The Indigenous of Venezuela facing European expansion
Abstract
The history of the Indigenous people of Venezuela is emblematic and
paradigmatic of the European / Amerindian relationship. In his stories we
find all the ways that have characterized this same relationship in other
areas: violence of every kind, extermination, enslavement, dispossession and
pollution of the land, devastating deculturation. The choral participation of
all the components of the Western world (military, socio-institutional, econo-
mic and religious) in this destruction seems to demonstrate almost an inten-
tionality that goes well beyond individuals and reveals a much larger design
than a whole ethnic family launched at full replacement of pre-Columbian
humanity. The article, bringing out the factors that led to the dissolution of
the pre-Hispanic cultural structure, in front of the recent return to a new
self-awareness and a renewed indigenous pride, however, concludes that the
recovery of a space by Indianity in Venezuela of today and in its future, it pas-
ses through the abandonment of certain traditional models and the assump-
tion of models borrowed from Western society.
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References
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