During
the night of March 3, 2013 Yukpa Cacique Sabino Romero, well known for his
defense of the rights of the Yukpa people, was assassinated on Chaktapa
Highway, in the Sierra de Perijá (Zulia State). Since November 13, 2003 when
President Hugo Chavez, speaking at El Menito, Lagunillas, announced the
increase in carbon exploitation to 36 million metric tons per year in the
territories inhabited by different native ethnic groups, Sabino Romero was one
of the people from indigenous communities that mobilized to protest the
consequences their land would suffer due to the expansion of mega-mining in
their region. Sabino’s struggle focused on obtaining the zoning and title to
the indigenous territories, for which he put together different mobilizations
in Zulia State as well as in Caracas, using different means of struggle, among
them direct action and occupation of indigenous lands in the hands of cattle
ranchers.
Sabino’s
autonomy in the struggle was the motive for a strategy shared among all
regional and national powers interested in the continuous exploitation of
indigenous lands. In 2009 two communities, one of them Sabino’s, occupied a
farm in Chaktapa, Zulia, to protest the slow pace of the zoning process. The
national executive put in place a strategy to divide the occupiers, and in an
obscure deed three natives were assassinated. That was the perfect excuse to
take back the farm the military way and to criminalize Sabino Romero, who spent
18 months in prison accused of the homicide. While the ranchers accused him of
cattle rustling, the regional private media stoked the dirty war against the
indigenous struggle with the support of allies in Caracas: the Interior and
Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami and the Indian Affairs Minister Nicia
Maldonado. While the bureaucratic Chavists distracted the indigenous struggle
with delays, excuses and media spectacles every 12 of October, other Chavist
sectors isolated Sabino and the Yukpa from the solidarity of other social movements
and revolutionaries not dependent on Miraflores [TN: Venezuela’s “White
House”]. On all fronts, this strategy was put in place by each and every one of
the beneficiaries of an economy based primarily on the exportation of minerals
and energy from the country.
The
assassination of the Yukpa warrior is cloaked in official versions that
distract attention from the real culprits. These versions count on the
amplifying effect of the official newspaper Panorama, well known for its
generous publicity of state enterprises PDVSA, Corpuzulia and Carbonzulia, and
vouched for by political and military organisms, the same ones who have been
trampling on the indigenous communities of Sierra del Perija with the
complicity of the cattle ranchers of the area. It is very telling that the
assassination plans Sabino denounced would be perpetrated in Zulia now that the
state is under political control of the Bolivarians. As is the case of other
assassinated social fighters, the official media scandals will guarantee impunity.
Sabino’s
struggle was against the developmental model based on the extraction and
commercialization of oil, gas and minerals for the world market, a role
assigned to Venezuela by the economic globalization. The deepening of the
state’s oil capitalism hides its consequences to the environment and the
peasant and indigenous communities.The real cause for the delays in the zoning
and granting of indigenous land is that that’s where the mineral resources to
be exported are located. That’s why Sabino’s struggle was against the model.
That’s why they had to get him out of the way, no matter how. That’s why there
are 13 murdered Yukpa, all of them unsolved till today. As was evident at the
trial against the organizations that supported his fight (Homoetnatura and
Provea) they had to take away whatever support he might get.
El Libertario will reject and
denounce in every space we can reach the assassination of Sabino Romero, and
will continue to broadcast the indigenous struggles as well as other autonomous
social struggles in this country. Sabino joins the roster of fighters
assassinated during the Bolivarian government for defending their rights,
together with Mijail Martinez, Luis Hernandez, Richard
Gallardo and Carlos Requena. The only polarization we anarchists recognize is
that between governors and governed, between the powerful and the weak, between
bosses and workers, in general, between victims and perpetrators. Therefore we
will ask nothing of the perpetrators, we expect nothing from their fake justice
or the crocodile tears of the bureaucrats who empowered Sabino’s execution.
Like yesterday, today and tomorrow, we will continue to mobilize with all those
who struggle against the power, waiting for the day when the blood of our
people will be vindicated.
El
Libertario
March 4,
2013
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