by raising hands.
The vice president of the CNE, Rafael Simón Jiménez, declared that at least eight indigenous organizations registered with the electoral body were consulted before the approval of the Special Regulations. Another member of the electoral board, Luis Fuenmayor, expressed the opinion that the modifications were in harmony with ancestral aboriginal practices: “I understand that the process is very similar to the one used by the communities to elect their representatives, so the regulation in question would be more in tune with their culture, practices, and traditions ”.
Virgilio Ferrer, an indigenous member of parliament, denied that consultation with indigenous peoples took place, calling the decision “a move to erase the political rights of ancestral peoples.” Besides, 20 different indigenous organizations in the state of Amazonas released a statement demanding the nullity of the new regulation and to elect their representatives under the terms provided in the national Constitution. What the CNE directors seem to ignore is the deep process of intervention in the affairs of the Venezuelan indigenous communities, where traditional authorities have been displaced by proxies of the ruling party and customs and territory have been eroded by the practices of biopolitical control through social policies, the armed forces, and irregular armed groups, including the Colombian guerrilla.
The origin of the decision has little to do with an adaptation of the electoral system to indigenous customs. It is an unusual decision in a country that has frozen the exercise of the political and social rights of the indigenous peoples, one of the most vulnerable populations in the context of the Complex Humanitarian Emergency. Its genesis dates back to the result of the 2015 parliamentary elections when the three indigenous representatives elected in the state of Amazonas gave an absolute majority to the opposition in the National Assembly. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) decided at the end of that year to suspend their inauguration after receiving a complaint of irregularities regarding their election. In July 2016, the National Assembly unilaterally decided to reinstate them, for which the Tribunal declared it in “contempt” and made all its decisions void.
The Venezuelan government has called for new parliamentary elections in December, intending to regain the majority in the legislative organ. In addition to the political benefits of controlling all public powers, there are symbolic elements. One of them, after so many years of propaganda about the alleged “indigenous revolution”, is showing that the indigenous representatives are akin to the ruling party’s political views.
Due to its totalitarian leaning, Chavismo has never tolerated the right to otherness, to be different. Far from understanding and promoting the respect and dignity of the aboriginal worldview, they have used the indigenous people as a simple instrumental tool: as an actor in the official propaganda for territorial control and to cling to power, instead of autonomous subjects of rights. Hopefully, the Sixth Republic or whatever comes to the future of Venezuela after the Bolivarian hegemony will be better for that 3 percent of the country’s population.
Translated by: José Rafael Medina
