Seminar on reparations for damages caused by slavery and colonization is held in Caracas

This Monday began a new cycle of theoretical methodological seminar on reparations for the damage caused by slavery and colonization. In the next two days the professor of the Department of Afro American Studies of the State University of Georgia, Akinyele Umoja, will give a master class about the historical struggles of Afro American peoples in the United States. Umoja is also founder of the New African Peoples Organization and of the Base Movement Malcolm X, explained that the formation and creation of the United States revolved around the colonizers and the colonialism that in turn was characterized by genocide that not only involved the mass murder of a population, but also the appropriation of their lands and the stripping of their identity. “The founding document of the United States, the constitution established that any slave who escaped should be returned to his master. It also established that the descendants of Africans were three fifths of a person, so this was a document in favor of slavery”, Umoja said. He also pointed out that at the end of the Civil War, those who fought made a proposal for the redistribution of land. When the Union troops arrived on the North Carolina Coast, the slave masters fled, leaving the slaves emancipated. Then, the General William Sherman met with the Afro American leaders of those communities. Subsequently, Sherman drafted an order that said all Carolina’s free lands should be assigned to any Afro American person who wanted to settle there, 40 acres and a mule for each family. With the death of President Lincoln, this order ceased to be fulfilled and was revoked, but it became a popular demand among the Afro American peoples that has now resulted in the law proyect H.R. 40 On the other hand, Akinyele Umoja brought up that “in May 2018, a historical event occurs in Venezuela, as President Nicolás Maduro becomes the first president of the American continent to support reparations”. He explained that an important part of the reparations is to recover the identity of the people. “For example, my family in Georgia started their own school called Quilombo School, there my grandson has learned to play the drum, my granddaughter has learned African dances. And children have the opportunity to learn native languages ​​of Africa. They have also learned from the achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution, because activists like Jesus “Chucho” Garcia have come to our school to talk about it”. Finally, he added that in these moments when Venezuela is the object of a financial blockade imposed by the US and an attempted coup, now more than ever we must redouble our solidarity with the Bolivarian Government. It should be noted that this seminar is part of the International Decade for Afro descendant People 2015-2024, which was proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in 2013 and deals with three dimensions: the historical-philosophical, political-social and legal