Politics
Venezuelan indigenous communities still wait. Ten years ago, a brand-new government promised to claim room for the Venezuelan indigenous people. While this time, 41,630 hectares of the Perijá Mountains were handed over to some Yucpa communities in western Zulia state, many more hectares are yet to be negotiated as part of delimitation which as early as 1999 talks about special territories for all the indigenous people nationwide.

"These lands belong to those who for centuries were excluded from any way of development. The Bolivarian revolution headed by President Commander Hugo Chávez had to arrive to acknowledge their rights," said last October 12th Minister of the Interior and Justice Tarek El Aissami, when handing over title deeds to a sector of the Yucpa communities. Anyhow, these and other ethnic groups are aware that this is just one of many cases waiting for a definition of areas belonging to the indigenous people in the country.

"The country owes the indigenous a debt," found Kariña Deputy to the National Assembly (AN) José Poyo. The Yucpa case is included in the agenda; the murder of two of its members, just the day after some of them received titles of ownership, has moved both western Zulia state and the rest of the country. However, environmentalists, anthropologists and lawmakers agreed on saying that most of the lands requested by the indigenous have not been delimited.

"The area granted so far is just a small portion of Venezuela's indigenous territories," said Nalúa Silva, a professor with the Anthropologic Research Center, Guayana's National Experimental University. "While the Venezuelan state has kept a stance to claim rights over the land, in the practice, it has failed to bolster delimitations, as appears from the results attained so far by the National Delimitation Commission."

Dead letter
This story began in 1999, when the members of the Constituent Assembly finally acknowledged space for the indigenous communities. After a heated debate, Article 119 of the Constitution finally and expressly established that the indigenous people have "original rights on the lands that they have ancestrally and traditionally occupied."

Gabriela Croes, the head for two years of the Indigenous Affairs Administration, Ministry of Education, thinks that new ground was broken. Unlike the Bolivarian Constitution, that of 1961 only set forth in Article 77, "an exception regime" to shield communities and "their gradual incorporation into the life of the nation."

The case, however, has not gone beyond such constitutional acknowledgment. "There has not been political will," Croes reasoned. And she included even the indigenous leaders, from whom she requested increasing commitment. "What happened to the Venezuelan indigenous movement?" she wondered.

Except for specific cases, delimitation is yet to be determined. As late as in 2005, the government not even had delivered a first lot of lands. Pressure for some progress was applied from "up there," to such an extent that the Delimitation Commission made a joke about "express delimitations."

At that time, some Kariña communities in eastern Anzoátegui state and Pumé and Hiwi, of Apure state, were awarded title deeds personally by President Hugo Chávez. However, anthropologists think that it is not enough.
jpoliszuk@eluniversal.com

Translated by Conchita Delgado

Joseph Poliszuk
EL UNIVERSAL