La invención de la democracia racial en Venezuela

4 Oil's Colonial Residues: Geopolitics, Identity, and Resistance in Venezuela

“…Acts such as the toppling of the Columbus statue, and the resignifying of spaces and public holidays are symptoms, not drivers, of a longer‐term process in which the racialised inequalities always lurking beneath the established façade of a harmonious ‘racial democracy’ are exposed (Herrera Salas, : 86; Quintero, : 163). In the place of entrenched modern/colonial discourses that linked development to the transcendence of both Venezuela's racial and cultural composition as well as its petrostate status through European immigration, the bettering of the race and the inculcation of a protestant work ethic (Herrera Salas, ; Quintero, ), contemporary movements distance themselves from entrenched hierarchies and lingering Creole racisms. The result is a complex of direct actions, cultural formations and affirmations, and an inclusive experimentation with new forms of social organisation and participation.…”

Oil's Colonial Residues: Geopolitics, Identity, and Resistance in Venezuela

“…Acts such as the toppling of the Columbus statue, and the resignifying of spaces and public holidays are symptoms, not drivers, of a longer‐term process in which the racialised inequalities always lurking under the established façade of a harmonious ‘racial democracy’ are exposed (Herrera Salas, : 86; Quintero, : 163). In other words, they illustrate a drive by contemporary movements to distance themselves from the Creole racisms of the past.…”

“…Acts such as the toppling of the Columbus statue, and the resignifying of spaces and public holidays are symptoms, not drivers, of a longer-term process in which the racialised inequalities always lurking beneath the established façade of a harmonious 'racial democracy' are exposed (Herrera Salas, 2005: 86;Quintero, 2012: 163). In the place of entrenched modern/colonial discourses that linked development to the transcendence of both Venezuela's racial and cultural composition as well as its petrostate status through European immigration, the bettering of the race and the inculcation of a protestant work ethic (Herrera Salas, 2005;Quintero, 2012), contemporary movements distance themselves from entrenched hierarchies and lingering Creole racisms. The result is a complex of direct actions, cultural formations and affirmations, and an inclusive experimentation with new forms of social organisation and participation.…”

“…They are animated as much by the drive to change the political composition of the state as by a criticism of the modern/colonial discourse of development, the self‐defeating obsession with Venezuela's status as a petrostate, and a Eurocentric worldview that identifies civilization and progress to whiteness. (Herrera Salas, ; Quintero, ). The result is a complex of direct actions, cultural formations and affirmations, and an inclusive experimentation with new forms of social organisation and participation.…”