Country: Venezuela

Group: Warao

Date: 4/5/2020

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

Warao are the second-largest indigenous group in Venezuela, with lands around the Orinoco Delta. As a result of European colonization, the Warao were forced to leave the areas they previously inhabited to move to the Delta.  This contributed to loss of much of their traditional subsistence culture (Minority Rights Group, 2017). Today, the government of Venezuela is opening land traditionally belonging to the Warao people to foreign investment and extraction of natural resources, taking away the environment and traditional livelihood of the Warao people and forcing them to emigrate to be able to provide for themselves. According to the Working Group on Indigenous Affairs of the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela, indigenous peoples’ “territories are fragmented for lack of legal demarcation; their lands are threatened by the presence of illegal mining and irregular [armed] groups” (“‘Silent Genocide,’” 2015). Encroachments on indigenous land in Venezuela include the construction of the Caroni Dam and a “decree creating the Orinoco Mining Arch. the opening of 112 thousand square kilometers, 12% of the national territory to large transnational mining corporations” (Minority Rights Group, 2017b; Lander, n.d.). The implications of these projects could include, according to Lander (n.d.), “a further step in the direction of the ethnocide of the already endangered indigenous peoples living in that area…devastating socio-environmental consequences in both immediate and long-term terms, affecting part of the Amazon forest, destroying vast areas of extraordinary biological diversity and affecting the country’s main sources of water.” These conditions have resulted in hundreds of members of the Warao community suffering from malnourishment or disease or water contamination, leaving Venezuela, and being forced to live on the streets and in refugee housing provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Roraima state, in Northern Brazil (Broner, 2018; Fernandez, 2019).

Our team rated the data quality as a 1 because most of the information we found was from personal or informal sources. Sources that were more credible did not mention many of the details specific to the Warao that were covered in the less formal sources. This is an appropriate example of ethnocide because forced displacement during colonization and modern-day land grabs are destroying the environment and traditional means of livelihood of the Warao people. The land grabs may be economically motivated, but they are specifically affecting the Warao people.

Sources

  1. Broner, T. T. (2018, September 5). The Venezuelan Walkers. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/05/venezuelan-walkers
  2. Fernandez, A. (2019). In photos: The last ‘canoe people’ of the Venezuelan Delta. Retrieved from https://adventure.com/venezuelan-delta-warao-people-tourism/
  3. Gray, A. (1987). Indigenous Peoples of Venezuela-Self-Determination and Colonisation. Mennesker og Rettigheter, 5, 45. Retrieved from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/norjhur5&div=57&id=&page=
  4. Lander, E. (n.d.). The longterm crisis of the Venezuelan oil rentier model and the present crisis the country faces. Longreads. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from https://longreads.tni.org/longterm-crisis-venezuelan-oil-rentier-model-present-crisis-country-faces/
  5. Minority Rights Group. (2017, December). Warao and Kariña. Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/warao-and-karina/
  6. ‘Silent genocide’ of indigenous peoples denounced in Venezuela. (2015, October 13). Forest Peoples Programme. http://www.forestpeoples.org/en/topics/economic-social-cultural-rights/news/2015/10/silent-genocide-indigenous-peoples-denounced-ven