Venezuelan Yukpa Chief: Paramilitaries Trying to “Erase” Us

[Judi Lynn]

Venezuelan Yukpa Chief: Paramilitaries Trying to “Erase” Us
By Z. C. Dutka

San Francisco July 9th, 2014. (venezuelanalysis.com)- Around fifty armed men allegedly assaulted and forcefully removed Yukpa cacica (chief) Carmen “Anita” Fernandez from her land in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia last Monday.

Fernandez’s son Cristobal, 20, was murdered just six days before by corrupt National Guard hired by wealthy ranchers in repeated attempts to force the family’s removal from the area, witnesses have claimed. The community leader had already lost two of her sons in 2012.

The Fernandez family, like many of the indigenous Yukpa ethnic group, have long stood in struggle to reclaim the areas now owned and controlled by wealthy cattle ranchers in the mountainous Sierra de Perijá. Their claims are grounded in the 1999 National Constitution and the Indigenous Peoples Law, championed by late President Hugo Chavez, which granted a number of political and legal rights to Venezuela’s indigenous populations, as well as the demarcation and granting of ancestral lands.

The statute permitted many indigenous populations, such as the south eastern Pemon people, the kind of autonomy that was previously long denied to them. However, powerful ranchers in the fertile valleys of Perijá in the west have refused to relinquish their grip on the area, leading to an all out land war in 2008, when the Yukpa began to occupy disputed areas.

More:
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10783

[Judi Lynn]

1. Venezuela: new attack on indigenous leader

Venezuela: new attack on indigenous leader
Submitted by WW4 Report on Wed, 07/09/2014 - 02:10 Andean Theater

In the latest in a string of violent incidents related to land disputes in Venezuela's western Sierra de Perijá, on June 30 Yukpa indigenous leader Carmen "Anita" Fernández Romero and her son Luis Adolfo were wounded in an attack near her village of Kuse. According to reports, some 50 men armed with rifles and machetes set upon an encampment Fernández Romero and her family had established on the local hacienda El Carmen, which she asserts is on usurped Yukpa traditional lands. Members of the army and Boliviarian National Guard reportedly werre on hand, but did not intervene as the men began beating Fernández Romero and her son. Just four days earlier, another of Fernández Romero's sons, Cristóbal Fernández Fernández, 19, was killed—reportedly in a beating by National Guard troops. He was the third of Fernández Romero's sons to have met a violent death in the past five years. Fernández Romero is currently hospitalized, recovering from her injuries. She has been under an official order of protection since July 2012 following threats against her, but local environmental group Sociedad Homo Et Natura, which supports the Yukpa land struggle, asserts that it is going unenforced. (Entorno Inteligente, La Guarura, Aporrea, July 1; Aporrea, June 24)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/13368

(Short article, no more at link.)

[Marksman_91]

2. Surprised you're actually reporting on government-controlled forces doing atrocities for once

[Judi Lynn]

3. Anyone who reads the article will be able to understand it. Don't try to spin it.

No one at a Democratic message board needs back seat reading instructions from oligarchs. Everyone can figure things out quite well for him/herself.

[delrem]

4. Sometimes, if one closes one's eyes and shuts down all critical abilities,

it can almost seem as if they give a shit, can't it?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Yes, blind, and ignorant. It might work then......

Whoever could read that article and not be conscious enough to recognize the pattern of wealthy landowners getting militaries to do their "bloodwork" for them for some nice money on the side, and attempt to claim the democratically elected government which is TOTALLY different from the parasitic oligarchs (elites, living off the life's blood and energy of the working public) is responsible for this is wildly unhinged.

The wealthy landowners despise the government of Hugo Chavez which purchased some those areas which were lying fallow, and ceded them to the campesinos so that they could grow food, and possibly make a small profit. The landowners are trying to steal it from them (and the government). Quite a vast difference in the motivations.

It really can make one almost physically ill seeing these sneaky clowns plying their trade time after time, attempting to insert lies where the truth is here, and on other message boards. Who would want to live like that?

[Marksman_91]

6. Those "wealthy landowners" are most likely to be Chavista bigheads

Or do you truly think that those GNBs are actually gonna be punished for what they did? What will your reaction be if their actions are left impugn by the government-controlled authorities? Will you finally stop being so stubborn and accept that the Venezuelan government is corrupt?

[Al Carroll]

7. What's your evidence, besides your ideological fanaticism?

The link described paramilitaries working for landowners. Let's see your evidence they work for the govt or are allied.

Until then, you're just assuming with nothing to back it up.

The govt has been corrupt...but less corrupt than it was before. People actually often get indicted and imprisoned now for corruption, something unheard of before the Bolivarians.