The Murder of Makiritares: 2,000+ (dec 30, 1913 – jan 1, 1921)

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The Murder of the Makiritare (Ye'kuana) was carried out by Colonel Tomás Funes and his forces against the Ye'kuana people between 1913 and 1921 (Funes's execution by Emilio Arévalo Cedeño), with an estimated death toll between 2,000 (Wikipedia on Genocide of Indigenous peoples in Venezuela) and several thousand (various sources). Funes and his forces also engaged in enslavement, village destruction, forced labor in rubber plantations, torture, and systematic oppression. It has been labeled as genocide by some historical accounts, though formal international recognition is limited.

Colonel Tomás Funes, known as "the Devil of Río Negro," enslaved Indigenous inhabitants and killed approximately 2,000 Makiritare (Ye'kuana) Indigenous people during his repressive actions between 1913 and 1921. In 1913, during a rubber boom, Funes seized control of San Fernando de Atabapo, killing over 100 settlers, and in the following nine years destroyed dozens of Ye'kuana villages and killed several thousand Ye'kuana.

On April 24, 1913, Funes led an assault on the government house, assassinating Governor Roberto Pulido, his wife, and approximately 460 people. He then assumed power as governor without official authorization, ruling through terror until January 30, 1921, when he was captured and executed by revolutionary General Emilio Arévalo Cedeño.

This violence occurred during the rubber boom exploitation period in the Venezuelan Amazon and represents one of several historical atrocities against Indigenous peoples in Venezuela, though it has not received formal international genocide recognition like other cases.

Preservation through oral tradition: The memory of Funes's atrocities has been preserved primarily through Ye'kuana oral tradition, with elders passing down accounts of village destructions, family members killed, and survivors' escapes through the forests. These oral histories have been critical in documenting the genocide, as Funes destroyed written records and official Venezuelan archives remained largely silent on the massacres for decades. Contemporary researchers and human rights advocates have increasingly relied on Ye'kuana testimonies to reconstruct the scale of violence, demonstrating how Indigenous oral tradition preserved evidence of genocide that official histories deliberately erased or minimized.

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