The Rights of Venezuela’s Colombians
As North Americans debate
the questions of cross-bor-
der class relations raised by
NAFTA, Antonio Navarro Wolff,
the former guerrilla leader and cur-
rent candidate for president of
Colombia [see “Interview With
Navarro Wolff,” p. 12] has sparked
an Andean version of the same
debate. There are somewhere
between one and a half and three
million Colombians currently liv-
ing and working in neighboring
Venezuela. While some of them
manage to find stable, well-paying
jobs, most occupy the lowest rung
of the job ladder-typically finding
work on farms or in Venezuela’s
growing informal sector.
Navarro Wolff has accused the
Venezuelan National Guard of
human rights abuses against undoc-
umented Colombian immigrants.
He claims the Guard sells immi-
grants false Venezuelan identity
papers for exorbitant sums, and
submits those who are unable or
unwilling to pay to various forms
of torture and abuse.
On October 19, 1993, with
Navarro’s active assistance, some
of Venezuela’s Colombians sought
to amplify their human-rights con-
cerns by holding a “First Encuentro
of Colombians in Venezuela” at the
Central University of Venezuela in
Caracas. The meeting, together
with a recent Amnesty Internation-
al report entitled “Venezuela: The
Eclipse of Human Rights,” created
a heated controversy over the role
and behavior of Venezuela’s law
enforcement authorities-above all,
the National Guard.
The meeting took place as the
quality of life for most Venezue-
lans continued its rapid decline. Oil
revenues in this formerly oil-rich
country have been falling for ten
years, and the austerity program of
the outgoing government has made
day-to-day life a real struggle for
all but the very wealthy. Squeezed
and demoralized, most Venezue-
lans seem in no mood to support
the human rights of immigrant
workers. In fact, as prices rise,
incomes fall, and social spending is
cut, many Venezuelans are scape-
goating Colombians for the grow-
ing social disorder. Colombians are
vilified for living off social assis-
tance, for petty thievery, and for
introducing the guerrilla-Colom-
bia’s ELN operates along the bor-
der, occasionally kidnapping ranch-
ers and attacking National Guard
Patrols–to Venezuelan soil.
month after the Colom-
bians’ First Encuentro,
Venezuela’s Foreign Minis-
ter, Fernando Ochoa Antich, joined
the chorus of intolerance. He called
the meeting “unacceptable,” and
announced he would check with the
“competent authorities” to deter-
mine precisely which laws had
been violated. In a letter to the
organizers, he said: “In your condi-
tion as foreigners, you can’t hold
meetings with political ends on
Venezuelan territory.”
Cranking up the conflict a notch,
Navarro responded-from Bogotd,
where resentment of Venezuela has
a long history-by reiterating his
charges and defending the Colom-
bians’ contributions to Venezuela.
“If the Colombians in Venezuela
didn’t get up at four in the morning
to milk the cows and run the print-
ing presses,” he told a Bogoti press
conference, “Venezuelans wouldn’t
have milk or newspapers for their
breakfasts.”
Following Navarro’s remarks,
Venezuela’s Minister of Defense,
Radam6s Mufioz L6on, ordered a
military indictment against him for
defaming the country. “If he sets
foot on Venezuelan soil,” said
Mufioz Ldon, “he will be detained
and taken to an appropriate tri-
bunal.” Navarro said he would
gladly pursue the dispute in
Venezuela and that over 100
Colombians would be willing to
testify about the Guard’s extortion
practices, even though recent
events might give them pause. “If I,
a presidential candidate,” he said
“could almost be taken prisoner for
making a simple statement, imag-
ine what could happen to a person
living in Venezuelan territory.”
The Colombian underclass in
Venezuela forms a part of Navar-
ro’s natural constituency, and his
standing in the presidential polls
has risen since he has presented
himself as their defender. Mufioz
Le6n’s natural constituency is the
Venezuelan clase dirigente, and, as
the populist President-elect Rafael
Caldera prepares to take office, Mu-
fioz is seen by many as the strong-
est and most reliable defender of
the business community’s neoliber-
al agenda. Indeed, many in that
community have openly been call-
ing for a stronger military presence,
and despite the country’s eighth
consecutive democratic presidential
election, no one is discounting the
possibility of a strong military
“guarantee” of social peace.
A military bid for power would
look nothing like the intentonas of
1992 which were led by middle-
level officers with roots in Vene-
zuela’s popular classes. The coup
that many now fear would come
not from some ill-defined populist
space, but from the Right. It would
be led not by lieutenants, but by
generals. And it would call not for
popular participation, but for
order, open markets, and a “clean-
ing out” of the barrios. The benign
model is Fujimori; the more realis-
tic model is Pinochet. Beneath the
layers of nationalist rhetoric, the
Mufioz-Navarro conflict is not
between countries, but between
social classes.
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