A-Infos (en) Venezuela: The error of being Lusbi Portillo - ellibertario

As this text is written, Lusbi Portillo, professor at Zulia University (in Maracaibo) and 
environmental activist in solidarity with the indigenous movement is in hiding to protect 
his life and physical integrity. During the events of October 13 in the Sierra de Perijá 
two yukpas were killed and five more wounded in a conflict arising from the demarcation of 
indigenous land. The regional police announced that an arrest warrant against the 
professor for “drug possession” was imminent. This is not the first time the professor is 
criminalized for his active solidarity with the demands of the original peoples, but 
because the way the events are evolving – an investigation of the events has been decreed 
“national security” by the authorities – he decided to take preventive measures by going 
into hiding.

The environmental activist increased his activities in the indigenous
struggle as a reaction to the government’s announcement, by the President
of the Republic on November 13 2003 to triple coal exploitation in the
Zulia region to 36 million metric tons per year. Lusbi Portillo’s first
“error”, from the point of view of the immobilizing polarization that
controls the nation’s political scene, was to uphold his values and
demands in spite of the official discourse that promised to satisfy them
some time in the future. Regardless of his expectations and personal
sympathies, Portillo did not sell out nor agreed to lower his priorities,
preserving his autonomous social character, thus keeping his ability to
organize for the solution to the problems in spite of the electoral
situation.

The second “error” of Lusbi Portillo was to think with his own head. In
contrast with other intellectuals and members of the academic world whose
discourse has been diluted to the level of the polarity government-
opposition, Portillo mixes elements of research and activism in order to
generate a line of thought that motivates him to act consequently. In this
way he has been able to diagnose the roots of public and private policies
that impact nature and the way of life of the original peoples with a
correct appraisal of the consequences of Venezuela’s progressive coupling
with the main tendencies of the globalized economy. Thus he relates the
development plan promoted for the Zulia region within the project South
American Regional Infrastructure Initiative (IIRSA in Spanish), whose
objective is to optimize the flow of energy resources and increase
regional competitiveness to satisfy international demand. In many
documents and conferences Portillo has demonstrated that the IIRSA, a
project conveniently silenced by the limited and polarized debate,
represents the reverse side of the coin of a policy publicly condemned by
the current government: the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (ALCA in
Spanish). This sharp analysis of the increasing role assigned to the
nation by the main global economic actors, which includes other supposedly
“endogenous” development activities such as Puerto America, the Southern
Gas Pipeline, the exploitation of the Imataca preserve and the development
of the Orinoco-Apure axis, allows us to see what is really behind the
anti-capitalist rhetoric proclaimed by the current occupant of Miraflores
Palace.

A third “error” of Lusbi Portillo is that, in the framework of his
immediate demands – the preservation of the environment and the rights of
the indigenous people- he has established links and relations with all
kinds of grass roots initiatives, whose precondition is not how they
define themselves to President Chavez but rather their degree of
solidarity with nature and the original indigenous communities. This way
Portillo has been the center of a social network of variable geometry
that, in spite of conflicts and fluctuations, has been able to develop one
of the few instances in the country whose development has resisted the
usual Manichaeism in order to build and express its own perspective,
setting an example of how to disassemble the demagogy of those who feed
the false dichotomy “Chavism vs. anti-Chavism” in order to domesticate the
social struggles and build up to the electoral process.

The former “failings” condemn Lusbi Portillo to ostracism and isolation,
precisely one of the objectives of any policy that criminalizes
belligerent and independent protests by the social activists. After being
repeatedly threatened with warnings, two women, the attorneys Luisa Ortega
Díaz (the Republic’s Attorney General) and Gabriela Ramírez (People’s
Defender) will be responsible for any attempt on the freedom, personal
integrity and even the life of Lusbi Portillo, an activist whose major
error has been to maintain his old ideas in a time marked by opportunist
ethics and values degraded by the air conditioner. Solidarity with Lusbi
Portillo.

ellibertario@nodo50.org
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario (in Spanish & English)

Translation: Luís Prat

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* The latest demonstration of political criminalization of autonomous
social movements by the Venezuelan government is exposed by Rafael
Uzcategui, a member of the anarchist collective El Libertario.
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