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<h1 class="title">Why Are There No Barricades in Afro-Descendant
Communities? </h1>
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<p class="byline"> By <span class="author">Jesús Chucho García- La Voz</span>,
<span class="date">April 23rd 2014</span> </p>
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<div class="block-inner"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10637">http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10637</a><br>
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<p class="Body">In these 15 years of the Bolivarian process,
afro-descendant Venezuelans have been dignified in an unprecedented way
in Venezuelan history.</p>
<p class="Body">The process of social transformation with which
Venezuela has experimented the past 15 years has not only been
economical, but also a political process, where president Chavez played
an essential ideological role as the leader of this humane option, of
solidarity and participation.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Barlovento is not Altamira</strong></p>
<p class="Body">The afro-descendant communities of Venezuela have
benefitted in ways never before seen under previous socio-political
processes. Before, the land of afro communities was in the hands of
latifundistas and agrarian bourgeoisie. One the worst cases of
discrimination was reflected in the Farriar municipality, where Cuban
supporters of Batista, with the help of the [pre-Chavez] government,
dispossessed thousands of hectares of ancestral land, including
Cañizos, Palo Quemao, Farriar, Palmarejo, and El Chino. Numerous
witnesses tell of how the Batista supporters hired armed bands to
assault community inhabitants at night, threatening them and burning
their cane crops. This lead to persecutions, and a youth was murdered
when people protested these events.</p>
<p class="Body">When Chavez arrived, on an episode of “Alo, President”
filmed in Palmarejo, he declared himself afro-descendant, and handed
over 11 thousand hectares along with agriculture credits, and decreed
the land communal property of the afro-descendants of Yaracuy. In other
words, the <em>sacrocracia</em> (owners of the cane growers) were
expropriated in defense of the defenseless.</p>
<p class="Body">Additionally, in the subregion of Barlovento, thousands
of hectares in the hands of the cacaocracia (cacao plantation owners)
who had turned our grandfathers and grandmothers’ into hunchbacks from
bending over to sow the riches of the hacienda owners, who would pay
them a hundred times less what each basket of cacao was worth. Today in
Barlovento we are experimenting with the socialist cacao companies and
the chocolate manufacturers to work with cacao derivatives. And the six
autonomous municipalities of Barlovento have voted in favor of the
Bolivarian hope. In the Southern area of Maracaibo Lake (Bobures,
Gibaltar, El Batey, and San Jose de Hera) people placed their faith in
substantial change, in the hopes of eradicating the latifundio of the
cane fields owned by the Brillemburg.</p>
<p class="Body">This is why it doesn’t occur to us to join the <em>guarimbas</em>
like they are doing in Altamira or in upper-class areas of Caracas and
some inland cities. The afro-descendants of this country have achieved
a dignity without precedent in Venezuelan history.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>The Gods Are with Peace and Dignity</strong></p>
<p class="Body">We used the internet to make some inquiries about the
climate of destabilization in our country; The Revolutionary
Afro-Descendant Youth (JARAV) directed by Freddy “Pollito” Blanco, has
been strongly against the “commotion” fomented by the bourgeoisie to
return to power.</p>
<p class="Body">“We have already publicly shared our position about
the racist and fascist uprising. We have participated actively in the
manifestations in Barlovento and those convoked on a national level,
especially by the Youth Ministry.”</p>
<p class="Body">The pastor of the evangelist church La Voz de Dios, of
San Jose de Barlovento expressed to us via internet, “God wants peace,
he does not want more violence generated by an anarchic sector of our
society. It is necessary to consolidate the advances in our Barlovento
that Chavez left us with. The evangelists are people of peace… we ask
that violent people control themselves, as they will find it difficult
to find peace in their souls in the face of the damage they are
inflicting upon the country.”</p>
<p class="Body">From Yaracuy, Williams Sequera and Gustavo Suarez said
that the “havoc caused by a sector of the opposition is causing them to
close themselves in…We ask them to come to consult with us on the
mountain of María Lionza to withdraw the racist, terrifying,
imperialist spirits from them.”</p>
<p class="Body">***</p>
<p class="Body">José Chucho Garcia is an educator and founder of the
“Miguel Acosta Saigne” Center for Afroamerican Studies at the
Universidad Cental de Venezuela (UCV). He is also the editor of the
magazine AFROAMERICA and the author of several books.</p>
<p class="Body"><em>Translation by Zoe Clara Zutka for
Venezuelanalysis.com</em></p>
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