RESUMO
A cholera epidemic killed some 500 people in a fluvial region in eastern Venezuela. Most of the 'victims' were classified as 'Warao', that is, members of an 'indigenous ethnic group'. In combatting the threat to the legitimacy of public health institutions posed by alarmingly high rates of mortality, officials racialised the disease: 'Warao cultural practices' were depicted as the cause of the cholera outbreak. Genocide rhetoric provided members of the affected population with a means of countering stigmatising images, regaining a sense of agency, and calling attention to the conditions in which they were living. By virtue of its monopoly over official (especially statistical) representations of the cholera outbreak, the state was largely successful in suppressing narratives that charged it with genocide. Implications of withholding access to genocide discourse in such settings are explored.(AU)
