How agriculture made Venezuela's indigenous people independent

To overcome the crisis of food security that has pushed people to cross borders to get their basic food needs due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the South American indigenous Wayuu people found a way to achieve relative self-sufficiency via cultivating a network of gardens with vegetables and fruits.

The Wayuu people are a South American community who live in the northwestern part of the Guajira Peninsula, which shares borders between Venezuela and Colombia. In Venezuela, they account for 57.3 percent of the national indigenous population, while in Colombia, they are one of 81 ethnic groups.

One of the gardens, which was created by the women’s network Jieyúú Kojutsuu (Women of Value), has been cultivated by 26 members of the community, including the most vulnerable people, such as unemployed women of gender-based violence, those who are at the risk of being recruited by armed groups, and senior citizens, according to a statement from the UNHCR on July 16.

“Women who were most at risk of gender-based violence while their relatives or partners undertook back-and-forth trips to Colombia now have a safe space where they gather every day to grow food that will later benefit their families,” Diego Moreno, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Protection Assistant in Maracaibo, who has been monitoring this initiative, said in the statement.

This initiative has been applied to more than 660 community garden projects for indigenous people in the states of Zulia, Táchira, and Barinas, the statement added. 

The UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have provided these people with the equipment needed for agriculture. 

Wayuu people depended on agriculture and fishing in the 19th century, but now most of them work in trade activities. These indigenous people had a representation in Venezuela’s parliament in 1999, and that helped to reduce the poverty rate. However, hundreds of Colombian Wayuu migrated to the Venezuelan side due to a massacre that occurred in 2004.

In 2015, this community and its lands were victims of a presidential decision for coal and mineral exploitation in Zulia. The decision led to confrontations between the indigenous people with the mine workers, according to the Minority Groups Organization.