Indigenous Communities

Responding to President Chávez’s instructions last Sunday, Venezuelan government officials promised this week to accelerate the granting of land titles to Yukpa indigenous communities who have occupied private estates to demand their constitutional right to ancestral lands.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez pledged decisive support Sunday for the Yukpa indigenous people who have occupied 14 large estates in the northwestern state of Zulia to demand legal title to their ancestral lands.

A Venezuelan indigenous community belonging to the Yukpa ethnic group, which is demanding legal title to its ancestral lands, was attacked last week by hundreds of armed aggressors. According to the Yukpa, the aggressors were hired by elite landowners to evict the indigenous population from land each claim as theirs.

A protest against coal mining in the Sierra de Perija Mountains, in Venezuela's western state of Zulia, highlighted how mining there is hurting their health, the environment, and their livelyhood.