SALON

Friday, Sep 14, 2012 4:18 PM UTC

Venezuela’s tribe massacre mystery

Eighty Yanomami were reportedly killed by Brazilian miners. Evidence suggests this may not be the case

By

Topics: GlobalPost, Indigenous, Venezuela, Brazil, Hugo Chavez, South America,

Venezuela's tribe massacre mysteryA group of Yanomami Indians sit outside a hut in a village called Irotatheri, in Venezuela's Amazon region. (Credit: AP/Ariana Cubillos)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost

CARACAS, Venezuela — A couple of weeks ago, the world’s press took a swipe at Venezuela for its failure to properly investigate a massacre of indigenous people in the dense Amazon jungle.

Global Post

Some 80 members of the Yanomami tribe were thought to have been killed by Brazilian miners firing from a helicopter. The papers ran colorful opening paragraphs of the “charred remains” reportedly discovered at Irotatheri, apparently a remote community deep in the jungle near Brazil.

“Three survivors were found walking in the jungle after the attack, having fled at the sound of gunshots, explosions and the sound of a helicopter while they were out hunting,” wrote British newspaper The Telegraph from Los Angeles.

All the evidence — so far, at least — suggests that no attack took place.

On Monday, Survival International, the rights group that had initiated the allegations, changed its statement: “Survival now believes there was no attack by miners on the Yanomami community of Irotatheri.”

That came just as Reuters and AP journalists — who had been taken to the alleged site in a government helicopter — published their own photos and stories. They said they found nothing but the bewilderment of a handful indigenous people dressed in red loincloths. “No one’s killed anyone,” said one tribal leader.

Without visiting the remote region and collecting evidence from those scattered in it, it is impossible to prove whether an attack took place. Indeed, brutal incidents such as this alleged one have been all too common in the continent’s history and the Yanomami are no strangers to invasion. In 1993, Brazilian miners killed 16 Yanomamis on the Brazilian side of the border.

However, in revealing a story without sufficient evidence, the indigenous rights organizations as well as some unquestioning media may be acting as the boy who cried wolf.

“Our information was that Indians that had seen the aftermath had reported it directly to a Yanomami organization,” Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, told GlobalPost. “People had seen this happen. What more evidence could one have?”

The alleged attack took place in July, though took long to be reported thanks to the remoteness of the site, a more than two-week trek from the Amazonas state capital Puerto Ayacucho. Critics of the government jumped upon the rumors less than a month before the country’s most tightly fought elections during President Hugo Chavez’s long tenure.

The president slammed the allegations as an attempt to smear him. “There are some media that present this as truth but there’s no proof whatsoever,” he said last week. “They don’t provide a shred of evidence. Someone says something or some NGO puts out a document and if it hurts the public image of Chavez, it’s on the front page and the story is spiced up every day.”

Chavez has always shown warmth to the indigenous people of the country, as have other leftist Latin American leaders. “Never, in 200 years of history, has any government treated our indigenous people with such love, respect and dignity … We went everywhere looking for the truth,” he said, adding that no evidence was found.

Corry is not convinced. “The most appalling aspect of the Venezuelan government reaction is that its initial stance seemed to be disbelief,” he said. “Some sectors of government were denying this had happened even before people had reached the site, which does nothing to encourage one’s faith in the government.”

In order to offer some evidence for its point, the Venezuelan government flew the agency journalists down to Sierra de Parima, just 12 miles from the Brazilian border, late last week. One Reuters photographer wrote a blog describing how the Yanomami people had never seen white people before.

“‘Wishak, wishak, wishak,’ or ‘monkey, monkey, monkey,’ they repeated as two bearded photographers approached,” the photographer wrote. “It was our facial hair that took them by surprise. They touched our faces. They touched their own. Then they lifted their hands to their chest and said, ‘noji,’ or ‘friend.’”

Luis Shatiwe is the leader of a Yanomami group. He was one of the first to alert authorities to an attack. “Something happened,” he told GlobalPost this week. “But because of the Yanomami customs, it’s extremely difficult to work out what exactly.” Shatiwe added that they first had to work out exactly where the alleged incident took place.

Shatiwe and other Yanomami leaders, rights groups and lawyers are meeting in the coming days to try to get to the bottom of the rumors.

“We are not saying in our view nothing happened,” said Corry, of Survival. “We do not believe there was a serious attack on this community, and it was not destroyed.”

“We are now certain that this community was not destroyed. There was no attack of that kind of nature on this community. It’d be great to believe there was no attack on any Indians in the area, but it remains the case that something sparked this report by the Indians.”

More GlobalPost

More Girish Gupta.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from GlobalPost, an awarding-winning international news site that focuses on original reporting from journalists stationed around the world. GlobalPost combines traditional journalistic values with the power of new media to offer a fresh perspective on global developments.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
133 points134 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
122 points123 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
102 points103 points | 82 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
96 points97 points | 24 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
72 points73 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations