Venezuela, El Libertario on the murder of indigenous rights activist Sabino Romero (ca)

The official statement of the El Libertario collective following the murder of Sabino 
Romero, Yukpa indigenous rights activist, in Zulia, Venezuela last night. ---- 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 Perij?
(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