Powerline Project Threatens Amazon
VENEZUELA – In August, more than 1,200 Amazon Indian residents, representing five tribes from south Venezuela’s Imataca and Gran Sabana regions, blocked traffic along the nearly finished Road 174 BR “wideway” – the only highway connecting Venezuela with Brazil – to protest construction of a high-voltage electrical transmission line that would cut its way through their rainforest homeland in violation of international and Venezuelan law. A day after the government agreed to halt work until questions surrounding land title were answered, the Venezuelan National Guard attacked a village of Pemon Indians involved in the protests, sending three residents to the hospital.

The $90 million Southern Electrical Lines Project would accelerate the destruction of the region’s rainforest by enabling large-scale logging and mining operations to penetrate the 3.6 million hectare (acres) Imataca Forest Reserve, a region of diverse tropical forest the size of Holland. The Imataca is home to 10,000 indigenous people and acknowledged as one of the ten most biologically rich forests in the world.

Decree No. 1850, signed by the Venezuelan government in May, 1997, opened up 40 percent of the Imataca Forest Reserve to industrial mining and logging concessions.

The powerline project, which has proceeded without proper environmental studies or consultation with the impacted communities, would carve a 100- foot-wide “service corridor” (with access roads every kilometer) through 470 miles of dense tropical rainforest and savannas from Venezuela’s Guri Dam to Boa Vista, Brazil.

Once inside Brazil, the powerline would veer southward to supply massive amounts of electricity to Placer Dome, a Canadian mining company that hopes to build a $670 million gold mine – one of South America’s largest – inside the Imataca.

According to Amazon Watch, the powerline is “part of the government’s plan to open up the fragile ecosystems of the Canaima National Park (a World Heritage Site and home of Angel Falls) and the Imataca rainforest to large-scale mining, tourism and logging development.”

The project threatens to disrupt the lives of more than 15,000 people in 30 indigenous communities. Initial work already has deforested a considerable swath of tropical rainforest and destroyed important indigenous subsistence crops and forest gardens.

During the road blockade, Venezuelan National Guardsmen stood by as native protesters demanded a say in the uses of their rainforest. Vigil participants claimed that the government is unwilling to legally recognize and respect the boundaries of their ancestral lands, to which they lack legal title. Without official recognition of their ancestral land rights, they cannot effectively defend their lands or way of life.

The grassroots Indigenous Federation of the State of Bolivar – representing Pemon, Karina, Akawaio and Arawako Indian communities spread out over 92,000 square miles in southern Venezuela – has called for an immediate halt to all work underway to install pylons and stations. The Organization of Indigenous Towns of the Amazon also has asked the government to abandon the powerline.

The Venezuelan Government, at first ignoring the protest, reversed course and entered a historic agreement with the Indigenous Federation, agreeing to suspend all work on the powerline until the question of land title is resolved. Federation president Jose Luis Gonzalez hailed the agreement and affirmed the Federation’s commitment to halting all work on the powerline.

But while community members were meeting peacefully with federal officials to discuss the construction of the powerline, the Venezuelan National Guard – acting on orders from an unknown source – raided the village of Mapauri, a community of Pemon Indians in Bolivar State. Three residents, one a thirteen-year-old boy, were hospitalized for injuries stemming from rubber bullets and tear gas used by the National Guard. Jose Luis Gonzalez responded that the incident “puts in jeopardy the open process that has been established between our people and the Venezuelan Government.”

On August 12, the protesters reported, the National Guard attacked “in full force and in riot gear with orders from Caracas to remove our blockade.” Sleeping vigilers were driven half-dressed from their tents and an artillery tank was used to demolish the protesters’ log barricade.

Leobardo Acurero, an ecologist with the group CINECO-UD, has appealed for international help to halt the project and preserve “this beautiful natural zone.” – SRS

What You Can Do: Send messages of concern to: Your Excellency President Rafael Caldera, Palacio de Miraflores, Carmelitas, Caracas, Venezuela, fax: 011 (58) (2) 801-3644. For more information, contact Atossa Soltani, c/o Amazon Watch, 20110 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA 90265, (310) 456-1340.