Vol. 73/No. 25      June 29, 2009

Peru’s president Alan García defends the decrees as necessary to bring foreign investment regulations in jungle areas into compliance with a U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, which went into effect February 1. According to protesters one of the decrees could allow the sale of lands used by indigenous peoples to oil, gas, mining, logging, and agricultural companies. Another ends the requirement that companies consult indigenous communities before doing any work on the land.

In response to a call for a general strike June 11, more than 20,000 unionists, students, and indigenous peoples rallied in cities and towns across the country, from the Andean highlands to the Amazon Basin lowlands, to back this fight.

Chanting “The jungle isn’t for sale,” some 10,000 protesters marched in Lima, the nation’s capital. Police attempted to break up the action, firing tear gas on the crowd. Thousands also rallied in Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and in other cities and towns, including Puno, near the Bolivian border, and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.

“We don’t get anything from this huge exploitation, which also poisons us,” Maeo Inti, a leader of the Aguaruna Indians, told the Associated Press. “We’ve never seen any development and my community lives in poverty.”

On June 12 some 1,000 indigenous protesters from the town of Pichanaki began marching toward the mining city of La Oroya, and said they might march all the way to Lima.

A week earlier, more than 600 police assaulted 2,000 protesters who had set up a roadblock on a central highway near the northern Amazonian town of Bagua. Demonstrators fought back, capturing more than three dozen cops. More than 30 civilians, including three children, were killed in the clashes, according to indigenous groups, though with large numbers of people missing the figure may be much higher. Twenty-three cops also died during the clashes. According to Yehude Simon, the head of the Peruvian cabinet, 155 people were injured, about a third from bullet wounds.

In hopes of quelling the protests, Peru’s Congress suspended two of the government’s decrees for 90 days. But indigenous leaders rejected the move, demanding that all the decrees be repealed immediately.

“The government made the situation worse with its condescending depiction of us as gangs of savages in the forest,” Wagner Musoline Acho, 24, an Awajún Indian and indigenous leader, told the New York Times. “They think we can be tricked by a maneuver like suspending a couple of decrees for a few weeks and then reintroducing them, and they are wrong.”

Protests have been taking place since early April, with Indian activists blocking roads, waterways, and a state oil pipeline. President García declared a state of emergency May 9, suspending some constitutional rights in four provinces including Amazonas. He said the protesters are “ignorant” and “terrorists.”

Oil and gas contracts could cover about 72 percent of Peru’s rain forest, according to a study by Duke University in North Carolina. Among the biggest companies seeking oil exploration rights are U.S.-based ConocoPhillips, France’s Perenco SA, and Spain’s Repsol-YPF.

More than half the population of Peru is indigenous. While the regions where they live are rich in natural resources, at least 36 percent live in poverty, according to official government statistics.  
 
 
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