[News] Venezuelan Indigenous Community Attacked, 2 Murdered Following Land Grants

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Venezuelan Yukpa Indigenous Community Attacked, 
Two Murdered Following Land Grants

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4862
Written by James Suggett
Thursday, 15 October 2009

On Tuesday, the day after the national government 
granted more than 40,000 hectares of land to 
Yukpa indigenous communities in northwestern 
Venezuela, assassins attacked the community of 
Yukpa chief and indigenous rights activist Sabino 
Romero, killing two and injuring at least four.

Romero's son in law, Ever Garcia, and a young, 
pregnant Yukpa woman were shot dead in the 
attack. Romero received three bullet wounds and 
is currently in the hospital in stable condition, 
according to reports from the community. Romero's 
daughter, grand daughter, and nephew were also 
hospitalized with bullet wounds, and are now in 
the hospital in stable condition.

Romero was one of several Yukpa chiefs who led 
land occupations last year to demand that the 
government pay indemnity to the private estate 
owners and transfer the land to the Yukpa in the 
form of collective property, in accordance with 
the Venezuelan Constitution and indigenous rights 
laws passed by the government of President Hugo Chavez.

Since the land occupations began in July 2008, 
the Yukpa communities involved have been subject 
to repeated death threats and attacks by thugs 
believed to have been hired by large estate 
owners and their local government allies.

In August 2008, estate owner Alejandro Vargas 
participated in an attack on Romero's community, 
during which Romero's father, a community elder 
of more than one hundred years of age, was beaten and killed.

Vargas, a cattle rancher, in an attempt to 
justify his deadly raid on the Yukpa, accused 
Romero of stealing several head of cattle. He 
also claimed on one occasion to have paid bribes 
to local legal authorities for protection against 
prosecution, according to the victims of the attacks.

The Yukpa reported the attacks to local police, 
who said investigations were opened, but no suspects have been arrested.

The National Guard maintains a heavy presence and 
the government plans to build a new military base 
in the sparsely populated and conflict-ridden 
border zone, which is rich in coal deposits and 
affected by the spillover of refugees, guerrilla 
insurgents, and paramilitaries from the civil war in Colombia.

Romero and other Yukpa chiefs allied with him are 
openly opposed to the land grants issued by the 
government on Monday. They say the government did 
not effectively consult with the Yukpa 
communities about the proper demarcation of Yukpa 
land, and instead carved up Yukpa territory to 
protect large estate owners, preserve access to 
coal deposits, and preserve space for a military 
base in the region. Meanwhile, several other 
Yukpa chiefs have allied themselves with Minister 
for Indigenous Affairs Nicia Maldonado and 
supported the government's plan for indigenous land demarcation.

Housing and Credits Granted to Indigenous October 12th

In addition to the land titles issued on October 
12th in celebration of Columbus Day, which the 
Chavez government officially renamed Indigenous 
Resistance Day in 2004, the government also gave 
houses, transport vehicles, and a variety of 
small business credits to semi-rural indigenous 
communities in the states of Amazonas, Bolivar, Anzoátegui, and Zulia.

Education Minister Hector Navarro and Agriculture 
and Land Minister Elias Jaua attended the 
inauguration of a bilingual public primary school 
in Anzoátegui state, where the local indigenous 
community will be able to study and learn in 
Spanish as well as their native language.

In the Amazon region, Presidential Chief of Staff 
Luis Reyes visited a community of approximately 
one hundred Piaroa families who received small 
houses of uniform suburban design that were built 
by the government. The government also gave the 
community vehicles to transport fruit from their 
farms to the market. In previous years, the 
community received credits to build a fruit 
processing plant and a radio station, and the 
government built a primary school and a local health clinic as well.

Venezuela's indigenous population constitutes 
less than two percent of the national population. 
Indigenous communities have gained substantial 
constitutional, legal, and parliamentary 
recognition since President Chavez took office in 1999.
**********************************************

Venezuela: Land for Yukpa Indians, But No 'Territory'

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4867
October 16th 2009, by Humberto Márquez - IPS

Caracas, Oct 13 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government 
handed land titles to 41,600 hectares to three 
communities of around 500 Yukpa Indians on the 
western border with Colombia. However, the 
question of the demarcation of the broader 
ancestral territory of the entire ethnic group, 
made up of around 10,000 people, is still pending.

"This land belongs to those who for centuries 
were left out of any kind of development," 
Minister of Interior and Justice Tarek El Aissami 
said at the land titling ceremony on Monday. "It 
was not until the Bolivarian revolution led by 
President Hugo Chávez arrived that their rights were recognised."

"A dream and a demand of the 'pure' Venezuelans 
has come true," said Environment Minister Yuvirí 
Ortega, who announced that the three Yukpa 
communities were also receiving six trucks and 27 
loans from the government, to enable them to grow crops, mainly coffee.

The Yukpa, who have communities in the border 
province of Cesar in northeastern Colombia, 
belong to the Carib language group and have 
traditionally made a living from subsistence farming, hunting and fishing.

The three communities, Tinacoa, Aroy and 
Shirapta, received titles to land located between 
the mountains in the Sierra de Perijá National 
Park - which marks part of the border with 
Colombia at the northwestern tip of Venezuela - 
and the flatlands occupied by ranchers near the 
city of Machiques, some 650 km west of Caracas.

Efraín Romero, spokesman for the Shirapta 
community, said they were committed to the 
development process being carried out by the 
Chávez administration, and told the ministers who 
took part in the ceremony to "tell the president 
that he can count on us and our votes" in future elections.

But the movement demanding legal recognition of a 
larger, continuous Yukpa territory is now 
divided. Communities comprised of around half of 
the ethnic group's 10,000 members agreed to 
continue the struggle for the demarcation of a 
territory for all of the Yukpa people, rather 
than parcels for separate communities.

"We have to think of our children, who will grow 
up and will need flat farmland to grow their 
crops," Yukpa activist Rafael Kikenshi, whose 
community is located on a steep hillside where 
the land is difficult to farm, said in the town of Tokuko.

Reina Uvirishe, a local native leader, insisted 
that the Yukpa need a demarcated territory 
stretching "from Toromo to Kishashamo" - 
communities in the north and south, respectively, 
of the area to which the group lays claim, which 
is now covered by some 50 farms and ranches.

The Yukpa are demanding a territory of 285,000 
hectares, located between the Sierra de Perijá 
mountains and the fertile plains from which they 
were gradually driven in the 20th century by the 
expansion of cattle ranching and prospecting for oil.

The 1999 constitution, adopted after Chávez took 
office, requires the demarcation of indigenous 
territories. In the case of the Yukpa, whose land 
was systematically stolen from them over the past 
century, some communities have come down from the 
mountains in the past few years and occupied idle 
land on cattle ranches that they claim as their ancestral territory.

In the resulting conflict between the indigenous 
people and landowners in the area, Chávez 
instructed his ministers to find a solution.

The 1999 constitution, rewritten by an elected 
constituent assembly that included delegates of 
indigenous organisations, also stipulated for the 
first time that Congress must include representatives of native groups.

Sociologist Mauro Carrero, a member of the 
government's land demarcation committee, said the 
property handed over to the three Yukpa 
communities Monday includes two farms and parts 
of five others, "which shows that allegations 
that we are giving the indigenous communities 
infertile, rocky land are false."

Carrero added that the demarcation and land 
titling process would continue, and not only in 
the case of the Yukpa, but also with regard to 
the four other ethnic groups in northwest 
Venezuela: the Wayúu, Japreira, Añú and Barí, who 
represent a combined total of roughly 300,000 people.

But anthropologist Lusbi Portillo with Homo et 
Natura, an environmental group that works with 
indigenous people, told IPS that "by granting 
land titles to just three communities, the 
government is merely postponing the issue, while 
failing to solve the underlying problem."

The first problem, he said, is that the majority 
of the Yukpa are demanding the demarcation of one 
large territory for the entire Yukpa people, 
rather than separate areas for different 
communities, "which means some groups will 
continue to pressure ranches that they consider 
to be part of their ancestral territory."

In second place, "the government has not 
recognised agreements negotiated since the 1990s 
among all of the groups involved in the conflict, 
which were confirmed at a meeting between 
ranchers and indigenous people in March, under 
which the government was to pay the farmers and 
ranchers for improvements on their land (as well 
as compensation for the property itself) when it 
is purchased and given to the indigenous groups."

"The government has refused to recognise or pay 
for improvements on the land, and the ranchers 
are thus refusing to withdraw, which means the 
conflict will continue over the remaining 85 
percent of the land claimed by more than 90 
percent of the Yukpa," said Portillo.

According to Rubén Darío Barboza, president of 
the local ranching federation, the indigenous 
occupations of land have affected milk 
production, because the area in question produces 
200,000 litres of milk a year. The area is a 
major producer of beef and dairy products, of 
which Venezuela is a net importer.

The third problem, said Portillo, is that "under 
this system, the indigenous communities are 
receiving land that has not been formally 
expropriated and titled, besides the fact that 
under their territory lie coal deposits that the 
state would like to exploit in the future, and to 
which it has granted concessions, although the 
mining projects have not begun because of the 
indigenous people's opposition to the destruction of their land."

Besides granting communal land titles to 
indigenous groups like the Yukpa, the government 
has issued identity cards - through a programme 
named Mission Identity - to nearly 300,000 of the 
country's roughly 500,000 indigenous people, who 
belong to 32 different ethnic groups.





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