Alienated targets military discourse and the disempowerment of indigenous Amazonian peoples in Venezuela

Abstract

In June through August of 1984, a dispute over land tenure between the Piaroa, an indigenous Amazonian people, and a wealthy Venezuelan colonist escalated from a local conflict into a national controversy over military security and its alleged absence in the Federal Amazon Territory. In the process, high‐ranking government officials and members of the economic elite accused the supporters of Piaroa land rights of participating in an international conspiracy to dismember Venezuelan national sovereignty. These specific processes of disempowerment are not isolated phenomena but part of a long‐term historical process of nation‐state formation in Venezuela that has, in turn, become enmeshed in a broader, hemispheric process of military discourse. Indigenous peoples, organizations and scholars including anthropologists who advocate indigenous rights, and a variety of reformist groups in Latin America have been transformed into alienated targets.