“There is No Homeland Without Us”: Day of Indigenous Resistance

In elementary school, in the United States, we’re taught about the pilgrims, the beginnings of “Thanksgiving” and later, the plagues that wiped out indigenous peoples. The majority of US citizens don’t question the real histories behind why they eat turkey in November; celebrate Christopher Columbus or why the remaining indigenous peoples live on reservations.  And to think beyond the borders of US history is virtually unspoken.  

The article below touches on these histories, asks people (specifically in the US), to think about what we celebrate and why. What are the interests behind it? And, whose histories are we ignoring in the process? 

The scene is Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1992. This year, when Spain and other nations celebrated the slave trade and exploitation of African peoples, the genocide of indigenous civilizations across the Americas, and the rape of women and land, in Haiti, the people tour down the statue that disgustingly honored Christopher Columbus, on the Quincentenary of European colonization in the Americas and the beginnings of capitalism as we know it today. 

Venezuelans do not celebrate genocide. On October 12^th, this week the United States celebrates Columbus Day is celebrated and Spain, Day of the Spanish. In Venezuela, the Yukpa, Wayúu, Japreira, Añú, Barí and other indigenous peoples, their histories, cultures and struggles are nationally recognized. Formerly recognized as “Dia de la Raza” and “Dia del Descubrimiento”, Day of Indigenous Resistance began October 10, 2002 with Hugo Chavez’s presidential decree 2.028 (see link: http://www.minci.gob.ve/actualidad/2/5649/dia_de_la.html)  . 

In Venezuela’s constitution, the government recognizes “indigenous social, political and economic organizations, their cultures, customs, languages and religions as well as their environment and their rights as original peoples of the land that they have ancestrally and traditionally occupied and which are necessary for their development and their forms of life.”  The constitution guarantees indigenous rights to: natural resources found in indigenous lands,  preserve and develop their ethnic and cultural identities, values, spirituality, healthcare, economic practices and political participation are among the many (see link for constitution:  http://www.constitucion.ve/documentos/ConstitucionRBV1999-ES.pdf). 

Following the people’s revision of the constitution, the indigenous have representatives in the National Assembly, a department in the Ministry of the Communes and require state recognition of ancestral lands.

Murals in Downtown Caracas

Within the last year, over 41,600 hectares of land titles have been returned to Yukpa indigenous communities. The Yukpa, approximately 10,000 who principally reside along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, continue to struggle against hacendados who claim private landownership over the Yukpa’s ancestral land.  

The Yukpa and other indigenous communities continue to make demands on the Venezuelan government: the call for state demarcation of collective land, to be tried by ancestral indigenous laws, and language rights in the educational system. Though the constitution guarantees these right, their institutional implementation has yet to dramatically change.

The indigenous in Venezuela share a cross-national struggle with other indigenous peoples and that’s the fight for land as well as cultural and historical preservation—and their collective survival depends on their victory.

In Honduras, this week indigenous, Afro and Afro-indigenous communities commemorated “518 Years of European Invasions to Our Continent” with demonstrations in throughout the country and in front of the US and Spanish embassies in Tegucigalpa. 

“We commemorate Day of Indigenous, Black, Mestizo and Popular Resistance throughout the continent. We continue to fight against occupation and intervention, as Lempira, Mota, Barauda, Cincumba, Copan, Calel, and all our liberators taught us,” explained Berta Cáceres of COPINH (The Civic Council of Honduran Popular and Indigenous Organizations). 

In Honduras, the fight for the constitutional assembly and reconstruction of Honduras continues despite the June 28, 2009 coup. 

In Mexico the indigenous Maya of Chiapas who form the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional and whose uprising in 1994 is a symbol of today’s resistance. They continue to fight against the multinational land grabs, the Mexican government’s militarization of Chiapas and US imperialism which funds and supports these neoliberal efforts to massacre and disappear entire communities and civilizations. In neighboring Guatemala, the struggle against mining companies and disappearances of people’s political, union and community leaders continues. Following the histories of the 1980s when more thousands of indigenous Maya campesinos were massacred by the Guatemalan state with US direction and funding. 

Interview (Spanish) with Spokeswoman of the Mapuche

And in Chile, the Mapuche culminate almost three months of hunger strike against the Anti-Terrorist Law. This law, written during the dictatorship of Agosto Pinochet following the US backed coup of Socialist President Salvador Allende, categorizes the Mapuche as terrorists. The spokesperson for the Mapuche still committed to the hunger strike explained, “There doesn’t exist any flags for the strike of the imprisoned Mapuche…We respond to the communities, to the people that are victims of state repression.”[1]

Photos taken from:

http://www.fuerzasocialistaantv.org/fuerzaantv/images/stories/e/DSC00291.jpg

http://es.comunicas.org/2010/09/14/mapuches-presos-radicalizan-huelga-de-hambre-ante-la-indiferencia-del-gobierno/#axzz12TA3MeCa

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[1] Quote taken from October 6^th article, http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=114285.