When Hugo Chávez campaigned for the Venezuelan presidency in 1998, he not only expressed solidarity but claimed kinship with the country’s small indigenous population. One of his grandmothers, he told a Venezuelan public accustomed to seeing non-Indian “criollos” in high public office, was a member of the Pumé ethnic group of the Venezuelan llanos. Since taking office in early 1999, he has presided over a number of significant changes for the indigenous minority—a minority that makes up only 1.5% of the country’s population.[1] For one thing, there is a new indigenous participation in the country’s political life. Three indigenous representatives were elected to the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), the body that drafted a new constitution in 1999; three members of the Venezuelan National Assembly are indigenous; and an indigenous governor, Liborio Guarulla, heads the state of Amazonas. Chávez also appointed a woman from the Wayúu ethnic group of western Venezuela to the Ministry of the Environment, though she is no longer occupying that post.
These events and achievements are nothing short of remarkable; indigenous peoples had never before been given the opportunity to enter the political arena at such high levels of decision-making. Indeed, only in 1999 did Venezuela officially recognize its cultural and linguistic plurality—one of the last South American countries to do so. Having said that, it must be added that the process has not been simple, nor has it met with unanimous approval from the country’s indigenous groups—not to mention the criollos.
When Chávez’s government indicated that three positions on the ANC would be reserved for indigenous representatives, many Indians welcomed the news. Others, however, especially those who lived in more distant areas and under more rustic conditions, had very little idea of what was going on, and others actively mistrusted the process. Nor was the election of the three indigenous representatives a smooth process. A first election was challenged by several indigenous groups who felt they had not been adequately informed about the election nor properly represented during the meetings that led to the vote. Others raised charges of irregularities, partisan manipulation and deliberate confusion in the electoral process. Indeed, the election was repeated—and the outcome was the same—after the National Electoral Council (CNE) reviewed the complaints and decreed that a second election was necessary.
Despite these conflicts, the presence of indigenous representatives proved to be crucial as the ANC debated—and approved—proposals for the recognition of indigenous rights. Indeed, several opponents of the new constitution alleged that the document granted too many rights to indigenous peoples, who, in the opponents’ view, constituted a small and insignificant segment of the population. In fact, one of the most heated debates at the ANC took place when Chapter VIII of Title III, spelling out the rights and duties of indigenous peoples, was discussed. When that chapter was being debated, one prominent participant almost swayed the entire assembly against it by emphasizing that the recognition of indigenous pueblos with ample rights would dismember the Venezuelan nation and lead to Indians declaring themselves separate nations. One of the indigenous delegates, Noelí Pocaterra, played a key role during those debates, in which she skillfully incorporated images and words from the Indian and the criollo world and swayed—via much emotion—assembly members to the Indian’s side.
While the Indians and their supporters had to curtail many of their initial aspirations, the new constitution acknowledges the existence of indigenous peoples and their communities, as well as their social, political and economic systems of organization. Though Spanish is declared the official language of the Republic, the document also states that indigenous languages must be respected throughout the country and are official for indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are designated a cultural heritage of the nation and of humanity. The constitution also recognizes the habitats and lands traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples, traditional native medicine (subject to bioethical principles) and indigenous people’s right to maintain and develop their cultural identities, values and spirituality. Indigenous collective intellectual property rights are also sanctioned and protected. The registration of patents for genetic resources or for the ancestral knowledge associated with those resources is prohibited.
These new rights are noteworthy since until the early 1960s, the Venezuelan government, with the Catholic Church as a key ally, held a benign but paternalistic stance toward its indigenous population. Over time, this stance assumed, that the Indian population could be brought into full membership in “civilized” society. The policies emanating from this assumption were based on “liberal evolutionism” and a paternalistic “indigenism.” This indigenism was put into practice in the Mission Law of 1915, designed to “reduce” and “attract to citizenship life” the country’s extant Indian tribes and “partialities.” During the 1970s, indigenist policy in Venezuela became more complex, but the state still sought cultural homogenization. To achieve this goal it encouraged the expansion of its economic frontiers and increasingly “relied upon the assimilating effects of the multiple forces put into play by the dominant national culture.”[2] Christian missionaries began to function as buffers between the indigenous minorities and the culturally destructive forces unleashed by the state’s expansionist plans. In this way Venezuela reached the end of the twentieth century practicing a kind of cultural destruction labeled “ethnophagy”—the devouring of culture—by anthropologist Héctor Díaz Polanco. This devouring of culture, says Díaz Polanco, is achieved via “a collection of sociocultural magnets deployed by the nation-state and the hegemonic apparatus to attract, disarticulate, and dissolve groups that [are] different.”[3]
These culturally destructive “magnets” have burgeoned in indigenous areas.[4] There, a host of national and international agencies, NGOs and indigenous organizations have started to offer new avenues of information and means of social action. Over time, several Indian leaders and organizations have gained national and international exposure. Likewise, many Indian communities have diversified their economic activities through mining, tourism, and small-scale cooperatives. However, the push and pull generated by so many “sociocultural magnets” exacerbated the fragmentation of individual and collective bonds in many communities. It also helped catapult many Indians into political life in the mid-to-late 1990s. This political activism was further galvanized by the Chávez movement, which promised profound change and the emergence of a new nation, the “Fifth Republic.”
These political developments may lead one to believe that Chávez, like his predecessors, is just drawing indigenous peoples into citizenship and the world of criollos. While involvement in national politics unavoidably leads to greater engagement with the non-indigenous world, the new constitution allows for participation within the context of officially recognized cultural differences. Thus, cultural homogeneity is not deemed a prerequisite or the foundation for full citizenship as was the case with prior official indigenist policies. Today, at least theoretically, the notion of citizenship has been expanded so that one may be culturally different yet still participate and be represented, in national politics. In any event, Venezuelan Indians are not advocating separation from the nation but access to spaces and places that were historically off limits to them.
This past December, indigenous Venezuelans gained access to one such space. A ceremony took place in which the symbolic remains of the sixteenth century cacique Guaicaipuro, renowned for his battles against the Spaniards, were transferred to the National Pantheon in Caracas. Indians have thus “entered,” with President Chávez’s blessing, one of the most prominent symbolic sites on the political landscape, the burial place of the country’s most revered patriots, including Simón Bolívar. On the symbolic level, at least, indigenous Venezuelans have achieved a new degree of national respect.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Lourdes Giordani and María Eugenia Villalón are anthropologists at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the Central University of Venezuela, respectively. They have worked collaboratively among Venezuelan indigenous peoples.
NOTES
1. See República de Venezuela, Censo Indígena de Venezuela 1992, Tomo II, Nomenclador de Asentamientos (Caracas: Presidencia de la República, Oficina Central de Estadística e Informática, 1995).
2. Héctor Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples in Latin America: The Quest for Self-Determination (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p. 71; also see Antonio Rafael Boadas, Geografía del Amazonas Venezolano (Caracas: Ariel-Seix Barral, 1983).
3. Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples in Latin America.
4. Alberto Valdez, “Las empresas indígenas en una estrategia de desarrollo regional,” in Omar González and Andrés Serbin, eds.,Indigenismo y Autogestión (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1980), pp. 149-170; Antonio Rafael Boadas,Geografía del Amazonas Venezolano; Gerardo Clarac, “Los programas indígenas del IAN: Metodología e implementación,” in Omar González and Andrés Serbin, eds., Indigenismo y Autogestión (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1980), pp. 121-139.
