Published at: 09/07/2025 09:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL, JULY 9, 1987 and EL BOLIVARENSE, May 9, 1979)

• During the Jaime Lusinchi administration, as governor of Delta Amacuro, Emery Mata Millán, on July 5, 1987, a government tractor collapsed the homes of several Waraos families located in Barrancas del Orinoco.
• Later, in curiaras in the governorate, a group of 200 indigenous people were transferred. They were robbed of their homes, from Barrancas del Orinoco to La Chivera Island, without even leaving them a curiara or food so that they could support themselves and/or communicate with other towns to supply themselves.
• The result was that, five days later, eight Warao children died of malnutrition as a result of the State's abandonment, laziness and indolence. That is, homicide in the degree of guilt, for non-compliance and non-compliance with the Constitution and the Laws of the Republic.
• Despite being a national holiday, on July 5th, by orders of Prefect Luis Cedeño, a tractor collapsed the homes of dozens of Warao families, and then confined them to La Chivera Island, where they were isolated, incommunicado and without food for four days.
• The representatives of the Warao ethnic group explained that they barely had time to rescue their belongings and almost without explanation 200 people, including about 30 children, were boarded in curiaras and transferred to the aforementioned island, where they were left to their fate.
• In addition to all these, Governor Emery Mata Millán issued an arrest warrant for Cacique Warao Isaías, who committed the crime of reporting the abuses, demolition of houses and the death of children of his ethnicity.
• This is how cacique Isaías was put behind bars, while the abandoned Indians continued to suffer from malnutrition, parasitosis and lung diseases.
• Isaías, when he heard about the order, exclaimed: “Now the owners of the sawmills are going to be happy. Now that they're going to put me in jail, they're going to stay calm. I, on behalf of the Warao, have reported them. They're leaving the Orinoco Islands without wood.”
• Another ethnic genocide**: El Bolivarense** in its edition of May 9, 1979, reported the death of 10 Indians from the Guakirima Community, in Canaima, as a result of hunger, child malnutrition, tuberculosis, scabies and other ills that decimated the original populations of that area.
• Something similar to what the British Empire practiced at the time of Queen Victoria and other European monarchies, when anti-Semitic xenophobia prevailed and they wanted to get rid of Jewish communities or people in situations of extreme poverty: they abandoned them on small islands in the high seas so that, when the tide rose, the ocean would swallow them up.
• This is the practice of the most abject contempt for the inestimable condition, spirituality, nobility and dignity of the human person, whatever their race, religion, social status, age or economic status.

Mazo News Team