VENEZUELA:
Indigenous People Protest Coal Mining
Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Oct 26 (IPS) - Recent protests by indigenous people in Venezuela defending their land and the environment from coal mining show that not all is rosy in their relations with the government of Hugo Chávez, although they recognise that no president has ever done so much for the country's 35 native ethnic groups.

Coal-mining in northwestern Venezuela near the border with Colombia "has brought deforestation, polluted the rivers and air, and caused sickness among many of our brothers and sisters. The mining companies must leave," Wayúu activist Ángela González, told IPS

"We are not miners, but farmers, shepherds and fisherpeople. The companies are putting an end to our farming culture. That is why, if they give us land titles without removing the companies, we will reject them," said Leonardo Martínez, a Yucpa leader from El Tokuko.

Earlier this month, dozens of Wayúu, Yucpa and Barí Indians from the Sierra de Perijá mountains on the northern border with Colombia gathered in Bolívar Plaza in Caracas to protest a plan to mine for coal in their territories.

As of next year, joint ventures between the Venezuelan public enterprise Carbozulia and several foreign mining companies - Vale do Rio Doce of Brazil, the British-South African Anglo American, the Anglo-Dutch Shell, Ruhrkohle from Germany and the U.S. Chevron-Texaco - will begin to work mines that will increase production threefold, from the current eight million tons a year.

For each ton of coal removed, "between four and seven tons of earth, gravel and sediment must be stripped away - devastation that not only threatens the habitat of indigenous people in the northwest but also the sources of the rivers that carry water to Maracaibo," the country's second-largest city, anthropologist Lusbi Portillo, with the environmental organisation Homo et Natura, told IPS.

The indigenous people "are asking President Chávez to choose water over mines," said González.

Although the government has not responded to the indigenous groups' demands, Environment Minister Jacqueline Faría said she preferred to give priority to Maracaibo's need for water supplies and indigenous communities' rights to their land.

The state-owned Carbozulia has stated that the mines are not located on land to which the government will assign legal title to indigenous groups.

Indigenous people in that area are demanding that their ancestral territory be demarcated, with their participation, as stipulated by the constitution of 1999, which dedicates an entire chapter to the rights of indigenous people. The constitution was rewritten at the behest of leftist President Chávez.

"Our greatest conquest was the recognition and visibility that the constitution granted us, which has also given rise to the main demand that we are now setting forth - for collective title deeds to the land we live on," José Poyo, leader of the non-governmental National Indian Council of Venezuela (CONIVE), told IPS.

CONIVE recognises 35 indigenous groups in Venezuela, who speak more than 30 different languages and dialects and account for 580,000 people in 2,500 communities, mainly located in border states in this country of 26 million.

Indigenous people have three seats reserved in the 165-member Congress and have elected around 10 representatives to the regional legislatures in the states where they live.

"We recognise that Chávez is the president who has done the most for us, and that he has already handed out collective title deeds to 800,000 hectares," said Poyo. "He also created the Guaicaipuro programme for the demarcation of land, and he expelled New Tribes."

The New Tribes Mission, a U.S. missionary group that has been active for 60 years in southern Venezuela, has been ordered by the government to leave the country shortly, although several evangelical groups and representatives of indigenous communities where the missionaries are active have brought legal action against the expulsion order.

Sociologist Alexander Luzardo recently presented a report in which army General Eusebio Agüero, the local military chief in that area, stated that 42 Pumi and Yaruro Indians died of malnutrition in the southwestern state of Apure that borders Colombia. The deaths occurred in areas near the New Tribes installations.

According to Luzardo, both the evangelical missionary group and the Venezuelan state "are guilty of neglecting" the extreme unmet needs of a number of the country's indigenous communities.

But the problem faced by nearly all of the ethnic groups is that "we do not have the effective support needed for implementing the projects that are supposed to integrate us into the country's productive system and economic life. There is a great deal of red tape, and things are moving very slowly," said Poyo.

On Oct. 12, the day Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, which was dubbed by the Venezuelan government "indigenous resistance day", Chávez delivered collective land titles, boat motors, cattle, vehicles and loans to several indigenous communities in Venezuela's southern plains region.

"But that (assistance) is of no use to the thousands and thousands of indigenous people who have migrated to the slums surrounding cities like Maracaibo," said Ember Iguarán, a tribal leader in the Tawala organisation (which means "brotherhood" in the Wayunaekee tongue).

Over half of Venezuela's indigenous people belong to the Wayúu ethnic group, who live on the Guajira peninsula, shared by Colombia and Venezuela. The Wayúu have traditionally made a living herding goats, sheep and cattle, and to a lesser extent from fishing and making crafts.

Tens of thousands of Wayúu also live to the north and northwest of Maracaibo, "and many of them lack schools, decent houses, piped water and cooking gas. We are still a community that is badly mistreated by the state and so-called civil society," said Iguarán.

In Maracaibo and small towns of the northwest, Wayúu Indians generally depend on informal sector trade, as well as contraband and membership in semi-legal private security groups. But in other cities most indigenous people survive by panhandling.

That is the case of Fidelia, a member of the Warao ethnic group from the Orinoco river delta in the east. Several times a year she leaves her children at home to make the trip to Caracas, where she panhandles along an avenue in a residential neighourhood on the eastside of the capital. "Sometimes I earn 10 dollars, sometimes 15. I'm going to come back to make some money on Christmas," she said.

Portions of city squares and parks in Caracas are sporadically turned into temporary camps for Warao indigenous families, who make a living by begging. One Warao Indian pointed out that "there is no work in the Delta." Near that area, several foreign oil companies have begun prospecting for natural gas in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mining has also drawn complaints and protests in southeastern Venezuela, where the government plans to authorise mining for gold and diamonds, as well as logging, in the Sierra de Imataca mountains. In that same region, indigenous people protested in the past over a power line that carries electricity across the border to Brazil.

But the worst tension between indigenous people and the government is seen in the northwest, where indigenous communities are opposed to coal mining, a project long cherished by the Chávez administration within the framework of the strategic alliance it has forged with Brazil, and Venezuela's admission to South America's Mercosur trade bloc.

"The indigenous people who are protesting today form part of the population that withdrew their support from the traditional political parties and backed Chávez since 1998 (when the retired lieutenant colonel was first elected president)," said Portillo. "But now they are arguing that their rights should not be compromised to benefit transnational corporations."

"The land issue is the most visible, but it is not their only complaint," said the anthropologist. "The Añú community - comprised of 3,000 people around Lake Sinamaica, between the Limón River and the northwestern Gulf of Venezuela - do not even want to discuss the devastation that will be brought by the construction of a deep-water port in the area, for exporting coal."

There are also ongoing disputes between indigenous people and stockbreeders in that region, as the ethnic groups are laying claim to land that is allegedly owned by local ranchers.

In the Colombian-Venezuelan Sierra de Perijá mountains, some 20 armed men showed up earlier this month on a truck at the Ceilán ranch, which has been partially occupied by a group of Yucpa Indians, and destroyed around 50 huts and injured seven indigenous people.

"The government should decide, and search for solutions," said Portillo. "But indigenous people are going to resist and protest by holding new marches this year, in Maracaibo and Machiques (near the Sierra), and at the World Social Forum, which will meet in Caracas in January." (END/2005)