Salesian Missions, the missionary procurement of the congregation founded by Saint John Bosco in Spain, has organized a nearly three-week tour, from September 15 to October 6, through Madrid, the Basque Country, and Navarre with four women presented as «defenders of the Venezuelan Amazon.» The program, according to the organization itself, includes «meetings and workshops with feminist movements and collectives defending LGTBIQ+ rights,» in addition to meetings with cooperation officials, social organizations, and media outlets, as El Debate has reported.
A project subsidized by the Basque Government
The tour is part of a project titled Classrooms in Action Against the Climate Emergency: Alternatives to the Development Model from the Decolonial Feminism of the Defenders of the Orinoquía, coordinated by Salesian Missions and subsidized by the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation, an agency under the Basque Government.
The initiative, the Salesians explain, «seeks to generate spaces for exchange and to make known indigenous alternatives based on ‘good living’ and harmony with nature.» Oskar Pérez, head of the Northern headquarters of Salesian Missions, has stated: «We want to listen to the voice of the ancestral defenders of the territory and learn about the effects of mining on the life of the Orinoquía, in order to commit ourselves to their peaceful struggle.»
What is «decolonial feminism»
The denunciation of the ravages of illegal mining in the Orinoco mining arc is a cause that the Venezuelan Church has been upholding for years, with the Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Ayacucho at the forefront. What has drawn attention is the theoretical framework chosen to convey it.
«Decolonial feminism» is an academic current that, according to its promoters, criticizes the «coloniality of power» based on «the imposition and invention of the concept of race by European colonizers,» identified as «middle-class white men.» It also maintains that «gender» is also a European invention imposed through colonialism, which did not exist before that period, and that this imposition served to «control colonized women,» relegating them to the domestic sphere and taking «heterosexuality for granted.» Its theorists argue that in Latin America «the pattern of colonial domination of power and knowledge still persists.»
These are theses that are difficult to reconcile with Christian anthropology, which affirms sexual difference as a datum of creation, and with the very history of the evangelization of America, of which the Salesian missionary work in the Upper Orinoco is a direct heir.
The four guests
The participants are Lisa Lynn Henrito Percy, leader of the Pemón people and coordinator of the Pemón Territorial Guard; María Arana, of the Uwottüja people and coordinator of Communication for the Organization of Indigenous Women of Autana; Norayma Ángel, coordinator of the Human Rights Office of the Vicariate of Puerto Ayacucho and advisor to the Indigenous Network of Defenders of Indigenous Rights and Nature; and Crusita Yuvisay, social communicator and promoter of human rights.
They will share, according to the organizers, «their experiences of struggle against environmental degradation, the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples, and the consequences of extractive activities on communities and their natural resources.»