Latin America at a Crossroad

February 18, 2013

Latin America

What instantly captures the hearts of those brave enough to venture into the Venezuelan National Reserve, nestled in the Andes mountains, is the untamed beauty of the vegetation, the crystal waters of the rivers and their sumptuous cascades. Yet, scraping just below the surface of this idyllic scenario are the harrowing stories of the Wayúu, an indigenous community fighting to exist.

The Socuy River carries 60% of the drinkable water to the region. For peasants and indigenous groups living here in the Sierra de Perijà, it’s synonymous with life. But its subsoil, rich in coal, makes this territory extremely appealing to national and transnational mining companies.

In 2007, President Hugo Chavez stood up in front of the nation and declared: “If there is no environmentally safe way of extracting coal from the Socuy, then the coal stays below the ground.”

Only four years later, in June 2011, Francisco Arias Cardenas, the president of Chavez’s PSUV party and a candidate for governor of Zulia state, unveiled plans to open a previously renounced coal mine, plus two more.

The coal extracted from these three mines would fuel a new carbo-electric plant, and help mitigate the severe energy crisis the country is undergoing. Besides inflicting irreversible damage to the environment, as acknowledged by the president himself, the opening of these mines would displace six indigenous communities, including the Wayúu. This situation, akin to many others across the Americas, is the result of the extractivist practices upon which the Venezuelan economy heavily depends.

Josè Diego a member of the community of Wayuuma’ana, which would be displaced by the opening of the coal mines said “open air coal mining is the cheapest and dirtiest form of energy. A few Bolivares [Venezuelan currency] are not worth the irreversible damages to the surrounding environment and communities- who will invariably be forced into utter destitution”.

The Chavez administration has, over recent years, come under increasing criticisms by human rights activist and indigenous groups over its developmentalist policies and, in particular, its reliance on the extractive industry. Environmentalist scholar Eduardo Gudynas explains “despite the state’s greater involvement in redistributing the profits, the country’s reliance on the exploitation of natural resources represents an implicit acceptance of the global commercial logics, moving within its rules and parameters and keeping the Latin America subordinated to the global free trade market”.

One of the most problematic consequences of Venezuela’s extractivist economic model, aside from the obvious natural devastation that comes with it, is that it pits the country’s working poor (i.e. employees of state-owned oil and gas company, PDVSA) against indigenous communities; communities that continue to defend their lands from the advances of national and transnational mining companies, and rich farmers [hacendados], who will go as far as hiring hit men to forcefully displace them.

These growing tensions have been exacerbated by the recent trial of Lusbi Portillo – founder of the NGO Homo et Natura and long-time supporter of indigenous rights. In July 2010, Mr. Portillo helped a group of indigenous people belonging to the Yukpa ethnic group to organise a protest outside of the national tribunal to demand justice over the constant infringement of their right to self determination. Mr. Portillo is being charged for calling on Yukpa mothers and daughters to demonstrate outside the tribunal and thus “illegally transporting them outside of their natural habitat”.

Mr. Portillo said “Yukpa women have traditionally been on the front-lines; confronting the national police, hacendados, corporations and any other entity looking to forcefully displace these communities”. He adds, “more generally, there is no public event in which Yukpa women do not participate”.

Venezuela is by no means an isolated case. In most of the subcontinent’s democratic socialist countries we can see how extracivist or developmentalist practices are hindering possibilities for real social and economic change: Evo Morales, an indigenous Ayamara coca grower who rose to power in 2006 as a member of the socialist movement, MAS, with the specific mandate of empowering the long marginalised indigenous majority (70% of the country’s population), is also facing bitter criticism from indigenous and human rights groups.

In 2010, Morales championed a new constitution that granted Bolivia’s 36 indigenous groups an, as of yet, ill-defined autonomy. He promised to protect indigenous people from industry and developers. But, since winning the election in December 2005, the president has been forced to weigh development against environmental protection. His ‘revolution’ reached a crossroads last year when he decided to pursue a 190-mile (300km) jungle highway funded by Brazil through the Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory National Park, or TIPNIS, in the eastern lowlands state of Beni. When indigenous groups protested against the highway, state police broke down the demonstration in one of the most violent crackdowns seen in modern Bolivian history.

While the democratic socialist tide has plenty to learn, they are nonetheless an improvement over previous administrations. The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, since taking office in 2007, has pushed for neoliberal policies, criminalised protests against his administration, and blocked indigenous movements’ input in the development of extractive industries and the re-writing of the constitution. But in October 2010, when the right wing party attempted a coup, the indigenous groups promptly mounted vociferous protests against it, despite remaining extremely critical of the president.

These struggles show us that the fight of indigenous groups for self-determination is not merely an issue at the margins of Latin American nationhood. Through their demands – fundamentally rooted in the defence of their spaces and ways of life – indigenous groups are not only confronting the powerful intervention of transnational capital, but simultaneously questioning the political organization of the state.

Josè Diego of the Wayuuma’ana community in Venezuela said: “We want a territory where our children can grow free from the gasoline clout, pollution and general devastation that open air coal mining brings. We want self-determination not only for indigenous communities, but for Latin America.”

The uncertain outcomes of these struggles outlines the story of a subcontinent at a crossroads. If development plans carry on at this pace, then indigenous groups in these countries are condemned to disappear. At the same time, these territorial struggles could represent critical junctures in the history of extractivist policies in Latin America. A gauge of people’s ability to resist and even turn the tide. Will we be able to speak of the indigenous frontiers of globalisation?

 

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