Native Americans against Chinese in the Amazon

If you speak German, you have to read this article from Spiegel. If you don't, you have to at least get the gist of it by using some machine translation tool.

I'm busy, so I can't explain the whole thing right now. It's about illegal miners, the Chinese and CITIC, interests for gold and diamonds on one side and the native Americans and the environment on the other.

I will later come back and give some details. 

Timoto-Cuica

This sculpture, produced in Western Venezuela about the time when the Frankish Kingdom appeared in Europe, represents a man giving an offer.

The person who moulded it was very probably a Timoto-Cuica Amerindian. The Timoto-cuicas were part of the now mostly extinct Chibchan macrogroup.

They are all gone now. Still, they remain in our genes, specially on those from the maternal side (as opposed to the paternal side, which is mostly European). They remain in some of our traditions:

Arepa

I always liked the name Timoto-Cuica, it sounds so musical: t m t kk

State of Obilivion revisited: First Nations dying

Amazonas

Many of Venezuela's First Nations are concentrated in the state of Amazonas. They are becoming a minority there due to legal and illegal immigration, due to the ecological impact from gold mining (one of the main reasons for that immigration) and due to the government's deglect.

Scientists from the Universidad de Carabobo (Northern Venezuela) went to the area and after three days of travel arrived to the Piaroa community of El Caño, in the Autana Municipality. They found native Americans there were suffering not only from turberculosis, but also from malnutrition. They also found a tiny "health centre" that has been under construction for the last 4 years...abandoned. I am sure resources used for one Aló Presidente in, say, Guárico, would be more than enough to build -actually to its real conclusion- a health centre with plenty of basic medical equipment.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little attention from politicians in the main urban centres. The area is mostly controlled by the military in Venezuela, it is of very difficult access and it is most of the time completely out of most urbanites' thoughts.

EFE had previously reported that Yanomamö have been dying by the dozens in Alto Orinoco Municipality. Malnutrition and all those other diseases are nothing new, but it is a tragedy that Venezuela's First Nations still have to go through all this in the XXI century.

The red satrap and the boat people

Tissaphernes, satrap of Lidia and Caria

Lizeta Hernández, satrap of Delta Amacuro, next to Tucupita mayor, at an event to "give houses to the people" from state means, next to PSUV candidates

Orinoco's Delta

Delta Amacuro, a state almost as big as the Netherlands but with just 150000 inhabitants, is one of the poorest regions in Venezuela. 30% of its children are malnourished, according to United Nations. The Warao -boat people literally-, have managed to survive there thanks to the protection given by the labyrinth of the Orinoco Delta. These native Americans were forgotten for many decades and they remain largely forgotten now. Thousands upon thousands of criollos have recently arrived there looking for jobs in the oil sector, in smuggling and what not.

wa-rao

boat people

The Chávez regime has given to the Delta inhabitants some little crumbles from the largest oil boom Venezuela has had in many decades. That could make Chávez popular in the area for some time in a similar way as AD was popular in the early seventies. Some native Americans got some solar panels for a few of the isolated houses- something very publicized by the national government-, and both Waraos and the increasing masses of poor criollos got some food through the Mercal subsidized food network. Above all, Chávez knew how to use some PR: he asked once a Warao indian to speak live on Aló Presidente and his government has put forward a legislation to promote Indian languages, even if nothing has really changed.

Delta Amacuro remains in shambles. There are no real jobs but for the connected with the mayor or some close to oil company PDVSA. Native Americans keep going to the big cities to roam in the landfills and pick up rubbish for food.

The level of corruption, crime and pollution mainly through the oil exploitation have all increased as well. Corruption is particularly bad in the Delta, even if it has worsened everywhere in Venezuela. I will write further about this later. There is no sense of sustainable development. Fellow blogger Díaz, from the Delta, allowed me to show here some images from his blog.

Elections in the Delta

The Venezuelan law, as normal in most of the world, prohibits the State to use resources for party propaganda. And yet the military regime just does not pay attention to that. It violates the law all the time and everywhere, but it is particularly shameless in the Delta. These pictures were taken on a recent governmental march to promote the Chávez deputies for 26 September elections.

Here you see a picture of the governor of the state, a woman who has been investigated for corruption charges and who treats the Delta, as all the other governors, as her satrapy.

Here you see more of the column. Basically all state officials are ordered to parade and show Delta Amacuro people that they got thanks to them and not to a tiny fraction of the petrodollars.

Delta Amacuro is a very interesting state as the amount of deputies it elects is way above what it would get if we had real proportional representation: 4 representatives. That is 40% of the deputies Carabobo, a state with over 12 times the population, gets.

Most of Delta Amacuro has no roads. If you need to go around, you have to use a boat or a hydroplane. It is particularly difficult for the alternative forces, which do not have many resources, to campaign here.

Below you have some maps showing election behaviour in the Delta in 2008 and 2009. The first picture shows how people voted for the governor in 2008. The red dots represent 1000 or 500 voters for the Chávez candidate, the red satrap you see in some of the pictures above and in many more in Díaz's blog. The brown dots represent the votes for a local candidate representing native American and other groups. The yellowish ones represent votes for a candidate from a weird alliance of the Communist Party (usually allied to Chávez, but not here) with several other local parties. Last and least, the blue spots represent the votes for parties that are also represented in Caracas. Part of this has to do with the crumbles, part of this has to do with the fact almost all those parties in Caracas have forgotten the region. Absolutely no national politician but alternative Leopoldo López has gone to the area or talked about themes particularly to the region. There are some very good local candidates for the alternative forces there, but they get little or no help from the capital. Daniel Duquenal writes a bit about election chances in this region. He thinks the PSUV party will get 3 representatives and a fourth representative is too close to call. The very young and charismatic Veronica Brito from UNT has some chances.

On the next map you see dots representing 1000 votes (or +-500 smaller dot) for the YES (pro-Chávez) in the 2009 referendum and for the NO. There is something quite strange: in Antonio Díaz the Chávez position won with over 98% of the votes.

Now, here you see the level of abstention in the different municipalities. As you see, the Antonio Díaz municipality as a whole has a particularly low abstention level.

More strangely, there are about 12 centres in that municipality alone with an abstention of 0.0% and 2950 voters. There were more with an abstention of less than 0.2%. You have centres where all 200+ voters went and the centres with the lowest abstention tended to have more voters registered than the others.

The next charts show some interesting patterns. The first one shows votes for YES (pro-Chávez) NO and abstention in the municipalities Guacara, San Diego and Los Guayos, in the Northern state of Carabobo. Guacara and Los Guayos are rather pro-Chávez (or were back then) and San Diego is very against his regime. The second chart shows votes for YES, NO and abstention in Delta Amacuro state. I did not calculate variance for abstention across municipios or states but the pattern is very evident. Now, there were almost no witnesses from the opposition in most of those voting centres in Delta Amacuro. Of course, we cannot be sure about causation here. I could go for ages about other patterns, but I just wanted to give you a little picture.

Carabobo state, 4 different municipios

and YES, NO and abstention for 2009 referendum

Total of voters

voting centres

Delta Amacuro: 4 municipios and YES, NO and abstention. On the right you see how Antonio Díaz Municipio shows a particular pattern. It would be even more interesting if we could determine the many centres without witnesses for the alternative forces.

total voters

voting centres

The last two pictures are from Curiapo, seat of the Antonio Díaz municipality. After so many years with the largest oil boom in decades, the place has no system for sewage and no real jobs or decent schools. The increased population and the use of XXI century products has lead to high level of pollution. Most children have problems with their skin.

Curiapo toilets

native American in Curiapo

The red satrap and candidates parade in the state cars and every state bus, every bag with food for election time has the face of the red satrap or some reference to the president of the PSUV.

So, in spite of the misery and corruption, it is hard to campaign in the area.

Wayuu, an Arawak nation

The Wayuu (a.k.a. Guajiros) are a native American nation living mostly between Colombia and Venezuela in a very harsh area, the Guajira Peninsula. Many of them live on subsistence economy and smuggling. Their language belongs to the Arawak family, like the language of the Warekena and the Baniwa, like the extinct Tainos, but completely different to the Pemón, the Warao or Yanomamö languages. They are the most numerous native American group in Northern South America, accounting for about half a million people distributed in both countries. Their lot has been largely forgotten by the governments of the nations they are in. They have been deeply affected by the FARC/ENL and paramilitary terrorists and all the drug trade in the area.

A future Venezuela, working together with Colombia at least as closely as Germany and France do now, would have to give more attention to the sustainable development of this group while preserving their distinct identity.

I wrote more on the Wayuu here.

Most Wayuu live in complete destitution:




Here (Wayuu language with Spanish sub-titles) a Wayuu woman talking about their textile tradition (second half is just a corny speech by a criollo).

Venezuela and FARC: a recent chronicle

• 

Zulia state. Red spots represent municipalities where the major is pro-Chávez. Blue ones are the ones where the opposition tries to govern in spite of the military sabotage.
The yellow spot is the approximate location of one of the presumed FARC bases in Zulia.

2008

• January 2008: Chávez calls for giving "belligerent status" to the FARC and ENL guerrilla groups. The National Assembly (basically pro-Chávez) votes in favour of his proposal.
  

• February 2008: Some Yukpa indians reject claims they may be supporting the FARC. They reject statements from also Yukpa but regime-critical deputy Javier Armado and former opposition major Di Martino stating there are groups within the community providing the FARC with state resources.
  

• 11 March 2008: The Colombian army attacks FARC bases in Ecuador and kills some 20 terrorists, including FARC leader Raúl Reyes. The army seizes a couple of laptops with information that would link the Venezuelan government to the FARC movement. In the next months the Colombian government makes public a series of details from those laptops, information that suggest the Venezuelan government is actively supporting the FARC.

• Chávez pays tribute to Raul Reyes (here and here).
  

• 9 June 2008: Chávez urges the FARC to put down arms.

2009

• 14 April 2009: Uribe meets Chávez.

• 15 April 2009: Chávez again urges the FARC to put down arms.

• June 2009: Betty Luzeta, a Chávez's deputy for Zulia, declares the FARC is not a terrorist force but "a group with a different ideological thought".
  

• July 2009: Colombian troops on a raid discover in FARC camps Swedish weapons that had been previously sold to the Venezuelan army.

• July 2009: Chávez "freezes" ties with Colombia.
  

• August 2009: Chávez says the FARC stole those Swedish weapons in 1995.

• October 2009: Venezuelan government "assigns" some territories to the Yukpa indians along the border. The ranchers, who had been illegally taking land in the region for decades, have to leave the area but the Yukpas do not seem to get much control over it.

2010

• Spanish channel Cuatro shows in a programme about Chávez the influence of the guerrilla in Venezuela. One of the highlights is an encounter with the ENL in Apure and a brief conversation with Venezuelan soldiers who, very candidly, explain where the Colombia guerrilla groups are in the area.
  

• July 2010: Colombia presents material to the Organization of American States (OAS) to back up its claims about FARC and ENL camps in Venezuelan territories. The Colombian government asks the OAS to send international observers to Venezuela as soon as possible. The OAS, led by Insulza, does nothing.
  

• 23 July 2010: Cantankerous Chávez severes ties with Colombia. The Colombian government says it will go on putting forward details about guerrilla bases in Venezuela.
  

• 25 July 2010: Chávez asks the FARC "not to give pretexts to the USA" and put down arms.

• Insulza says he won't do anything unless Colombia presents a written petition and the Venezuelan government agrees. He says the conflict is "between Colombia and Venezuela".
  

El Tiempo is reporting further details about possible FARC-Venezuela connections. The Economist has an interesting article about the Uribe-Santos possible rift.

Impression

My impression is that most Venezuelan soldiers are just powerless. Their bosses, though, are very much ideologically close to and eager to tolerate and probably support the FARC.

Insulza is head of the OAS primarily thanks to Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan military regime already said it will not accept international observers unless they can also visit the US bases in Colombia. Insulza is a joke. He has already said he won't do anything about the requests from Venezuelans to investigate human right abuses by the Venezuelan government because "those are internal affairs". Now he says he won't do anything because those are "bilateral affairs". What on Earth is Insulza getting money for? Probably to give the opening speeches at banquets of the OAS, a.k.a. the Club of American presidents.

"Gracias, Chávez, por apoyarme"

Looking at skeletons in the wrong closet

Wrong skeleton!

The Colombian government informed in great detail about the presumed whereabouts of top level FARC men in Venezuela. This comes at a moment when inflation in Venezuela is going through the roof, when the murder rate remains out of control (the highest by far in South America) and when scandal after scandal about rotten food or anything else pop up (just a random selection of anything else here).

What does the military regime in Caracas do? Caudillo Chávez declares the government opened Simón Bolívar's grave to examine the skeleton inside and find out whether semi-God Bolívar really died of tuberculosis or US Americans murdered him. Never mind we are not sure those are Bolívar's bones. Never mind the vast majority of Venezuelans think there are a zillion other priorities. The personality cult around Bolívar (and as usual linked to the current caudillo) has taken new dimensions.

A few days ago the Venezuelan government had announced the Dutch military had violated Venezuelan airspace with their aircraft. I wonder what purpose the Dutch may have had.

Going back to the FARC issue in Venezuela: Colombians announced one of the big guerrilla guys is in the Perijá Region. The FARC is said to have a base there. The location is exactly in the territory where the Venezuelan government "returned land" to the native American communities of the Yukpa (the Westernmost group of Carib Indians). Curiously, a lot of Indian groups in other parts of Venezuela had been demanding lands for a long time but the government has completely ignored them. The only ones who "got" some land were the Yukpas. Those lands had been stolen some decades ago by terratenientes. Unfortunately, the Yukpas haven't got much control of that land : the military and, according to some sources- FARC are the ones in control. Basically, the government pretended to give land to the Yukpas because they wanted to seal off the area from anyone else and the Yukpas have hardly any means of spreading information to the outside world. Hardly anyone can get into that area now, even NGOs trying to bring medicine to the destitute Yukpas.



Chávez et alia do not want you to take a loo at certain skeletons located, among other places, between municipality Rosario de Perijá, municipality Jesus Enrique Losada and the Colombian border.

The Rape of Venezuela's Paradise

Last Friday the current vicepresident, Elías Jaua, declared an "emergency plan to rescue the Caura Basin", as if his government had just come to power.

Venezuela's Guayana is one of the most gorgeous regions I had ever seen on Earth. It has an extraordinary biodiversity, breathtaking landscapes and is home to several of Venezuela's last First Nations. Those First Nations have several languages, from Pemon and Yekwana to Yanomamö. Yek'wana and Pemon are probably as close to each other as Spanish is to French, whereas Pemon is as close to Yanomamö as English is to Hebrew or Arabic. We are talking about very unique cultures, unique and under threat.

Several important rivers have their origin there. Most of Venezuela's electrical power comes from the dams built in them. The region is rich in gold as well.

Southern Guayana has had a problem with illegal mining for many years. When I first was there, in 1990, there were very few outsiders in the region. In 1997, Santa Elena de Guairén, the main city in Southern Bolívar, had already grown and there was a good road towards Brazilian Boa Vista. Still, changes would come later on.

Back in 1997 I talked to several illegal miners who were taking the same route through the jungle, towards Icabarú. There were a couple of military posts on the road and nothing more but jungle. The military, who were supposed to do something about illegal mining, would just greet them by name and let them pass. Very few tourists passed through that road, so the soldiers knew who was who. I remember how I asked the miners about the mercury. "Don't you think that is bad for the rivers, for the animals?" "Nay, nothing happens. Mercury is only bad for us, the miners".

The situation has dramatically worsened since then. From 2006 onwards it has become absolutely critical. I have written several times about it (for instance, here and here). El Universal published an interesting article about the problem a couple of days ago. I was actually writing this post when the vicepresident finally spoke.

The only people who can be found in those areas are native Americans, military posts and illegal miners. There are very few tourists. There is no way mining machinery can get to the illegal mines unless they pass in front of the military posts. And that is what is happening day in and day out.

Caura Region

The Caura has its origin in Southwestern Bolívar and flows northwards into the Orinoco.

El Universal article quotes José Royo, from the Indigenous Parliament, who says that before 2006 there were some 600 illegal miners in the Caura region and now there are more than 3000 miners from Brazil, Colombia and Guyana. Other sources talk about more than 4000. Mind: that number refers to the Caura region only.

The region around Jaua Sarisariñam, one of the most impressive tepuyes, is supposed to be a restricted area for anyone but native Americans and scientists. In reality it is one of the most affected.


Sarisariñama with its huge caves containing unique flora and fauna is one of the worst hit by miners just in the Caura region

The massive erosion has lead to an increase in the cases of malaria among the Yekuana and Sanemas. The Indians also suffer heavily from mercury pollution. Dissident deputy Pastora Medina says mercury has led to a dramatic increase in the cases of cleft lips and other deformities among Indian children. The fish in the rivers are full of mercury and the waters go all the way to the Orinoco and affect thus many more people.

The native American association Kuyujani went to the National Assembly to talk about this. NGO Provea has also protested in front of the Ministry of Environment on several occassions. The Universidad Nacional Experimental of Guyana has organized a workshop to discuss the illegal mining in the Upper Caura.

Oswaldo Ponce, precandidate of the PUSV with native American background and even Vicente Rangel, a Chavista vicepresident -after so much talk from NGOs -, have finally taken over the topic.









White spots in some of the key areas of illegal mining

Gran Sabana

The problems affect all the way from the Caura basin across the Caroní River eastwards up the the border with Guyana, in the Gran Sabana, on the Southeast of Bolívar state.

The Caroni River has its origin in South-Southeast Bolívar State and it flows into the big Guri dam and from there into the Orinoco. It is also heavily polluted now. Illegal miners get to Icabarú through the Santa Elena de Guairén route or with small airplanes.

The Pemón Indians, who inhabit that territory suffer from the same things as their cousins to the West: mercury poisoning, the destruction of their forests, the influx of illegal miners.

They are also increasingly under pressure from squatters and others from Santa Elena to the South and from the different mining spots on the West and North (El Dorado).

And Amazonas state...

The whole problem with illegal mining is not only present in Bolívar State, but in the other state Venezuela has south of the Orinoco: the Amazonas state. That region is as big as North Dakota and larger than Greece but fewer than 200000 people live there. Many are still native Americans (Yekuanas, but also Yanomamö, Piaroas, Banivas, Piapocos and others with very distinct languages). In a previous post I wrote how the government expelled hundreds of illegal Colombian miners who were in the Western part of the Amazonas state only when Chávez became angry with Colombian president Uribe. Until that moment they had been tolerated and they had been destroying the environment. I wonder what has happened with Venezuelan and Brazilian illegal miners in that area.

Why is all of this happening?

Countries such as Brazil and Colombia have traditionally been very lenient towards environmental crimes in spite of their strict legislation. But they started to do real efforts to improve things and enforce the law. The Venezuelan government, on the other hand, has been mainly busy with pretending to have a revolution. Illegal miners have opted to cross the border on a massive scale for many years now, joining the groups of Venezuelan illegal miners. Many poor Venezuelans in the South have opted to get into mining because there are very few other options.

Gold is gold and votes are (still) votes

The military are said to receive a meaningful part of the gold as payment for allowing the ore extraction, for allowing the transportation and smuggling of food and much more. Many Indian villages have become now deposits of food, machinery, weapons and sex for miners. The town of El Dorado, just to the North of the Indian areas proper, is completely based on the mining industry.

The government does not want to lose votes. You can understand the situation when you read some of the things those minsers say in a video called El Dorado. Please, take your time and watch it yourself. Things go like this:

"I have been working here for 30 years...and you know, after you are forty years old there is no other job in the state" (miner)

"fortunately, this government has allowed us to work".

If you watch the whole video, you will notice most of those miners haven't got the slightest clue about what damage they are bringing to the environment. They say they don't harm the forest because they don't cut many trees and then they "replant". They have no idea about the whole problems with mercury pollution and they are often not aware of how much vegetation they are destroying or what impact they are having to the local communities. Any state will have to do some serious work on education among these people.

The government has known very well about the problems in Guayana, but then: there are more miners and relatives of miners and newcomers who work providing food, machinery, dwelling and prostitutes to those miners than native Americans in the broad South Guyana region by now.

What to do?

I hope with all my heart the government will finally do something about this. I doubt it but I can only hope it does. The pace of destruction is very fast now. I hope they don't just close a couple of mines for some time and forget about it all. I actually demand from the government to bring about sustainable improvements for the whole region of Southern Venezuela.

Among other things, the government must

• stop all illegal mining
• stop the use of mercury and other poisonous materials for mining
  
• create a reliable, independently-managed mechanism to guarantee that the military men (or better still, an educated police force) enforce the law and comply with it themselves
  
• stop further squatters from getting into national parks or areas destined to the First Nations
  
• fulfill the promise to give ancestral lands back to all native American communities while providing a mechanism for preventing that external groups profit from them
  
• improve health services to the First Nations
  
• guarantee good primary and secondary education for all native Americans and support the publication of text books and other material in all the native American languages with at least 1000 speakers
  
• support transparent programs to create sustainable jobs for the First Nation communities
  
• support transparent programs to generate job opportunities for all those Venezuelan miners outside protected regions
• provide good basic and secondary education including state books to all children in the Guyana region (for all Venezuelan children, for that matter, it costs less than what we are spending in weapons)
  
• prevent external groups or individuals who think "they are one with the environment" or "they do know how to live in communion with it" from living in those national parks
• introduce educational programmes in the whole Guayana area to educate people about pollution problems

When Chávez was a candidate back in 1998, he promised he would not let the huge electric line be built across the gorgeous Gran Sabana. One of the first things he did was to build that electric line. Two Pemon indians were killed by the military while opposing the action.

After more than 500 years we finally need to understand we do not need El Dorado. We need sustainable development at a social, economic and environmental level.

---

Interesting post in Spanish about the Caura case here

Die Uramerikaner und der stille Glaubenskampf in Venezuela

Dies ist ein Teil der ARD-Sendung Expedition Humboldt, die Ende 2009 ausgestrahlt wurde.

Leider ist hier der Anfang der Sendung nicht zu sehen, wo man die Proteste gegen die Regierung, das Personenkult um den Präsidenten, die Wiedersprüche der sogenannten "Revolution" und die Erzählungen der Chaima-Indianer sieht.

Ich kann allen, die sich für Venezuela interessieren, die Reise in die Äquinotialgegenden des Neuen Kontinents ganz herzlich empfehlen.


Vor etwa zwei Jahren hat die venezolanische Regierung hochposaunt, dass man das Institut für Indigene Sprachen errichten würde. Bis jetzt steht das alles nur auf Papier, es gibt kein Geld dafür...und wie zu Humboldts Zeiten bleibt vom Papier wenig übrig, wenn auch nicht mehr "wegen der beständigen Verheerungen der Termiten oder weißen Ameisen".

Venezuela, Land of Grace

Two Venezuelans, Austrian-born Gerry Weil and Venezuelan-born Hector di Donna, composed this song in honour of the Pemón. Enjoy sound and image.

Ideas for Venezuela: identity and language

If you know someone who speaks Wayúu, please, send her/him to the Wayúu project

If you speak Pemon or know someone who speaks it well, you/he/she can contact me.

Between the lines: destroying the Indian territories

based on a map from this great site














Yesterday Venezuelan and Colombian media outlets reported some 392 Colombian and Brazilian citizens were forced to leave Venezuela, where they working in a mine near San Fernando de Atabapo. Now they are in Inírida, capital of the Colombian department of Guainía. Some 400 more are expected soon.

Venezuelan news are saying those minders were illegal. Colombians are saying the expulsion of so many people is causing a big problem for Inírida and that it is just inhumane. This event takes place on the context of the increasing tension between Chávez and Uribe.

Orinoco meets Casiquiare: in spite of the brown colour they always had, they were clean until mining and other uncontrolled industries arrived.

I do not know why Hugo decided to throw out the Colombian miners now: does the Venezuelan military want the resources to be exploited by someone else? Who then? Or were they just finally trying to put some order in the plundering of the Amazonas region? Or is it something else?

What I do know and see here anyhow is what people on either side don't discuss: this event shows once again the absolute lack of governance, the absolute chaos and the complete lack accountability on both sides.

• Fact: they were working illegally indeed.

• Fact: they are not the only ones, illegal mining is happening everywhere in the Amazonas state and in Bolívar state, it is done by Venezuelans and foreigners alike.

• Fact: they are using mercury, mercury that goes into the rivers (the Río Negro, the Casiquiare and the Orinoco, among many others), mercury that is highly poisonous to all forms of life and which is almost impossible to clean up.

• Fact: those miners, together with lots of Venezuelan miners from poor and not so poor regions, are getting into native American territory, they are making native Americans again a minority in the last regions native Americans have left.

• Fact: military on both sides just control those they want, not those they should.
  

Below you have a map of the Venezuelan Amazonas State showing population density (inhabitants/km2). San Fernando de Atabapo and its whole municipality have less than 15000 inhabitants. Around that city you have the territories of some very small First Nations who until now have had very little contact with alcohol, Western diseases and so on.

















Here a look at the other side, the neighbouring departments and the estimate population there.
Many of the miners, according to sources from the Colombian side, are not from those departments but from other regions of Colombia.



















The Colombian departments on the other side of the Orinoco and Río Negro have a much higher population and there is a civil war going on there. The Venezuelan government seems to be siding with the guerrillas for many years already.

Some NGOs say there are around 3 million illegal Colombians in Venezuela. That is over 10% of Venezuela's population. In Venezuela there is no reliable registry of population. On one side, for some years now you have to tell your ID number to any vendor in Venezuela when you buy (not just sell) anything but a hot dog. This is supposedly for VAT reasons. On the other side the government does not know really who lives where and estimates for population in many municipalities are just wild guesses.

Everybody - the opposition in Venezuela, the government, the Colombian government and the Colombian opposition - should openly talk about possible solutions to uncontrolled movements of populations, present transparent mechanisms to improve the security situation on both sides of the border and work on detailed plans for a sustainable development of the region. That is very unlikely to happen now. The native Americans - the Puinave, the Piapoco and others - as well as the natural resources are the ones who are suffering.

Geez...we so badly need shadow ministers in Venezuela that show Venezuelans there are solutions, we need them now, even in the middle of the emerging dictatorship.

Oops...apologies to the Piapocos, I mispelt their name in the map below

The First Nations in our blood

Map showing how main female genetic markers spread

Population genetics has been providing new insights into where we all came from, what roads we took to settle the world and how each of our many ethnic groups interacted with each other. Very little research has been carried out in Venezuela compared to Europe. Still, Venezuelan scientists have carried out some interesting studies. They confirm a lot of what historians knew but they also provide new details that could help us fill in some of the gaps in our understanding of the past.

I have written before about some of those studies. Basically, they confirm what most Venezuelans but our president knew: the vast majority of Venezuelans are very mixed, most of our male ancestry is of European origin and most of our female ancestry is native American and there is sub-Saharan influence on both sides as well.

Native Americans keeping a distinctive ethnic group are a tiny minority in Venezuela these days. I have talked a little bit about those groups. A lot of Venezuelans have some native American background, though, even if they look very European or African or anything else. Still, little do they know about that background. We eat arepas, we eat cachapas, we use some Indian words in our Spanish (less than Bolivians, Peruvians or Mexicans, but still some like cuaima or catire) but we don't know much more about our American ancestors. As Alexander von Humboldt noted already after his 1799-1801 trip through Venezuela, most Venezuelans have lost track of their history, their European, their native American and their African history.

The historical records tell us that there were some Indian groups around the Tacarigua Lake, some others in what is now Caracas, some others in Margarita Island. We know about some of those groups have the same language and others belonging to very different groups with very different looks and customs.

Very roughly, we know a lot of the West of what is now Venezuela was populated by Arawak groups (Arawak being a very broad term, like Romance groups or Slavic groups) and a lot of the East was populated by Carib groups (also a very broad term). We also know there were isolated groups that spoke languages completely different to all the others. We still have in Venezuela about 30 languages that represent several language families, quite a lot of variety compared to what you see in Europe. The native Americans are now mostly in remote regions on the West, on the East and South. Still you see the Arawak groups more to the West, the Carib more to the East and both in the South, but there are exceptions, like Carib Yukpas in Zulia, and there are many groups that have very different languages to all the rest, like the Waraos.

Some Venezuelan scientists presented a paper this year where they showed a first study on "Mitochondrial diversiy in Northwest Venezuela" and "Implications for Probable Prehispanic Migratory Routes".

Dinorah Castro de Guerra, Figuera Pérez, Izaguirre, Rodríguez Larralde, Guerrera Castro and other Venezuelan researchers chose 4 communities in Northwestern Venezuela: three very small towns in Northwestern state Falcón and Barquisimeto, a big city and capital of Lara (to the South of Falcón). They selected their samples from people whose grandparents were all born in the same town, signifying people who were likely to have very strong roots with the place.















The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is always inherited through the mother and the Y chromosome through the father. A certain pattern of DNA sequences in the mtDNA or Y chromosome can be used to identify a a genetic group, a haplogroup. In this case, most of the mtDNA haplogroups (refering to the mother's mother's mother's...) were of native American original, albeit there were also instances of sub-Saharan African and European groups.
This contrasts with the markers on the Y chromosomes, which show, as usual in the Americas, that Venezuelans have on the paternal side mostly European haplogroups.

There are 4 native American mtDNA haplogroups and they are known simply as A, B, C and D. H is the most typical of European populations, J is typical of Middle-East, Northern Africa and Europe, U is mostly in the Old World outside sub-Saharan Africa and L and L3 are mainly found among sub-Saharan populations and recent descendants (like slaves).

Here I plot the mtDNA haplogroup distribution for every town in this study.

Some of the things we can observe:

1. 

• As in previous studies, the Indian contribution is the most frequent on the female side
  
• the European maternal contribution in traditional populations in those towns is much lower than in the main cities as in the capital (see what I wrote on a previous study for Venezuela's capital here)
• Macanillas is a place where people apparently have very unique haplotypes and in general there seem to be a lot of unidentifiable haplogroups in this study (errors? something special about hardly studied groups?).
  
• The African maternal contribution is slightly higher in the most costal village, which is not surprising for anyone who has been to Venezuela
• It seems as if on the coast (Macuquita) haplogroup D is particularly represented, which could hint at Indian populations that differ more from the other 3 locations

All this should be taken with a pinch of caution. The samples were taken from 81 persons in Barquisimeto, 25 in Macuquita, 58 in Churuguara and 29 in Macanillas.

I will continue in a future post with some proposals for future studies on Venezuelan population genetics.

Venezuela's First Nations and land

Main First Nations. The names with circles represent Arawak ethnicities. Those with an underline are for Carib groups.

Promises and the Yukpas

10 years ago the government promised to delimit the protected areas of Venezuela's First Nations. That was a good idea. Until then Indian areas were precariously protected by a vague law about "lands under state of exception". Since then little has happened, though.

As El Nacional says, some 41630 hectares (416.3 km2) were assigned for the Yukpas in Perija, Zulia state (North-Western Venezuela). Just the day after the president announced it, 2 people from the Yukpa community were shot dead. The pro-government Yukpa leader said initially hired killers sent by the ranchers did it, other Yukpa contradicted him (here in Spanish). The Association of Ranchers of that municipality said the murders were caused by an internal conflict. The minister of Justice, Tarek al-Assimi, announced some of the murderers, Yukpa Indians, have been caught now. Al-Assimi rejected that the murders had to do with the land struggle and added that ranchers were trying to hinder the land distribution. There is some messy reporting about the issue in Spanish here, it seems the truth is somewhere in the middle. Whatever happened, the situation is very murky.






Yukpa Indians selling their artcraft






Still waiting

The Yukpas have just got some land in the Perija region, but hardly any other Indian group has received any of theirs, as experts demand. Ye'kuanas, and Sakemas (both in Amazonas and Bolivar) and Karinhas (a.k.a. Kali'na, in Anzoátegui), for instance, presented their demands years earlier and they haven't got a response. Is there something special about their lands? Is it because of the gold and diamonds in the Ye'kuana and Sakema lands? Is it because of the oil fields in Karinha's ground? Is it because of possible politic preferences? I don't know. Anyway, my impression is that:

1- ranchers and other private groups are very reluctant to give back land to the First Nations
2- the government has not investigated properly possible involvements of ranchers against attacks to the First Nations and it has not compensated people as it should
2- the government is even more reluctant to give back state-owned land to the First Nations than the ranchers are and it prefers to give what is currently in the hands of private individuals
3- the government has been incredibly slow in establishing land rights in general (in fact, almost nothing is registered in a centralized, much less in a digital fashion)
4- the government is doing very little to protect the native Americans in the Southern part of Bolivar and Amazonas, where Brazilian and Venezuelan miners have established camps
5- illegal miners are massively polluting rivers in Indian territory with the mercury they use for the gold extraction (for instance, the Paragua river, tributary of the Caroní River, in Southern Bolívar is now an ecological disaster and this is affecting the Pemon community)
6- illegal miners are clearing large amounts of forests in Indian areas (read this, it is from 2006 but the situation remains unchanged)
7- a lack of cooperation between Venezuela and Colombia has lead to guerrillas, paras and drug dealers roaming freely in Indian areas

The government has been reluctant to clarify the rules of the game. It prefers to use confiscation as a political tool. A large extend of Venezuela's surface has no clear property rights: either ownership papers cannot be tracked down to the Independence time as demanded by the state or they do not exist at all. Most of Venezuela's territory has always been in the hands of the state anyway. The government has determined just a tiny fraction of property rights and it uses the insecurity among people as a method of control: "be nice or we take your fuzzy or clear property rights". I have already stated the government should make public (via online databases) all land claims existing now and, progressively, all land rights. The government should then process cases based on a clear set of parameters (area, time and so on).

The Venezuelan government has a very strong military presence in Indian territory. High ranking officials, including the president, are afraid of giving too much land or power to the First Nations. They think this could lead to a fragmentation of Venezuela or to them losing political control in those areas. Individual military men at all levels have always profited from control over Indian areas, turning a blind eye on "cooperative" illegal miners or worse.

In Venezuela much has been announced and little has been accomplished. Brazilian garimpeiros moved to Venezuela because they knew control is much worse than in Brazil.

What we need to do

The Venezuelan people - including the self-annointed opposition leaders - need to demand from the government clear, open procedures regarding land rights. The government needs to explain and abide by the rules and let the national community have a look at the whole process. The government will oppose this as it wants to move towards some sort of communism (never mind they are not even moving towards bad socialism but towards plain banana republic authoritarism). Still: we must insist on a transparent and very public procedure for delimiting land and establishing when it is the state's and when the private groups' turn. This should be in the framework of a comprehensive and very open cadastre process for the whole nation, including the possessions of all the Boliburguesía.

As I have already stated, there is now a legislation for the protection of Venezuela's native languages. Still: little has been done about a real implementation. There is little done about the establishment of public libraries for them, about how their languages will be defended in their territories. Translating some manuals with political content and basic lessons for school won't do.

The general situation of schools in Indian areas is bad and the health care is a disaster.

It is evident that the First Nations must have more power to decide for themselves. They should also have the tools to develop their own local economies. Preserving their identity does not necessarily mean they need to go on working on subsistance economy and dressed as they do now (unless they want).

All in all we need to give them the tools to help themselves. I know this is a big challenge: Venezuelans as a whole, with much better conditions than the First Nations, are still living from the petrodollars they started to depend on over 70 years ago.

I really hope all Venezuelans take the protection of the First Nations to their heart. We own it to them.

ADDENDUM

As a general reference, here you have a chart of the languages of the First Nations that still exist today in Venezuela (a chart for the Amazonas state only can be seen here) . Each node in white represents a language family, like "Indo-European" or "Semitic" in the Old World. Some of the language families have other languages spoken but they are not spoken in Venezuela. The family languages with the largest amount of speakers are Arawac and Carib. When Europeans arrived in Venezuela, most of the central region was inhabited by Arawacs and a large part of the East by Carib groups. There are some language isolates, like Warao, spoken in the Orinoco Delta. Those languages have so far proven unrelated to others (like Basque in Europe).

Each one of those languages is a world that could be lost. The ones with a red flag are almost gone now. The ones without a flag are in danger. The ones with the green flag have better chances of survival but nothing is sure. Wayúu is spoken by over 150000 people, Warao by some 40000 and Pemón by more than 5000 to 15000.

Amazonas, state of oblivion

With 180,145 km2, Venezuela's second largest state, Amazonas, is much larger than Greece and about the same size of Cambodia. It is the most thinly populated state: only some 143,000 people live there (Greece has 11.3 million inhabitants and Cambodia almost 15 million). The 1991 census showed 60207 inhabitants, which means a 231% growth for 2007 if governmental estimates are right.

Population density (population/km2 in each municipality)







Amazonas' people are mostly very poor. Most live from subsistence economy, state jobs as well as on the activity of the many military bases there. There is some "ecotourism" (mostly not ecological) which is managed mostly by outsiders and a lot of ilegal mining. The state is rich in natural resources and it constitutes Venezuela's Southern border with Colombia and Brazil. The military presence there has been strong for decades.

Amazonas was one of the few regions where native Americans, our First Nations, were not completely assimilated. Few outsiders ventured to this area. Alexander von Humboldt visited it in his quest to find the connection between the Orinoco and the Amazon River (a connection native Americans knew well).










Non-Indian settlers started to arrived in the mid XIX century, but they had little impact. It was only in the XX century when the outside influence started to be felt, mostly in the Northwest, where the capital is, and along the shores of the Orinoco, which runs from South to North at this stage and forms the border with Colombia.

Most people in the state capital and along the Orinoco are now criollos or mixed people. Outside influence has increased for several decades. Miners arrived and with them diseases, alcohol and abuses of all sorts.

Catholic priests set up shop in the Amazonas state from the XIX century onwards. US evangelical missionaries (mostly New Tribes) followed beginning 1945. A few years ago, in 2005, Hugo Chávez expelled the New Tribes. Wikipedia says:

In October 2005, the BBC reported that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had announced his intention to expel New Tribes Mission from Venezuela. He accused New Tribes Mission of imperialism, of collaborating with the US CIA, of violating Venezuela's national sovereignty, and of violating the country's laws by making unauthorized flights into and out of the country. He also attacked the group for building lavish camps in which to live next to poverty-stricken villages. Responding to the allegations, NTM said, "Any kind of air travel we do, we always do within the guidelines of what the government allows. We always file reports." With respect to "luxury" living, they "live in homes that make it possible for them to continue the work that they do. The homes that they live in are very simple." On November 3, 2005, hundreds of Venezuelan indigenous people marched in Puerto Ayacucho protesting against the expulsion of NTM by the Venezuelan government. Although the Venezuelan constitution recognized their collective ownership of ancestral lands in 1999, "poverty remains acute among many Indian communities and many protesters said the missionaries were the only people who have tangibly improved their lives."

Accusations have gone back and forth: "spies, imperialists, people helping in illegally prospecting for precious metals", "the government has abandoned the Indians, the Indians are now worse off". There have been accusations since 2005 about chavismo cooperating with the Iranians, among other things, to provide uranium that could be used for weapons. You can read one of those sites here, with quotations from the accusers and the president.

It is very hard to find out what was and is really going on there. Unfortunately, few Venezuelans in the capital and other major cities pay attention to the rural areas unless they are into the already mentioned "ecotourism". Besides: the military in Venezuela have always behaved in a very arbitrary manner and it is almost impossible to hold the military to account, specially that now one of them is the "jefe de Estado".

Some of the problems that we do know for sure are these:

1. very bad health services for the First Nations
2. few and low-quality basic schools
3. uncontrolled miners, settlers, companies selling "ecotourism" without clear permissions
4. military men bullying people
5. a porous border where drug dealers and Farc guerrillas come and go
6. an increasing clash of civilizations where criollos bring products, customs and viruses for which native Americans are unprepared

All this could change for good if Venezuelans wanted and put their act together. They would need to force accountability in all spheres, demand the state fulfills basic needs according to specific deadlines and conditions and promote the development of the region by allowing it to foster its particular heritage.

The political picture
Look at the first map. Over half the population (around 91386 persons) live in the Atures municipality.

The Alto Orinoco, in blue, is larger than the Netherlands and yet it had for 2007 around 17767 inhabitants.

The first map shows most municipalities have mayors who support the current government (red) and only one (in blue) has an independent one: Jesus Manosalva. Here you see how his budget was more than halved on April 2009. The central government reduced the budgets for all municipalities, but we have heard from many sources that part of the money from areas with opposition governments are being diverted to the other areas via "special programmes".

The support is relative. There are two regional parties supporting the Indian interests: PUAMA and MUPI. PUAMA has been working together with the officialdom whereas MUPI is against. MUPI has now a seat in parliament. The deputy is Jesús Castillo. Strangely, it is impossible to find what party he is now in just by looking at the site of the National Assembly.

Although it is possible to find a meaningful support for independent or non-chavista groups on a local level, the figure of Chávez is particularly popular in Amazonas. On the second map you can get an impression of the vote preferences in the 2009 referendum. The referendum was about allowing or not indefinite nominations for public offices but it was mostly about whether Venezuelans wanted to allow the president to run without limits. A cyan circle represents 1000 vote s against indefinite reelection and a red one one in favour. I rounded up or down: there were cyan votes in every state but often less than 500.

Of course: one thing is the real or optimized vote to enable this president to run again in 2012, another thing is what will happen when the moment arrives.

The region elects 3 of the 167 deputies at the National Assembly and voters contribute in voting for a fourth one reserved for the Indian groups.

You realise how primitive the services are in Amazonas when you try to find out something about the civic services in the most populated municipality. Here you have the municipality site. Internet is not real life, but the Internet presence does give some hints about it.

Language and identity
Although native Americans are now becoming a minority even in Amazonas, they still form a very varied lot. Here you can see a map showing the general distribution of Indian ethnicities and languages in the Amazonas state. Mind: some of those languages are as similar to one another as Spanish to Italian, whereas others are as different as English and Japanese. Most are endangered: less and less people speak them, most do not read or write or if they do, they only do so in Spanish.























Languages and language families: Arawac languages (like Baniva) or Carib languages (like Ye'kuana, a.k.a Yekwana) are completely different from Hoti or Yanomami.








The National Assembly has passed some laws for Indian matters. I wish something good would really come out of that. The main topics related to that legislation are:

- a law for the protection of Indian languages (this sounds nice, but I still want to see how it is implemented, in Spanish here) and

- the creation of an Institute for Indian languages (again, I want to see it firstly)

Now there are plans for

- a legislation for the protection of Indian handicraft (here in Spanish) which, I suppose, will would theoretically lead to something like the protection of Indian products as in Canada, at least if a miracle takes place and the law is implemented.

So far I haven't been able to find real proofs something out of this has been put effectively into practice.

Some ideas
I wrote in a post (here) a couple of measures a government could implement to promote the culture of our First Nations. I wish there were some people out there among the political parties who would pay attention. Language is not everything, but it is the main tool for individuals to express their culture and reafirm their identity. Effectively promoting the written use of American languages would be a step forward in the preservation of Venezuela's particular heritage. It could also become one of the initial steps for developing assertive communities.

We could learn a lesson or two about how regional languages are protected in Spain.

Apart from the language issue I believe all Venezuelans should start paying more attention to regions such as Amazonas and that not just for some videos of beautiful rivers and tepui.

Brainwashing

In this video (in Spanish, some Yekwana) you can watch some news from the chavista channel about a visit of the Minister of Indian Affairs in Yekwana territory. They stress the fact that the people can talk in their native language with the minister. A couple of things are worth noticing:

1) the minister is a Yekwana and I very much doubt she will be able to talk to the Wayúu in Wayúu, to the Waraos in Warao, to the Yanomami in Yanomami and even to the Pemones in Pemon. She talks about how much her Indians love "the government in the capital". She should really care about whether all Indians are getting basic services, whether they have the right medicine, quality basic schools and are left alone by miners and military.

2) the vice-minister, a young woman, keeps repeating how the chavista government is helping the warriors to be prepared, to "fight imperialism" and to be trained in the ideology. She repeats the world ideology several times. I wonder if she is aware of Chinese imperialism or of pluralism.

The best he has got

Here you have a video of a Piaroa Indian speaking in his language. He has a Guevara T shirt and he ends his speech in Spanish with the Guevara chant "Hasta la victoria siempre". He is full of hope. I am sure he got some explanations, a lot of half-truths, of why they are so poor and others so rich. He has probably got more help now than any of his ancestors did from the powers that be in the capital. Still, he has probably not heard about how the new Boliburguesia is gettings ints share of the eternal plunder.

It would be great if a future goverment provided education that showed different perspectives, if it provided a view of different ideologies and, above all, if it provided people with the tools for critical thinking.

PS.

After I finished this post I found an interesting article by lefty Jeroen Kuiper, now a journalist for, among others, German Freitag. You should read his account here. The title of his article is "Venezuela's Forgotten State", which is almost the same as the title I chose for my article. Kuiper gave a good picture of the situation in Amazonas in 2005 (although I think he still was too naive regarding chavismo). Since then things have changed quite some, though: the rumours about people wanting to use the uranium that is supposed to be in Tamatama regard now not the missionaries but to the Iranians. Are those rumours just baseless? I don't know. I know we should be extremely cautious, to the left and to the right, if we want to move forward.