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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/10/us-venezuela-indigenous-idUSTRE75901820110610
Barefoot college helps Venezuela Indians fight back
Thu, Jun 9 2011
By Frank Jack Daniel
CANO TAUCA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Every morning, groups of
tribespeople cross a jungle creek from their adobe student homes
and wander barefoot through savanna inhabited by boa constrictors
to reach class at Venezuela's first indigenous university.
The original residents of Venezuela's forests, Caribbean coves and
swampy plains, dozens of Amerindian ethnic groups now make up only
a fraction of the 29 million people in the South American country
dominated by the oil industry.
Like similar groups across the world, their habitat and way of
life in a vast, long-neglected region of forests and waterways
around the Orinoco river are increasingly threatened by illegal
mining, ranchers and evangelical Christianity.
Adding to the mix of influences are socialist aid programs from
President Hugo Chavez, who has placed Venezuela's Indian identity
at the heart of his home-spun revolution.
Many are grateful for the help, but others say it splits villages
and draws them into cash economies dominated by non-Indians.
"They offer me an outboard motor for my canoe, then I have to get
a job to buy gasoline and oil," said Najiru, a 23-year-old
student, whose Warao tribe lives scattered in the delta at the
mouth of the Orinoco.
On a campus that sprawls from grassland into thick jungle, 100
students drawn from many of the country's 44 recognized tribes are
trying to fight back at the university, which teaches ancient
customs alongside modern law and technology.
"This university is the best hope for saving our cultures," said
Najiru, working on a plan for a forest farming thesis on a laptop
in a dirt-floor hut.
The goal is to create leaders who can defend land rights and
prevent a headlong rush into modernity from destroying thousands
of years of knowledge about forest and river life.
Students and teachers are also racing to put into writing the
wisdom of elders that is not being handed down orally as in
previous generations and may soon vanish.
"The elders are living libraries," said teacher and Ye'kuana
Indian Emjayumi Torres, 27, one of the school's first graduates.
Unlike peers who study in regular schools in Venezuelan towns and
often sever ties with their rural homelands, these students need
no city clothes for class. They sleep in hammocks and cook on open
fires.
AID AND DEPENDENCY
Founded seven years ago, the Venezuelan Indigenous University is
to be incorporated into the national higher education system this
year. That will bring funds for classrooms and curriculum.
It also carries risks.
Torres, the teacher, chalks a timeline of Venezuela's indigenous
history across a blackboard in an airy classroom. A dozen students
take notes, the faces of some painted with traditional symbols,
others fiddling with mobile phones.
"The door has opened so Indians can participate in the state,"
said Torres after class, wearing a Bob Marley tee-shirt. "But that
door also brings problems. In his contact with the government the
Indian is at times just an assistant."
Soon after taking office in 1998, Chavez created a new
constitution which for the first time enshrines indigenous rights,
including claims to long-occupied land.
Chavez himself claims indigenous roots and the tribes' support
gives a home-grown identity to his revolution, along with the
ideas of independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Twelve years on, a government presence is common even in the most
remote Indian villages deep in the Amazon, where Hercules cargo
planes and helicopters deliver food, medicine and doctors.
Therein lies the problem. While aid and government jobs are a
welcome relief from the harsh reality of jungle life, for many
Indians, Chavez is creating dependency and weakening traditional
elders with politicized community councils.
"They are going to wipe out these cultures in no time if these
policies are not corrected," said Jose Korta, 81, a Jesuit priest
who is a founder of the university.
He says money flowing into villages often ends up spent on alcohol
in stores owned by non-Indian ranchers who have invaded their
territory, pushing Indians to shrinking patches of land.
The thorny subject of recognizing tribal land, much of which
straddles borders with Colombia and Brazil and is rich in
minerals, is bogged down as Chavez tries to balance economic
priorities and sovereignty concerns with the obligations in the
constitution.
University alumni are mapping territory using GPS handsets to
pinpoint hills and rivers that elders have identified for their
tribes.
LAPTOPS BUT NO ELECTRICITY
Out in the villages, many Indians long for modern comforts,
including protection against preventable diseases.
In the village of Keipon, about 40 Enapa Indian families live in
adobe huts nestled in a lush range of hills near a broad tributary
of the Orinoco river. The Enapa hunt birds and grow rice, fruit
and vegetables in family gardens.
Most here work the land, unlike other hamlets where government
cash lets many buy subsidized food that can cause dietary issues
as pasta and flour replace traditional fare.
Like most Indian groups, the Enapa have long been in contact with
the world but now face faster change. The government, Evangelicals
and university graduates are all jostling for influence.
"We need a more comfortable life," said village nurse Kushewa,
inside a crumbling adobe clinic, stocked with a small range of
medicines. Officials have approved funds to build a new brick
clinic, but so far only the roof has arrived.
"We have no transport and when someone falls sick here we have no
way of taking them elsewhere," he said.
The government also gave simple laptops to a dozen schoolchildren
in April. But there is no electricity supply, so the computers can
only be charged with a small generator, when villagers have
gasoline to spare.
Funds won by the government-aligned community council were used to
build houses with gleaming zinc roofs in the center of the
village. Though liked for offering less refuge for snakes, they
are so hot that in summer families move back into their old
palm-roofed homes for relief.
One man, Wine, returned to Keipon after graduating from the
university. After consulting with villagers, he helped pipe clean
water from a mountain spring into homes. That's the kind of
approach the university is seeking: changes that improve people's
lives without destroying their traditional ways and are not
imposed upon them.
But there is a bigger change to life in Keipon. Last year, one
family converted to Protestant Christianity, and now half the
villagers have followed suit.
Elsewhere south of the Orinoco, entire villages have switched from
Catholicism, which most indigenous groups have some allegiance to
and often tolerates pre-Hispanic customs.
Pre-school teacher Yaneth Avila, 23 gives classes in Enapa. She
says religious schisms cause tension and could end rites such as a
month-long mass-naming ceremony for young children.
"We are practically losing our culture because Creole ways are
squeezing in, we are switching one culture for another," said
Avila, breast-feeding her baby as parrots flitted by.
(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Kieran Murray)
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