I have known about the possible massacre of a tribe of Yanomami indians for at least two weeks. The report was that some Brazilian gold diggers, or “garimpeiros” had killed 80 indians. A reader (VJ) even noted that in Chavismo circles, the garimpeiros were said to be all work of the US Government and its mercenaries to destabilize Chavez. But what is truly appalling, is to have the Minister of Defense say that he sort of had heard about it, but is not sure, but by next week, he should have confirmation. Because it is now that they sent someone to check it out. It takes the Venezuelan Government one week (plus whatever time has elapsed already) to learn about its citizens being massacred. Some Minister of “Defense”
Then comes the threats, if it is found to be false, he will take legal measures against those that claimed this was true.
And I ask: What if it is found to be true? Will he assume responsibility and resign?
Can he sue all the other liars in Government for us?
The Devil's Excrement 
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September 5, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Kepler: I do think it is the key element, comparing times when shipping too time and was expensive to today is not valid. Today you can ship water (!!) cheaply across the ocean and make money, that makes a huge difference, To me it is the key because Governments that protect eventually pay for it and most get stuck on their controls, there are very few examples of success with controls and these allow the private sector to flourish, even if they try controls.
September 5, 2012 at 12:27 pm
a video which illustrates the point of how we act as human beings when we feel something very missing from our lives.This goes for all human beings.
I see that on many political blogs people seem to think that controlling everything that goes on will make life better.
I beg to disagree.We all have to the right to be different and to decide our own fates.God or the fates or the people save us from political control freaks!
The only thing I see relevant to control in the case of Yanomami are the borders in order to protect them from criminals.For heaven sakes!
September 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
Charles,
A good relationship for them would be if Chavez can give another of his books to Obama.
September 5, 2012 at 10:06 am
Biggest lie of the day-from Nicholas Maduro:
“Si alguien ha estado interesado en tener relaciones buenas con los EE.UU. es el presidente Chávez”, resaltó el canciller.
There is no lie too big for these automatons to tell.
This is not just a “lie”. It is a “damn big lie”.
September 5, 2012 at 9:59 am
“What are they missing that they need this?”
Not only Germany-but throughout Europe. My friend from Poland is
nuts about Indians, for example-and told me about many Polish people are
the same.
It is the appeal of naturalism, or nativism- tribalism-this started when the
“New World” was discovered and books were written with drawings etc
about native people- they were bestsellers in Europe..
September 5, 2012 at 7:57 pm
I share with you all a few related vignettes that may answer some of the comments on Native societies …
In the mid-1960’s, I went away to a city high school 3,000 miles away from home. The religious teacher, at the time, an odious woman, showed us films, ‘jactándose’ of the conversion of native children to christian faith/values and euro-based views. The tool for that conversion was the residential school, operated by various religious groups, notably of the Anglican and Catholic faiths, throughout several Canadian provinces, mostly Ontario and Quebec. In droves, native children were pulled away from their communities and sent to these far-flung outposts.
Around the 1990s, the gruesome aspects of those experiences surfaced. But the odious woman had died by then, not before having become school principal for a few years. If she were alive, today, I wonder how she would squirrel out of/rationalize her comments of decades ago.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission is now in progress, in Canada. I think it’s important, especially for those anglo canadians who have a tendency to be smug, like they’re the only ones who know the Truth.
One of the recurring themes of this Commission, beyond the abuse that these survivors of residential schools, is the loss of language. I can think of few things as traumatic as this. And you’d empathize, if you had ever come close to the experience. Language is the essence of your primary identity, the loss of which can be devastating.
There’s a 100-foot + wall at an architecturally refurbished Native Ctr in downtown Toronto. On it is wallpaper of a low-opacity, sepia toned photograph, showing winter woods of silver birch. Superimposed, almost crowding the winter woods are hellos and welcomes of various sizes, in all the native languages of this western hemisphere. And there are so many Native languages! For me, the wall is the most impressive part of the Centre, even more so than the outstanding medicinal garden on the building’s rooftop, its sweat lodge, aspects of conservation that are so ingrained in Native culture, the well-thought out architecture. En fin, it was a privelege for me to get to know some of the Native directors and staff, when I exhibited my enlarged photo-impressions of PowWow dancers in motion with swirls of magnificent colour.
May I suggest that those who scoff at people who are fascinated by PowWows learn a little something (yes, you can teach old dogs new tricks) and actually attend one of these?
September 6, 2012 at 9:15 am
All very true Syd about language- that is the case/has been all over the world-esp. for example India and Africa and China.
Another angle- remember “the Greatest Show on Earth” . Even now, certain places, natives get dressed and perform for tourists…
I am not scoffing at Pow-wows (although at one reservation I lived nearby-there were hundreds of tiny cabins where whites came once a year to see the big pow-wow and party -I never went there to it…)
No, most of the natives I saw esp. males- did not finish school and were not dependable workers. They seemed lost and confused.
On a rare occasion I have met one who came from reservation and started a business for example and succeeded. Those said they were glad they left
and that the” reservation mentality”-atmosphere was terrible and the only thing to do was leave…
September 6, 2012 at 9:42 am
A little O/T – I heard about a tribe who had a very smart individual who upon encountering the English-learned English and writing-AND he developed
written language for his tribe -their language!
But, they were a small tribe and were wiped out.
September 6, 2012 at 9:43 am
As far as I know -that is /was the only case of developing a written language from a native language. This is the case worldwide too.
September 5, 2012 at 8:01 am
Kepler,
I am more interested in why Germans are so obsessed with the theme…German obsession with the Wild West —Cowboys, and Indians and the “poor” lost primitive tribes….guao!!!
the extent of it is a little astonishing.
At powwows — there are dozens every year — thousands of Germans with an American Indian fetish drink firewater, wear turquoise jewelry and run around Baden-Wurttemberg or Schleswig-Holstein dressed as Comanches and Apache.
What are they missing that they need this?
Now this German guy comes in to gives his 2 cents on a country that is not his, and I suppose pontificates on the way things should be for a people to whom he does not belong.
Don’t assume that everything is political.I believe in letting people live as they wish, to a certain extent.Draw a line around their territory and leave them be.If they want to leave, or change they are free to do so.
and I am not a ” lefty”… it’s a bad habit I have seen on these blogs of putting everything in a political context.
September 5, 2012 at 11:44 am
Firepigette,
The documentary was about Humboldt’s voyage. That was the only part where they showed that.
Still, that is not the point. Apparently as you feel uncomfortable with the topic (perhaps too many fundamentalist gringo friends?), you come up with something that is beside the point: why the Germans are interested in this at all. It doesn’t matter. It is the video I could find in a jiffy of a phenomenon I know very well…and I am Venezuelan.
Would it have been better for you if the video had been shot by a US American, preferably from the South?
Actually: I think there are as many Germans in Karl-May Indian outfit as there are US Americans or Britons in Nazi custom these days. Perhaps it is one of those crazy things people do. But as I said: it is beside the point.
This reality exists independent of the Germans. I saw it myself and I know quite some people – native Americans included – who have seen it.
I definitely don’t think Germans are missing more than white right-winged US Americans who are so much missing their Lost America. When are you going to get it back?
September 5, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Kepler,
Actually I don’t feel uncomfortable which is why I brought it up.As an agnostic I am not friends with any fundamentalists, BUT so what if I were?Isn’t it good to know many types of people? You are the one claiming to know many fundamentalists.
Still categorizing people in order not to address a point Kepler?So in so is lefty, others are gringos, still others are Nazis….these are not points.
It is important to know why some people meddle with others, while at the same time getting irritated when others do so.
Inferior minds speak of people, average minds of events, superior minds of ideas.
September 6, 2012 at 2:13 am
And you speak of ideas and I speak of people. OK.
September 5, 2012 at 7:05 pm
I am more interested in why certain American women are so obsessed with Venezuela that they can’t wait to inform strangers know that they wear alpargatas … guuaaoo!! and and have 1,000 (count’em) family members living in barrios, in Venezuela. The extent of the I’m-here-to-tell-you-that-I’m-as-venezuelan-as-you-are is a little astonishing, especially on these POLITICAL blogs.
September 4, 2012 at 1:34 pm
For those who speak German, here an interesting video about Amazonas, the native Americans and the US evangelicals
I hope one day we will have soon there a Venezuelan government that provides for health and education for the native Americans, not outsiders and not the military mafia.
September 4, 2012 at 5:50 pm
I wish the report had sub-titles or dubbing. (Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.)
September 5, 2012 at 3:41 am
Yeah, it’s a pity. I didn’t upload it. In any case: one of the things it shows is the rapid alienation the First Nations are going through because of the myriad of religious sects trying to win them over.
What I find depressing is how in Latin America people tend to swing between
“that’s the only solution” (because they are themselves members of such sets)
“there is nothing one can do, it’s unavoidable”
and
“I want them to remain as they are because that’s what I learnt in my anthropology studies plus my lefty orientation”
In the video they showed how the New Tribes are still there, in some remote areas with the Yanomamo, even if they do not have the clout they had before.
They showed how Venezuelan evangelicals now go there and preach and do everything in Spanish (I know that too well, as I know quite a lot of those Venezuelan evangelicals)…and everyone gives them freebies until they get dependant on those products.
What this part of the video didn’t show were the other things we know: the rape of the region by military and miners.
I don’t think we have to either go for a model of just meddling around there with no control or isolating them as if we had the right to keep them preserved from history.
First there must be a serious effort to provide solid non-religious, pluralistic education. The government needs to see to it they get property rights to their lands and transfers are controlled for quite some time to prevent miners from giving them broken glass for that land. The government needs to teach them to become sustainable in a new society but also give them means – by that I mean some basic hardware but above all training – to preserve as many of their customs as they want.
That’s why I wonder if something can be done as with the Sami in Scandinavia in the second half of the XX century.
September 5, 2012 at 4:02 am
I would say the “Sami” are quite successful. Also, contrary to what many believe many Eskimos in US territory and Canada are successful-fishing.
Also many small tribes inUS have become very rich from allowing gambling
facilities to be built on their lands.
What everyone hears about is the alcoholism, drug addiction, high rates of diabetes, very short life expectancy (esp. males). Many do not understand that native people have little ability to digest alcohol-it is poison. Also, they are very sensitive diet-wise-therefore many become overweight and diabetic.
Something rarely mentioned is -every tribe-a few Indians are involved in corruption, criminal activities-ex. smuggling.. for example- US near Mexico- Indian tribes allow illegal aliens and drug smugglers to cross their lands.
They have “autonomous control” and in some cases if “gringos” are found on their lands -they will be shot.
September 5, 2012 at 4:07 am
A couple of times when I was young I lived near Indian reservation-and saw many things. For example – nice houses built- and they were immediately trashed. Doors broken, windows broken – bathtub placed in the front yard to water the animals…
One reservation- most all men had these huge scars on their face- I forget what they called it? It was from them getting drunk, passing out and waking up with their face frozen to the concrete sidewalk and they tore themselves off the sidewalk and make this huge scar…
September 4, 2012 at 12:57 pm
the withdrawal of missionaries from the area has been a disadvantage
September 4, 2012 at 10:59 am
We note the interest and agitation shown by the government here and by governments around the world on the yet unverified story of 80 Yanomamö killed by Brazilian miners. Here is what seems to be the truth of the matter. We have been able to find out that a group of Yanomamö men from the upper Ocamo area walked into Parima, an area of Yanomamö where there used to be a missionary base. This group of men told that the entire upper Ocamo area was being over run with Brazilian miners and the yanomamö in the area were getting fearful for their lives. They asked that the proper authorities be informed. Since the Yanomamö in Parima still have a radio up there, they called out and told what was happening. Like the old game of “gossip” the story grew until it was the story that shocked everyone into action.
If the story would have been true, it would have been a huge tragedy. Especially since the Yanomamö themselves have been turning in reports of mining activity on the upper Ocamo river for years and basically they have fallen on deaf ears. But to me, what is even more of a tragedy are the hundreds of verified deaths among the Yanomamö and other indigenous tribes here in Amazonas state that have happened since missionary aviation was kicked out of the country and all village airstrips closed. Yet, no one is talking about these deaths.
The reality of life in the jungle today, is that with no access to speedy emergency evacuations, deaths that were once very preventable are happening with more and more frequency. While the gov does maintain an airstrip in Las Esmeralda, to many Yanomamö, that airstrip is days away by boat from their villages and even once they get there, many times they have to spend days waiting for a plane to come up and evacuate them out, days, they just don’t have in their weakened condition.
September 4, 2012 at 8:06 am
CharlesC:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/sell-the-farm-to-buy-a-future-as-chinas-food-bowl-20120531-1zkv0.html#ixzz25PtG71b5
September 4, 2012 at 11:50 am
I am very aware of this. Richer countries are buying up farms all over the world though- Madagascar for example- Saudis and S.Koreans.
Food security is a high priority for wealthy countries. Esp. ones that cannot feed themselves.
September 4, 2012 at 11:52 am
I forgot to mention that local Aussies and Kiwis are very nervous about so many Chinese buying farms and -my friend-a farmer in state of Victoria, AU said most claim they are getting their money out of China -because they think China is headed for crash. The problem-my friend said is-they don’t know anything about farming.
September 4, 2012 at 12:54 pm
interesting Charles
September 5, 2012 at 3:28 am
The world’s future food supply will be handled by new(er) technologies, such as hydroponics, which consume 10% of the water and fertilizer while doubling production. While enabling food to be grown where it is consumed.
The buying of farmland is a stopgap measure between now and then.
September 3, 2012 at 9:07 pm
What the US, China and others outside the region are doing matters little to Venezuela. Even the oil deal with China is a drop in the bucket unless you or your children die from the loss of revenue which, probably would have been stolen anyway.
What is this is that thanks to Chavez destroying or taking over every company he could, Brazil is now major exporter to Venezuela and with Mercorsur will be even bigger with Venezuela nothing to trade but USD. While there may be some Chavez-Lula cabal in all this, the fact is that Brazilians have been working hard to get out of the third world for several decades now. Positive computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivo_Inform%C3%A1tica is one example the tenth largest computer company in the world. Another is http://linear-tv.com/about-us/overview/ . They created the digital tv standard for SA and other countries world wide including Venezuela. The same can be said for other sectors like oilfield equipment, aircraft, agriculture and so on.
With Mercorsur , like it or not Venezuela will have the same trade practices as the other countries in the group. I see Venezuela being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century with or without Chavez.
September 3, 2012 at 6:18 pm
“The USA can be the poster child. Played to its inevitable end, it performs no better than communism. Those who doubt that, just give it a couple more years.” quote from m_astera.
I have always liked you Mr.Astera, (and I did not know you live in US or visit often.)Many things you said above I agree with-yet your conclusion I do not.
1.As corny as it sounds, don’t bet against the USA. Even with their huge debt..
2. China is marketing worldwide-not just in US. It’ s plainly a case of
“overproduction” by the Chinese. They flood the market for example with cheap shoes and put a country’s shoemakers out of business. How many shoemakers, bootmakers in VZ now?
3.I read somewhere that at the rate CHina is using resources -they will use all fo the resources in the world in the next 50 years…
4. You and I both agree that the future belongs to the most efficient and also the most sustainable.
Regardless of the system you call it- there are new rules and new technologies
that change the world. Now is the time for everyone to contribute to making the world a better place for the children-ie. the future. We have to clean up, go green, and become much less wasteful..Take it from here-m-astera.
September 3, 2012 at 8:33 am
Kepler: brazil began doing better when it adopted free markets, so I would not think your explanation is corrrect. Europe md the US are doing worse for complex reasons, which include too little free markets and too much freemarkets.
September 3, 2012 at 8:55 am
Miguel,
Brazil is doing better for more complex reasons than just “free trade”.
We can see how things are being done better: on one side you have
Venezuela and badly but not as bad, Argentina, in the middle you have Brazil, that takes usually whatever it needs at the moment – Realpolitik –
and on the other side you have…well, you don’t have anything because
whenever a country opens up as rapidly as some here preach,
it collapses or they say “it didn’t open fast enough, it was not really free trade but monopolies etc”. It sounds a little bit like what socialists say: it was not really socialism but state capitalism etc. Whatever it is, pure remedies never work. They have never ever worked. If you think otherwise, give me one single example.
If you can admit that Europe and the US are doing worse “for complex reasons”, perhaps you might consider whether it is not the same with Brazil..and that is precisely the case with China as well.
One just needs to do a little bit of research about the economic history of the US and Britain and China to see how they were all pushing for “free trade” in one direction: to support their exports. They only opened up when they saw fit and they almost always measure it up. That was the case very much during the US’s Gilded Era. Innovation, triggered by free -mostly internal trade-, a solid education level, cheap access to energy sources, etc, was just one reason. You should know how the US protected its steel industry, its cotton industry etc until they saw it fit “to open it up”
Regarding Chávez et alia:
We agree Chávez has set the native Americans decades back…so has he with the rest of Venezuela. I understood by what you said it was just about opening those territories as free as possible.
These people need health care, no one denies that. They also need top education, which will be a huge challenge. But they also need a period that may last for some decades where their lands do not fall into the hands of outsiders – and if there are things like tourism operating there – like in the falsely called “ecotourism”, it has to be at least in part managed by them, not by some of the first adventurers as they do now in Delta Amacuro.
September 3, 2012 at 9:55 am
Tge turning point for Brazil was Cardoso opening up the economy and deregulation. That Brazil had amore professional industrial class is a different problm, but they have taken advantage if free trade because they can be competitive and the Government meddless less than in Venezuela, for example. But Brazil was amess for decades when things were controlled.
September 3, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Miguel,
I am fully aware of all of that and yet that is not the whole story.
It has never ever been. Of course Venezuela is a shambles with all that stupid regulation. Of course control of everything in a country smothers the economy and we even had that during colonial times – where we could not grow but certain products and export/import only through Spain, etc.
I know Brazil was much worse off before. I still remember visiting Brazil as a child and seeing quite a different picture to what they offer now.
And yet that is not everything. Every single country that has become strong has done so by a cold analysis case by case of what things to liberate and under what conditions – its owns, not external political pressure-.
And of course, Brazil’s critical mass makes it much easier for it than for any other country in Latin America – ceteris paribus – to develop its “comparative advantages”.
They negotiate thanks to their weight. They have done what the United States did before and while it was becoming a power to reckon with
September 3, 2012 at 3:51 pm
It may not be the full story, but it is the KEY story. Latin Americna countries can be ranked according to their free trade practices and their success and the correlation is outstanding. People dont like to talk about Chile, the country that opened up more, both inside and out and is the most successfull one, even more than Brazil, given the relative sizes, next comes Brazil, then Mexico and Peru. Ir is an incredible correlation, whether peple want to admit it or not. Of course you set you on path and have to be intelligent about it, but it is opening up that made it successfull, no wonder US farmers buy Brazilian and. Try that in Venezuela or Agentina. It is the simplest rules that are most important, not the detailed model.
September 5, 2012 at 2:15 am
Miguel, I am not discussing that it is not a key element. But it is never THE key element. There will never be any sustainable development by blindly opening up because that has never been the case in the world. On the contrary: things collapse then very quickly and then there will be a counter-movement of blind protectionism.
I don’t know the details about Chile, but they cannot be resumed just by looking at one single chart without understanding all the rest.
It’s like saying “to grow cereal you have to plant the seeds, everything else is secondary”.
Fine, but if every time you do that you don’t give enough water to the crop you know what will happen.
So: any country trying to get its way to prosperity all the time have taken also some intelligently designed protective measures while “opening up”.
I do know it from Brazil, I do not know from Chile, but Brazil has never just sheepishly done whatever the US Americans or Europeans want, which is what most Latinos who studied in the USA want our countries to do to attain better standards, as if they were the only ones to swallow the CoolAid from
US exporters and people related to them.
As I mentioned already: please, take a look at the economic history of the USA since its independence and all the protective measures they took at every stage. You don’t know about them? You don’t care about them because you think you can derive the right policies out of looking at the common denominator and its value in a set of comparison studies?
Finding the right policies for the development of a country is definitely not the same as predicting share price development out of pure statistical data.
So: we agree there is no wheat without planting the seeds. But I am telling you there is much more to it, even if the wheat seeds seem like the one factor only. I am not asking to put it back.
The gringos, the Germans, above all the Chinese are going to screw us up if we want to open up as no developed country has EVER done.
September 3, 2012 at 1:35 pm
I’m reposting this from above, so it isn’t lost in the fine print.
The USA’s standard of living is dropping, just as the warehouses in China are filling up with unsold goods. Why that is happening isn’t hard to figure out. The jobs that used to be in the USA were exported to China et al, which facilitated lower prices for consumer goods and higher profits for corporate stockholders. All this was mostly financed by the housing bubble. The money was spent by Americans but didn’t re-circulate through the economy; it went overseas or to Wall Street. Thus the accumulated wealth of the middle class was largely siphoned away, leaving underwater mortgages, very few good paying jobs, a country-wide rust belt (shut down manufacturing) and landfills filling up with cheap consumer goods.
Today we have a clear example of how that sort of free market open border no tariff fiat money debt based “capitalism” plays out. The USA can be the poster child. Played to its inevitable end, it performs no better than communism. Those who doubt that, just give it a couple more years.
September 3, 2012 at 10:21 pm
“didn’t re-circulate through the economy” That’s easy to fix in capitalism, though, not so in communism.
—
September 2, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Roger said “I would imagine that some of the choppers have air-air re-fueling capability making their range almost unlimited” C’mon man! Most all of the militaries-except the most advanced DO NOT have that.
Choppers just aren’t that available in remote areas, general rule- exception
Australia…
September 2, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Not a new situation. Brazilian and it is said Colombian miners have been going in there for decades killing indians and stealing Venezuelan gold. I seem to recall the FARC operating down there and killing Brazilians inside Brazil. If they can operate there you have to wonder why the Army can’t. I would imagine that some of the choppers have air-air re-fueling capability making their range almost unlimited. Of course they still can’t find where the multi engine drug planes are flying in and out of on the Llanos.
September 3, 2012 at 2:09 am
Roger, I don’t want to defend the Venezuelan military. They are a shame.
I have seen how Brazilians and others enter so effortlessly into Pemon territory. Illegal miners come and go in jeeps along the Santa Elena-Caura region in front, literally in front of military posts of Venezuelans. They let them go for some of the gains. Things have got much worse. Sometimes some military do try to do something right but most are utterly corrupt.
On the Brazilian side there are roads coming closer to the border on that part. It is easier as that is a lower side…but also because the Brazilians have more concern with controlling their area…they have always had…not for nothing their country stole a lot of land from other countries in the XIX century…actually: it was Solano (the one who built the fort in Puerto Cabello) who stopped the Portuguese penetration into Venezuela by setting up posts in San Carlos on Rio Negro.
Still, please, take a look at the map. The North-Eastern side of Venezuela’s Amazonas state is a bit harder to get to, a little bit to the South of the Yekuana territory. Colombians usually come from Colombia to our Amazonas. They cross the Orinoco or rather the Rio Negro. Sometimes they come from the very South of Amazonas state, at the three-country crossing. That’s jungle but flatland. This region we are talking about is on the other side, rising and making a huge valley with harsher conditions when it comes to mist. It is much harder to get there by any means from the Venezuelan side. Not for nothing Alexander von Humboldt stopped at Esmeralda, in what is now central Amazonas. Well: for that and because the Yanomami back then could keep the foreigners away in more effective ways. Humboldt had been tempted to go all the way up to look for the source of the Orinoco.
The source of the Orinoco is in the Parima range. It was found only in the middle of the XX century.
September 2, 2012 at 2:16 pm
remember when the government made all foreigners leave the jungle area? new tribes and wings of mercy missionaries had small planes and radio equipment and could monitor and more important communicate to the world what was happening there.
remember a few years ago a military helicopter was shown shooting the locals in paragua
September 2, 2012 at 3:18 pm
George,
Venezuela’s military is highly politicized, corrupt and simply incompetent. There may be colliding interests there.
Now: La Esmeralda and a couple of sabana-like clearances further down or to the Northwest of La Esmeralda are NOT Parima.
Not even the New Tribes were penetrating everywhere, just like that, not in a week or so. If you do reach one area there with a wee plane, it doesn’t mean you can reach everywhere.
Environmental conditions are different in and around Tamatama, say, or Parepoiteri, or towards the Parima area and the Ocamo river there. So is the jungle formations.
(I produced that crappy map, it’s not much of a map but it shows where the biggest regions are…Alto Orinoco is bigger than the Netherlands)
And on top of that: yes, the choppers are deficient at best: some are just way too heavy to descend there and the others – used by the obtuse military – are malfunctioning because of lack of maintenance and lack of spare parts.
September 2, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Lets be clear: this blog, written in English (no problem with that) is clearly very sensitive to a world view not primaryly South American in conception. You all seem so concerned with the poor Indians, and I even believe that you folks are sincere in your worry. But if you stop and think for a minute you’ll realize you’re only real concern is with the preservation of the jungle, the indians only come as jungle keepers. Now that your traditional religion (or whatever is left of it) is so weak, you’re only left with “environmentalism”, with goddess earth… How sad, how destituted of values you guys seem to be…But the indians will not remain in this helpless state forever. Just in order to spoil your fun, let me tell you this: one day there will be a Walmart in Ianomami territory with Indian consumers paying with Amazon extracted gold!!!
September 2, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Julio, you are pretty arrogant. It seems you are the one who has THE insight about the world. You know nothing about most of us, probably very little about the others.
What do you have? The real religion? The one Truth?
What a wally!
September 2, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Let me apologize if it sounded arrogant; it was half in jest ok? still the indians will not be helpless forever. they will get tooth pastes, and yogurts, and sunglasses, (not as handouts but as consumers, buying where it’s more affordable and if it has to be at a walmart, so be it!), just like everyone else. I pray for that. it will habe been worth all that long walk accross bering land after all. sorry mother earth, your purity might have to suffer some…
September 2, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Next time a US citizen is caught committing a misdemeanor in Venezuela we should claim that he was hired by the Brazilian secret service to do that 🙂
Some Chavistas will try to blame anything bad that happens in the World on the US- Both the killing by the garimpeiros and the fire of Amuay.When the US sent chemicals to fight the fire, that could be considered meddling in foreign affairs by some.
If the US did not send them, it could be deemed a total lack of solidarity.
September 2, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Erm, just an FYI for you: not EVERYONE goes to Walmart. I haven’t been to one since the very first week in Feb. of this year. And let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I live in a very rural area in NC, and there really aren’t a whole lot of other places to shop. But, I manage, even if I have to pay a little bit more elsewhere. I refuse to support Walmart and their abhorrent practices.
September 3, 2012 at 2:47 am
Which of their “abhorrent” practices are you referring to:
Lowering costs to lower prices?
Offering jobs to people?
Making the market more efficient?
Do they put their competitors out of business? NO. Consumers do that when they choose to shop at Wal-Mart. Good for you for not shopping there if you disagree with their practices. I wish everyone had such integrity. But as for Wal-Mart’s practices that most Americans abhor? Well, I think that they are examples of the free market at work and in fact have provided a large majority of Americans with a much higher standard of living.
Miguel, sorry for the hijacking, but ignorance is dangerous. In fact, nearly half of America wants to head down the Venezuelan/Cuban road.
September 3, 2012 at 8:13 am
Ignorance?
Things, Deananash, are a little bit more complicated.
DO you know about this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Acts
There were and still are a zillion measures like that which are as important to a country’s wealth as an attempt to reach a freer trade (it’s never free).
I find it amazing how many people in the English world cannot call bread bread and wine wine.
The reason why the USA and Europe are having more and more trouble keeping their standard of living is because other nations such as China and Brazil are not buying into the bullshit of “free trade is like the laws of physics”…nor are they going along any more with the socialist utopias but do precisely what the US and Britain did ages ago: adapt themselves, open up when it was convenient, close when not, without ideological rubbish.
September 3, 2012 at 1:27 pm
The USA’s standard of living is dropping, just as the warehouses in China are filling up with unsold goods. Why that is happening isn’t hard to figure out. The jobs that used to be in the USA were exported to China et al, which facilitated lower prices for consumer goods and higher profits for corporate stockholders. All this was mostly financed by the housing bubble. The money was spent by Americans but didn’t re-circulate through the economy; it went overseas or to Wall Street. Thus the accumulated wealth of the middle class was largely siphoned away, leaving underwater mortgages, very few good paying jobs, a country-wide rust belt (shut down manufacturing) and landfills filling up with cheap consumer goods.
Today we have a clear example of how that sort of free market open border no tariff fiat money debt based “capitalism” plays out. The USA can be the poster child. Played to its inevitable end, it performs no better than communism. Those who doubt that, just give it a couple more years.
September 3, 2012 at 4:08 am
I wish you wereright Julio, but I doubt it. These peoplelive like they did 100 years ago. Including illnesses and despite the fanfare Chavez has done very little for them. If they had a WalMart factory alone that would be orders of magnitude above their current squalor. But the way things are going they may have to wait another 100 years for any improvement. Chavez or no Chavez.
September 3, 2012 at 7:52 am
Miguel,
I find it quite depressing that we have to decide between the lefty dreams of “let them dance naked around” to the dreams of US (or else, Chinese, EU) “let them have the magic, really universal laws of free trade prevail” (which are as just very crude half-truths). At the very least these people deserve a less paternalistic view and some support for them to grab the means of modernity as the Sami population has been able to do in the last century in Scandinavia.
It doesn’t depend on Chávez or not-Chávez. It depends on you and me and all the others who are Venezeulan.
September 3, 2012 at 8:31 am
I dont think that wanting the Government to provide them with basic infrastructure, specially healthcare which will prolong their life is being paternalistic, left wingor right wing. And I do think these 14 years have set Venezuela back in time such that it will be difficult for the life of all Venezuelans to improve, whether I want it ir not. There is little I can do.
September 2, 2012 at 12:24 pm
By the by, I have not seen a bloated picture of HCF on the web since the 27th. Maybe he just wrote off the last week of August because it was a such a bad month for his image.
September 2, 2012 at 11:56 am
May I “play Syd” for a moment?
No evidence. Brazil asked VZ to conduct an investigation and even offered to help across the border…Obviously Brazil does not know and they are more developed just over the border and have Yanomami in Brazilian territory too.
If we believe Aissami (and I have never believed him)claims to have talked to 5 of the 7 Yanomami tribes and “all 5 said they knew nothing about a massacre”.
Also, what I find far-fetched is “a helicopter used in the attack”.
Finally, the “miners” have to be armed -why: a.the Yanomami are not angels[here comes the attacks] b.other miners will rob and kill you, c. you are in jaguar territory….Organized miners with a helicopter- I doubt it..
September 2, 2012 at 11:16 am
The venezuelan satellites, What are they good for? The army could send for a month the militia men in to the forest, just for training…..
September 2, 2012 at 11:58 am
Alberto, Alberto- they sent 3000 men to the border with Colombia to find FARC- and they couldn’t find any…
September 3, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Alberto, the second satellite is firmly rooted in military design and manufacture. It’s electro-optical panchromatic CCD in the 2-meter resolution range. They are dual-use civilian and are marketed as such. It’s their ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) play. There are two types: SAR and Electro-Optical. They need Synthetic Aperture Radar too so expect this announcement. They want at least two of each, ideally 3 or more for proper coverage. These programs will accelerate with China and Argentina when/if regime kicks table and consolidates power.
They want to see everything visible. They are playing for keeps and are very serious. Will explain more about their military space program if you wish.
September 4, 2012 at 11:20 am
I’d love to know more, Alfredo. You appear to have credible and quantifiable inside information.
September 4, 2012 at 8:47 pm
I, too, would love for you to share whatever information you have regarding these satellites. Your knowledge seems to be superior to anyone else who has contributed thus far (not to take away from the Diablito’s contributions!). So, yes, we wish, we wish!!!
September 4, 2012 at 2:36 pm
I’m sure they were pretty good for “skimming” a couple $M (or more than a couple) off of the project, which, no doubt, ended in some Swiss, Cayman Island, or even Andorran bank account. As many other things with this “Robolucionario” Government, they’re most probably junk when it comes to actual functionality.
September 2, 2012 at 10:15 am
I am going to ask Jungle Mom if she has some information.
In any case, protecting the borders of any country is the only ethical course.But there can be reasons some governments refuse to do this and these reasons should be freely discussed.
What should be obvious by now is that it is extremely hard to get to the truth in today’s world, but especially in a country like Venezuela.
September 2, 2012 at 9:19 am
Are the Yanomamis only in VZ? Or are there tribes across the border?
Seems like an area–both geographically and figuratively–where Brazil and VZ should have set up some kind of cooperative effort on an ongoing basis to monitor and assist the indigenous.
As a major anti-Yanqui, anti-Imperialist talking point for the leftists…protecting native peoples…this is one hell of an embarrassment for Hugo, although the word “embarrassment” surely doesn’t justly describe it.
It’s something ALL shades of the political spectrum pretty much agree on (although successes and methods vary), but a massacre like this? On VZ soil during the Chavez administration?
Wow.
September 2, 2012 at 9:32 am
They live on both sides of the border.
Watch this video from 2008:
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v70505154hFAD7T8
Mind: a couple of the guys in Boa Vista mentioned Venezuela, miners going there…where there is no government as in Brazil there is.
I have been to that area, not to Parima but just to the Southern region of Bolivar and up to Boa Vista. I have talked to the miners and Pemon Indians there. The Venezuelan part is always the weaker link.
September 2, 2012 at 9:34 am
Listen to 2:04. Even if you don’t understand Portuguese/Spanish: he clearly says how they go to Venezuela…you know, usual stuff.
I still have two friends on the Pemon area. They cry for what is happening there. But now there are more miners living there than Indians and miners vote as well.
September 2, 2012 at 7:02 am
Miguel,
I know a lady who is pretty well known for her work with the Yanomami. She is currently in Caracas, but Yanomami friends from Puerto Ayacucho’s have called her several times. Information is contradictory. What she says is what I posted about in my blog. The thing is: the Venezuelan military doesn’t seem to have adequate choppers. That area is particularly misty – it’s the Parima region, along the Ocamo river. and now it is very much so.
They apparently only have heavy Russian helicopters.
That’s no good.
Of course, one thing the military should have done years ago was to build an adequate airfield just next to the Brazilian border.
As far as I know, the closest airfield (thus, for more than choppers) is in La Esmeralda, which is very distant from the Parima border, specially due to the very dense forest.
Nobody knows the exact coordinates of that community. That community has never been registered in a census ( my contact has gone to the most remote places to help counting Indians).
Anyway: I think Primero Justicia (or any other party with ambition) should have set up shadow ministers a long time ago and one of them should have been one for native American affairs (even if there are so few native Americans, it’s a particularly important topic, for reasons we won’t get into here).
September 2, 2012 at 7:51 am
not sure what they mean by adequate helicopters. They have a full compliment of European, Russian and American helicopters. Long range, heavy payload, all-weather, night-vision flying. They are always short on capable pilots. Sounds like the tribe is too remote.
September 2, 2012 at 8:29 am
Gregory,
This is what my contact said and she is no military specialist or something, she has just been very very often to Alto Orinoco. She says the people she knows say they have huge problems with the parts for light American helicopters. This is indeed an issue. There have been a series of Russian choppers going down in recent years in Venezuela, but also, as far as I remember, two US-made helicopters.
Perhaps they know the vehicles are completely conked out now…or as you say, they don’t have pilots. The area we are talking about though is definitely one of the most remote of the whole Amazonas state.
September 3, 2012 at 7:44 pm
sounds like old american helicopters in need or repairs. The does have the capability to put a helio just about anywhere. Obviously this is not that important for the military.
September 2, 2012 at 6:21 am
Yesterday La ministra para los Pueblos Indígenas denied that anyone had died.
http://www.globovision.com/news.php?nid=245369
“Aclaró que fue enviada una comisión integrada por efectivos de la Fuerza Armada, al mando del mayor general Cliver Alcalá Cordones; del Ministerio Público, de la Defensoría del Pueblo, de la Fiscalía General de la República, de los ministerios para los Pueblos Indígenas y Relaciones Interiores y del Cicpc, a la zona de Alto Orinoco a investigar la denuncia. “El balance de estas visitas es que no se encontró evidencia de las viviendas incendiadas”, explicó.”
But, then on Twitter last night appeared this statement:
Centro DDHH UCAB @CDH_UCAB
Nos informa abogado defensor #DDHH de Amazonas: FALSO q autoridades hayan llegado a Irotatheri. Solo hasta Momoi #Yanomami
There is more to this story that may or may not ever come to light.
September 2, 2012 at 1:44 pm
True words.!! Of course they deny this!
September 3, 2012 at 6:54 am
Those statements aren’t automatically exclusive. Minister says they went to Alto Orinoco, tweet says not past Momoi. As long as Momoi is in AO, the Minister could well be telling the truth.
Of course, if the alleged murders and house-burning is supposed to have been in Irotatheri, then it’s a pathetic excuse for an investigation. Just not a lie. Though arguably worse.
September 2, 2012 at 3:16 am
“To Calmly Witness a Crime is to commit it”. Jose Marti