Country: Venezuela

Group: Wayuu

Date: 4/5/2020

Team: Vianney Mancilla (lead), Erika Walker, Colleen Clauss

The Wayuu primarily inhabit La Guajira desert, which straddles Columbia and Venezuela. The Wayuu people have faced a long history incursions from colonizers (Barrera, n.d.). The Wayuu fought off the Spanish, who tried to colonize the Wayuu from 1701 to 1769 (Barrera, n.d.). In 1718, Governor Soto de Herrera referred to the Wayuu as ‘Barbarians, horse thieves, worthy of death, without God, law or a king’ (Barrera, n.d.). The Wayuu defeated the Spanish, allowing them to preserve their culture and identity (Banco, n.d.). Later, the Wayuu were also subject to the conversion to Christianity in 1905 when Pope Pius X created the Vicariate of La Guajira in an attempt to ‘civilize’ the Wayuu people (“Wayuu,” n.d.).

Wayuu livelihoods have experienced dramatic changes since the beginning of colonization, first transitioning from subsistence activities to market-oriented livestock-raising in the 16th century, then employment on sugar cane plantations in the 19th century, and more recently work in the oil economy in the 20th century (Minority Rights Group, 2017). The Wayuu of Venezuela’s land is also “fragmented for lack of legal demarcation; their lands are threatened by the presence of illegal mining and irregular [armed] groups” (2015). The Wayuu of Venezuela protested against coal mining in their land and reduced the exploitation of their resources (Minority Rights Group, 2017). The data quality for the Wayuu ethnocide would be a 2.

Sources

  1. Barrera, Monroy (n.d.). La rebelión Guajira de 1769: algunas constantes de la Cultura Wayuu y razones de su pervivencia. La Red Cultural del Banco de la República. Translated to English. Retrieved from https://www.banrepcultural.org/biblioteca-virtual/credencial-historia/numero-6/la-rebelion-guajira-de-1769
  2. Forest Peoples Programme. (2015). ‘Silent genocide’ of indigenous peoples denounced in Venezuela. http://www.forestpeoples.org/en/topics/economic-social-cultural-rights/news/2015/10/silent-genocide-indigenous-peoples-denounced-ven
  3. Minority Rights Group. (2017). Wayuú. Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/wayuu/
  4. Wayuu people. (2020). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayuu_people