Peru en movimiento

Peru: Indigenous people defend their land

2011-03-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Sunday, March 6, 2011
By Kiraz Janicke
In a joint statement on February 25, indigenous communities that make up the Native Federation of Madre de Dios River and Tributaries in south-eastern Peru rejected a military crackdown on illegal mining on their lands.

The statement said it was a “false solution to a problem that has social and economic roots”.

Environment minister Antonio Bracks authorised the operation in mid February —involving about 1000 police and infantrymen — to destroy illegal mining equipment including bombing of dredges.

At least four miners have been killed and 15 others injured in clashes with police, Correo Peru said on March 1.

Indigenous groups say they welcome formalisation of the illegal mining, but reject the military actions. The statement said these actions are “incompatible with democracy” and “violate our rights under international standards”.

The statement said that, due to the government’s failure to provide work opportunities, many impoverished indigenous communities make a living from small-scale illegal mining.

Since his election in 2006, Peruvian President Alan Garcia has vigorously pursued a neoliberal policy aimed at opening up vast swathes of indigenous people’s land in the Amazon to oil, mining, timber and agribusiness companies.

In April 2009, indigenous people in the Amazonian town of Bagua began an uprising to demand the repeal of more than a dozen decrees that aimed to open their lands to privatisation.

On June 5, the government ordered police and Special Forces to crack down on the protests. At least 30 people died and scores of indigenous people were disappeared.

A nationwide backlash forced the government to repeal some of the most controversial decrees.

However, indigenous activists say the government is still illegally auctioning exploration licences in the Amazon to big transnational companies — without consultation or agreement from indigenous communities.

In a press conference on February 22 the Interethnic Association of Development of the Peruvian Jungle, which unites more than 1350 communities from 60 different indigenous groups across the Peruvian Amazon — declared they are on a “permanent war footing” in defence of their ancestral lands.

From Green Left Weekly

Peru's Patricks? Call for solidarity action goes out

2011-02-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

Republished from Maritime Union of Australia

Armed troops and police are waging a brutal crackdown against dock workers fighting port privatisation in yet another war on the waterfront, this time in Peru.

Paddy Crumlin, International Transport Workers' Federation president and dockers chair has joined the world outcry over the labour rights violations which include military personnel and police strikebreakers, some dressed as civilians, harassing and detaining dock workers.

"This use of military or para military against dock workers failed in Australian in 1998 when ITF workers of the world showed their solidarity and it will fail in Peru. Sutramporpc Here to Stay!" said Paddy Crumlin who is also National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia.

In a circular to the ITF Dockers Section Committee, Frank Leys reports the 585 dockers of Puerto Callao in Peru, members of Sutramporpc downed tools on January 19.

The strike action came after the World Bank gave support for port structuring and privatisation without genuine consultation of the workers and without doubt will also result in the sacking of the organised labour.

"These Dockers are fighting until the bitter end and need your help," said Frank Leys.
The ITF is alerting affiliatiates to at least seven vessels loaded by military strike breakers now on route to world ports.

"I am sure you will give them the appropriate welcome when they call your port," he said.
The ITF has written to the Peruvian President of Peru, Sr. Alan Pérez on behalf the 5 million transport workers, it represents to intervene and cease all Human Rights violations of the port workers.

The union has agreed to resume negotiations with management next Tuesday.
Meanwhile members are urged to send messages of solidarity to "WILMER ESTEVES MORALES"

Meanwhile the ILWU announced a major victory in Costa Rica this summer with Sintrajap (Sindicato de Trabajadores de Japdeva) winning a major battle against State sponsored phoney candidates for their trade union.

Peru: Corrupt leader assaults protester

2010-10-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 23, 2010
By David T. Rowlands, from Green Left Weekly

Peruvian President Alan Garcia, who last year ordered the brutal massacre of protesting Amazonian tribespeople, has once again resorted to violence — this time in person.

Visiting Edgardo Rebagliati Hospital in Lima, on October 9, Garcia encountered 27-year-old Ricardo Galvez, who shouted “corrupt” at the president. Eyewitnesses say Garcia flew into an uncontrollable rage and forcefully struck the volunteer worker in the face.

Members of Garcia’s entourage landed follow up blows, knocking a defenceless Galvez to the floor where he was subjected to further mistreatment.

A dazed and bleeding Galvez was dragged away and detained by security personnel. However, the spontaneous intervention of fellow hospital workers and patients expressing their solidarity with Galvez secured his release.

This is not the first time Garcia has publicly assaulted a citizen. In 2004, Garcia kicked a protestor out of the way, later denying the incident occurred until footage surfaced.

Garcia admits to verbally attacking Galvez but denies striking him. In fact, within hours of the incident, the Garcia camp had concocted a farcical story about a patriotic hospital cleaner who had spontaneously punched Galvez to defend the honour of the nation’s head of state.

The “cleaner” in question came forward and made a full confession. But it has since been proven by Peruvian journalist Rosa Maria Palacios that this so-called cleaner is in fact a professional bodyguard and a long-serving member of Garcia’s security team.

These revelations have seriously embarrassed hospital authorities who collaborated with Garcia’s failed cover up. Garcia himself appears beyond embarrassment.

After all, this is the man who embezzled a fortune’s worth of public money and fled to France in disgrace after his first presidential term in the 80s, only to return to win the 2006 elections on the Popular American Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) ticket.

Officially a party of the workers, APRA — like the Australian Labor Party — has long since sold out to the big end of town, embracing pro-corporate policies.

Garcia’s previously unthinkable comeback was facilitated by generous campaign funding from US government sources, which financed a relentless propaganda campaign against his main opponent, left-leaning Ollanta Humala of the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP).

Galvez’s courageous stand appears to have been prompted by the latest scandal involving Garcia: vote rigging. It has been alleged that widespread electoral fraud has perverted the course of Lima’s October 3 mayoral elections.

Desperate to contain the rise of the new centre-left party Fuerza Social (FS), Garcia’s APRA machine reportedly intervened through the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPU) to illegally disallow more than 8000 votes cast for FS candidate Susanna Villaran.

Polls were predicting a strong win for FS, which would have been the first left-of-centre victory in a race for mayor since 1986. Garcia’s manipulation worked in favour of the conservative establishment candidate Lourdes Flores, prompting protests by FS supporters.

In a highly suspicious development, the ONPU has released figures indicating a dramatic narrowing of Villaran’s previously comfortable lead.

At the time of writing, the result still hangs in the balance. Should Flores be declared the winner, few are in any doubt that it would represent one of the most brazen examples of electoral fraud in Peruvian history.

The support for FS is a sign of growing popular disenchantment with the neoliberal “free trade” policies pursued by successive US-backed right wing administrations. The ruling elite and its foreign backers are determined to stem the tide.

In a disturbing sign of rising repression and censorship, maverick journalist and writer Jaime Baily’s high-rating television show El Francotirador (“The Sniper”) has been abruptly axed by channel Frequencia Latina for denouncing the vote rigging scandal and for planning to interview Galvez.

Baily has won a popular following in Peru for daring to speak out against corrupt practices. Now it appears that he has gone too far for Frequencia Latina’s owner and director Baruch Ivcher, a member of the Peruvian oligarchy and a close associate of Garcia’s.

So much for freedom of speech in “democratic” and “investment-friendly” Peru, a country recently praised by US President Barack Obama as a model for the rest of the continent.

If Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or any other leader of the Latin American left were to conduct themselves this way, the international corporate media would immediately launch into a chorus of condemnation.

Along with the Colombian regime of war criminal Juan Santos, Garcia’s Peru is Washington’s strongest ally in the South American continent. This helps to explain why he can apparently get away with anything.

Garcia’s sordid accommodation to foreign capital has had a corrosive effect on Peruvian society, further undermining an already jaded faith in public institutions.
Public pressure forced Garcia to sack his entire cabinet in October 2008. Secret recordings had emerged of several senior government members discussing the bribes they would receive from a Norwegian oil company in return for Amazonian extraction rights.

Grassroots activist network Second Class Citizens, one of several dissident groups becoming increasingly active in Peru, said: “Our country is going through one of the gravest moral crises in its history.

“The poverty and exclusion of millions of Peruvians is being extended by institutionalised corruption and the capture of the state by private interests.

“This system based on the fire sale of the country’s assets, the destruction of our natural resources and the criminalisation of protest is fertile ground for the advancement of corruption…let’s reclaim our Peru.”

Ricardo Galvez’s act of defiance sums up the feelings of millions of Peruvians towards the rotten-to-the-core president who is a puppet dictator in all but name.

No one in Peru is seriously debating the substance of Galvez’s allegation because it is common knowledge in every quarter of the country that Alan Garcia is as corrupt as they come.

U.S. Praise for Peru's Economy Misses the Mark

2010-09-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

By Lisa Skeen
Republished from NACLA

Sep 13 2010 - The Peruvian economy has been enjoying something of a heyday lately, basking in the glow of the mainstream media. Currently being hailed as something of a Latin American wonder child, the Andean country has received increasing press coverage for its near decade of strong growth, which has continued despite the global economic downturn. But extensive coverage of fawning comments by President Obama have overshadowed the parallel narrative of a country potentially on the brink of disaster, with widespread voter discontent, sharp income disparity, and explosively divergent claims to land and resources.

After Peruvian president Alan García visited the White House early this summer, Obama praised the country during a press conference, stating “We've seen not only the solidification of a thriving democracy but also an extraordinary economic success story. Even over the last year in the midst of a very tough global recession, we saw that Peru was able to remain resilient.”

Meanwhile, outside the White House, a small group of activists protested the meeting. A Peruvian woman and her daughter were later charged with defacing government property after the daughter chained herself to a White House fence and the mother poured an oily substance on her.

The incident, which was meant to highlight the environmental destruction wrought by mining companies, was mentioned only in passing on an ABC news blog. Obama's “economic success story” line, however, has reverberated through the mainstream media.

His comments, however, are as much a statement of faith in neoliberal trade policies as they are a statement of faith in Peru itself.

Certainly, the Peruvian economy has expanded. In May, the International Monetary Fund estimated that Peru's economy would expand by 6.3% in 2010 – the largest increase in the western hemisphere – due mostly to foreign direct investment (FDI) in mining and energy and the soaring price of gold, Peru's second-biggest export. Bank of America estimated that investment in the country would nearly double in 2011, to $8.4 billion, from $4.4 billion in 2009.

And yet, García's approval ratings hover at around 31%, up slightly from an abysmal low of 26% in May. His ratings reflect the reality that there is often little, if any, immediate correlation between GDP growth and quality of life for ordinary citizens.

Former president Alejandro Toledo described an alternate reality in an interview with PBS Newshour: “[There are] millions of Amazonians, Afro-Peruvians, who don't have the chance to have access to potable water and sanitation, to quality health care . . . ,[and] access to energy. And that's a population that's very discontented, and today getting together.”

A June report by Oxfam America paints a bleak picture of Peru. Throughout the 1990s, reports Oxfam, the country underwent a dramatic restructuring, with heavy emphasis on decentralization. As a result, local governments are now given 50% of royalties and taxes paid by extractive industries (called the canon minero), which in theory, should have been a boon to local communities, given the rapid growth of FDI. FDI inflows have nearly tripled in the last decade, from $1 billion during 1990-1999 to $2.7 billion during 2000-2009. As in the rest of Latin America, the exploitation of natural resources, particularly minerals and gas, is responsible for the majority of this investment.

Poverty indices, however, indicate that foreign investment and the current system of royalty distribution – hobbled by lack of institutional support and corruption – is highly ineffective at spreading wealth equitably. The García administration claimed the national poverty rate fell from 48.7% in 2005 to 34.8% in 2009, but Farid Matuk, a former head of the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) – the organization responsible for these statistics - was highly critical of García's conclusions, which have been widely reprinted in the media. According to Matuk, “The poverty figures are not a product of scientific measurements but an artistic creation . . . there is no math on earth that backs up INEI's statistics.”

A closer look at INEI statistics indicates that poverty levels have actually increased in rural areas, particularly in rural areas associated with mining, agriculture exports, and the Amazon. They range from an astounding 70.3% in Apurimac to 56% in Cajamarca (Peru's leading gold mining region) to a low of 13.7% in the Pacific coast region of Ica. Food poverty levels, considered a more accurate indicator of day-to-day hardship, have increased in rural areas, from 40.7% in 2005 to 45.8% in 2010.

Mining and gas concessions cover a staggering 70% of the Peruvian Amazon, many of which overlap with indigenous lands. Though many of the concessions are not being actively utilized, forecasts about environmental degradation are grim One recently released study offered a worse-case prediction that 91% of the Amazon would be deforested/degraded by 2041.

Rural discontent over land use, which has been simmering for years, boiled over in June 2009 with indigenous protests against the granting of exploration concessions to oil and gas companies in Bagua. Thus far, the protests have had little effect on García's policies.

The potential for such deadly explosiveness has investors concerned that there is a “sizable danger” that Peru will elect a populist president in April 2011. The possibility is considered likely enough to warrant the suspension of anticipated credit ratings upgrades until after the elections.

The potential for the election of a president who appeals to the rural poor rather than the urban business class no doubt looms large in the minds of investors and U.S. officials. Under García, Peru has remained a critical ally of the United States, particularly for its strategic location among other coca-cultivating countries that are, at best, highly wary of U.S. foreign policy. The potential deepening of a military alliance between the two countries was alluded to in comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates during an April visit to Lima.

But it is most likely Peru's friendliness to foreign investors that goes the farthest to explain Washington's insistent praise for Peru's “growth” amid such stark evidence of domestic discontent. The United States – Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA) went into effect on February 1, 2009, and according to the U.S. Trade Representative, trade between the two countries grew to $9.1 billion in 2009, up from $3.6 billion in 1999.

The TPA included a requirement that Peru protect labor rights, as well as a pledge of bilateral cooperation on the promotion of environmental protection. Under the agreement, Peru had 18 months from the February 1 implementation date to bring itself into compliance with this pledge. In July of this year, U.S. Ambassador Ron Kirk, expressed concern that Peru would not meet these obligations by the August 1 deadline.

Thus far, the Obama administration has not seriously addressed Peru's noncompliance with those few parts of the agreement capable of positively impacting local communities. Meanwhile, the praise keeps flowing and foreign investors continue to profit as rural Peruvians sink deeper into poverty – and discontent.

Lisa Skeen is a NACLA Research Associate.

El buen vivir: Peruvian Indigenous Leader Mario Palacios

2010-09-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

By Deborah Poole

In 1999, community leaders representing more than 1,200 communities in nine regions of Peru came together to form the National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI). Founded to counter the negative environmental and social impact of mining and the virtual absence of state regulation, CONACAMI initially sought direct, bilateral dialogue with the mining companies. But at its second national congress in 2003, delegates voted to reject dialogue and to embrace an anti-systemic politics that calls for the total rejection of mining and the neoliberal economy’s exclusionary practices and principles. They also voted to reconstitute CONACAMI as an indigenous confederation that would center its demands on defending indigenous rights, promoting indigenous political participation, and refounding the nation-state. In subsequent years, CONACAMI has expanded its presence in the Andean region through the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), an umbrella organization that CONACAMI helped to found in 2006.

The history of CONACAMI and its importance to popular struggles in the Andes points to the centrality of both community and Mother Earth to indigenous proposals for rethinking politics and the state. In this respect, it is also significant that CONACAMI, as an organization founded in opposition to the untrammeled destruction of the environment and natural resources, has played such an important role in revitalizing indigenous political organizations in the Andean regions of Peru, where self-ascribed indigenous organizations have not historically played as visible a role as either peasant or labor movements in popular political resistance.

In May, Deborah Poole interviewed Mario Palacios, president of CONACAMI (2008–10), in New York. In the edited transcript that follows, Palacios expands on the political and cultural vision of CONACAMI and its relationships with other indigenous organizations, including AIDESEP, the Peruvian Amazonian confederation that led the indigenous uprisings of 2008 and 2009.

CONACAMI is composed of communities from the Peruvian Andes that have suffered from the chaotic and disorderly expansion of mining in recent years. In Peru, mining is a crucial activity for the government in that it represents 64% of the country’s exports. However, although the state celebrates mining as an activity that is crucial for maintaining exports, it never talks about the negative effects that mining has on our lives. Mining generates not only environmental contamination but also greater poverty; it affects social relations within communities; and it leads, in many cases, to the actual disintegration of communities. It also jeopardizes resources that are necessary for the development of communities, like water and land, by degrading or contaminating them. Faced with this, CONACAMI is responding as an organization to defend our territories and the natural resources of Peru.

CONACAMI is basically an organization of communities that works in 16 of the country’s 24 departments. There are around 6,000 communities in Peru, of which 3,200 suffer the negative effects of mining. CONACAMI has almost 2,000 Andean community affiliates. Beyond that, however our work also draws on the diversity of Peru’s social movement. For example, we are constructing a strong alliance, a process of unity with indigenous organizations from the Peruvian Amazon. In this sense, CONACAMI and the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) are organizations that have led the struggle in both the Andes and the Amazon. We greatly respect the work of AIDESEP, an organization that has been carrying on very effective work in the Amazon since the early 1980s. In the Peruvian Andes, however, indigenous political organizing is more recent.

Peru’s neoliberal political process bases its economy on extractive industries. This political process brings not only the “free market,” but also free access to natural resources, free investment, and above all the looting of our resources. So our ancestral communities, many of which have territorial titles that date back 300 or 400 years to the colonial period, are today suffering from the expropriation, dispossession, and dissolution of their territories, not only because of the actions of the mining companies, but also because of the state itself and the governmental policies that are being applied in Peru. This is a politics of expropriation that dissolves or liquidates communities. And within this politics of extermination of communities, the rights of ancestral, originary, or indigenous peoples are not recognized.

In these last years, however, as a result of pressure, struggle, and resistance from both Andean and Amazonian communities, the Peruvian state has recognized the existence of the International Labor Organization Convention 169 (ILO 169). Although Peru signed this international convention 15 years ago, the state has continued to deny us our rights, as indigenous peoples, in every conceivable way. But the indigenous struggle has finally forced the state to recognize that this convention does have normative value as a binding international convention. It was the indigenous uprisings of 2008 and 2009 that forced the state to recognize these rights.

Today in Peru we are debating a legislative proposal that would implement our right to prior consultation, as provided for in the text of ILO 169.1 They are also debating a Law of Indigenous Peoples. I think these are important elements to achieve the recognition of indigenous rights in Peru, because these are rights that have been dismissed or denied ever since our lands were first invaded and colonized. But the proposal put forward by CONACAMI and the indigenous movements goes well beyond this question of rights and the defense of our own territories and natural resources. We are fighting because humanity itself is lost in a way of life that is marked by forms of accumulation and by the destruction and contamination of Mother Earth. These tendencies have increased in recent years because neoliberal capitalism is putting humanity’s very survival at risk. In Peru, for example, we are experiencing in a particularly dramatic way the effects of global climate change.

For us, it is not just climate change, but rather a climatic crisis that manifests itself in the frosts, hailstorms, torrential rains, droughts, floods, and landslides that we are enduring in the Andean region. These climatic changes, which reduce agricultural production and introduce new diseases that we never before knew, are directly affecting our way of life. Humanity must think carefully if we are to avoid in the next decades a crisis that could lead to our own extinction. The indigenous movement has taken up this challenge to construct, during the past 20 years, a political proposal that is also a proposal for life, a project of life—el buen vivir. This project, which translates in Quechua as allin kawsay or in Aymara as sumah qamana, is composed of various parts: It encompasses a new vision, a new way of seeing, that is different from Western developmentalism in that we call for harmony with, and respect for, Mother Earth.2

Our project also calls for another way of conceiving the state. The republican states that were invented 200 years ago are effectively exhausted, since have not been able to resolve fundamental problems. These homogenizing, uninational, monocultural, monolingual states, which took shape in the aftermath of the French Revolution, are today in crisis. In Peru, for example, we are effectively excluded from social, political, and economic participation because the state is dominated by criollos who are, in fact, a minority in the country. So the indigenous movement has put forward the need to reinvent another form of the state and a new model of democracy—a democracy that is no longer just representative. In the Peruvian case, representational democracy, through the Congress, has effectively collapsed. The Congress is highly corrupt, inefficient, and informal. The executive branch is also characterized by high levels of corruption. So we need a different democracy, and the form of democracy that we propose from within the indigenous movements is communitarian; it is a participatory democracy of mandar obedeciendo.3

1. On May 19, the Peruvian legislature passed the Law of Prior Consultation to implement rights guaranteed in ILO 169. President García refused to sign the bill, arguing that indigenous communities are not juridically recognized subjects and that the law would give indigenous peoples “veto power” over the nation’s development initiatives. The government’s actions, which were supported by Peru’s Constitutional Commission on July 15, have met with vigorous opposition from indigenous organizations, including CONACAMI, as well as from the Peruvian Ombudsmen (Defensoría del Pueblo).

2. The literal translation of allin kawsay is “to live well.” However, the term is understood and used in a much broader sense by indigenous political organizations and activists, who use it to refer to the practices of living in harmony with nature, with other communities, and within families and communities. As such, it refers as much to the practice of equality and ethical responsibility as to the aspiration of achieving a more just world.

3. Mandar obediciendo is a Zapatista phrase that has gained wide currency in indigenous movements in Latin America to refer to practices of democratic consultation in which authorities or elected representatives “lead by obeying.” In this view of political authority, leaders do not have the authority to make decisions without both consulting their bases and taking all opinions into account.

Deborah Poole is Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her recent publications include A Blackwell Companion to Latin American Anthropology (Blackwell, 2008).
Republished from NACLA

Extractivism Spills Death and Destruction in Peru

2010-09-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

By Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique

On June 19, a barge belonging to the Argentine transnational Pluspetrol spilled 400 barrels of oil into the Maranon River in Peru’s northeastern Loreto department. The day after the spill, the Peruvian government’s Bioactive Substances Laboratory tested the river water—which the Cocama and Achuar peoples depend upon for both water and fish—and found very high levels of oil. “It was practically all petroleum,” said chemical engineer Víctor Sotero, of the government’s Peruvian Amazon Research Institute.1

Even though the extensive contamination had been reported to the central government, Minister of Energy and Mines Pedro Sánchez seemed to suggest that the many lives and the complex environmental systems it had destroyed were not important, when he declared on national television that the Marañon spill involved a “very small amount of oil.” When “compared with what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico,” he concluded, “it should not be a cause for alarm.”2

The Marañon spill was certainly much smaller in absolute terms than the estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of crude oil that British Petroleum dumped each day into the Gulf of Mexico for almost three months.3 But scale is not an issue in environmental disasters that destroy complex ecological and riverine systems, and deprive the humans who depend on those environments for food, water, and a future for their communities. Sánchez’s comparison does, however, speak clearly of the Peruvian government’s attitude that environmental disasters are acceptable collateral damage for the millions of dollars that mining generates for Peru’s elite.

Indeed, the Marañon spill was just the latest example in a long series of environmental disasters that have accompanied Peru’s boom in mining, logging, and oil. Less than one week after the Marañon spill, the Caudalosa Chica company’s zinc and lead mine in the southern region of Huancavelica dumped more than 550 tons of tailings containing cyanide, arsenic, and lead into rivers that provide the sole source of drinking and irrigation water for more than 40,000 Peruvians.4 Again, the government of President Alan García responded with a series of denials, dismissals, and disclaimers.

One of the biggest challenges facing indigenous peoples in Peru, and throughout the Americas, is the unregulated expansion of these industries and the resulting contamination of land and water. The García government has granted oil, lumber, and mining companies territorial concessions and leases to almost 75% of the Peruvian Amazon. Of these, the vast majority (58 out of 64 leases) are located in indigenous territories. García’s government has also refused to implement rights of prior consultation—or any of the many other rights accorded to indigenous peoples in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which Peru ratified in 1993 and signed into law in 1994.

Because natural-resource extraction directly affects both nature itself and those forms of community and social life that seek harmony with the earth, it has served as a catalyst for the emergence of radical indigenous politics grounded in the defense of nature and life. Indigenous Peruvians have taken the lead in denouncing the mining, logging, and oil companies, as well as Peruvian government policies that promote extractive economies while trampling the rights of local communities and populations. In response, indigenous communities have mobilized to resist laws and policies that support the further incursion of mining companies. These include laws that grant the state ownership of subsoil resources in indigenous and peasant communities, laws that give the state the right to grant concessions without compensation, and policies that call for the titling and privatization (“regularization”) of collectively held lands in peasant and indigenous communities.

Indigenous organizations—including the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), and the National Federation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI)—have called for criminal charges to be brought against companies like Caudalosa Chica and Pluspetrol. Faced with continuing protests from indigenous and regional leaders over the Caudalosa Chica disaster, the government finally imposed a symbolic fine on the mining company. The fine comes nowhere close to compensating for the extensive environmental and economic damages—and it will no doubt join the long list of environmental penalties that the García government has levied yet failed to collect. In the three years leading up to these two most recent environmental disasters, Peru has managed to collect only $4.4 million of the $20 million in environmental fines it had imposed on the largest mining companies, which made more than $20 billion in profits from Peruvian mines between 2005 and 2009.5 As a result, mining and petroleum companies continue to operate in a de facto state of impunity in Peru.

This and other serious challenges remain for Peruvian indigenous movements, despite their significant advances over the years. The neoliberal agenda allows no room for negotiating territorial or political rights, and the entrenched racism of Latin America’s dominant criollo or mestizo societies makes it difficult for indigenous perspectives and voices to be heard. The García government has systematically criminalized indigenous organizations, and demonized indigenous peoples in speeches and TV spots that portray Indians who defend the environment and their territorial rights as “manger dogs,” “subversives,” and “savages.”

Indigenous organizations have made common cause with political actors who do not necessarily identify as indigenous but share their concerns. On July 7 and 8, for example, indigenous leaders joined opposition political representatives from Huancavelica to lead a regional strike and a “sacrifice march” to Lima to protest the García government’s refusal to act in the Caudalosa Chica case. Only after a general regional strike, marches, and protests of indigenous and popular organizations, and an increasing critical media, did the government reluctantly agree to temporarily close the mine.6

1. Quoted in Milagros Salazar, “Don’t Minimize Impacts of Amazon Oil Spill,”
Inter Press Service, July 1, 2010.

2. Iván Herrera Gálvez, “Perú: el mito de la petrolera ‘limpia y responsible’ se hunde en la oleosa realidad,” Servicios en Comunicación Intercultural Servindi (servindi.org; Lima, Peru), June 30, 2010.

3. CNN.com, “Oil Estimate Raised to 35,000–60,000 Barrels a Day,” July 16, 2010.

4. Servicios en Comunicación Intercultural Servindi, “Peru: Denuncian atentado criminal a la ecologia de los rios Totora y Opamayo,” June 28, 2010.

5. Milagros Salazar, “La impotente regulación,” IDL-Reporteros.pe, June 3, 2010.

6. La República (Lima), “Ordenan paralizar operaciones de mina Caudalosa Chica,” July 13, 2010.

Deborah Poole is Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her recent publications include A Blackwell Companion to Latin American Anthropology (Blackwell, 2008). Gerardo Rénique is Associate Professor of history at City College, City University of New York. Republished from NACLA

Peru: Amazon indigenous create new political party

2010-08-31T02:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 28, 2010
By Kiraz Janicke

Peru’s Amazonian indigenous people have announced the creation of their own political party and will contest the presidential elections in April 2011.

The indigenous people clashed with Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s government in 2009 to defend their ancestral lands in the largest indigenous uprising in recent history.

The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP), Peru’s largest and most representative indigenous organisation, announced the formation of the Alliance for an Alternative for Humanity party (Alianza para la Alternativa de la Humanidad — APHU).

The announcement came shortly after the one-year anniversary of Garcia’s violent crackdown on thousands of indigenous protesters near the town of Bagua Grande on June 5, 2009.

Indigenous communities were protesting against a series of government decrees in line with the US-Peru Free Trade-Agreement that opened up their ancestral lands to exploitation by oil, mining, timber and agribusiness companies and undermined constitutionally recognised consultation processes.

The Bagua massacre — as the crackdown became known — left at least 34 dead, including police and protesters, and unknown numbers of indigenous people disappeared. Bagua sparked national and international condemnation.

AIDESEP president Alberto Pizango — despite not being present at the Bagua protests — was charged with “conspiracy, sedition and rebellion” and was forced to flee the country and seek asylum in Nicaragua.

The crisis caused the entire ministerial cabinet to resign and forced the government to repeal some of its most controversial decrees.

But indigenous activists say the government is still illegally auctioning exploration licenses in the Amazon, without consultation or agreement from indigenous communities.

Political persecution of indigenous leaders continues. In November 2009, the Ministry of Justice issued a request to dissolve AIDESEP, but promptly backed away when the move sparked a public backlash.

The government has also tried to create alternatives to AIDESEP that agree with its neoliberal agenda, and to promote fake “consultation” processes with indigenous communities to ensure outcomes that favour transnational companies.

Pizango, who returned to Peru on May 26 to fight the government’s trumped up charges and spoke at the August 11 press conference, condemned the government’s attempt to divide the indigenous movement.

The new party was created by indigenous people but it will “attempt to embrace all the citizens of Peru who defend the forests, nature and life on Earth”, he said.

The party’s platform is based on three main points: peace, sovereignty and land rights; education and health for all Peruvians; and the indigenous concept of vivir bien (living well), which Pizango described as harmony between people and nature.

Pizango said the APHU “will be a political tool for defending the Amazon and its resources which belong to all Peruvians, who must be consulted about its fate”.

Pizango said he was willing to stand as APHU’s presidential candidate but said the traditional Apus, or indigenous leaders of the Amazon, would decide.

The party is in the process of collecting the required 160,000 signatures for official registration. So far it has 100,000 registered members.

Some have described Pizango as “Peru’s Evo Morales”. Morales is Bolivia’s first indigenous president who came to prominence by leading social struggles in the defence of natural resources and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Pizango said his project, like that of the Bolivian indigenous leader, is based on the “aspirations of peoples”.

“People are coming together today to defend planet Earth, to defend their right to a life of dignity whereby they can recover knowledge that allows them to live in harmony with nature and thereby ensure the survival of future generations.”

Peru has the second-largest indigenous population in South America after Bolivia. About 53% being of Peruvians are indigenous.

The new party is based primarily in rural areas and is made up of the poorest of the poor — Peru’s tribal indigenous communities — and for these reasons faces many challenges in terms of resources.

It is unlikely Pizango will be elected in 2011, but analyst Roger Rumrrill told AFP on August 11 that the creation of APHU is a good strategy “as an exercise in building power for the long term”.

Another candidate on the left is Marco Arana, priest and leader of the Peru Land and Freedom Movement. It describes itself as a “political movement that believes in social transformation via social movements”, and calls for the democratisation of power “in all spaces and at all levels”.

But the most visible face of the opposition in Peru is Ollanta Humala, leftist leader of the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP), who narrowly lost to Garcia in 2006.

All three candidates are fierce critics of neoliberal policies, but face an array of conservative or centrist politicians backed by the US and Peru’s traditional capitalist elites.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

US Activist Lori Berenson and Baby Son Returned to Peruvian Prison Just 3 Months After Release on Parole

2010-08-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

US activist Lori Berenson has been sent back to a Peruvian prison just three months after she was freed on parole. Berenson had served nearly fifteen years following her 1996 conviction for collaborating with the rebel group the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA. Democracy Now interviews Lori Berenson’s mother, Rhoda Berenson in Lima, Peru. [transcript below]

JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin today’s show in Peru, where a three-judge panel has ordered the American activist Lori Berenson back to prison to serve the remaining five years of her twenty-year sentence. Berenson and her fifteen-month-old son Salvador had been free since May, when she was released on parole.

Berenson is the American activist who was arrested in 1995 in Lima, accused of collaborating with the rebel group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA. She was initially sentenced to life in prison for treason, but four-and-a-half years later, due to international pressure, her sentence was vacated. She was retried by a civilian court, which reduced her sentence to twenty years.

On Monday, Berenson appeared in a Peruvian courtroom and pleaded for the judges to allow her and her son to leave for the United States in order to seek medical treatment. She apologized to the people of Peru.

LORI BERENSON: [translated] If my participation contributed to societal violence, I am very sorry for this. If my coming to Peru has meant more harm to the country, I am very sorry for this. And those who are affected by my words or actions, I ask their forgiveness.

AMY GOODMAN: Lori Berenson also told the court she does not pose a danger to anyone.

LORI BERENSON: [translated] I lament the repercussions that my parole has had on society. This has always been a media case, since I was detained. The truth is, despite how it hurts me, I accept that I have been ostracized, but according to the law and based on my behavior, I do not represent a danger for anyone.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the story, we’re joined on the telephone by Lori Berenson’s mother Rhoda Berenson in Lima, Peru. Rhoda and her husband Mark run the website freelori.org.

Rhoda, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain what has happened? Why has your daughter Lori and her son Salvador, your grandson, been reimprisoned?

RHODA BERENSON: Hi, Amy.

There was an appeal on Lori’s parole. Right after she was granted parole in the end of May, the state prosecutor appealed that. That’s a process that’s permitted. Either side can appeal. And that was what was being studied in the courtroom, and there were papers that went back-and-forth on Monday. And there were a couple of main issues that the prosecutor had brought up, namely that Lori did not serve a full fifteen years—that’s three-quarters of her sentence—but had been shorter, because she had worked. If you do work-study time, you can shorten that. It’s a standard procedure, and that’s how everybody had done it in the past.

And there was also an issue about the apartment that I’m right now sitting in, as to whether or not the police had seen the apartment prior to the decision to giver her parole. The police come and check that the apartment really exists and that people aren’t saying they’re moving someplace that doesn’t really exist. So that was what the issue was, the decision yesterday, that because the apartment hadn’t been checked before the judge granted parole, that the apartment must be checked, the judge then has to say the apartment was checked and then, once again, decide whether or not to give Lori parole, and that, in the meantime, Lori must return to prison. So, because there was a technical error, because the judge did not order the house inspected, Lori had to return to prison until this is all settled.

And it’s absolutely outrageous. And actually, after—while Lori was living here, the police do come and check once a month. That’s a standard parole procedure that every—so they’ve been here. It was all ludicrous. I mean, there was a famous Peruvian lawyer who was last night saying it’s, you know, just ludicrous to send her back to prison until you finish that up, because then they can appeal again. So they haven’t really decided on any issues other than this technicality. So I know it’s probably complicated for your listeners, but there was a technicality in the original decision to giver her parole, and Lori had to be imprisoned until that is resolved, which will probably take a couple of months, at which point, we assume that that’s going to be taken care of. The judge will once again say she’s granted parole. She’ll then be out on parole again. But then again, this is Peru, so you never know. But that’s what our assumption is. But then it may be appealed again. So, this is—this is something that only happens to Lori Berenson. You know, we’ve been at this for fifteen years. Hundreds of Peruvians who have been involved in political terrorism cases have—[no audio]

AMY GOODMAN: Rhoda?

We seem to have lost Rhoda Berenson, mother of Lori Berenson. Again, she has been reimprisoned along with her son Salvador. Rhoda Berenson, speaking to us from Lima.

Rhoda, did we reestablish a connection?

RHODA BERENSON: Yes, I’m here. When did you lose me?

AMY GOODMAN: Just in the last second. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Rhoda, I’d like to ask you, you were mentioning the—this is Peru. As you were talking, we were showing some of the video to those of our audience that have video access or TV access, showing the frenzy of the press around this case. Could you talk about the climate in Peru ever since Lori was released?

RHODA BERENSON: Well, the climate has always been like that for Lori, if anything happens and her name is mentioned. But the press in Peru—[no audio]

AMY GOODMAN: Hmmm. Well, I’ll tell you what we will do. We will go to a break, see if we can get her back on. Rhoda Berenson is who we’ve been talking to, mother of Lori Berenson. Lori and her son have been reimprisoned to serve out the full twenty-year sentence, after she’s already served fifteen, though her mother says this may be a technicality and she could be out sooner. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re trying to have an uninterrupted conversation with Rhoda Berenson, the mother of Lori Berenson. Lori has just been reimprisoned in Peru. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, yes, before we were cut off, Rhoda, I was asking you about the media reaction to Lori’s release a couple of months ago.

RHODA BERENSON: Well, the reaction was horrendous. You know, there is nothing Lori can do that they don’t turn against her. And they’re physically—when, any time either Lori, I or—last night was Lori and her baby, were almost crushed. I mean, the baby was screaming, because the priests come swarming right in on you. And, of course, when that happens, the immediate media reaction was, "Well, she shouldn’t have had her baby with her." You know, this is like—you know, it’s like blame the victim kind of thing, when, of course, if she didn’t have her baby with her, they would have yelled, "She doesn’t have her baby! She’s abandoned her baby!" There’s nothing Lori can do that they don’t twist in a negative way. I mean, nobody knows her real story. Nobody knows that she was not convicted of being a member of a terrorist group, that she was acquitted of that. Nobody knows that. They make up any—she can walk down the street, and they call her assassin. You know, she’s certainly never assassinated anybody. Nobody knows the facts. They just quote anything they like. And it’s—so, for the entire time she was out, there were articles every single day about Lori Berenson, Lori Berenson, Lori Berenson.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you afraid for her—

RHODA BERENSON: Are you still there?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Were you afraid for Lori and her son Salvador’s safety during the period that they were out?

RHODA BERENSON: We had—there were some threats. You know, we were nervous. I really didn’t expect anyone was going to physically attack either of them. And, you know, I would say a huge majority of the population is anti-Lori, but we still managed to walk the streets and have people come up to us and say, "Lori, not everybody’s like that. We’re on your side." So, it was—yes, we’re always nervous here, because people recognize us.

AMY GOODMAN: Rhoda, can you explain what Lori was convicted of?

RHODA BERENSON: She was convicted of renting an apartment which was used by the MRTA. Also, at the time, she had been charged with being a member of the group and helping plan things or—you know, all of that, she was acquitted of. So she was found guilty of renting the apartment for her. And I think in her little speech the other day, she said she accepts responsibility for that.

AMY GOODMAN: Has Salvador, her son, gotten the operation that he needs?

RHODA BERENSON: No, that’s scheduled for November. And certainly we’re hoping that Lori is out on parole. And, you know, with the Peruvian public feeling so uncomfortable, for whatever reason they have, with her, it just makes sense, in my mind, that they all say, "Throw her out of the country."

AMY GOODMAN: Does she want to come to the United States?

Well, we lost Rhoda Berenson again, but we’ll have to leave that for another day. Rhoda Berenson, the mother of Lori Berenson. Again, Lori Berenson and her son Salvador, fifteen months old, have been put back in prison after serving fifteen years. Lori faces another five.

Republished from Democracy Now

Peruvian Government Draft Report Buries the Truth about Bagua, Resurrects Racist Stereotypes

2010-08-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

David Hill

One year since the tragic events at Bagua in northern Peru, when armed police attacked indigenous Awajún and Wampis protesters, it is clear Peru’s government has no intent to change its hostile relationship with the country's indigenous population. In a move that has provoked outrage in many quarters, President Alan Garcia recently blocked a law, voted by Congress, that would have recognized indigenous people's right to consultation about projects affecting their land – precisely one of their demands when protesting the year before.

It wasn’t just the fact that Garcia blocked the law. It was the way he did it. In a response not unlike last year’s, when he described the protesters at Bagua as "pseudo-natives" committing acts of "savagery" and "barbarism", Garcia returned the law to Congress with several suggested modifications and claims, including one that the "legitimacy" of indigenous organizations should be judged by Peru’s Office of Electoral Processes and another that Peru’s Andean communities are not really indigenous.

If you think Garcia is the only one holding such offensive views, think again. In early December 2009 a draft report written by the government commission appointed to investigate the causes of the violence at Bagua was leaked to the Peruvian press. Two members of the commission, one of whom was Carmen Gomez Calleja, a nun, quickly distanced themselves from the draft, and later refused to endorse the report even after it was finalised and major changes were made.

"Our president, Alberto Pizango, regrets the differences that have emerged between the members of the commission investigating what happened at Bagua," said national indigenous organization Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP). "He agrees with Maricarmen Gomez, who has warned how the draft report contains serious errors such as holding indigenous people responsible for the death of 34 people."

That wasn’t the draft report’s only error. In addition to completely failing to clarify what happened at Bagua or explain why or how so many people were killed, the draft repeatedly makes gross generalisations about "the native", claims they were manipulated into protesting by outsiders, and concludes with a series of "recommendations" to Peru’s indigenous population that are so ignorant, so paternalistic and, ultimately, so offensive that they almost defy belief.

"The native is handicapped by race, by being indigenous, by living in the rainforest," reads one sentence in the draft’s second paragraph. "The current situation in the Amazon means that the native must revise his culture and social, political and religious structures," reads one recommendation. Another: "The natives need to adapt to a globalization model inspired by an authentic humanism." Another line reads: "The natives should abandon their belief that all people are equal..."

Reaction to the draft was scathing:

"The antithesis of a serious work of investigation," said a spokeswoman from Peru’s Institute of Legal Defence.

"Shot through with stereotypes of a culture it knows nothing about," added one columnist from the La República newspaper.

"Not the result of sober investigation. It oozes racism, treating indigenous people as ignorant and incapable," said Bartolomé Clavero, a member of UN’s indigenous issues forum and a regular commentator on Peru.

For Peruvian anthropologist Alberto Chirif, the draft could almost have been written 100 years ago. "Handicapped by race, by being indigenous, by living in the rainforest? Nothing could be further from the truth," said Chirif. "This is an old strategy, used by the rubber barons a century ago who said indigenous people couldn’t testify about the torture they had experienced or the number of people who had died because they were racially incapable of doing so."

Even more extraordinary is what the draft report says about "uncontacted" tribes: that’s to say, indigenous people living in the remotest parts of the Amazon who have no contact with outsiders and are very vulnerable to contact because of their lack of immunity to disease. In Peru, two of the most common Spanish terms for these groups are "indígenas aislados", the term often used in the draft, or "indígenas no contactados", used by President Garcia in his recent letter to Congress blocking the law.

The draft report makes several unlikely, unsubstantiated claims about the aislados. At one point, it says that members of one group, when "they finish studying at university", intend to "kill the people who call them aislados because this misleading term is impeding their ability to develop." At another, it says some aislados, unhappy about being called that, have threatened to kidnap an oil company worker "so they can show the whole world they’re not aislados and deserve help like anyone else."

The leaked draft also makes several unsubstantiated accusations against those working in support of the aislados’ rights. It accuses NGOs of condemning them to live "underdeveloped" lives and causing "injustice that will provoke violence", and anthropologists of being "racist", "romantic", inventing the idea of an "isolated native", violating their rights, committing "scientific fraud" and "ethnocide." Calling them aislado is a "time bomb", states the report.

Just to be clear, the people who NGOs and anthropologists say live "without contact" do just that. Although it is true that has not always been the case – e.g. some groups had contact during the "rubber boom" 100 years ago and then retreated into isolation after so many indigenous people were killed – today sightings of them are rare, encounters rarer still. Contrary to what the draft claims, there are no aislados studying for a degree.

"The report tries to discredit those working in defence of isolated tribes by using an argument that is absolutely mistaken and fallacious," said Beatriz Huertas, a Peruvian anthropologist and the author of one of the few books about Peru’s aislados, called "Indigenous Peoples in Isolation in the Peruvian Amazon". "The fight for their rights is about ensuring their existence and survival on the grounds that they have the right to decide how they live. It’s about respecting their rights to self-determination."

Ultimately, in addition to everything else that is wrong with it, the draft report must be seen as an explicit attack on the aislados and those working to ensure their rights are respected. The reason for this attack is obvious. In recent years, as Peru’s government has opened up more and more of the Amazon to oil and gas exploration, an increasing number of people, in Peru and internationally, have spoken out in defence of those, i.e. the aislados, who are most likely to be affected.

David Hill is a researcher with Survival. Republished from Upside Down World

Peru: 100 thousand construction workers rally to demand wage increases and improved working conditions

2010-07-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

By Yasser Gomez

14/07/10 - The Federation of Construction Workers of Peru (FTCCP) decided to take the demands of workers against the employers to the streets in Lima where 20 000 workers mobilised and 80 000 in other cities around the country.

The workers held pre-rally concentrations in many areas from where they marched to the Plaza Dos de Mayo in downtown Lima, where they all converged. Then they marched to the Congress. Mario Huaman, secretary general of the FTCCP and CGTP (1) espoused a platform of struggle in front of thousands of workers.

"This is a march in repudiation of the APRA government, because of the 4000 workers who were sacked only for deciding to unionize. We reject the systematic anti-labor policies," he said.

Also, Huaman said that whenever mobilisations are held the government criminalizes protests and as a result of the repression so far there has been 70 deaths among workers, peasants, indigenous, environmentalists and popular leaders.

The secretary general of the FTCCP denounced the violence in the sector and the parallel unionism promoted by the mafia and criminal gangs in a so-called new Federation, sponsored by the APRA government. He also demanded higher wages in proportion to the rapid growth in the construction sector the country and the productivity of workers, which is among the highest in Latin America.

Mario Huaman called for better working conditions. “In 2008 we presented to Congress a draft law for health and safety. But we have not had a reply. Since then, 131 workers have died in construction accidents at work. There is no law to protect the lives of workers.” Before this Huaman was emphatic in expressing demands of the working class. "An employer who does not apply the safety measures must be jailed, because you can not play with the lives of workers."

In addition, Huaman demanded improved social security and lowering the record of contributions to fifteen years, so that workers have access to a retirement pension. "Because only 8% of construction workers have access to retirement." Finally, workers proclaimed their support for the demand of the peoples of southern Peru, against the Camisea gas exports in order to avoid increasing the price of fuel and the cost of living.

(1) CGTP – General Confederation of Peruvian Workers

Yásser Gómez is a journalist and editor de Mariátegui. La revista de las ideas.
http://sangreenlasideas.blogspot.com

Translated by Kiraz Janicke for Peru en Movimiento

Peruvian Indigneous leader Unjustly Arrested on his Return from Exile

2010-05-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

Alberto Pizango, president of the Peruvian national indigenous federation AIDESEP, has been arrested immediately upon his return to Lima today (May 26, 2010) after several months in exile in Nicaragua. He is facing politically motivated charges in Peru which Peruvian human rights experts say have no legal foundation and should have been dismissed long ago.

Pizango was granted asylum in Nicaragua nearly a year ago after the Garcia administration attempted to hold him responsible for fatalities during the violent June 5th army raid on indigenous protestors outside the Amazon town of Bagua. The incident, which left 34 people dead on both sides and more than 200 people injured, eventually led to the Peruvian Congress repealing two of nine contested Presidential decrees that had sparked nationwide indigenous protests.

International and Peruvian human rights groups are calling on the Garcia Government to drop the trumped up legal charges against Pizango and instead address the root causes of the conflict with indigenous peoples.

Pizango said of his decision to return "I represent indigenous peoples, I am returning to take on the hard task of resolving these problems, so that we as indigenous peoples can have a voice, can have justice, and can truly live in peace as we deserve."

Pizango returned just days before Peruvian President Alan Garcia is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. on June 1st. Lima will also be in the spotlight as it hosts the General Assembly of the Organization of American States from June 6-8.

The protests last year were sparked when President Garcia used the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement to justify the promulgation of a series of decrees that roll back indigenous land rights and open much of the Peruvian Amazon to foreign corporations. Given the U.S. connection to the conflict in Peru, rights groups are pushing President Obama to raise this issue with Garcia.

"Pizango's courageous return to Peru marks an important opportunity for the Peruvian government to begin repairing its relations with indigenous peoples," said actress and indigenous rights activist Q'orianka Kilcher. "President Garcia should consider that the world is watching and that all of this is unfolding on the eve of his meeting with President Obama and the assembly of the Organization of American States."

Peruvian human rights experts agree that the pending charges against Pizango have no legal foundation and should have been dismissed long ago.

Pizango stated: "Nearly a year has passed since the tragic events in Bagua, yet we have not reached any resolution. Now is the moment for the Peruvian government to show good faith and stop persecuting indigenous peoples."

To mark the one-year anniversary of the violence in Bagua, indigenous and human rights groups are planning a series of events to bring attention to continuing indigenous rights violations and the criminalization of protest in Peru.

In February 2010, the International Labor Organization (ILO) of the United Nations asked the Peruvian government to "suspend the exploration and exploitation of natural resources which are affecting [indigenous peoples]" until the government has developed consultation and participation mechanisms in compliance with the ILO convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples.

"The Garcia administration does not seem to have learned the harsh lessons of Bagua. Just last week, the government intensified its assault on indigenous rights by offering yet more indigenous territory to foreign oil corporations so that half of all indigenous lands in the Peruvian Amazon now fall within oil concessions," stated Atossa Soltani, Amazon Watch's Executive Director.

"President Garcia is imposing a model of 'development' for the Amazon that is based on shortsighted extraction of natural resources and tramples on the rights of the people's whose lives depend on the rainforest," added Soltani.

International norms such as ILO Convention 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples obligate governments to respect indigenous peoples' right to decide their own future. Governments are legally required to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of affected indigenous peoples before moving ahead with policies or economic activities.

Republished from Amazon Watch

Peru: Opposition to demand Alan Garcia's resignation for "permanent moral incapacity."

2010-04-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Lima April 7 - Opposition leader Ollanta Humala announced on Tuesday that the Peruvian Nationalist Party will present a demand for Peruvian President Alan Garcia be removed from his post for "permanent moral incapacity."
Humala said the demand is being made in the face of "the policy of criminalization of protest" that exists in the country, which he said has resulted in more than 70 dead and 600 injured in the four years of Garcia's term.

Humala explained that "a very serious fact can be shown, which is a policy of criminalization of protest, which so far during his four-year-rule is leading to a growing number of deaths."
"There are more than 70 dead, more than 600 injured, people disappeared, one political refugee and more thant 1300 Peruvian citizens, the majority of them social leaders, that have been charged with the crime 'protesting against the Government'", he said.
Some 6,000 artesanal miners are currently blocking the road in the town of Chala, about 620 kilometers south of Lima, where six people died last Sunday (five by gunshot wounds), in clashes with police.
In the clashes twenty civilians were also wounded (15 shot) and 8 policemen, said the Ombudsman.

The protest is against a decree that aims to formalize mining in the jungle region of Madre de Dios, with a great biodiversity and the main focus of artisanal gold mining.

Garcia reiterated Tuesday that his government would not negotiate with the miners until they stop the protests and road blockades.
The president warned that his Government's obligation is to "respect and enforce the law" and stressed that "no one can block roads without the risk of a charge and a criminal penalty."

However, Humala together with a spokesperson for his party said today he would evaluate the terms of the demand for the president's resignation and that his party is also seeking the interpellation to the prime minister, Javier Velásquez.
In this regard, he indicated that "there must be a political, not just operational, responsibility, that corresponds to police orders."

"Why did the prime minister? Precisely because he is the great coordinator of this whole operation and which has finally come out with a more radical position than those who are on the road, a hardline position that he is not going to dialogue" he said.

According to Humala, in the current administration there is a policy of "not giving importance to life in the face of the implementation of certain policies that respresent the interests of economic groups."

"The government is in favor of defending this model, the crony capitalism, defending various economic 'lobbies' that are behind the takeover of public infrastructure, natural resources, it has no qualms about putting at risk the lives of citizens, who ultimately are those who elected it," he concluded.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke, republished from Aporrea.org

Police in Peru Killed Between 4 to 9 Miners During a National Strike against Government Decrees

2010-04-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

Carlos A. Quiroz - Peruanista

April 4, 2010 - Between 4 to 9 people were killed today in Peru and about 17 were injured, after a clash between Peruvian police forces and informal miners blocking a main road, as part of a national strike against the Alan Garcia government's decrees intended to prevent informal gold mining.

The violence occurred early today Sunday April 4, 2010 as protesters blocked the Pan-American road in the small fishing town of Chala, located in the Arequipa region.

The government of Alan Garcia is trying to promote the formalization of between 60,000 to 100,000 informal miners who extract mostly gold in rivers and lakes of several provinces of Peru, producing between $600 to $840 million dollars in annual revenues.

According to the miners, they are also in support for a legal formalization but with rules that can promote their small businesses, something that is not accepted by the Garcia administration. There are not intentions for an open dialogue from the Peruvian government, that has chosen police repression instead.

The Prime minister of Peru, Javier Velasquez confirmed only one casualty but Peruvian radio station CPN and others covering the protests, said that at least four people were killed including 3 miners, a local civilian. About 7 police agents were injured in the attacks.

The national strike is organized by the organizations National Federation of Small Miners of Peru [Federación Nacional de Mineros Artesanales de Perú – FENAMARPE], and the Mining Federation of Madre de Dios [Federación Minera de Madre de Dios].

The FENAMARPE says in its website that more than 300,000 miners have started today “an indefinite strike” in the regions of Ayacucho, Arequipa, Apurímac, Lima, Piura, Ica, Puno, Cusco, Ancash, Huancavelica, Cerro de Pasco, Tacna, Huánuco, La Libertad, Cajamarca, Moquegua, Huancayo and Madre de Dios.

Rafael Seminario, one of the leaders of FENAMARPE said that at least nine people died this morning, after police shot the miners who were blocking the Pan-American road. The miners are demanding the approval of laws that will strength the small mining ventures, and that the government revokes decrees that “affect thousands of Peruvians that working in mining as their only way of living, in the poorest and most hidden regions of the country”.

The leftist blog Prensa Alternativa wrote that witnesses assured that “the police opened fire directly to the protesters”, killing Alejandro Llamoca Barriga (34), Edgar Mitma Wuilcarima (37), Arturo Zamaca Chiri (26) and Juan de Dios Larrea Huamaní (38). There could be more dead people, apparently hidden by the police at the local health care center, something yet to be confirmed.

According to BBC about 6,000 miners arrived from other regions to Chala , but other protests were also held in the coastal town of Nasca, and in the Amazonian regions of Madre de Dios, Cusco and Puno.

The Lima government has mobilized 6,400 police officers to avoid road blockades and other possible actions to be taken by the protesters, says Living in Peru adding:

Teódulo Medina Gutiérrez, from the Federation of Informal Miners, had explained that they want the repeal of the decree 012-2010, that establishes a reorganization of the informal mining activities in Madre de Dios region, because they consider it as unconstitutional.

Fernando Gala, Deputy Minister of Mining, told the press that the decree does not intend to take informal miners out of their business, as they claim. The government says that Russian and Brazilian mining corporations are manipulating the protesters.

Living in Peru also reports that the government of Peru has declared the state of emergency in seven provinces, giving the internal control to the Police, with the support of the Armed Forces:

Facing the possibility of an indefinite strike that may mobilize thousands of informal miners nationwide, the government declared the state of emergency in seven southern Provinces: Nazca, Palpa and San Juan de Marcona in Ica region, Tambopata and Manu in Madre de Dios region, and Caravelí and Camaná in Arequipa region.

Pollution and human exploitation

The president of Peru, Alan Garcia has said to CPN radio that his administration will avoid the existence of any informal mining activity, because it pollutes rivers, destroys the environment, slaves children and young workers and it creates natural disasters due to lack of proper technology.

In this sense, Garcia is right.

Many Indigenous people have migrated from the Andes to the Amazon forests of Madre de Dios, Puno and Cusco searching for promising jobs in gold mining. They work for “middle-men” ventures who work for bigger mining concessions leasing from the government. This has led to the creation of unruly small mining towns, causing pollution by chemicals used by miners. See this video:

Unfortunately, and due to the records of the Garcia administration which allows bigger cmining corporations the same kind of abuses, it's hard to trust the intentions of Garcia and its cabinet.

The other side

While the Peruvian government has become very strict with small miners, doing its job to protect the environment but the Garcia administration overlooks worse abuses committed by big mining corporations in other parts of the country, like in Yanacocha (the second biggest gold mining venture in the world) and Tambogrande where people have died of mercury pollution. Both projects are located in northern Peru and one of the activists against these abuses, father Marco Arana, is now a potential presidential candidate.

Also the Garcia administration accuses the leftist Partido Nacionalista party to promote the strikes, and the minister of Environment, Antonio Brack has said that “bad elements” could infiltrate the protests as the miner may carry guns and act violently.

The small miners say they are not promoting violence, and they have invited the National Ombudsman and the National Prosecutor's Offices, to supervise the mobilizations. The general director of FENAMARPE also said that informal mining creates $850 million dollars annually and the strike could cause over S/. 2.7 million soles in daily lose to the national economy.

In this situation both parties are looking for a formalization of the small miners, but the government seems to want to eliminate the small competition, perhaps to benefit bigger corporations.

This is especially convenient now that the Inter-Oceanic highway is coming to completion, connecting both coasts of Brazil and Peru, allowing the transportation of gold production for exportation. More details about this conflict will come to light, as the strike continues this week.

Republished from Peruanista

Jailed Leaders of Clandestine Police Union in Peru Call for National Strike

2010-04-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Kiraz Janicke/Esvieta Topovich - Peru en Movimiento/La Primera

April 1, 2010 - Jailed leaders of the clandestine United Police Union of Peru (SUPP) have called for a nation-wide strike by the Peruvian National Police (PNP) on April 5 to demand salary increases, which have remained unchanged for 20 years.

From their prison cells the leaders of the underground union called on police officers around the country to stay at home that day in order to make the Alan Garcia government understand the profoud levels of discontent that exists in the police force.

"One day off work is not a crime nor a serious infraction," SUPP general secretary Richard Ortega Quispe said in a statement from the Pre-Police School of Anti-Narcotic Affairs in Ayacucho, where he is being held.

Similarly SUPP organisation secretary, Edward Casas Diburcio, who has been on hunger strike for 18 days, sent a letter from his bed at the Police Hospital, where he was transferred on Tuesday from the PNP Technical School in Puente Piedra, Lima.

Taking a day off work is only a minor offense under Law No. 29,356, of the police disciplinary regulations, which is punishable by a warning or a maximum of six days in jail, Diburcio explained.

Both leaders said that they and their colleague Abel Hallasi Zarate, held in Cusco, had been imprisoned unjustly. In addition to their immediate release, the police of the country are demanding an end to the politics of deceit from the government, a salary increase and the re-boost of the "broken" police pension fund.

Ortega Quispe said President Alan Garcia, Premier Javier Velásquez, the ministers of Interior, Finance and Defence and senior police commanders would be responsible for any "undesirable" events may arise from the lack of police on the streets.

He also said businessmen, bankers, transport companies, traders and the general public would have to take their own precautions to prevent their property and assets being affected by the lack of security.

The general coordinator of the SUPP, Wilson Vilcaromero, who began a hunger strike today, also held Garcia responsible for what may happen in the streets.
The SUPP has 30 thousand members, out of a total of 90 thousand active police officers in the PNP Vilcarmero said.

Raul Herrera Soto, president of the Retired Police Officers Federation (Federpol) which represents 15 thousand members, announced that from early Monday morning, retired police officers will take over bridges, highways and roads to support the strike by active police officers.

The SUPP clashed previously with the Garcia government over the Bagua Massacre of indigneous protesters on June 5 last year, where 23 police officers were killed and unknown number of indigenous protesters were dissappeared.

In a statement shortly after the massacre the SUPP sent condolences “to the spouses, children and families of our comrades in arms, who were members of the clandestine police union, as well as to the families of our native brothers, to all of those fallen in Bagua; those in uniform, who were following orders of repression by the APRA [Garcia’s party] government,… and the natives defending the land and resources of the jungle, which belong to all Peruvians, in the face of their imminent privatisation."

“The only aim of the APRA government is to defend their sell-out politics and to sell off the country, which the most conscious uniformed workers [the police] reject, repudiate and condemn.”

Free Trade Undermining Rights in Peru

2010-03-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

By Milagros Salazar

Thursday, 25 March 2010(IPS) - Peru is enthusiastically espousing free trade, and has signed six tariff-lowering agreements in the space of a year. But it has not matched them with the internal policies needed to reduce their impact on labour rights, the environment, and sensitive areas like agriculture, social organisations and experts say.

"Who benefits from these free trade agreements (FTA)? What policies have been put in place to ensure fairer redistribution of the profits from foreign trade? Over the last year, only a handful of people have benefited," Alejandra Alayza, coordinator of the Peruvian Network for Globalisation with Equity (RedGE), told IPS.

The United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA) came into effect Feb. 1, 2009 and set the pattern for negotiating the terms and conditions of subsequent agreements, Alayza said. It was followed by FTAs with Chile, Mercosur (the Southern Common Market, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), Canada, Singapore and China.

This month saw the conclusion of negotiations on an FTA with the European Union, and Foreign Minister José Antonio García Belaúnde has already announced that the government of President Alan García is intent on closing similar deals with Japan and South Korea.

Peru is also entering into talks with Central America, the Dominican Republic and the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, which includes Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States and other countries.

"In the context of signing so many FTAs, it is essential to guarantee labour rights so that workers share in the benefits," Alayza emphasised.

Former deputy Labour Minister Julio Gamero, an expert on labour issues, told IPS that the PTPA with the United States has not improved employment conditions and workers' rights in the country. In fact, he said, in some ways they have worsened.

The number of collective bargaining agreements between organised workers and employers on wages and conditions was 434 in 2007, but declined sharply to 364 in 2008 and 233 in 2009.

Health and safety inspections of workplaces in the Lima metropolitan area also fell, from 742 in 2008 to 326 in 2009, while the proportion of workers belonging to trade unions dropped from 7.1 percent of those in formal jobs in 2007, to 4.5 percent in 2009.

The agricultural exports sector, which reaps the most benefits from the PTPA, has only five workers' unions among its 1,500 companies.

Aspects such as the right to form trade unions, wage conditions and compliance with the country's labour laws were incorporated as an annex on labour issues in the PTPA, only after pressure was exerted by social organisations.

However, "the authorities have only adopted short-term measures," said Gamero, who was in the administration of former president Alejandro Toledo, García's predecessor.

Gamero said that only when a U.S. delegation came to Lima in January to examine labour issues was it announced that a liaison office would be set up between the government and trade unions to deal with conflicts and workers' demands.

"A year has gone by, and only this one meagre step has been taken, while dismissals of union leaders and workers who join unions continue apace," he complained.

Neither have measures been taken to cushion the negative impacts on the most sensitive sectors, such as agriculture, experts say.

Only three percent of Peru's agricultural land is used for growing asparagus, mango, sweet peppers and other leading agricultural exports, the sector that is most favoured by the PTPA with the United States.

In contrast, 73 percent of agricultural land is used to cultivate potato, rice, maize, coffee, sugarcane and cotton, which are particularly sensitive products under the agreement, because of the subsidies paid to U.S. producers of these foods.

President García "promised he would renegotiate the PTPA in order to protect peasant farmers and institute compensatory prices and subsidies for three products (maize, cotton and wheat), but he has not done so," Alayza said.

Agricultural expert Miguel Macedo proposed an automatic tariff mechanism to correct price distortions in the case of subsidised products imported from industrialised countries. He also proposed carrying out a detailed census of agricultural producers, and improving the country's estimates for production quantities and the impact of the FTAs.

These proposals are among several initiatives for internal discussions that have been raised by various non-governmental organisations in the context of Peru's removal of its trade barriers.

With regard to environmental issues, a new forestry and wildlife law including the views of indigenous people and civil society is still pending approval by Congress.

While preparing the way for the PTPA with the United States, Peru's forestry laws were modified by a legislative decree, which was later repealed after mass protests by forest-dwelling indigenous peoples.

In August 2009, the Agriculture Ministry declared that revising and updating the law, by means of a participative, decentralised and nationwide process, was a priority. But a secretariat for this purpose was not set up until December.

After the June 2009 conflict in the jungle province of Bagua, in which 33 police and indigenous people were killed when the security forces cracked down on a protest by native demonstrators, the executive branch held meetings for dialogue, seeking views on the forestry laws. But Sandro Chávez, head of Foro Ecológico, a biodiversity conservation organisation, told IPS that the government's draft law does not reflect the contributions made by experts and indigenous peoples at those meetings.

Another aspect of the PTPA that has come under expert criticism is its protection of intellectual property rights over test data on new medicines. PTPA rules allow pharmaceutical companies to withhold information about any patented medicine for five years, thus securing a monopoly that excludes competitors and maintains high prices.

According to Javier Llamoza, of Health Action International Latin America (AISLAC), "protecting test data on medications is a way of creating a monopoly, which violates people's basic right to health." He said at least 12 applications for such protection have been made, by eight different companies, and two applications have already been approved.

Llamoza said that when generic versions of a drug become available on the market, prices typically fall by between 30 and 70 percent, while if a company has a monopoly on a drug, its price can increase up to 21-fold.

Recently, criticism has also been levelled at the FTA with China, in force since Mar. 1.

A study by economist Víctor Torres indicates that the sectors worst affected by this agreement, like the garment industry, leather production for footwear and the textile industry, have only been partially protected from China's low prices and allegedly unfair trade practices. As a result, lay-offs are likely to occur in these labour intensive sectors.

Micro and small businesses (MSEs) are the most likely to suffer from the FTA, as in the footwear industry, for example, where 98.5 percent of companies are MSEs.

The FTA with China lacks even a minimum framework for environmental standards and labour protection.

China introduced a broad definition of investors which includes companies from other foreign countries as long as they are controlled by Chinese capital. Under the FTA, however, Peru does not enjoy the same privilege.

In case of disputes, China cannot be sued in international courts without the case first going through an "internal administrative review process" in China. This safeguard is not applicable to Peru, however, which will therefore need to be on its guard, experts say.

The Militarization of the Peruvian Countryside

2010-03-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

Mar 22 2010, Kristina Aiello

On December 30, Peruvian Defense Minister Rafael Rey stated that the acquisition of military equipment to be used in the Apurimac and Ene River Valley (VRAE) against the armed group the Shining Path would be the first priority in 2010 for Peru’s defense budget. Increased military spending is part of a governmental effort to strengthen the country’s domestic security forces, a process that includes plans to purchase new tanks from China and several war planes from Brazil, France, and the Netherlands. Peruvian President Alan Garcia also has budgeted resources to improve coordination between police and military forces during operations against insurgent targets, as well as the training of special operation forces dedicated to that task. Although Peru also receives substantial military support from the United States, any equipment received under that agreement is currently authorized to only combat drug trafficking.

Despite the re-emergence of guerrilla warfare in the VRAE, many rights groups fear that Peru’s increased counter-insurgency presence could have far-reaching consequences beyond the policing of armed groups like the Shining Path. Since taking office in 2006, Garcia has initiated an aggressive economic development strategy focused on opening up Peru’s natural resources to international extraction corporations, often in the face of large-scale protests and organized campaigns. The administration has responded with efforts designed to criminalize the opposition’s actions via newly enacted legislation, while simultaneously beefing up the country’s private security sector and authorizing the wider deployment of Peru’s military forces. The government has coupled these efforts with an aggressive propaganda campaign that links protestors to armed groups as a justification for increasing the national security presence in regions that are attractive to foreign investors.

Garcia’s efforts to construct a legal infrastructure to criminalize lawful protest began on April 28, 2007, when Congress passed Law 29009, delegating legislative authority to the executive branch to regulate organized criminal activity including drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, and gang activity.

The delegation of legislative authority has been a favorite tool for Peru’s party in power. It allows the legislative branch to abdicate its role to the presidency in order to facilitate the passage of controversial or politically difficult legislation. Once the power to legislate in a particular area has been delegated, the executive branch can then unilaterally act by decree, allowing leaders in Lima to avoid having to defend a potentially unpopular policy during an exhaustive and public congressional debate. Former President Alberto Fujimori used this process to enact several legislative decrees to help the government combat “aggravated terrorism,” decrees that many human rights groups argued threatened civil liberties.

The Garcia administration has used its authority under Law 29009 to issue several legislative decrees that have severely curtailed the right to protest. The decrees were enacted after massive strikes rocked the country, cutting across several sectors of Peru’s economy.

Legislative Decree 982 expanded the legal definition of extortion to include actions broadly associated with public protest. These included the obstruction of roads and the disturbance of government functions for any particular reason, both of which became punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Public officials became guilty of extortion for participating in protests that led to the benefit of third parties. In addition, any police or military official acting under official orders whose actions resulted in lethal harm became immune from prosecution.

Other legislative decrees made it easier for the police to detain individuals accused of criminal activity. Legislative Decree 989 allowed an individual to be held in custody for 24 hours without a warrant, even if that individual was detained far from the alleged criminal act. Legislative Decree 988 stated that individuals detained with a warrant could be held incommunicado for up to ten days regardless of the crime. And finally, Legislative Decree 983 permitted preventative detention of up to 36 months for “complicated cases” while the criminal investigation proceeded.

The Garcia administration has also enacted new legal instruments to expand the government’s domestic use of the military. In 2008, the administration used its executive authority to issue Supreme Decree 012-2008-DE/CFFAA, which regulates Law 29166, a statute that governs the activities of Peru’s military forces. Prior to its enactment, the Department of Defense could only deploy the military after officially declaring a state of emergency. Now the government can deploy troops in support of the Peruvian National Police regardless of whether or not a state of emergency has been declared. The decree also expanded the circumstances under which the military could use deadly force to include the protection of public and private property.

The purpose behind this effort is clear: It justifies the deployment of the country’s security apparatus into resource-rich zones to serve as protection for corporate interests. Several officials of the Garcia administration have given interviews to the media in which they linked indigenous groups protesting the government’s development strategies to armed groups like the Shining Path. In a January television interview, Garcia referred to these indigenous protestors as members of a paramilitary group.

The communities of Ayabaca province in the northwestern coastal department of Piura provide a strong example of this paradigm. Community groups and environmental activists have engaged in a long struggle against the granting of mining concessions in the Ayabaca mountain range, home to a cloud forest that runs along the border between Ecuador and Peru, that serves as a vital source of water for the entire department. Since the struggle began in 2003, nearly 300 leaders of local communities and environmental activists have faced criminal prosecutions and have been linked by government officials and the press to terrorism or drug trafficking.

The Garcia administration appears intent on ratcheting up the pressure by using those criminal allegations against activists and community members as a pretext to establish a military base in the region, a prospect widely rejected by the surrounding communities. If successful, local activists fear that this would serve as a pilot project for similar activities based in other areas facing social conflict over resource extraction activities.

Rights groups have also warned about private security companies. Across Peru, extraction firms are privately contracting these forces, and part of the security they provide appears to be the conducting of espionage operations on groups opposing resource development projects. In the Cajamarca department, the Yanacocha gold mining project that is majority owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the largest gold mining company in the world, hired two private security firms, Forza and Andrick Service, to provide security for their gold mining operations. Forza has been linked to the espionage operation known as “Operación el Diablo,” in which several activists opposing Yanacocha were video taped and photographed. Andrick Service has also been implicated in illegal wire-tapping operations. Both firms also have strong ties to Peru’s Navy and are suspected of having received intelligence from the Navy’s intelligence arm.

The Garcia administration is intent on continuing its extraction-based development strategy. Government officials recently urged Congress to approve a bill that would facilitate the removal of whole communities in resource-rich areas when a particular project was deemed fundamental to the public interest. The passage of this bill will have an impact on hundreds of communities across the country, which will organize themselves in opposition to the government’s plans to take their homes and harm their environment. The increase in social strife will likely be met by greater efforts to militarize Peru’s countryside.

Republished from NACLA, Kristina Aiello is a NACLA Research Associate.

Peru: Public Sector Workers Call Nation-wide Strike

2010-03-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Prensa CGTP / Mariátegui
18/03/10

A press conference called by the Confederation of State Employees (CTE) and the Confederation of Intersectoral State Employees of Peru (CITE), was held at the headquarters of the CGTP (General Confederation of Workers of Peru) today, where it was announced that a 48-hour stoppage will take place on 23 and 24 March.

Union leaders Winston Huaman (CITE - Administrative Sector of the University), Jorge Villagarcía (CTE - Education Sector) and Raul Montero (CITE - Municipal Workers Federation) said that among main demands of state workers are the implementation of the right to job security contained in Legislative Decree No. 276 and its regulations, under threat by Legislative Decrees 1025 and 1026; with respect to the civil service, the improvement of wages through collective bargaining and the establishment of a unified system of remuneration, the incorporation of contract workers into the unified permant system through the CAS regulations (Legislative decree 1057) and a full frontal fight against corruption.

They added that they will hold a massive mobilization marching from the Plaza 2 de Mayo to the office of the National Civil Service Authority (SERVIR) located in the Ministry of Labor.

The Secretary General of the CGTP Mario Huaman, said the union federation supports the strike by state sector workers and also rejects the attempt to fill the state apparatus with supporters of the ruling party. "APRA wants to fire workers with unconstitutional legislative decrees and replace them with APRA supporters" he said.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke for Peru en Movimiento, republished from Revista Mariategui.

Peru: Suspension of Mining Operation Merely a Placebo

2010-03-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

By Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) - Although the Peruvian government reported that it had suspended the exploration activities of the Afrodita mining company in the country's northern Amazon jungle region to avoid further protests by local indigenous people, officials took no actual steps to bring the firm's work to a halt.

So what really happened?

After a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Prime Minister Javier Velásquez and Minister of Energy and Mines Pedro Sánchez announced on Feb. 17 that the Peruvian company's permits to drill in the rainforest had been suspended.

The two officials said OSINERGMIN, Peru's mine and energy regulatory agency, had stated that the decision would be in effect until the company provided evidence that it had authorisation to use the land where the exploration activities are being carried out.

"We have reached a decision on the Minera Afrodita business," Velásquez repeated in parliament two days later. "OSINERGMIN just suspended the company's activities. And it is not like the company says - that we have given in to blackmail (by local indigenous protesters); what happened was that the firm did not comply with what is established by law."

Leaders from 52 native communities complain that the company has polluted two rivers in Awajun indigenous territory with the mercury and cyanide used in mining operations.

Afrodita has been exploring for gold and silver in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range in the northern province of Amazonas, 15 km from the Ecuadorean border, despite protests by the local Awajún Indians.

Many local members of the Awajún ethnic group were also involved in a two-month roadblock and protests near the northern jungle town of Bagua - also in Amazonas - that ended in a tragic clash with police on Jun. 5, 2009 in which at least 10 native demonstrators and 23 police officers were killed.

The mining boom in Peru that has resulted from soaring minerals prices over the last few years, and the passage of laws aimed at opening up the jungle to the extractive industries, have led to numerous conflicts between mining companies and native communities protesting the environmental and social effects of the mining industry.

After the government reported the suspension of Afrodita's activities, OSINERGMIN inspection and oversight chief Guillermo Shinno told IPS that the company could continue its prospecting operations as soon as it obtained a permit showing it had surface rights to the land in question.

"We have to clarify that OSINERGMIN has not brought the company's exploration activities to a halt; it merely sent the firm an official letter indicating that it cannot engage in such activities without a land-use permit," he said.

In its Feb. 11 letter to the company, the regulatory agency cited a document in which the Ministry of Energy and Mines informed the company that the Superintendencia de Bienes Nacionales (Superintendence of National Assets) had not issued Afrodita a permit granting it surface rights or ownership to the land where it has already begun to operate.

In other words, OSINERGMIN's letter merely notified the mining company that it needed a permit. The firm has not yet presented its request for the permit to the Superintendencia, sources in the government office told IPS.

In a statement, Afrodita said it would "temporarily" bring its drilling operations to a halt while the administrative problems were worked out.

But OSINERGMIN said that "no appeal is necessary, because no administrative steps have been taken" to stop the company's activities.

Afrodita also said that during the halt in activities, it would focus on analysing geological reconnaissance data collected in the area where it is prospecting mainly for gold and silver.

Minera Afrodita is owned by Peruvian geologist Carlos Ballón, who is also a director of the Cardero Group, the umbrella company that includes Dorato Resources.

Through a series of option agreements, Dorato Resources Inc., a Canadian mineral exploration company set up to focus on the Cordillera del Cóndor - described by the firm's web site as "one of the most important gold-bearing districts in the region since pre-Incan times" - has the right to acquire 100 percent of Afrodita, which has held seven concessions in the area since 1995.

Dorato says the option would involve "an extensive land package of approximately 800 square kilometres."

But the Peruvian constitution bans foreigners from owning property within 50 km of the border.

Canada is the second-largest investor in Peru, after Spain. The biggest Canadian company operating in this South American country is Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner.

Mining is one of the engines of the economy in Peru, which according to "Top Mining Companies in Peru" put out by the Peru: Top Publications publishing company, is the world’s leading producer of silver and tellurium, and is second in zinc, third in copper, tin and bismuth, fourth in lead, molybdenum and arsenic, and sixth in gold and selenium.

In a communiqué, Dorato said "The Peruvian government is stating that although Minera Afrodita has legitimate, long-standing mining claims and a valid drill permit, it does not own the surface rights and therefore cannot proceed with the previously permitted and officially endorsed drill programme.

"The company believes, based on legal advice, that this reasoning has no legal basis, as Minera Afrodita has only carried out exploration work on state-owned land, where such work is expressly authorised under Peruvian Mining Law pursuant to which no additional authorisation is required.

"The exploration authorisation was granted to Minera Afrodita in December 2009, after having agreed with the local population, in a public assembly in the Santa Maria de Nieva town, the undertaking of exploration activities in the area," it adds.

But OSINERGMIN clarified that what Afrodita obtained on Dec. 9, 2009 was approval of the environmental impact study for the mining project, and that to begin exploration work it also had to prove that it had ownership or surface rights to the property in question, according to the country's environmental regulations.

And in the case of communally owned indigenous territory, a permit granted by two-thirds of the local community is needed.

"Approval of the environmental assessment study is not sufficient to begin exploration operations; other permits are also needed," Shinno told IPS. He pointed out, for example, that the company also needs to apply for a water use permit.

The technical report by the Ministry of Energy and Mines explaining that the environmental impact study was approved clearly states that a land-use permit is needed.

On page 13, the report says "it is the responsibility of the Afrodita SAC mining company to have, before the start of exploratory activities, surface rights to the land where said activities are to take place."

The report, seen by IPS, also says that approval of the environmental impact study "does not constitute the granting of authorisation, permits or other legal requisites that the mining project must have before it begins operations."

Under OSINERGMIN regulations, Afrodita could be subject to sanctions for beginning exploration work without the required permits.

The prime minister took advantage of the company's failure to comply with the regulations to try to nip in the bud indigenous protests that threatened to spread once again in the country's Amazon jungle region.

The suspension of Afrodita's activities was one of the 16 demands that indigenous organisations of northern and eastern Peru set forth in a Feb. 22 protest.

But the Awajun are demanding more than a mere suspension of operations. They are worried about pollution of rivers and destruction of flora and fauna by mining industry activity in the area.

Their worries are not unfounded. In 2009, OSINERGMIN initiated legal procedures to sanction Afrodita for mismanagement of solid waste. The company has appealed. But the regulatory agency declined to provide further details.

For the Awajun people, the hill in the Cordillera del Cóndor where Afrodita has cleared four hectares of jungle represents Kumpanan or "powerful hill", considered to be the father of lightning and the owner of air and water, according to the Lima newspaper La República.

The Awajun (also known as Aguaruna) are the biggest native ethnic group in Peru's Amazon region and have a reputation as fierce warriors.

Their leaders have denounced that Afrodita pays soldiers from military barracks in the area to guard the company's operations, rather than protecting the local population.

The Awajun also reported a year ago that the El Tambo military post was used as a base of operations by the company. At that time, the tension was at its peak, because local native anti-mine protesters had taken several mine workers hostage after they entered Awajun territory without permission from the local communities. The hostages were released unharmed after a few days.

For now, the government's announcement of a suspension of operations would appear to be merely a pain-killer or even a placebo, because the central problem remains unsolved: Afrodita will be able to continue operating as soon as it takes care of the pending bureaucratic steps. (END)

Republished from IPS

Indians Renew Protests in Peru

2010-03-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

LIMA (February 22)– Amid heavy security measures, organizations representing Indians from the Peruvian Amazon region on Monday resumed their peaceful marches as part of a campaign to defend their rights, the first such action nationwide after the violent confrontations that left 34 people dead last June.

Those organizations, including the umbrella group Aidesep, reject the government report about last year’s incidents and are asking for the return of their leader Alberto Pizango, who fled to Nicaragua after being charged in connection with those events.

The protesters are also demanding that Peru respect an International Labor Organization pact that requires signatory governments to consult the indigenous peoples about decisions related to their ancestral rights to certain tracts of land.

Clashes that erupted last June in the Amazonian town of Bagua left 24 police and 10 Indians dead, although relatives of the victims and human rights groups said dozens of civilians were killed and their bodies were incinerated or dumped in rivers.

The protests ended after Peru’s Congress – acting on a request by President Alan Garcia – voted overwhelmingly on June 18 to repeal the two most contentious laws aimed at opening the Amazon region to development.

Some 4,000 elite police were deployed Monday in Bagua, where the protesters planned to hold a sit-in.

In Lima, about 500 Indians marched through Lima during the afternoon carrying posters and placards on which could be read slogans such as “Long live the Amazon struggle” and “Let’s save our planet.”

In Lima, “apu” (chief) Saul Puerta accused the government of provocation and carrying out “psychological pressure” in remarks to Efe, adding that many Indians did not participate in the marches out of fear that the army troops deployed to prevent the blocking of highways and strategic installations would crack down on them.

The protests of 2009 put on the table the great dichotomy that exists in Peru, where on the one hand the government is aiming to foster investment in the Amazon region, including with big petroleum and lumber interests, and on the other hand, the Indians are demanding that their property rights to the land in the area be respected.

After last year’s violence, Congress overturned two of the laws rejected by the jungle communities and the executive branch set up an investigative commission, following the recommendations of the U.N. special rapporteur for the indigenous peoples, James Anaya.

But when the commission’s report was released in mid-January, after four months of work, the Amazon communities refused to sign it saying that the document was a whitewash of the police role in the confrontation. EFE

Republished from Latin American Herald Tribune

Peruvian State Protects Mining Company Instead of Citizens: Interview with Mario Tabra Guerrero

2010-03-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

By Yásser Gómez, Translation: Marcelo Virkel

Today, while those in power wage a campaign of media disinformation to prepare the scene for the 2011 presidential elections, peasant communities of Ayabaca, Piura continue to fight multinational mining corporations. With government support, these companies continue to explore for and exploit mineral deposits, ignoring residents’ concerns about the environment and the water supply. Upside Down World interviewed Mario Tabra Guerrero, one of the leaders in this fight, and president of the Frente de Defensa del Medio Ambiente de la Vida y el Agro de Ayabaca (Life Environment and Farm Defence Front of Ayabaca).

Since 2003, the Rio Blanco project, formerly called Majaz, a proposed open-pit copper and molybdenum mine, has generated opposition from resident campesino communities. Residents are concerned about potential impacts on water supplies and agricultural activities taking place within the watershed. As a result, the company has never obtained the two-thirds approval from local assemblies that it is required to have by law in order to operate in the area. In August of 2005, a campesino delegation marching to meet a mining commission for dialogue was ambushed by Peruvian national police and private mining security forces. For three days, 29 campesino representatives, including Mario Tabra, were held and subjected to physical, psychological and chemical torture. In 2007, a popular referendum reaffirmed community opposition to mining. The government refused to discuss the results, and, in recent years, nearly 300 local leaders have been politically persecuted for their participation in the referendum by threats and complicated legal processes.

- In the context of militarization of the territories and criminalization of protests in Ayabaca, in what state are your trial processes?

- They're still open, and I can't even leave Ayabaca without the judge's previous authorization. This is another way of keeping my activities under surveillance. As a person and as a citizen, I should be able to carry out these activities and move freely in my country. But this measure was taken to prevent me from realizing any kind of activity or coordination with anybody.

- Is it related to your participation in the resistance against the mining company Majaz in 2005?

- Yes, and they are still accusing me despite the lack of evidence that I took a gun from a DINOES (Special Operations National Office) police captain. They say I shot him, and I took the gun with me. But what happened was totally the opposite: I was detained and tortured for three days. Therefore, I didn't have the option of stealing guns or participating in any kind of confrontation. Besides, when the atomic absorption test was performed on us, no substance related to having fired a gun was found. They can't uphold the accusation, and there are also contradictions in the captain's version. He doesn't know what the subject he says he confronted looked like or what he was doing. In his first version, the captain stated that there had been a struggle and the gun had been accidentally shot. Afterwards, he said I had taken the gun from him. There are a lot of contradictions, enough to suspend this trial; however, they keep us controlled under these accusations.

- By claiming that they are after the author of the attack of the Río Blanco mining company's installations, they continue to persecute you...

- Due to the resistance of the peasant communities - which agreed in large assemblies not to accept mining- and what looks like a close deadline for Alan García to give away these territories to transnational corporations like Newmont and Sigiminim (so they can start their explorations for mine exploitation), a strong persecution that criminalizes all kind of resistance has started. Specifically on November 1st, 2009, there was a very strange attack at the Río Blanco camp. Initially, the peasant communities were accused of this attack in which, unfortunately, mine company workers died. These workers were just the villagers from Huancabamba that were working there, and the manager.

After this strange attack, those who were defending the environment were accused. First, the media was used to express that environmentalists, terrorists and drug traffickers' allies didn't want the mining presence and for that reason would perpetrate attacks of this kind. Then, since this hypothesis couldn't be proved, they began to send notifications: I got three notifications in one week. This is something very strange that hadn't happened in a trial process before. The notifications would arrive every two days, even though the most efficient administration would send notifications only every three days.

It wasn't possible to arrive on time in Huancabamba from Ayabaca because you need a day to climb down from Ayabaca to Piura, and another day to climb up to Huancabamba. Therefore, we couldn't go. They would notify us over the phone, but when we wanted to contact the person to ask for a prorogation that would allow us to appear in trial they would refuse to give us any contact information. They would say, “We know nothing; we just follow orders and notify you.” That was the problem.

After the second notification, on November 29, the Huancabamba attorney and the DININCRI (Criminal Investigation National Office) commander came to my house, and claimed they were investigating the November 1st attack. They told my family -since I was not at home- that they wanted me to expose what had happened on November 1st. The second notification stated: “bloody deed in Huancabamba;” this means that they were accusing me of murder. It wasn't that they wanted me as a witness; they directly got me involved in the case.

My daughter called me and told me that the attorney, the commander and four policemen were waiting in front of my house. They were watching both doors, waiting for me to get out. When I called my lawyers, they told me that given the circumstances I shouldn't turn up because surrounding the house meant something different from what they had stated. They even followed my daughter when she was looking for me in Ayabaca. This situation is growing: it's not only that they persecute me for being a leader but they also persecute my family, which is an aggravating factor.

I was in Ayabaca, but not at home. So they left a certificate to let me know that I had to appear in 2 days -i.e. on December 1st- but I hadn't been formally notified; there was only this certificate that was intended to confirm whether I was home. I only got the formal notification on Monday 30th, at about 10 AM. It stated that I had to appear on Tuesday at 6:00 PM in Huancabamba. I left for Huancabamba that afternoon, I slept in Piura, and climbed up to Huancabamba in the afternoon. My surprise was that the attorney was not on time to take my statement. He was more than a hour late, and told me “you didn't need to be here. You could have presented your statement at your leisure, because you are just a witness.”

A witness shouldn't be pressured to present a statement; being a witness is a voluntary action, so they shouldn't have sent the policemen and the attorneys to my house to put pressure on me to present my statement. Then, they asked me why I had told the media that they sent the policemen and the attorneys. They were caught a bit off guard because the media started to denounce this new act of persecution, so my lawyer and I presented the statement and they let us go in the middle of nowhere at around 9:00 PM. Because the place where the DININCRI had been installed in Huancabamba is not within the city, it's in a health centre located in a village out of town; and this can lend itself to various things, like the disappearances that the Peruvian state has perpetrated in many places in the country.

From then on, we don't know the results. They had told us they had 20 days to finalize the investigation -that was secret, without reports of who stated what-, but more than a month has passed by and they haven't prepared a report or a file with the charges to accuse us. We don't know anything about the state of the process. I thank the supportive media, especially the independent media that managed to denounce what's happening and slightly deter the arbitrary detentions.

- Is the Peruvian state acting as the transnational corporations' private army?

- That is the intention, shown by what the last supreme decrees have granted to Newmont company and other corporations: the government gave them 18.000 hectares of moor and cloud forest. The Aprista [party of President Alan García’s] government has practically given up all the Ayabaca mountain range, border between Ecuador and Peru. First, it was Alejandro Toledo's government with the decrees 022 and 023 (2003); and now Alan Garcia's decree 072 (2009) gave away the sections of the range that remained. This is a serious attack against the environment, in the province where the water spouts out from the plains and goes down the mountains towards Piura. If these mining projects are developed in the highlands, Piura and the provinces north of Cajamarca -like San Ignacio and Jaén- won't have water anymore.

- There was also a version, very much publicized by the mainstream media, in which the drug traffickers were blamed for the attack at the Río Blanco mining company.

- Sure. They always try to mix both issues in order to justify what was demanded by the corporate media: a militarization of the region to bring peace. In other words, if they are not terrorists, they are traffickers or there is a perverse alliance between the drug traffickers and the terrorists to stop investments. But see how they promote confusion; it's a psychosocial campaign to get people to accept the militarization of Ayabaca. It's true this is a border zone, but the militarization goal won't be to protect our border from external enemies but to protect transnational corporations and their actions that destroy the environment. Due to the fact that this accusation didn't work out, I believe they are trying to find another strategy to establish the army; because now they want not only the DINOES, that is currently guarding the mining company, but also the army. In other words, they became the mining companies' guardians.

- Is that why they threatened to install of a military base in Ayabaca?

- Exactly. The government started to throw out the idea, aiming at us. It's a trial to see what the towns people would say about the possibility of this installation. It'd be an early test of militarization in Ayabaca, so they can later militarize other zones when resistance against transnational corporations arises. The trial to see if it is possible to militarize and silence Ayabaca has to do with the fact that this is one of the most resistant communities against mining in Peru. If they can get their way here, they can do it in other places. That's the idea.

Yasser Gomez is a journalist, Upside Down World correspondent in Peru and editor of Mariátegui. La revista de las ideas. [The Magazine of Ideas]. Email: Yassergomez@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Marcelo Virkel is a political scientist and translates documents form English to Spanish and vice versa. He specializes in current world affairs and human rights, and has completed translations of policy documents, organizational procedures, informative reports, news articles and websites. Marcelo collaborates with Upside Down World and with Peace Brigades International, a grassroots NGO that promotes nonviolence and protects human rights defenders through accompaniment and advocacy. E-mail: mvirkel@gmail.com mvirkel@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Republished from Upside Down World

President of Peru closes a television station for showing images of his government's repression against indigenous peoples

2010-01-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

Gonzalo Sánchez - Tercera Información, January 22, 2010

During the summer the government of Alan Garcia ordered the National Directorate of Special Operations (DINOES) to attack without regard the indigenous population in Bagua who were protesting against the Free Trade Agreement. The result was dozens of indigenous people killed, missing and hundreds injured, some policemen dead and two journalists killed.

The indigenous protestors were trying to prevent the privatization of the Amazon, as the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) establishes that the natural resources of the Peruvian Amazon will be privatized. Alan Garcia whilst calling for negotiation ordered the massacre of the Indians who were protesting.

Now, months later, a television channel not compliant with the rightist government of Garcia was eliminated from the air. The network, called Radio Oriente, is based in the north of the country, and has broadcast videos of the massacre, which Alan García didn’t like, and for which he revoked its license claiming the channel had not acquired the necessary equipment to transmit the year after getting it's license.

Radio Oriente responed that it received permission for the equipment 2006, which was confirmed in 2007.

The ombudsman has asked for explanations from various sectors and branded this as an attack on freedom of expression.

Alan García also suspended for 120 days several MPs and sanctioned others in different ways for supporting the struggles of indigenous peoples. Many of these members belong to the Peruvian Nationalist Party, of opposition leader Ollanta Humala.

Repbulished from Tercera Información, translated by Kiraz Janicke for Peru en Movimiento

Peru: A historical conflict that requires political solutions

2010-01-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

By Miguel Palacín Quispe

The Alan García government has focused on the police in relation to the Bagua Massacre in order to evade political responsibility. It is necessary to form a truly independent Investigation Commission with international observers.

The conflict between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian state has deep historical roots. The Bagua Massacre on June 5 last year was the most visible point of an increasing process of indigenous political protagonism and the criminalization of rights by the state. The dominant neo-liberal capitalist civilisation is becoming more and more violent against the indigenous world view, against life, against equilibrium and harmony with Mother Earth.

A conflict of this nature is political, economic, social and cultural. And it requires those kinds of solutions and not, as the APRA government tries to promote, a simple focus on the police in the debate, especially after the presentation of the Bagua Commission Report and the dissemination of questioned images (photos and videos) of a disappeared policeman.

On 5th June 2009, at Devil's Curve, Bagua, Utcubamba and Station 6, 34 people died. Research to identify and punish the material perpetrators of these killings, all equally condemnable is the responsibility of public prosecutors and the judiciary. But that does not resolve the conflict and therefore will not avoid new conflicts: for this it is essential to identify the real problem, its causes and those politically responsible.

The most profound cause is the policy of cultural and physical extermination of indigenous peoples, begun more than five hundred years ago, that did not stop with the birth of the Republic and its uni-national and mono-cultural state. More recently, in Peru at the beginning of the last decade of the last century, the imposition of neoliberalism swept away our rights, especially our land rights (and it is in relation to our lands where our identity resides and from which emerges all of our rights), and made us move from resistance to alternative proposals, a process which strengthened and articulated our organizations. We moved from invisibility to political prominence.

The issuance of the legislative package to implement the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, whose repeal is the focus of the Amazon and Andean indigenous platform, is part of the neoliberal imposition, with its trade agreements and indiscriminate concessions without any controls on the extractive industries, with its attendant environmental, economic and cultural impacts.

But now they try to co-opt the social pressure to repeal the decrees - which since the Bagua massacre, has become a national demand with broad international backing - with discussions under the jurisdiction of law enforcement and the judiciary. It is not only to lay smokescreens to ultimately evade political responsibility. It is also another attack against indigenous peoples, against those which the Bagua Comission Report, using a racist Western vision, presented as violent, ignorant, and manipulated by NGOs, churches, the media and parliamentarians, incapable of governing ourselves, as we have been doing for thousands of years before the existence of the Peruvian State. We governed ourselves and lived in harmony with Mother Earth, without exploiting her, polluting her, pillaging her, guarding her to continue raising new generations.

Trying to create parallel organizations to the Interethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP),[1] continuing judicial harassment of its leaders, seeking "to dissolve," it and speaking of "paramilitary groups" in the Bagua massacre, does nothing to resolve a historical dispute. On the contrary, it exacerbates it and is the practical application of the “Barnyard dog” doctrine of Alan García and his government. [2]

Politically responsibilities, which are not even mentioned in the Bagua Commission Report, begin with President Alan García and his then ministers, principally Mercedes Cabanillas Interior Minister and Mercedes Araoz Production Minister, now the Economy Minister, Yehude Simon, then president of the cabinet, and Javier Velásquez Quesquén, then President of Congress who provocatively again postponed a discussion of the repeal of legislative decrees of the FTA with the U.S. and now chairs the Council of Ministers.

The legislative decrees have not been repealed, the dialogue table with the government failed to resolve the platform of indigenous peoples. And the state continues to remain deaf to the observations and recommendations of United Nations agencies that have spoken on the subject. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), said officially:

"The Committee urges the State party to follow the recommendations of UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, Mr. James Anaya, following his visit to Peru and to proceed urgently to implement an Independent Commission with indigenous representation, for a thorough, objective and impartial investigation. It also recommends that the Commission's findings enrich the discussions that are occurring in Peru on the Law on Consultation and Participation of Indigenous Peoples in Environmental Matters and the regulations on the existent issue of mining and petroleum subsectors presented by the Ministry of Energy and Mines. The Committee waits to be informed of the negotiations, the constitution, the findings, conclusions and recommendations of said Commission (...) ".

We must remember that James Anaya, the Special Rapporteur recommended that this Independent Commission counts with [the participation of] international observers. And the [Bagua] Commission that late last year issued its questioned report was not independent because most of its members were former ministers of APRA or are linked to the government and it did not count with [the participation of] international observers.

The CERD has also recommended:

"To continue pushing urgently for the adoption of a framework law on indigenous peoples of Peru, encompassing all communities, trying to align and harmonize the terms to ensure adequate protection and promotion of the rights of all indigenous peoples.”

"That the State party implements a participatory and inclusive process in order to determine what is the vision of the nation that best represents the ethnic and cultural diversity of a country as rich as Peru, as a shared and inclusive vision can guide the course of the State party in its public policies and development projects.”

Other recommendations of the CERD that continue being ignored by the Alan García government are the enactment of a Law of Consultation and a Law of Preservation of Indigenous Languages.

In short, the conflict continues to fester because the historical causes remain, the demands of the Amazon mobilizations have not been met, the criminalization and stigmatization of indigenous peoples continues, the debate is focused on the police to avoid political responsibility and the Alan García government has not the slightest intention to undertake policy measures as recommended by CERD to solve it.

These are the pending tasks and indigenous organizations, all social movements and human rights organizations must continue to press for them to be carried out, without falling for distractive and cover-up manoeuvres [by the government].

Once again the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations, CAOI, stresses that political conflicts require political solutions. If the CERD has recommended a framework law of Indigenous Peoples, we note that the solution is to give character to the Organic Law on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the UN. If it has recommended to "determine what is the vision of the nation that best represents the ethnic and cultural diversity" of Peru, we reiterate our call to build a pluri-national State. And we insist on the creation of an Investigation Commission that is truly independent and with international observers.

The projects of the Law of Consultation and of Free and Informed Prior Consent and of the preservation of indigenous languages, still awaiting debate in Congress must happen now. All this [must be done], without forgetting the immediate repeal of the still current legislative decrees of the FTA and an end to the criminalization of indigenous peoples and the social movements.

Due to the considerations raised and due to the lack of independence of the report issued, [the issue] should go to the UN, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and other agencies to enforce the recommendations of the CERD and establish an International Commission to clarify the facts and demand the punishment of those responsible.

Lima, January 12 2010.

Miguel Palacín Quispe is the General Coordinator of CAOI

Translated by Kiraz Janicke for Peru en Movimiento

Translators Notes:

[1] According to official government reports 34 people died in clashes between indigenous protesters and the police, including 23 police officers, on June 5, 2009, in what has become known as the Bagua Massacre. However, witness testimonies and human rights organisations say the real number is much higher and that hundreds of indigenous people have been disappeared. Witnesses report bodies of indigenous people being dumped from helicopters and incinerated at a nearby army barracks.

[2] AIDESEP is the largest organisation of Peruvian indigenous peoples, representing over 3000 indigenous communities. It has lead the resistance to the legislative decrees implemented by the García government to bring Peruvian law into line with the FTA signed with the U.S., and which open up vast swathes of indigenous peoples lands to exploitation by trans-national companies. In October 2009, Peru’s Public Prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice solicited the dissolution of AIDESEP, but withdrew the request after a nationwide outcry.

[3] In October 2007, García “penned an opinion piece titled "El syndrome del perro del hortelano," or the syndrome of the barnyard dog, for the Lima-based daily El Comercio. The title compares those advocating the protection of the Amazon's resources to a barnyard dog growling over food that it does not eat but will not let others have. Besides insinuating a racist comparison between indigenous peoples and dogs, García blamed his opponents—singling out indigenous—for standing in the way of Peru's development via foreign capital.” - Peru's Cold War against Indigenous People, Kristina Aiello July 19, 2009 (https://nacla.org/node/5995).

Republished from Agencia Latinoamericana de Información

Hugo Blanco: `Only extinction of capitalism will ensure the survival of our species’; Reunión sobre cambio climático Copenhague

2010-01-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

By Hugo Blanco, translated by Richard Fidler for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

The concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is already so high that the climate system has been brought out of balance. The CO2 concentration and global temperatures have increased more rapidly in the last 50 years than ever before on Earth, and will rise even faster in the coming decades. This adds to a multitude of other serious ecological imbalances, the impacts of which threaten the lives and livelihoods of the people of the world, most acutely, impoverished people and other vulnerable groups.

The imbalance of the climate system leads to greater and more frequent extremes of heat and rainfall patterns, tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, extreme flooding and droughts, loss of biodiversity, landslides, rising sea levels, shortage of drinking water, shorter growing seasons, lower yields, lost or deteriorated agricultural land, decreased agricultural production, losses of livestock, extinction of ecosystems, and diminished fish stocks, among others. These phenomena result in food crises, famine, illness, death, displacement, and the extinction of sustainable ways of life. -- People’s Declaration from Klimaforum09

January 2010 -- In response to this, the United Nations agreed to hold a Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15), which met in Copenhagen December 7-18 to draft a treaty for the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming.

The meeting ended without any agreement since the countries primarily responsible for global warming — led by the United States, which, with only 4 per cent of the world’s population, produces 25 per cent of the pollution due to carbon dioxide emissions — were unwilling to commit themselves to even the least reduction in that pollution.

At the last minute, after the official meeting had broken up, US President Barack Obama met with some accomplices and got them to sign, without discussion, a paper expressing “every intention” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but without any binding commitments, and promising “to help” the major victims of warming, basically in Africa and other poor countries, but again without establishing any amounts or enforcement mechanisms. Simply expressions of good intentions without any commitment.

Despite the failure of the official meeting, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales stated: “They say it was a failure, but I would not say that the Copenhagen summit has failed, but rather that it is a triumph for the entire world... because the developed capitalist countries could not impose their statement.”

We fully agree with him. It was different from the Kyoto meeting which set ridiculous goals that the US and other major culprits did not sign and did not fulfill — which made environmental protection a commodity, but nevertheless gave hope to people that something was being done. In Copenhagen, fortunately, the failure of the official meeting was completely clear.

This awakened many who still had the illusion that within the capitalist system it is possible to stop global warming, that the world’s major predators can act in defence of the survival of the human species.

Copenhagen brought together not only official representatives. In the international demonstration on Saturday, December 12, there were 100,000 people concerned about climate change. The meeting was preceded by massive demonstrations in England and other countries.

An organisation was formed, “Change the system, not the climate”, and it issued the “People’s Declaration in Klimaforum09”.

In the meeting of the presidents, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez repeated two slogans raised by the people in the streets: “Change the system, not the climate” and “If the climate were a bank they would have saved it by now.”

Evo Morales reported that when he went to speak they evacuated the room so that only the official leaders heard him. He posed five questions on climate change that the United Nations should put to the world’s peoples in a global referendum, asking that they answer yes or no, "That will leave the decision in the hands of the peoples of the world.” (The United Nations will hold no such referendum, of course.)

1. Do you agree with re-establishing harmony with nature while recognising the rights of Mother Earth?

2. Do you agree with changing this model of over-consumption and waste that the capitalist system represents?

3. Do you agree that developed countries should reduce and re-absorb their domestic greenhouse gas emissions so that the temperature does not rise more than 1 degree Celsius?

4. Do you agree with transferring everything spent on wars to protecting the planet and allocating a budget for climate change that is bigger than what is used for defence?

5. Do you agree with establishing a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge those who destroy Mother Earth?

Morales has also issued a call for the “Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change” in defence of humanity, life and the planet. Those invited will be not only the presidents of interested countries concerned about the issue, but experts, academics and representatives of the social organisations.

“The goal is to achieve a consensus position to be raised at the next Summit on Climate Change to be held in Mexico in December 2010.”

The People’s Summit will be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia April 20-22, coinciding with the first worldwide celebration of Mother Earth Day recently instituted by the United Nations.

It is naive to think that the world’s major polluters will do anything about climate protection.

Large multinational companies are the ones who govern the world through the “leaders” who are nothing more than their servants.

Their neoliberal religion commands them to make as much money as possible in the shortest time possible. They know very well that to do this they must destroy nature. They know very well that they will have no descendants, but they do not care. Through their media they spread the most possible disinformation about global warming and the appropriate steps to be taken.

Evo is right when he says:

They only deal with the effects and not the causes of climate change.

Climate change is a product of the capitalist system, which favours the pursuit of the maximum possible profit. That is the purpose of the capitalist system, with no consideration for the lives of others. In Copenhagen we should analyse which countries are doing the most damage to the environment and, with that in mind, focus on the need for those countries with the greatest responsibility to pay for this debt to the global climate. That is an obligation ...

The Copenhagen summit is much more global in nature, it is a debate about life, about humanity. Here we have profound differences with capitalist governments. I remain convinced that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity.

We might still be able to ensure the survival of the species. We have cause for optimism in the meeting of 100,000 people in Copenhagen, the formation of the organisation “Change the system, not the climate”, the call for the meeting in Cochabamba, the violent impact on the rich countries of Europe of the freezing temperatures in recent days.

Apparently we Indigenous peoples, who for centuries have been struggling and dying in defence of Mother Earth and the defence of our collectivist solidarity, will no longer be alone.

Only the extinction of capitalism will ensure the survival of our species, and the sooner the world understands this the better.

[Hugo Blanco was a leader of the Quechua peasant uprising in the Cuzco region of Peru in the early 1960s. He was captured by the military and sentenced to 25 years in El Fronton Island prison for his activities, but an international defence campaign won his freedom. He continues to play an active role in Peru's Indigenous, campesino, and environmental movements, and writes on Peruvian, indigenous and Latin American issues. He edits the Lucha Indigena newspaper. An earlier English version of this article first appeared at Another Green World.]

Perus Supreme Court Upholds Fujimori's 25-Year Sentence for Murders and Kidnappings

2010-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

By April Howard, UpsideDownWorld

On January 3, 2010, Peru's Supreme Court upheld Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's April 2007 conviction and 25-year sentence for aggravated homicide, aggravated kidnapping, severe injuries and forced disappearance of persons.

Fujimori was president of Peru from 1990 until 2000 during a period of civil unrest, and waged a 'dirty war' against a Maoist guerrilla group called the Shining Path, and any and all Peruvians suspected of sympathizing with them.

The recent ruling addressed several crimes, including the killings of suspected Shining Path guerillas which took place in Barrios Altos (1991), where 15 people were shot to death and 4 others were seriously injured by a clandestine military death squad, and in La Cantuta, where nine students and a university professor were tortured and murdered, and their bodies destroyed and disappeared in sand dunes outside Lima (1992). Also in 1992, secret police kidnapped journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer and held both in the basement of the Army Intelligence unit during a so-called auto-coup. Though a paramilitary death squad called the Colina group carried out the killings and kidnappings, Fujimori was convicted for knowing of and authorizing the action through his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

When Fujimori's administration collapsed under corruption charges in 2000, he escaped to Japan, the country of his parents. He was able to avoid extradition for most of the decade due to the Japanese government's recognition of his citizenship. It was not until he took a trip to Chile in 2005 that he was put under house arrest detained and extradited to Peru in 2006.

In April of 2007, after a trial lasting 15 months, the Special Penal Court, led by Supreme Judge César San Martín, convicted Fujimori of the charge, which he denied, of being the "mediate author of the crimes of qualified homicide and grave injuries," and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. His historic conviction marked the first time a democratically elected Latin American leader was found guilty of human rights abuses in his own country.

The 71 year-old Fujimori is already serving three other prison sentences at the same time: a six year sentence for abuse of power from 2007, seven and a half years for paying Montesinos $15m of state money, and for phone tapping and widespread bribery of members of the press, business sector and political opponents.

In November of 2009, Fujimori's lawyer, Cesar Nakazaki requested the revocation of the human rights abuse sentence and the annulment of the conviction for the La Cantuta kidnappings. Even though a law enacted in 2006 states that a presidential pardon or amnesty cannot be granted to those convicted of kidnapping (Law 28760). Nakazaki argued that there was insufficient evidence find Fujimori guilty of ordering the abductions.

The sentence was (R.N. Nº 19-01-2009-A.V ) ratified by the First Penal Transitory Hall of the Peruvian Supreme Court of Justice, led by Judge of the Supreme Tribunal Duberli Rodriguez, as well as by judges Julio Biaggi, Elvia Barros, Roberto Barandiaran and Jose Neyra. The court unanimously upheld the murder conviction and the 25-year sentence. The kidnapping charges were ratified by a majority vote, in which Justice Julio Enrique Biaggi upheld the fines and damage, but dissented on the charges of aggravated kidnapping rather than simple kidnapping. The sentence also ratified the qualification of the massacres as crimes against humanity.

Fujimori's prison term includes his time in Chile in custody and under house arrest from 2005 until 2006, making his sentence effectively until Feb.10, 2032. He is not permitted a pardon, but after serving 19 years (3/4 of his sentence), he would be allowed, at age 90, to shorten his sentence by one day for every 7 days of prison work he completes. He is currently being held in the north of Lima at the special operations unit of the National Police.

Judges also ordered Fujimori to pay 62,400 soles (22,285 U.S. dollars) each to Marcelino Marcos Pablo Meza and Carmen Juana Marinos Figueroa, and to 21 other relatives of the victims.

Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, Fujimori's daughter, said a writ of habeus corpus would be presented to the Court. However, the court's most recent decision makes a future pardon on grounds of age or health unlikely.

Nakazaki said that they will continue to fight for the nullification of the sentence" and that "if Fujimori is to have justice, that justice must be found at another Judicial Power or at Constitutional Courtl level." However, on January 5, Constitutional Court president Juan Vergara, stated that a Supreme Court decision cannot be changed the Constitutional Court.

Republished from UpsideDownWorld

Avatar is real: Pandora is located in Central and South America and Africa.

2010-01-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

January 12th 2010, by Carlos A. Quiroz - Venezuelanalysis.com

Indigenous peoples are displaced by wars and corporations

If you haven’t seen Avatar then you are missing out a good movie. The film excels in creativity, imagination, excitement stories and technical work. The result is overwhelmingly pleasing to the senses and I suggest you watch its 3D version to enjoy it the best.

Most importantly this film has a message beyond the central romance story, and perhaps that is the reason why I suggest you should watch it. I won’t spoil your experience by telling you what happened at the end of the movie, however I would like you to understand the context of its main story, some say its fiction but it has a lot of reality.

Avatar is real: Pandora exists in our planet and it's located in South and Central America, and Africa. The Na'vi peoples, the Indigenous peoples in those regions are being displaced and killed right now, in order to extract the natural resources laying underground. The names of places and peoples may be different in the movie, but the facts of reality are almost the same.

Distant regions of green, tropical forests rich in beauty are in danger, due to their abundance in unknown treasures hidden behind human’s eyes. In order to get those resources needed by rich countries, multinational corporations are using governments, armed forces, paramilitary and guerrillas to massacre and displace Indigenous peoples.

Sadly, in most cases the U.S. military is involved one way or another.

In the next generation, Central and South America will be the next battle fields for rich countries fighting over natural resources which they need to continue growing and keeping up with their consumerists, excessive ways of life. Minerals, oil, drinkable water, natural gas, forest and bio-tech resources are widely available in areas kept in balance by Native peoples for thousands of years.

Thus, the last pristine virgin forests on Earth, could be taken over by powerful military armies, working on behalf of multinational corporations, especially those based in the U.S., Europe, and Canada; and perhaps soon India, China, and Russia.

This is not fiction. It's happening already in the tropical forests and mountains of Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Ecuador, where big mining, oil, lodging, tourism, real state, pharmaceutical corporations are invading the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples and stealing their cultures and heritage in order to profit, all of which is done with the complicity of the local puppet governments.

In the film, the attacking thugs were a bunch of cold hearted and insensitive corporate and military folks who would invest money in science, researching and cultural programs in order to win the hearts and minds of Indigenous peoples living in sacred, untouched, pristine forests of a balanced but fragile environment. Those places are the final destinations for destructive mining machinery, ready to extract the insides of the mother land.

Sebastian Machineri is a leader of the Yaminawa indigenous people that live in the border area of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, deep in the Amazon forest. He was recently in Washington, DC, participating at a working meeting of the Organization of American States for a continental declaration of Indigenous rights. Sebastian Machineri told me that Indigenous peoples in Brazil are being killed, attacked, displaced, and exterminated by the federal government and private ranch owners. “I have no hope that anything will change in the near future” he added, when I asked if international legislation in behalf of Indigenous peoples rights -like the UN declaration adopted in 2006- can help. He said that greedy powerful interests are pushing governments to destroy our planet.

This is the truth. In 2009 the Indigenous peoples around the Americas faced increasing violence, deadly military attacks, displacement, persecution and incarceration from governments, paramilitaries, guerrillas and military forces linked to corporate interests and extractive industries.

In order to do displace Indigenous peoples, governments in Latin America are forced by powerful interest groups to pass special legislation based on the “free-trade” policies model, which was designed by Wall Street. This economic trend known as "neoliberalism" has opened the doors of protected areas to private corporations with enough money and influences to do what they please, without considering the rights of the Indigenous peoples living there.

Last June 2009 in Peru, hundreds of Awajun and Wampis Indigenous farmers were massacred by US-trained militarized police forces of Peru, in the Bagua region. The Natives were protesting peacefully against government legislation that allowed corporations to take over their lands resources, without previous consultation. Also as a result, many policemen of Indigenous heritage were killed by a riot of Natives who heard of the Bagua massacre. Months later, the Awajun and Wampis peoples detained five employees of the Canadian mining company IAMGOLD, who didn't have authorization to enter their territory.

In several regions of Peru, mining corporations are causing pollution and the poisoning of entire Indigenous towns. This has led to social protests and a growing Indigenous movement, but the response of president Alan Garcia has been of racism, violence and repression, accusing the Natives as terrorists, criminals and second-class citizens. Many community leaders have been incarcerated when protesting against the government plans, which includes leasing 73% of the Amazon forest and extensive areas of the Andean mountains to multinationals.

In 2006 the Bush administration forced Peruvians to accept an abusive free trade agreement (FTA) which was entirely written in the United States. The massacre of Bagua was an indirect result of the policies included in that FTA. The authorities of Cusco were forced to pass legislation that bans bio-piracy or “the appropriation and monopolization of traditional population’s knowledge and biological resources”, in order to prevent the negative effects of the unpopular and controversial U.S.-Peru FTA. But that is not it.

Jeremy Hance denounces more atrocities faced by Indigenous peoples in Peru in this excellent article posted by Mongabay News:

Just weeks after the bloody incident [of Bagua], Texas-based Hunt Oil, with full support of the Peruvian government, moved into the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve with helicopters and large machinery for seismic testing. A scene not unlike Avatar, which shows a corporation entering indigenous territory with gun ships. The seismic testing alone involves 300 miles of testing trails, over 12,000 explosive charges, and 100 helicopter land pads in the middle of a largely-untouched and unknown region of the Amazonian rainforest. The reserve, which was created to protect native peoples' homes, may soon be turned into a land of oil scars. Indigenous groups say they were never properly consulted by Hunt Oil for use of their land. [...]

In the film the Na'vi are dismissed as "blue monkeys" and "savages" by the corporate administrator. Both the corporation and their hired soldiers view the Na'vi as less than human.

In Peru, President Alan Garcia has called indigenous people "confused savages", "barbaric", "second-class citizens", "criminals", and "ignorant". He has even compared tribal groups to the nation's infamous terrorists, the Shining Path.

There is no end in sight in the struggle between the indigenous people of Peru and government-sanctioned corporate power.

Lets move on to Colombia, where the Amazonian Indigenous peoples are caught in the middle of the internal war between the government, the guerrillas and the government-supported paramilitary. Twenty members of the Awa Indigenous community were killed in 2009 by the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and by the end of the year 74 more Awas were killed by paramilitary groups linked to the illegal drugs cartels. Many Indigenous peoples are forced to leave their lands due to this type of violence, and the abandoned lands are taken by agro business corporations.

Also last year, more than 2,000 Indigenous Embera people in Colombia have abandoned 25 villages and their territory, in order to escape violence from paramilitaries. Meanwhile the Colombian House of Representatives approved a controversial program to convince local women to submit to sterilization. This same type of program has affected over 330,000 Indigenous women and men in Peru in the 1990s.

In the Pacific region of Colombia, the Afro Colombian population continues to endure violence, killings and displacement. Just last month the leaders Manuel Moya, Graciano Blandon and his son were assassinated by the paramilitary. Over 4 million Colombians have been displaced by this type of violence created by the guerrillas, the military and right-wing paramilitaries, who have strong ties to the Alvaro Uribe government.

The same tragedy is occurring all over the continent. According to information posted by John Schertow of the Indigenous news website "Intercontinental Cry", these are some of the most violent attacks faced by Native peoples in Central and South America in 2009:

In central Brazil, the Yanomami community of Paapiu began calling for the immediate expulsion of illegal gold miners occupying their land. Survival International reported, “[the Yanomami] say they are prepared to use bows and arrows to expel the invaders themselves if the authorities do not take immediate action.”

The Guarani Kaiowa community of Apyka´y in Brazil was attacked by ten gunmen, who fired shots in to their camp, wounding one person. The gunmen also beat up and injured others with knives and then set fire to their village. This was the second village torched in less than a week.

As many as 300 troops from Panama’s National Police demolished a Naso village in Bocas del Toro–for the second time. No injuries were reported, however, some 150 adults and 65 children were left with no shelter and limited access to food and water.

Following an overturned eviction, an Ava Guarani indigenous community in Paraguay’s Itakyry district was sprayed with toxic chemicals, most likely pesticide, resulting in nearly the entire village needing medical treatment.

In Guatemala, a group of Maya Mam villagers set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig, after the Canadian company Goldcorp repeatedly failed to remove the equipment off the community’s land.

In Chile, several Mapuche communities began to reclaim their lands in Araucania, a region located in the center of the country, which they say were stolen in the XVI century during the Hispanic invasion. At least five people have been killed by the Chilean government, which has passed strong anti-terrorism legislation to imprison and trial Mapuche indigenous leaders.

In Ecuador, Indigenous peoples are suing U.S. oil corporations for damages to their Amazonian forest land and water pollution. Meanwhile the leftist government of Rafael Correa has tried to betray its electoral promises, by selling extensive lands to oil and mining corporations. The response was a strong national strike and social protests.

The panorama is different in Bolivia, where Indigenous people are moving towards self-government under their own cultural traditions, after the December 6 presidential and legislative elections. In those elections 12 of the 327 municipalities of the country voted in favor of Indigenous collective self-government, giving them control over the natural resources and their land. The same model, but at a smaller scale is being applied in Venezuela by the government of president Hugo Chavez, which is giving its Indigenous populations the right to own their ancestral lands.

Unfortunately, justice for Indigenous peoples seem to be wrong for the Obama administration, already controlled by the same corporate interests of its predecessors. A biased U.S. media often attacks the governments of Bolivia and Venezuela, while it remains silent in the massacres of Indigenous peoples in Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and the violent repression in Chile and Ecuador, or the violence promoted by the coup regime of Honduras where death squads trained in the U.S. are killing the opposition including Garifuna, Miskito and other Indigenous groups.

The future of Central and South America -and Africa- depends directly of how much power is retained by rich countries and their multinational corporations, in those regions. In the last decades, Wall Street and London have told poor nations that small governments are the key for progress and development. The less control, the more democracy, more human rights and especially more foreign investment. This model has failed.

We see what is happening right now in Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, etc. where weak governments can't stop internal wars financed by rich countries and private corporations. Only in Congo this type of violence has caused over 6 million people killed and 500 thousands men and women being raped. This is a painful proof that governments need to be strong, that people must take control of their destinies, not corporations.

Growing up in South America, we were told that our Indigenous people were exterminated, disseminated, gone. Therefore they taught us in schools that nothing was left to reverse the colonization process, that our peoples could never dare to stop it. We were told we weren't Indigenous anymore.

In reality, there is so much all we people -of every race- can do in order to stop the imperialist oppression of Indigenous peoples, and the destruction of our planet. Everyone can do something, because in the end this is about the survival of the whole human race and our home, our mother land.

We need to stand against rich countries oppressing poorer nations with direct military invasions or with provoked internal conflicts. It's happening today in Congo, Uganda, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Mexico, Colombia, Yemen, Burma, Pakistan, Nigeria, Peru, etc.

Like in Avatar, this Pandora-like violence against Indigenous communities all over the world is promoted by a racist, selfish sector of United States government and corporate involvement in military invasions, coups, paramilitary groups, training of torturers and repressive forces, and financing of anti-Indigenous governments.

For instance, during the Bush administration, the strategy to take over the natural resources of Latin America was domitated by free-trade agreements (FTA) and the funding of violent conflicts in Colombia, Haiti, and Mexico. Thousands of civilians have been killed, many of whom were Indigenous and Afro descendants.

In 2009 with Barack Obama in power, the U.S. government has slowed down on its FTA policies but the Pentagon has confirmed the opening of seven military bases in Colombia, while it has possibly increased its presence in Peru with three military stations. The Pentagon’s Southern Command has also increased military exercise programs conducted with Peru, Panama, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, while Chile received approval from U.S. Congress to obtain high technology war missiles.

In Avatar, the main destructive leaders were the military chief and the corporate boss. The relation between U.S. military intervention and corporate interests is never more obvious than in Colombia. As the second biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world -after Israel- Colombia is an important source of oil, minerals, cocaine and agro business which are crucial for the U.S. economy. Its neighbor Venezuela is not taking these close ties too lightly, and recently the Chavez government has bought armament from Russia, China and possibly Iran.

In the James Cameron's film Avatar, the US military became a sophisticated army of private mercenaries, working in behalf of extractive industries and its huge profits. No matter what they needed to destroy or who they had to kill, they had to get the job done. The "Sky people" had already destroyed their home, "and no green was left".

Despite the white-supremacist tone of the end of the film with a white male saving the Indigenous population, the script had an interesting approach to race. While a mostly-white leadership were leading destructive enterprises, the saviors were a young and multi-racial group of thinkers and dreamers.

The movie presents Pandora's Indigenous peoples as blueish half animals, not humans. In reality that is the way how some people see our Indigenous peoples in the Americas, almost as sub humans, with no rights to live, to survive. Our peoples are the victims of the permanent greediness of the so called developed nations.

As a result of extraordinary experiments, some of the humans become laboratory-mixed Natives. The Avatars were like a new race, mixed, mestizo individuals who are physically similar to the Indigenous, but mentally more aware of certain things. They learn the spirituality and sciences of nature from the “savages” and with time, they learn that mining is not worth the price of such destruction. Then they become the protectors of Natives, who using a mixture of knowledge, both human and Na'vi, eventually kick the invaders out of their land by actually killing most of them.

Sorry I just told you the rest of movie, but at least I didn't reveal the romantic part. No worries, you will still enjoy this film.

Avatar represents a new step in the filming industry, not just because of its high technology animation [amazing!] and the way its mixed with real actors, but also because it's showing us the most likely future of this planet, if we allow it to happen.

In the film, the attacking thugs were a bunch of insensitive corporate and military individuals, working for hidden interests. They would invest money in science, researching and cultural programs in order to win the hearts and minds of Indigenous peoples living in sacred, untouched, pristine forests of a balanced but fragile environment. Those places are the final destinations for destructive mining machinery, ready to extract the insides of the mother land.

Sebastian Machineri told me that Indigenous peoples in the Amazon forests are angry at many non-profits that come to their communities, video record their ways of live, take photos and teach them "modern" skills. Later on, corporations and ranchers move in.

The possible military conflicts to take place in Central and especially in South America in the next years, are related to corporate greediness and special capitalist interests. This is the scary future that awaits to the future generations.

Unless of course, the United States, Europe and other rich countries end their colonialist, imperialistic policies which are designed and dominated by corporate and military machines, true mafias. Like in Avatar, the future of our Pandora is in the hands of "the People" in order to regain the control of our lands, to guarantee a true democracy, to respect our Indigenous peoples with equality, where our planet is preserved and life is sacred again.

Carlos A. Quiroz is a free lance writer and independent journalist , video blogger, activist and artist painter based in Washington, DC. An Indigenous man of Quechua and Muchik heritage from Peru, he writes three blogs: Carlos in DC, Peruanista and Double Spirited. His articles have been published by The Huffington Post, Ground Report and websites in the U.S. Peru and Venezuela. His Twitter is CarlosQC.

Report on Massacre of Native Protesters in Peru Biased, Says Head of Inquiry

2010-01-05T16:54:00.000-08:00

Milagros Salazar interviews JESÚS MANACÉS, head of the Bagua massacre inquiry commission

LIMA, Dec 30 (IPS) - The coordinator of the commission convened by the Peruvian government to clarify a June massacre of 33 indigenous protesters and police near the Amazonian town of Bagua refused to sign the final report, which he says is biased.

Jesús Manacés, an Awajún leader who coordinated the special commission, told IPS that he did not sign the final report because it does not include the views of everyone involved and does not identify those who were responsible, in the political, police and military spheres.

He said the commission had neither adequate resources nor enough time to clarify what happened on Jun. 2 near the town of Bagua in the Amazon jungle in northern Peru, where a clash between security forces and native protesters left at least 33 people dead, one missing policeman and over 200 people injured.

The killings put an end to a two-month demonstration and roadblock in Bagua by Amerindians demanding the repeal of decrees passed by the government of Alan García that opened up indigenous land in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies, in the framework of the free trade agreement (FTA) signed with the United States.

(After the incident, in June, Congress revoked two of the most controversial decrees.)

According to different sources, the local police chiefs and the protesters had reached an agreement for a peaceful lifting of the roadblock at 10:30 AM. But just before 6:00 AM, heavily armed police units arrived and opened fire on the demonstrators, some of whom were still sleeping.

Manacés and religious worker Carmen Gómez, another member of the commission, went public on Dec. 26 with their discrepancies with the report, in a letter addressed to Agriculture Minister Adolfo de Córdova, who heads the Grupo Nacional de Coordinación para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (national coordinating group for the development of indigenous peoples).

In the document, Manacés and Gómez say they will draw up an alternative report to shed more light on what happened that tragic day. IPS correspondent Milagros Salazar sat down with Manacés to discuss the situation. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: You note that the commission was unable to question several key figures to clear up what happened in Bagua. Who are you referring to?

A: Several cabinet ministers and others in high-level positions. In some cases, we were unable to arrange the interviews, as in the case of former Prime Minister Yehude Simon. I pointed out the need to talk to him, we wrote a letter, but the request never reached him.

We also asked for a meeting with then Foreign Trade Minister Mercedes Aráoz, who defended the decrees that prompted the protest by our indigenous brothers and sisters. She said that if those decrees were repealed, the FTA with the United States would collapse, and as we know now, that wasn't true.

She made an appointment with us, but we didn't go because the work of the commission was moving along so quickly and we didn't have the resources or assistants to deliver the letters or carry out the interviews.

Q: You met with Mercedes Cabanillas, the then minister of the interior. What explanation did she give you about the violent police crackdown to break up the roadblock by the native protesters who were camping out at the Curva del Diablo (a spot on the highway near Bagua)?

A: She described the events for about half an hour, and then responded to only a few questions.

Q: Didn't you ask her who ordered the operation to break up the roadblock?

A: She said she didn't give the order, that it was the police chief who gave it. She didn't respond as expected. But it's obvious that she was ultimately responsible.

Q: Cabanillas insists that everything was in the hands of the police and that she only received a report after the fact.

A: That response is like saying that as minister, the person who is ultimately responsible, she gave the police free rein to do whatever they wanted. And if that's true, isn't she responsible for what happened?

Q: You said you also weren't given access to important documents like the Interior Ministry's "Report on Internal Security". Who refused you access to that document?

A: I made that request in front of Minister Octavio Salazar (who replaced Cabanillas) in a meeting with him and Gen. Javier Uribe (who was in charge of the negotiations with the indigenous protesters prior to the police operation) in the Special Operations Division headquarters.

The general said he couldn't hand over the document because the case was being appealed, but I insisted that it would be a big help for us to do our job. The minister then agreed to give it to us, but that didn't happen.

Q: Isn't it contradictory that the final report signed by the other members of the commission acknowledges that agreements had been reached by the police and indigenous people to peacefully call off the roadblock, but that no one was found to be responsible for what happened?

A: Yes, but…it was Gen. Uribe who negotiated the peaceful lifting of the traffic blockade, and after that there was a change of command. Who ordered it? Why did they do it? Everyone here knows which authorities were in charge.

That's why I believed responsibilities should have been determined at different levels of the executive branch, the legislature, etc. Now it turns out that so much talking has been done, but nothing has been clarified.

Q: What progress has the commission made in determining who was responsible, in the police and army chain of command?

A: It's clear that the army provided the police with no support, that the situation on the ground was not properly assessed, and that those who took part in the operation after the agreement for a peaceful lifting of the roadblock did so without understanding the magnitude of the protest, that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 demonstrators there.

It was a disproportionate operation conducted without coordination. I'm sure that if it had not been carried out, the people would have left on Jun. 5 at 10:30, as planned. Maybe it was launched to justify the police presence in the area.

Q: You observe that in nearly every paragraph of the report, the version of only one side is presented, rather than conflicting or different versions.

A: That is one of the main reasons that I have not signed the document. It's why I asked for an extension, to complete the information.

With the time pressure, on Sunday Dec. 20 we worked into the wee hours of the morning of the next day, and a few hours later they wanted me to take a final look at the whole thing, in order to sign it.

I refused because I was only given a very short time, but the other members handed the report over to the executive branch. I'm not sure that what was delivered is what I saw on Sunday night.

Q: It has come out that the final report states that legislators of the (opposition) Nationalist Party incited the indigenous groups to protest the decrees. How much of that is true?

A: That isn't true, it's just some seasoning added by the politicians. The idea behind saying that is that we had no idea why we were going to the protests, as if someone had given us some formula to repeat.

Q: You say the report wrongly insists that the origin of the conflict was the lack of communication and failure to explain the positive aspects of the decrees.

A: That's right; they say that because they don't know us. For us it was sufficient that the decrees were approved without consulting indigenous people, as required by International Labour Organisation Convention 169, which means they had no legal standing. It didn't matter if one part was good and another bad.

Q: You reached the Curva del Diablo only minutes after the break-up of the roadblock, like a number of your Awajún companions. Did the fact that you were on the scene on Jun. 5 help you in the search for the truth of what happened there?

A: I was not in the previous meetings that the demonstrators held with the police, because I arrived later. But what I can confirm is that there was a disproportionate use of fire power by the police, because of the 200 people injured, 82 had bullet wounds, and it is the authorities themselves who say that. (END/2009)

Republished from IPS

Peru: Violence Targets Anti-Mining Activists

2009-12-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

By Jennifer Moore
December 7, 2009 - On Wednesday afternoon, Vicente Robledo Ramírez, aged 55 and father of eight children, and Castulo Correa Huayama, aged 36 and father of six, were shot dead in a confrontation with national police. Another six campesinos were wounded and two detained. The police report that they also sustained several wounded, but further details have not been released.

Over the weekend, a reported 2,000 campesinos turned out to mourn the death of the men in the remote rural province of Huancabamba where campesinos have been opposing a Chinese and UK owned mine for the last six years. The Rio Blanco project is principally owned by the Chinese Zijin Consortium together with the UK's Monterrico Metals.

Juan Amancio Romero, son of Vicente, asked authorities “to investigate what took place and to respect the decisions of the people who don't want the mine to continue in the area, nor a NGO [believed to be closely linked to the company] or police.”

The Front for the Sustainable Development of the Northern Border of Peru (FDSFNP by its initials in Spanish) also called for further investigation and reiterated “its will to dialogue” with the government.

The incident brings the death toll in the area to seven. On Nov. 1, two security guards and the mine site manager were killed in an armed attack by unidentified perpetrators at the Rio Blanco mining camp, now the subject of reserved investigations involving national police. Also, in 2004 and 2005, two campesinos were killed as result of repression against protests.

According to the People's Ombudsman (Defensoria del Pueblo), police report that the deaths last week took place after they detained a man in the area of the community of Cajas-Canchaque. The regional police chief Walter Rivera said that the detention was part of investigations into the November attack on the mine camp and that those implicated in this prior incident had been refusing to cooperate. President Servando Aponte of the campesino community challenged the police version saying that officers acted “arrogantly” and that when they entered the home of Lorenzo Rojas to detain him that his neighbours came out in his defence because there was no official warrant for his detention.

For the last six years, the Rio Blanco project, a proposed open-pit copper and molybdenum mine, has generated opposition from campesino communities on whose land it would be located given potential impacts on water supplies and agricultural activities taking place within the watershed. As a result, the company has never obtained the two-thirds approval from local assemblies that it is required to have by law in order to operate in the area. On Sept. 16, 2007, three rural districts in Huancabamba and Ayabaca participated a popular referendum and reaffirmed their opposition to the mine in which a majority voted against any mining activity in the area.

Earlier attempts at dialogue broke down because of government refusal to discuss the results of the 2007 referendum. Since then, around 300 local leaders have faced legal processes believed to be a means of political persecution for their role in the referendum. Most recently, tensions have risen following the Nov. 1 attack on the mining camp for which it is believed that those opposed to the mine are being principally targeted as part of investigations by national police.

Javier Jahncke of the Ecumenical Foundation for Development and Peace (Fedepaz), whose organization is part of a national network that promotes the sustainable use of natural resources and the rights of rural and indigenous communities, says they have concluded that police are leading investigations into the November incident “with a single hypothesis in which they assume that the campesinos were the authors of the crime.”

The day following the attack the FDSFNP, a coalition of local community leaders opposed to the mine, expressed its condolences for the deaths and urged that thorough investigations take place. According to the Peru Support Group, the UK company Monterrico Metals was also “quick to distance itself from any accusations blaming local community groups for this latest violence and indeed thanked local communities for the help they showed the mine camp's employees who escaped the attack.”

However, Jahncke is concerned that police have set aside other possible explanations for the attack to focus on the possible involvement of the mine's opponents. He suggests other theories, such that Rio Blanco's workers might have been killed as part of an attempted robbery or that there was a dispute among workers that led to reprisals, are being ignored. He notes that they have not been privy to evidence being considered as part of investigations since they have been reserved by police.

A congresswoman from the northwestern department of Piura has also received testimonies that police have detained and tortured people in local communities as part of efforts to gain confessions concerning the attack.

Jahncke further questions the timing of the recent violence given that a judge in the English High Court has only recently upheld an injunction to freeze the assets of Monterrico Metals saying that 29 men and women from Piura have a “good arguable case” against the company for allegations of abuses which took place at the Rio Blanco mine site in 2005.

“This lawsuit has seriously affected the image of the company Monterrico Metals,” says Jahncke, “and by extension, Zijin.” This raises questions in his mind about the recent violence and how it is being dealt with “because of who is being affected by this situation, and if it isn't the same campesinos that have been resorting to international channels to be able to be heard since such a process has not begun in their own country.”

Fears of Militarization

As a result, Jahncke sees last week's violence as part of a “clear effort at any cost” to make way for the mine. He fears that by creating the public perception of a rural population that is “unmanageable” and “violent” that the state will be able to “justify the militarization of this area.”

Only days after the November attack on the mining camp, Peruvian Prime Minister Velásquez Quesquén indicated that the government was evaluating the possibility of installing a military base in the area. The General Manager Jian Wu of the principal stakeholder in the Rio Blanco project, the Chinese Zijin Consortium, was present at the meeting.

However, says Jahncke, “These conflicts cannot be resolved with the military protecting the company operations. This will just put more fuel on the fire and generate more conflict... For this to go ahead would be the worst thing possible.”

Overall, he is concerned that the government continues to favour the company's presence “over the property rights of the communities.”

He concludes, “Until this situation is seen as the rights of some being preferred over the rights of others, in a situation that is not legal, and in which rights have been violated for a long time, the problem will not be solved and you will see decisions that will collide with community rights and the conflict will continue to grow, which is what we least want and what hopefully the state least wants to see happen as well.”

Republished from UpsideDownWorld

Peru’s Workers Confederation Rejects Fake Elections in Honduras

2009-11-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

Prensa CGTP

In the face of the Peruvian government's decision to recognize the results of the Honduran elections taking place next Sunday 29 promoted by the coup makes, the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) condemned the decision of President Garcia that affects the image of Peru and justifies the interruption of democratic life in a nation through the intervention of the armed forces, an ominous precedent for the entire region and the world.

Despite the struggle of the Honduran people and the fact that their legitimate President, Manuel Zelaya is in the country, granted sanctury in the Brazilian embassy to demand his restitution, neoliberal-leaning governments like ours (as well as Colombia and the U.S.) with their decision to recognize an election rigged by the coup, legitimize the ongoing violation of human rights and the usurpation of legitimate authority by a minority sector groups allied to economic powers.

The CGTP appeals to social organizations in the country to be alert to the actions that the APRA government might carry out in order to maintain the current economic system in our country, taking into account the implementation of the upcoming elections. President Garcia's conduct in relation to what happened in Honduras demonstrates his disregard for democracy and its authoritarian stance against the demands of change raised by the peoples of the region who reject the neoliberal model advocated by APRA.

The CGTP expresses its solidarity with the people of Honduras and urges them to maintain the resistance to achieve the restoration of democracy and respect for the rule of law.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke

Peru: Hunt Oil Contract to Reignite Amazon Uprising?

2009-11-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

Bill Weinberg

After the indigenous uprising in Peru's Amazon region in June, the country is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples, highland campesinos, and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima's political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.

Yet there has been a high price in human lives, and only the most controversial of President Alan García's legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru's congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.

The southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios was the scene of considerable unrest during the past two years' worth of protests. In early July 2008, regional government offices in Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital of Madre de Dios, were occupied for three days. The city was paralyzed as the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), an indigenous Amazonian organization, joined the regional campesino union in launching the general strike. Campesino demands for land titles were united with indigenous demands for territorial rights, while federations representing small miners, Brazil-nut harvesters, Puerto Maldonado moto-taxi drivers, and other sectors also joined the strike, uniting in an Alliance of Federations.

Then the regional government offices were burned down. It remains unclear who was responsible, but indigenous protesters were accused. More than a year later, the burned-out shell of the building still stands, its walls scrawled with graffiti. The words have been painted over in an attempt to obscure them, but they are still readable: "La tierra es del pueblo" (The land is the people's) and "No se vende, se defiende" (We don't sell out, we defend ourselves). Some 25 were arrested, and Jorge Payaba, a former president of FENAMAD, was beaten and hospitalized. His successor, Antonio Iviche, went into hiding for several days before the charges against him were dropped.

Now it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.

Hunt signed a contract with Peru's government to explore within Lot 76 in 2006 and later brought in the Spanish firm Repsol as a half-partner in the project. The lot overlaps with much of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve as well as 16 titled native communities-including those 10 that are adjacent to the reserve and jointly responsible for managing it with the national government. Hunt's exploration work calls for 18 seismic lines with 20,000 detonation points across the southern part of the reserve. This work is to be serviced by 166 mobile camps with heliports, as well a main base camp. FENAMAD said these activities are to take place in the most sensitive part of the reserve, near the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Río Madre de Dios.

FENAMAD's Iviche, a traditional Harakmbut leader, said the oil project threatens the forests and waters of the reserve, which was established in 2002 for the use of local Harakmbut, Yine, and Matsigenka communities.

"Our communities have decided not to allow these activities in the communal reserve," Iviche said, charging that Hunt is operating without the consent of the area's native inhabitants, most of whom oppose the oil company's presence. "They have never consulted with the communities." Failing to adequately consult indigenous communities on land-use issues in their territories is a violation of both international standards and Peru's constitution.

The Amarakaeri reserve was created following years of petitioning by FENAMAD-and a march in April 2002 by some 1,000 indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado. Each of the 10 communities bordering the reserve has its own range within it for hunting and gathering, but indigenous residents cannot enter the zonas silvestres, or wild zones-yet this is where Hunt is now operating.

Additionally, Lot 76 borders (or nearly borders, separated by a strip barely two thirds of a mile wide) two national parks. On the north, it borders, and slightly overlaps with, a State Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation. This was created along with the Amarakaeri reserve to protect "uncontacted" Matsigenka bands believed to be living in this zone.

On September 9, FENAMAD sought an injunction against Hunt's exploration work before the Madre de Dios Superior Court of Justice, the equivalent of a local district court. Said FENAMAD secretary Jaime Corisepa: "We have to attack on every level, using the courts, but we are ready to defend our territory physically."

In 2007, Hunt began holding "information workshops" at FENAMAD's offices in Puerto Maldonado and at some of the communities bordering the reserve. Corisepa denies these were consultations, saying the company representatives were just "announcing what they were going to do."

One community, Shintuya, has signed an agreement with Hunt to accept $30,000 in compensation for allowing the company access to its titled lands. There is a dispute as to whether the community approved this decision by the two-thirds vote required under Peruvian law.

FENAMAD said Hunt is required at a minimum to compensate the two communities whose lands it seeks to enter-Shintuya and Puerto Luz, at the eastern and western ends of the seismic lines, respectively-and the Amarakaeri reserve's governing council, known as the Administrative Contract Executive (ECA). Hunt has no deal with Puerto Luz, and a tentative deal with the ECA is now in question.

"Laws are being systematically ignored by the company and the government," Corisepa charges. "The Peruvian state has a hydrocarbon policy that violates the rights of indigenous communities. This is what the Amazon uprising was about."

*

At a September 13 meeting at FENAMAD's Puerto Maldonado office, leaders from the 10 communities bordering the Amarakaeri reserve met privately to hash out their position, then invited three Hunt Oil representatives to receive their declaration. The atmosphere in the small thatched-roof conference room was tense.

Three communities, Shintuya, Puerto Luz, and Diamante, dissented from the decision to issue a declaration opposing the project. Nonetheless, the joint statement from FENAMAD and the ECA opposing the Hunt-Repsol presence in the reserve demanded that "this decision be respected by the state as well as the said companies."

Anoshka, a Harakmbut leader from the community of Masenawa who is also a popular singer on the local cumbia circuit, gave the most impassioned statement. "I plead with you from my heart to respect our desire," she said, directly addressing the Hunt representatives. "A majority of our communities have decided no. The conflicts you are sowing among us will not succeed, but you are already causing damage to our communities."

Speaking of the Amarakaeri reserve's management plan ostensibly drawn up with input from the 10 communities, she added: "The master plan said the communities favor the oil company. This is a lie and we will never accept this."

The master plan, drawn up by the government natural-resources agency, is strongly contested. Although the ECA signed off on it, many Harakmbut charge the communities were not informed of last-minute changes that afforded oil companies easier access to resource exploitation in the most sensitive area of the reserve. Also at issue is the plan's "recommendation" that the ECA accept any hydrocarbon contracts that the state permits in the reserve.

FENAMAD is especially concerned about the status of the high jungle in the south of the reserve, near the border with Cuzco region, which protects the watersheds of several tributaries of the Río Madre de Dios that run through the reserve. FENAMAD argues that under Peru's Water Law, this area should be a strict protection zone, which would bar resource exploitation there. Instead, it was reclassified as a zona silvestre, affording a lower level of protection.

Equally controversial is the environmental-impact study produced for the Hunt project by the Peruvian firm Demus. In April, Demus workers in the community of Barranco Chico were confronted by local residents armed with clubs, who chased them from their lands. FENAMAD challenged the impact study before the Mines and Energy Ministry as what Corisepa calls a "plagiarism"-basically a cut-and-paste job from earlier studies elsewhere in the Amazon. Nonetheless, the ministry accepted it in June.

Hunt workers may be the next to be physically confronted. At the end of the meeting, Iviche announced that if Hunt doesn't withdraw from the reserve, the communities are prepared to carry out a desalojo-eviction.

*

Silvana lay, a forestry engineer who serves as Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for the Lot 76 project, defended the company's position in comments outside the meeting at the FENAMAD office.

"We weren't going to come in until the master plan was approved," she said. "We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We are working in the part where we are allowed to work under the rules that were put in the plan. The last thing we want is a dangerous situation for our workers or the communities."

While the ECA did not have to sign off on the impact statement, Lay points out that public hearings on the study were held in the village of Salvación. "We held workshops with the communities on whose lands we are going to work, with the ECA invited."

Lay insists that Hunt, in contrast to many resource companies in Peru, is committed to playing by the rules. "We have the [impact statement] approved. We have the master plan approved. We did workshops with the communities-all this before we started our work. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead-within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead."

She points out that the $380,000 offered in compensation to the ECA is nearly 25% of the Amarakaeri reserve's five-year budget. It is now in question whether the ECA will accept this money. She said the $30,000 pledged to Shintuya is forthcoming, and that Hunt will stay off of Puerto Luz community's lands until a compensation deal is finalized. Hunt's overall budget for the exploration project is $17 million, she said.

Lay asserted that the Hunt contract is in the best interests of the communities. "They can use that money to police the reserve against illegal logging and mining. The illegal exploitation is the greatest threat to the reserve, while the media and government are checking up on us. We are a good opportunity for the reserve."

FENAMAD attorney Milton Mercado rejects Lay's portrayal. "The ECA has never signed any document allowing Hunt in the reserve," he said. While the master plan allows oil exploitation in a general sense-with approval by the National Service of Protected Areas-it makes no reference to the Hunt contract. And this provision was added above the protests of the communities, he added.

"The only consultation has been with Shintuya and Puerto Luz," Mercado said. Consultation is mandated by the International Labor Organization's Convention 169, to which Peru is a signatory. The principle is also enshrined in Article 6 of Peru's constitution.

Mercado sees a hopeful precedent in a February ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru's highest court, in a case concerning Lot 103-which includes the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, a high jungle that protects the headwaters of important rivers in northern San Martín region. Citing potential damage to aquifers, the tribunal ruled against a consortium including Repsol, Petrobras, and Occidental Petroleum, ordering a halt to exploration in the reserve until a master plan is in place.

FENAMAD's case against Hunt likewise focuses on the issue of protecting aquifers. But Mercado points out that it is the first in the history of Peru to rest on lack of consultation with indigenous communities-and a favorable ruling would be precedent-setting.

*

Almost all of the Madre de Dios region is divided into hydrocarbon exploration lots. Sapet, a Peruvian venture of China National Petroleum, has a license for Lots 113 and 111-the former covering the Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and the latter actually covering the town of Puerto Maldonado. The company has pledged not to explore in the reserve, for the moment at least. Lot 157, on unprotected lands to the east of the large protected areas, is currently suspended following the "Petrogate" scandal, in which officials are accused of kickbacks in the granting of concessions to Norwegian company Discover Petroleum.

These medium-sized firms are clearly viewed as an advance guard for the industry majors, who mostly abandoned operations in the Peruvian Amazon because of instability in the 1990s-and who García openly hopes to woo back.

Shell Oil explorations in area in the mid-1980s took a grave toll in disease on the recently contacted Yaminahua people in the north of Madre de Dios, who now have a titled community in neighboring Ucuyali region.

A decade later, a consortium including ExxonMobil and Elf began exploration in Lot 78-covering nearly the same territory as the contemporary Lot 76. This lot was reorganized in subsequent years as the communities around the Amarakaeri reserve were being titled.

In addition to hydrocarbons, timber is being massively exploited in Madre de Dios, mostly by Peruvian firms for export to the United States and China. There are legal concessions on state land in the largely unprotected eastern half of Madre de Dios-as well as much illegal exploitation in the protected areas.

Gold is next in line in the local resource boom. Legal placer and dredge mining concessions operate on the region's rivers. But illegal and highly destructive hydraulic mining goes on in pirate operations.

A hydroelectric project is pending on the Río Inambari, with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht likely to get the contract. The Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Brazil's Atlantic coast with Peru's Pacific is also under construction through Madre de Dios.

This matrix of development interests could make the frontier zone of Madre de Dios a very different place in a few short years-and many young indigenous people fear what the future will bring. Wili Corisepa, a young Harakmbut from Shintuya who works with FENAMAD, said: "In the time of the missionaries, in the time of the rubber, of the timber, and now the oil, they all lied to us. It is the same person wearing a different mask."

Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report (ww4report.com). Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Republished from NACLA

Peru: Government Launches massive attack on indigenous organisations

2009-11-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

Pronouncement by the Andean and Amazonian Peoples:

For our rights and in defence of organizational autonomy

Against the request by the Public Prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice to order the dissolution of the national organization of indigenous peoples that make up the Amazon Interethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), the community organizations and indigenous peoples of Peru, and various civil society organizations, express the following:

1 .- That continuing with its policy of silencing the organizations representing indigenous peoples, the government through the Public Prosecutor, Ministry of Justice has requested the dissolution of the Interethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Jungle, (AIDESEP), as notified October 15, 2009, by the 37th Criminal Court of Lima. This act corresponds to the interests of ending the representative organizations of indigenous peoples and communities and at the same time aims to sharpen social discontent promoting new processes of mobilization and uprisings, in order to later blame others.

2 .- Once again the government implements its policy of double standards, because on one hand it announces the installation of spaces for dialogue with indigenous organizations and the other seeks to dismantle the organizations that have spoken out against the unconsultative application of a series of public policies and legal measures that undermine our legitimate rights to self determination, land, consultation and others. This shows it is putting economic interests, before our rights as indigenous peoples.

3 .- We denounce this practice that is not unique to the incumbent government, but habitual of the regimes in recent decades. It seeks to silence and destroy existing organizations or generate other parallel entitites using individuals or organizations that lack representation and legitimacy, this and other situations have led to a series of recommendations by international agencies that monitor compliance with treaties and Conventions as in the case of CERD, CEACR-ILO, High Commissioner of United Nations and others.

Given this situation we declare:

We recognize AIDESEP in its condition as a territorial organization representing the indigenous Amazon people, with input and suggestions in defense of our rights as peoples during its years of existence. We also support its regional and community based organizations in the face of this attempt at dissolution by the current government. We reaffirm that their existence as distinct peoples is not subject to the will of the state and as such their organizational autonomy and institutional force must be respected.

We reaffirm the just and legitimate defense of our rights as indigenous peoples and communities, as are recognized by the Constitution, international conventions and treaties.

We reject the discriminatory state policy, which aims to interrupt the process of dialogue between the State and the legitimately elected representatives of Amazon Indigenous Peoples, which emerged after the events of Bagua. This should express and give effect to the agreements reached in the communities of the central and northern jungle.

We demand the cessation of hostilities against the national indigenous organization AIDESEP and its leaders. There must be a waiver of claims against it and filing of complaints for acts that were not generated by the organization but were generated by unwise public policy and the denial of the existence of indigenous peoples by the current government.

We demand the establishment of a horizontal dialogue process in good faith and the suspending of operations that attack this process under construction and do not contribute to confidence building between the parties.

We demand that the situation of indigenous peoples are addressed in general, and that this includes the Amazon, the Andes and the coast, with the aim of determining national policies and that the State does not encourage fragmentation in its treatment [of indigenous peoples].

Lima, November 1, 2009.

National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining Peru - CONACAMI

Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations -IOTC

Campesino Confederation of Peru - CCP

National Agrarian Confederation - CNA

Advisory Council of Indigenous Peoples of the Andean Community CCPICAN

Indigenous Collective

Program for Democracy and Global Transformation - PDTG

Translated by Kiraz Janicke for Peru en movimiento.com

The original version in Spanish can be read here at Revista Mariategui

Amazonian natives say they will defend tribal lands from Hunt Oil with "their lives"

2009-11-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

By Jeremy Hance

Indigenous natives in the Amazon are headed to the town of Salvacion in Peru with a plan to forcibly remove the Texas-based Hunt Oil company from their land as early as today. Peruvian police forces, numbering in the hundreds, are said to be waiting in the town.

The crisis has risen over an area known as Lot 76, or the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. The 400,000 hectare reserve was created in 2002 to protect the flora and fauna of the area, as well as to safeguard watersheds of particular importance to indigenous groups in the region.

Despite its protected status, in 2006 the Peruvian government granted concessions within the reserve to two oil companies, Hunt Oil and the Spanish company Repsol.

According to FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios) protections had been slowly and systematically stripped from the reserve without indigenous groups' input. In addition, FENADMAD contends that Hunt Oil has violated international standards and the Peruvian constitution by going ahead with their operations without approval from the indigenous groups.

Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for Lot 76, Silvana Lay, disagrees. He told the Indian Country Today that “we weren’t going to come in until the Master Plan was approved. We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead – within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.”

However, indigenous groups say that Hunt Oil only met with two communities: the Shintuya and the Puerto Luz, leaving others who use the reserve out in the cold.

A document written by FENAMAD further alleges that the Environmental and Social Impact Study conducted by Hunt Oil and approved by the federal government is "completely irresponsible and [does] not describe any reality for the area. It was approved illegally and unconstitutionally, in spite of the observations made by a group of professionals from civil society in Madre de Dios."

On September 13th of this year representatives of indigenous groups released a statement that said "the entry of Hunt Oil and Respol into the interior of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve to execute seismic projects is not accepted, a decision that will be respected by the Peruvian State, Hunt Oil and Repsol, who have been present witnesses to this decision."

However, Hunt Oil has continued its seismic surveys inside the reserve. It is their unwillingness to halt activities that has prompted the indigenous groups to travel to Salvacion and, according to statements made by the indigenous groups, forcibly remove the US-corporation from their land.

"The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin," the document by FENAMAD states. "For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives."

FENAMAD's statement may be a portent: in June a clash between native peoples and Peruvian police over exploitation of the Amazon turned bloody. Thousands of indigenous people blocked roads to protest new rule changes that made it easier for foreign companies to extract oil, gas, minerals, and timber from the Peruvian Amazon, including tribal lands. During the ensuing clash, twenty-three police were killed and at least ten protestors, according to official numbers. Indigenous groups, however, say that hundreds remain missing and have asked for a Truth Commission to investigate the tragic incident.

Republished from Mongabay.com

Peru: ‘Free trade’, cocaine and terrorism

2009-10-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

David T. Rowlands

Before the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement was ratified in 2007, many Peruvian and international human rights and environmental organisations said the deal would lead to increased social destabilisation and drug production.

Archbishop Pedro Barreto, president of the Episcopal Commission for Social Action of the Catholic Church in Peru, said: “We are certain that the trade agreement will increase the cultivation of coca, which brings with it a series of negative consequences including drug trafficking, terrorism and violence. ”

Tragically, these predictions are now starting to become a daily reality in Peru.

The available statistics point to a resurgence of “narco-terrorism” in regional centres associated with the cocaine trade.

From 2001 to 2006, armed groups mounted six major attacks on government installations and/or personnel. Since 2007, 20 separate attacks have been recorded.

In other words, the incidence of “terrorist” actions has risen from an average of one a year to roughly eight.

In a recent clash at Sinaycocha in the Junin region on September 2, a military helicopter taking off from a clearing was hit by bursts of heavy machine gun fire from surrounding jungle.

The helicopter crashed, resulting in 11 casualties (including three killed). Automatic fire continued to sweep the area for days.

This spike in civil violence is evoking traumatic memories of the 1980s era, when ultra-radical Shining Path guerrillas and US-backed government security forces committed a long and bloody series of atrocities against the population.

At least 69,000 people died.

However, what the corporate-owned news sources are not reporting is that the new conflict is a direct result of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (TLC).

In 2000, Peru’s governmental Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that lasting peace and stability could be established in devastated regions only by providing programs that would encourage “employment and income generation”.

Perversely, this objective has been completely undermined by the TLC, which has slashed the livelihoods of the rural poor.

The TLC required Peru to remove tariffs on many staple agricultural products, leading to a steadily-increasing flow of imports from heavily subsidised US agribusiness.

Nearly a third of the Peruvian population depend on agriculture for their income and at least 1.7 million families have already begun to suffer adverse effects from the free trade deal.

With the TLC driving down commodity prices, rural dislocation is on the rise. This is lead to a corresponding increase in coca production as desperate peasant farmers strive to make ends meet.

Increased coca production has boosted profits for the cartel bosses, who have helped to revitalise the Shining Path and other like-minded groups by hiring their members as mercenary enforcers. This symbiotic arrangement has been in place for decades, but the fallout from the TLC has lent it new life.

The drug barons are not the only beneficiaries of the devastation that has resulted from the TLC. With the US eager to restore its previously hegemonic grip on South America, the so-called “War on Drugs” has provided the Pentagon with an excuse to broaden its involvement in Andean nations such as Peru.

“Coca eradication” operations have been stepped up, leading to a wave of unreported military abuses against civilians in coca-producing areas.

Under the guise of combating terrorism, the Peruvian security forces are engaged in a struggle against all forms of dissent (peaceful or otherwise) on behalf of the ruling elites and foreign corporations who stand to gain from the TLC.

Pulling the strings by supplying funds, training and material is Washington. The Bush administration designed the free trade deal with oppressive intentions, and the Obama administration is continuing to implement that foreign policy goal.

With the US strategy of fomenting instability in the region, the threat of spill-over terrorist violence striking heavily-inhabited population centres in Peru is once again an ugly possibility.

The victims will be the ordinary people of Peru — caught, once again, in the crossfire.

Having “lost” several countries in South America to “hostile” left or centre-left regimes (such as in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador), the US is determined to shore up its political and economic stake in South America.

Ruled by a US-funded client regime, Peru (along with Colombia) remains a key asset in US strategy for the Western Hemisphere.

Having already announced its intention to establish a network of new military bases in Colombia, it may not be long before similar plans are implemented by stealth in Peru.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Amazon natives move to evict U.S. Oil company

2009-10-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

By Ahni

Some three hundred indigenous people from the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios are on their way to the town of Salvacion to evict the Texas-based company Hunt Oil from their ancestral territory.

According to reports on mongabay.com, hundreds of Peruvian police officers are waiting in the town for their arrival.

Last month, Indigenous leaders from the Madre de Dios issued a formal statement rejecting Hunt Oil’s presence in the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve—a legally protected biodiversity ‘hot spot’ which the government handed over to the company in 2006. The leaders warned Hunt Oil to voluntarily exit the territory within a week or they would be forced out.

This ultimatum was released just a few days after FENAMAD, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and tributaries, took legal action to halt the company’s activities, which, according to the lawsuit, threatens the headwaters of the Madre de Dios river, Upper Alto Madre de Dios, the Blanco river, the Azul river, the Inambari river and the Colorado river.

Referred to by the company as “Lot 76″, the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve was created in 2002 to safeguard all six rivers, which are of critical importance to the indigenous Harakmbut, Yine and Machiguenga Peoples and to protect the region’s biodiversity. When the lawsuit was filed, FENAMAD’s leader stated his hope to “paralyze any activity inside the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, as otherwise the very existence of Madre de Dios’ indigenous people would be put at risk.”

The lawsuit also points out that the government failed to consult with the communities in the reserve. “This omission violates the Agreement No.169 of the International Labour Organization, which Peru had signed, and which points out in its article 6 that governments should ‘consult with the interested peoples by using appropriate procedures and in particular through their representatives institutions, each time when legal or administrative measures are planned that might affect them directly’”, notes a statement by FENAMAD.

Despite this and other laws, not too mention the ultimatum, Hunt Oil is actively operating inside the reserve, content to hide behind the government’s unlawful “generosity.”

“The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin,” states FENAMAD. “For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives.”

Republished from Intercontinental Cry

Venezuela, Honduras, Peru, Ecuador “small” oversights and “big” lies

2009-10-21T14:32:00.000-07:00

By Eric Toussaint[1]

It may be useful to assess the dangers of the systematically hostile
attitude of the overwhelming majority of major European and North
American media companies in relation to the current events taking
place in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. This hostility is only
matched by an embarrassed, complicit silence with regard to those
involved in the putsch in Honduras or the repression enacted by the
Peruvian army against the indigenous populations of the Amazon.

In order to demonstrate this statement, here are a few recent facts:

1) On 5 June 2009, the Peruvian army massacred over 50 Amazonian
Indians who were protesting against the land concessions made by Alan
Garcia’s government for foreign, mainly European transnational
companies. The repression aroused no disapproval among the major
global media groups.[2] These groups gave almost exclusive priority to
the protests occurring in Iran. Not only did the press fail to condemn
the repression in Peru; it did not even bother to cover the story. And
yet in Peru, so great was public discontent that the government had to
announce the repeal of the presidential decree which the Amazonian
Indians had fought against.

Once again, media coverage of the government’s backtracking was almost
non-existent. We must ask ourselves the following question: if a
Venezuelan or Ecuadorian army or police intervention had caused the
deaths of dozens of Amazonian Indians, what kind of media coverage
would such events have received?

2) When the constitutionally elected president Manuel Zelaya was
ousted by the military on 28 June, the overwhelming majority of media
groups declared, in total contradiction of the truth, that the
soldiers were reacting to Zelaya’s attempt to modify the constitution,
thus ensuring he could remain in power. Several other media groups
added that he was following the example of Hugo Chavez, who is
presented as an authoritarian populist leader. In fact, Manuel Zelaya
was proposing to the Honduran citizens that they vote in favour of the
organization of general elections for a Constituent Assembly, which
would have represented real democratic progress being made in this
country. This is well explained by Cécile Lamarque and Jérôme Duval on
their return from a CADTM mission in Honduras: “The coup d’Etat was
carried out on the same day Manuel Zelaya had organized a non-binding
“consultation” asking the Hondurans whether or not they wanted to
convene a National Constituent Assembly, after the elections which
were due to take place on the 29 November 2009. The question went like
this: “Do you agree that at the next general elections of 2009, a
fourth ballot box be installed so as to allow for the people to
express their point of view on the convocation of a national
Constituent Assembly? YES or NO?” If this consultation had resulted in
the majority voting “yes”, the president would have issued a decree of
approval before Congress so that, on 29 November, the Hondurans would
formally make known their decision on the convocation of a Constituent
Assembly through this “fourth ballot box” (the first three ballot
boxes would be for the election of a president, deputies and mayors,
respectively). In order to give an air of legality to the coup,
Congress and the Supreme Court, associated with the putsch, deemed the
ballot box to be illegal and asserted that president Zelaya had
“violated the Constitution” by trying to modify it “so as to set his
sights on serving a new mandate”, in the manner of an “apprentice
Chavist dictator”. And yet, Manuel Zelaya, through this consultation
with the people, was not seeking to renew his presidential mandate of
four years which cannot be renewed. Zelaya would therefore be unable
to be a candidate for his own succession.”[3]

Whilst the popular movements opposing those involved in the Putsch
increased, with protests and strikes in July, August and September,
the big media names only dedicated a couple of lines to these events.
On the rare occasions when the leading daily newspapers dedicated a
feature article to the situation in Honduras, they adopted a policy of
slander against the constitutionally elected president by presenting
the military’s actions as a democratic military coup. This is the case
with The Wall Street Journal, which in its editorial on 1 July 2009
wrote, “the military coup d’Etat which took place in Honduras on June
28th and which led to the exile of the president of this central
American country, Manuel Zelaya, is strangely democratic.” The
editorial adds, “the legislative and judicial authorities will remain
intact” following military action. On its part, perhaps in a more
subtle manner, the famous French newspaper Le Monde participated in a
smear campaign against Manuel Zelaya. Here is one example. On 12
September 2009, Jean-Michel Caroit, the paper’s special correspondent
in Honduras, quoted the words of a French expatriate living in the
country and then associated these words with the systematically
repeated lie regarding Zelaya’s supposedly sinister intentions, “ ‘For
the Hondurans, Zelaya’s return is unacceptable as that would mean
there would be twenty years of a Chavez-style dictatorship,’ states
Marianne Cadario in reference to the Venezuelan president who - as his
ally Manuel Zelaya tried to do (underlined by me) - modified the
Constitution in order for him to be allowed to be re-elected. Marianne
Cadario, a Frenchwoman who has lived in Honduras for over thirty years
states that she is “very shocked by the reaction of the international
community who condemned the putsch.”[4] The tone of newspapers like Le
Monde and Libération began to change at the end of September after
those involved in the putsch began to increase their repressive
measures. The tone became more critical of those involved in the
putsch. Having said this, the daily newspaper Libération deserves a
prize for its use of euphemisms. In fact on 28 September 2009 (3
months to the day after the coup) the title “The Scent of
Dictatorship” (underlined by me) of a paragraph explaining how the
government involved in the putsch had declared, “‘the banning of “any
public unauthorized meeting,” the arrest of “anyone putting their
lives or anyone else’s in danger” “evacuation” of areas where there
are protesters and those who interfere with “any broadcasting of
programmes by any media that endanger public order.”[5]

3) At the beginning of August 2009, the Venezuelan authorities’
intention to question the right of 34 radio and television channels
made the headlines in the international press: “It is further proof of
the almost total disappearance of the right to expression and
criticism in this authoritarian country.” The way in which the major
news publications treat the subject of the media in Venezuela is one
of unilateral hostility, despite the fact that 90% of the Venezuelan
media is privately owned, a large number of which actively support
disinformation campaigns. Globovisión, one of the main privately-owned
TV channels, actively participated in the military coup d’Etat against
Chavez on 11 April 2002. A documentary made by Globovisión made its
way around the world on 11 April 2002 and the days following the
military coup. It was actually a set-up, designed to distort the
truth. One can see people posing as Chavez supporters on a bridge,
firing their guns in an unidentifiable direction. The voice-over of
the Globovisión journalist states that the Chavez supporters are about
to kill opposition protesters who were protesting peacefully in the
streets below the bridge. The Venezuelan prosecution has been able to
reconstruct the exact chain of events, having analysed the reports and
photographs made by certain individuals on the day of 11 April. In
fact the pro-Chavez militants, who, according to Globovisión, were
shooting at protesters, were actually responding to gunfire coming
from an armoured vehicle of the metropolitan police, allied to the
putsch. The opposition protesters were no longer in the streets when
those guns were fired. Several sources can prove without a doubt that
the assassination of the anti-Chavez protesters was used as a set-up
so as to attribute these crimes to Chavez, thus justifying their coup.
On 11 April 2008, the Venezuelan viewers were able to see again the
images of the press conference given by the military involved in the
putsch at a time when no protester had been killed yet. And yet the
military announced at that time that they were taking power following
the murders carried out by the Chavez supporters. This clearly
supports the theory that these murders were planned deliberately so as
to be able to justify their seditious plan.

In the days following the putsch, on 12 and 13 April 2002, when
hundreds of thousands of unarmed citizens surrounded the barracks of
the putschists to demand the return of Hugo Chavez, then in prison,
Globovisión failed to broadcast any coverage of these protests,
explaining that the country was back to normal and that Hugo Chavez
had tendered his resignation and was on his way to Cuba. During the
last hours of the putsch, this channel broadcast only cartoons and
variety shows[6]. Globovisión in fact connived with the putschists on
several critical occasions, a fact which led the parents of victims
and injured survivors’ associations to demand the channel’s
conviction. Up to now the Chavist government has refused this demand
in order to prevent further escalation of the international smear
campaign being waged against him. Several human rights associations
are dissatisfied with the passive attitude of the Venezuelan
authorities in this matter.

More recently, Globovisión has been sympathetic towards the authors of
the 28 June putsch in Honduras. Several programme presenters at
Globovisión have supported the putsch from the very beginning, at the
same time accusing the Chavez government of interference in condemning
it. For example, Guillermo Zuloaga, the president of Globovisión,
stated on 17 July that “the government of Micheletti complies with the
Constitution, and we would like, indeed we would be delighted, if here
in Venezuela, the Constitution was respected in the same way that it
is in Honduras”, thus making clear his support for the putschist
government.

Globovisión has never been prohibited from broadcasting. What major
European or North-American media has even mentioned this fact? What
major European or North-American media has ever informed the public
that the overwhelming majority of Venezuelan media are controlled by
the private sector? Or that they account for over 90% of the viewing
audience? Or that they are extremely aggressive towards the
government, presenting it as a dictatorship, or that some of them
played an active part in ousting a constitutionally elected president,
and have continued to broadcast freely for seven years? Can one
imagine General de Gaulle failing to take repressive measures against
a newspaper, radio or TV station that was seen to actively support an
OAS coup during the Algerian war? Would it not be considered normal
for the Spanish government to take measures against the media that
actively supported – in real time – Colonel Tejero when he burst into
the Cortes[7] with a group of military putschists and held (up) at
gunpoint the MPs who were there? If Manuel Zelaya were restored to
office as constitutional president, would he and his government not be
in their right to demand accountability and take measures against the
Honduran media owners who deliberately supported the putschists by
systematically deforming the truth and covering up the many human
rights violations committed by the military?

4) Arms spending. When you read the European or North American papers,
you have the distinct impression that Venezuela is indulging in huge
arms expenditures (particularly by way of Russia), which poses a
serious threat in the region. Yet according to the CIA[8] the
situation is quite different: the Venezuelan military budget ranks 6th
in the region, after the budgets of Brazil, Argentina, Chile (far less
populated than Venezuela and regarded as a model), Colombia and
Mexico. In relative terms, taking the GDP of each country, the
Venezuelan military budget comes 9th in Latin America! Is any of this
published in the leading news publications?

On another front, in August 2009 we read in the papers that Sweden
took Venezuela to task after the Colombian government once again
denounced its neighbour for supplying arms to the FARC guerilla.
Sweden had in fact informed Colombia that SAAB missiles found in a
FARC camp had been supplied by Venezuela. But for those who read Hugo
Chavez’ detailed response it became clear that the missiles in
question had been stolen from a Venezuelan harbour in 1995, four years
before Chavez became president.

Conclusion: One needs to be aware of the one-sided manner in which the
leading media report the news, and adopt a highly critical approach
when appraising it. The discrediting of Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa and
Evo Morales is so excessive that it poses the risk of numbing
international public opinion in the event of another coup d’Etat, or
of lulling the public into approving aggressive measures taken by a
government such as the US. Among the many insidious and unfounded
accusations, we can read in the Spanish papers (for example in El
Pais) that Rafael Correa’s election campaign was financed by the FARC.
We can also read that the Venezuelan authorities do nothing to fight
drug trafficking. In the case of the Honduran president Manuel Zelaya,
the discredit heaped on him is intended to prevent international
opinion mobilizing in favour of his return to power as head of State.

Translated by Francesca Denley and Judith Harris

________________________________

[1] Eric Toussaint, president of CADTM Belgium (Committee for the
Abolition of Third World Debt, www.cadtm.org ), has a PhD in political
science from the University of Liège (Belgium) and the University of
Paris VIII (France). He is the author of Bank of the South. An
Alternative to the IMF-World Bank, VAK, Mumbai, India, 2007; The World
Bank, A Critical Primer, Pluto Press, Between The Lines, David Philip,
London-Toronto-Cape Town 2008; Your Money or Your Life, The Tyranny of
Global Finance, Haymarket, Chicago, 2005.

[2] See http://www.cadtm.org/Le-CADTM-est-pleinement-solidaire and
http://www.cadtm.org/Perou-le-massacre-de-Bagua

[3] Cécile Lamarque and Jérome Duval, « Honduras : Why the Coup d’Etat
», 17 September 2009, www.cadtm.org/Honduras-Pourquoi-le-coup-d-Etat

[4] Jean-Michel Caroit, « Au Honduras, la campagne électorale s’ouvre
dans un climat de haine », Le Monde, p. 8, Saturday 12 September 2009.

[5] http://www.liberation.fr/monde/0101593847-le-honduras-s-enfonce-dans-la-crise

[6] It is interesting at this point to note the initiative of Hugo
Chavez’ government on 11 April 2008, six years after the putsch. The
government used its right to broadcast on the private and public TV
stations to show a re-run of the entire reportage produced by the
anti-Chavist private channels (Globovisión, RCTV...) on the official
inauguration session of the president and the putschist government in
a reception room in the Miraflores presidential palace. The complete
programme, which the whole of Venezuela could watch on 11 April 2002,
was re-broadcast without any cuts or critical commentary by the Chavez
government. Hugo Chavez relied on the critical acumen of Venezuelan
viewers to form their own opinion on the active complicity of the
private media with those behind the putsch, amongst whom the viewer
could identify the leading Catholic church authorities, the putschist
military brass, the head of the anti-Chavist labour union CTV
(Confederation of Workers of Venezuela), the chief executives of
private corporations and the president of the Venezuelan Federation of
Chambers of Commerce (Fedecámaras), Pedro Carmona. It should be said
that this president, who held power for scarcely 36 hours, earned the
enduring nickname of “Pepe el breve” (Pepe the brief).

[7] On 23 February 1981, an attempted coup d’état organized by
Franquist sectors took place in the Spanish Congress, The leader,
Colonel Tejero, held up the members of parliament present at gunpoint
and took them hostage as the new president of the government was being
sworn in.

[8] See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html,
consulted in March 2009

Peru: Gov't Seeks Legal Shield for Security Forces

2009-10-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

By Ángel Páez

The Peruvian government has moved to protect the armed forces and police against investigations for crimes committed in the line of duty, especially in areas convulsed by social protests or where remnants of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas are still active.

The administration of Alan García sent Congress a package of bills that would limit action by prosecutors and grant extraordinary powers to the military authorities.

One of the draft laws would modify the Criminal Code, so that no legal action could be taken against soldiers and police who kill or injure civilians in the so-called "emergency zones," areas controlled by the security forces by order of the executive branch because of "terrorist" threats or violent social protests.

The presidential initiative also proposes that prosecutors must be in receipt of a "technical report" issued by the armed forces or police authorities, before opening investigations of soldiers and police for alleged human rights violations in the "emergency zones." The report must explain why the accused used the degree of force that caused death or injury.

The executive branch also sent a draft law to Congress on the purpose, scope and definition of the term "use of force" by the National Police, detailing situations in which a police officer is exempt from responsibility when his or her actions have a lethal outcome.

If the accused officer can justify the use of lethal force by the intensity and dangerousness of the aggression, the behaviour of the aggressor, or the hostile surroundings and situation, he or she will be exempt from criminal, civil and administrative responsibility, says the draft law.

The bills were introduced in Congress just as the Ombudsman's Office reported that as of Sept. 30, 2009, 288 social conflicts (such as protest demonstrations) had occurred in the country over the past year, nearly 62 percent more than the 177 conflicts recorded by September 2008.

A third draft law proposed by the government would give the military and police the prerogative to remove the bodies of members of the security forces without the presence of prosecutors, as the current laws require. This would mean that they could disturb a crime scene without judicial authorisation.

The package of bills follows an intense campaign by conservative and pro-military groups, which accuse non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of pressing for legal action against troops and police involved in putting down social protests and the guerrillas.

Defence Minister Rafael Rey argued that the armed forces were left without legal protection after being baselessly accused of a large number of crimes committed during the 1980-2000 internal conflict between the security forces and left-wing guerrillas.

The independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, published in August 2003, found that during that period 69,280 people were killed or disappeared by the insurgents or state agents, and that the majority of these crimes - between 54 and 60 percent - were attributable to the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

Rey referred to several notorious crimes by state agents against civilians as "excesses," of which he insisted there were very few.

Adding together all the "excesses" - in Barrios Altos (where 15 people, including an eight-year-old boy, were killed at a neighbourhood barbecue on Nov. 3, 1991), La Cantuta (where nine university students and a professor were seized and killed on Jul. 19, 1992), Accomarca (where 69 highland villagers were massacred on Aug. 14, 1985), and Putis (where at least 123 villagers were killed on Dec. 13, 1984) - the total number of victims was under 1,000, Rey said.

"I am not saying these figures are unimportant, as even one person abused or murdered is shocking, but it is unfair to blame the armed forces for 21,000 deaths," the minister said.

But human rights watchdog Amnesty International compiled evidence that torture, killings and disappearances by state agents were widespread and systematic during the internal conflict, constituting crimes against humanity. Military, intelligence and high-ranking government officials of the period have been convicted and jailed for their part in these acts, including former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), and others await trial.

After judicial authorities exhumed some of the remains of the 123 civilians massacred by the army in 1984 in Putis, a rural hamlet in the mountains of the southern region of Ayacucho, Rey stated that the trials for human rights violations by army troops fighting Shining Path guerrillas in the valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, a jungle zone in the southeast of the country, were a more important issue.

The draft laws were called into question by the Attorney General, Gladys Echaíz.

"The proposal that the Attorney General's Office cannot open an investigation or bring charges without previously receiving a 'technical report' would place limits on the action of prosecutors," she said. "The constitution invests the Attorney General's Office with the power to undertake criminal prosecution, to conduct, direct and decide on investigations, without being subject to any conditions whatsoever."

"I don't think the military and police need a cloak of concealment," Echaíz said.

The deputy chair of the congressional committee on defence and internal order, Carlos Bruce, also expressed reservations about the constitutionality of the draft laws, especially the one that aims to prevent the Attorney General's Office from proceeding with a criminal prosecution until it receives a "technical report" from the security forces.

"I agree that members of the armed forces cannot be judged in the same way in emergency situations as in normal ones, but I do not agree with making the Attorney General's Office's actions conditional on a prior report from executive branch bodies. The prosecution service must be independent," Bruce told IPS.

Contrary to the aim of those who wish to protect the armed forces from legal action, these draft laws damage the image of the military institutions, the executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinating Committee, Ronald Gamarra, told IPS.

"Any legal initiative to secure impunity affects those members of the military who justifiably and with self-sacrifice fight against terrorism," Gamarra said. "No favours are done to the military by curtailing the powers of the Attorney General's Office or enabling interference in its functions. To hamper the constitutional powers of prosecutors is to seek not justice, but a cover-up."

The first vice president, retired vice admiral Luis Giampietri, proposed that the areas where the armed forces are fighting guerrillas be declared "war zones," so that they would be under purely military jurisdiction.

Giampietri said this would solve the problem of members of the armed forces being investigated, charged or taken to court for doing their duty.

The proposed bills to ensure the impunity of the armed forces and police "are perfectly aligned with the thinking of Vice President Giampietri, who has said that prosecutors and judges are a hindrance to the military," activist Roberto Lamilla, the coordinator in Ayacucho of the NGO Paz y Esperanza (Peace and Hope) which assists the families of the Putis victims, told IPS.

"Their goal is to guarantee impunity for members of the armed forces who commit excesses. Giampietri said it clearly: human rights are a hindrance to military action. If these bills are passed, it will be a serious setback in terms of human rights," Lamilla said.

Republished from IPS

The Neoliberal Crusade For Resources on Indigenous Lands in the Peruvian Amazon

2009-10-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

By Jamie Way

Despite the repeal of Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s controversial executive decrees, it appears as though the Amazon is still very much for sale. Earlier this year, violent demonstrations erupted over Garcia’s decrees that attempted to open Peru to foreign (read: extractive) investment in accordance with its free trade agreement with the U.S. In Bagua, located in the Northern Peruvian Amazon, the official death toll is said to have reached 33, (10 civilians and 23 police officers). Other accounts, however, claim that up to 40 indigenous civilians were killed. Although the violence has resided, at least for the time being, the larger underlying issues are far from resolved. Moreover, the neoliberal tendency of taking advantage of indigenous resources is evolving into more complex and duplicitous forms.

Neoliberalism in the Amazon

Outside of Pucallpa, south of where the violent demonstrations erupted, Shipibo indigenous leaders are finding themselves pressed by the same issues as their Northern counterparts. PeruPetro, the country’s hydrocarbon licensing agency, is pursuing an aggressive policy in the region. While I was working in the Amazon with a U.S.-based NGO, Village Earth, I was told of multiple occasions in which PeruPetro contacted community leaders directly. It does not appear that the indigenous population has the legal grounds on which to contest the decisions of the state agency, but it is clear that PeruPetro is required to at least inform the indigenous population of their intent to explore, and later exploit, the oil-yielding potential of their land. Thus, to maintain the state agency’s thin guise of legitimacy, PeruPetro has made it common practice to solicit indigenous leadership’s approval.

Shipibo land, which is located within an oil block with rights belonging to PetroVietnam, is not only threatened by oil extraction. It could also become the focus of a number of other extractive industries. Although it has not yet become a pressing matter for the Shipibo, many of Garcia’s decrees were not only aimed at encouraging oil development in the Amazon, but also pertained to a diverse array of natural resource development, including forestry, water, irrigation and mining.

And it seems as though Garcia’s wish, and perhaps even more significantly the wish of many of his predecessors, is becoming a reality. Big oil is currently big business in the Amazon. Whereas in 2004 only 13% was slated for oil and gas development, in 2006 approximately 73% of the Peruvian Amazon was under contract for either exploration or production purposes. Today it is near 80%. Significantly, 58 of the 64 blocks that have been leased to oil companies are located on lands that are legally titled to indigenous peoples and 14 blocks overlap natural reserves that are inhabited by indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. [1]

Proponents of neo-liberal “market” policies, which appear to be on a constant rampage to commodify every last inch of the planet, have happily encouraged the “opening” of the Amazon to foreign capital investment. Peruvian proponents of such policies, including President Garcia, have argued that such investment is the way to “modernize” the Amazon and make it productive. Anyone who impedes such noble “progress” is seen as selfish and a traitor. In fact, as if Garcia’s disdain and disrespect for the Native people of his country were not obvious enough through his classification of them as “second class citizens,” two years ago, Garcia wrote an opinion column in which he compared them to a gardener’s dog. Depicting the population as irrational and selfish, he claimed that, “like a gardener’s dog, they do not only eat from the garden, but they will also prevent others from eating.” [2] Thus, according to Garcia and his allies, indigenous people’s traditional use of their land is an impediment to “progress.”

Evolution of the Discourse

Beyond Garcia’s blatantly racist application of neoliberal policies, a much more clever and well-articulated argument in favor of the crusade for neoliberalism is becoming paramount in national discussions. While Garcia’s lack of sophistication has made his argument easy to pick apart, leading Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, has framed his push toward neoliberalism in a much more favorable light. Instead of blatantly embedding his argument in Garcia’s racist discourse, De Soto has cleverly co-opted the language of leftist intellectuals. Instead of focusing on the “backwards” culture of indigenous groups, like Garcia has, De Soto argues that in order to fully allow the native population to participate in the capitalist economy, laws must be applied uniformly to them. While on the surface this argument seems like a logical move toward equality, it is important to note that in the context of many Amazonian tribes, it is perhaps even more dangerous than Garcia’s decrees.

Under a worldview that operates in terms of a “developed-undeveloped” dichotomy, Hernando De Soto has made it his goal to discover why the capitalist system has worked so well in the Western world (an interesting assertion in and of itself), and so poorly in the rest of the world. His work concludes that capital is successfully generated through legally recognized individual land ownership and consequently one’s ability to leverage his or her resources for credit. While his recommendation of legally allotting individual land may be desirable in squatter villages without land titles, it could have dire consequences for native populations, many of which already hold titles to their land. Contrary to De Soto’s vision, however, most indigenous groups hold their land under common title and many even chose to hold and work the land in a communal format. For De Soto, this communal land is unproductive, because individuals are unable to use it to produce more capital without the permission of the entire community. What he so often fails to discuss, however, is that in risking your land for credit, you can potentially lose it. Thus, it becomes evident that with private interests salivating at the chance of getting their hands on a piece of the Amazon, it is likely that communities would be greatly disturbed by even one or two individuals being forced to default on their loans. By individualizing and privatizing indigenous land, extractive industry would be able to apply a new version of their divide-and-conquer tactics, as indigenous groups would have little legal ground to stand on when opposing the sale of the neighbor’s land to an oil company. If even very few individuals in desperate situations could be bought off, the entire community could be at risk of being destroyed through the impacts of the extractive industries.

Ironically, one of De Soto’s predominant arguments is that the norms of the wealthy and the poor must be melded and incorporated into law. However, his policy makes no exception or variation in the case of indigenous groups with long histories of engrained societal norms and very distinct cultures. Instead, his one-size-fits-all policy has become a cornerstone for moving the Amazon toward the wonders of the capitalist world. Cleverly framing his suggestions as a move toward affording the indigenous population the rights that the rest of the country already has, he acts as though he is supporting equality. In reality, while his work claims to incorporate indigenous culture, it only does so to the extent that they are able to be successful capitalists. It is vital, then, that the indigenous population moves away from its communal use of land, and instead adopts the rules of the West. This, he argues, will allow them to follow in the foot steps of first world progress. He fails to discuss the effect leveraging a house for credit has had on the U.S. market, and additionally takes no note of the negative historical implications of individualization and privatization of U.S. Native Americans had on their culture. By omitting the horrific historical implications that land privatization and individualization has had on Native Americans, De Soto creates a policy that is unable (or unwilling) to foresee a number of problematic outcomes of his work.

The Academic-Political Connection

All of De Soto’s arguments would be well and fine if they remained sequestered in the academic world. Unfortunately for indigenous groups in the Amazon, this is not the case. De Soto and his organization, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, have the ear of many a world leader. Garcia is amongst those with which De Soto has developed a relationship. This is only logical. While Garcia and De Soto verbalize a differential amount of respect for indigenous culture, their policies are like opposite sides of the same coin. Garcia’s decrees work to open the Amazon to foreign investment and promote free trade. In Garcia’s mind, this would appear to eliminate the greedy native people of his country. De Soto, on the other hand, shows a bit more compassion (and may in fact be acting with good intentions, be they misdirected). He does not want to eliminate indigenous people; he merely wants to eliminate any aspect of their culture that does not allow them to be successful capitalists. Thus, De Soto’s suggested policies will allow indigenous land to become the tool for deciding the success of each individual indigenous person. If they are successful capitalists, they will be able to maintain their land. If not, they will lose it to the external interests that Garcia supports. It is evident then that their seemingly distinct policies blend nicely together to form (what, upon enacting a similar policy with Native Americans, Theodore Roosevelt called) “a great pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.”

So while Shipibo communities and their counterparts sit under a tenuous calm in the Amazon, it is important to note the lurking danger of not just Garcia, but his academic equivalent. Currently, De Soto is sending his researchers into indigenous communities to extract information about their titling system. He has released effective propaganda videos and is clearly positioning himself as central to the Peruvian Amazon debate. Therefore, while his work may appear more benevolent at first glance, it is essential that activist and the indigenous population be cognizant of the fact that his arguments are potentially even more dangerous than the words of Garcia. If unnecessary bloodshed is to be avoided and the fight to protect the Amazon is to be won, it appears that it must be fought on both the academic and political front.

[1] See Finer, Jenkins, Pimm, Keane, and Ross 2008.

[2] “Syndrome of the gardener's dog.” El Comercio. 10 Oct, 2007.

Jamie holds a M.A. in Political Science from Colorado State University. She is currently employed by Village Earth, as well as the Alliance for Global Justice.

Republished from UpsideDownWorld

Hugo Blanco: Indigenous ‘struggle for nature’

2009-10-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

Federico Fuentes

“The world needs to understand the importance of the struggle in defence of nature”, Hugo Blanco, legendary Peruvian peasant leader active in the indigenous peoples’ struggle against corporate exploitation in the Amazon, told Green Left Weekly in late September.

“That is the struggle that the indigenous people are waging today. The Amazonian indigenous people are fighting not just for themselves or Peru; they are fighting to defend the lungs of the planet.

“Those fighting in Borneo to defend the rainforest are also fighting for the planet, as are native Indians fighting against the uranium mine in the Grand Canyon.”

Blanco said it was time “the people from the cities began to understand that they should follow the lead of these indigenous peoples in defense of nature, because today we can no longer just fight around social issues”.

“Now”, Blanco told GLW, “we are fighting so that humanity can continue to survive”.

One such struggle occurred this year when Peru’s Amazonian indigenous peoples rose up against neoliberal laws that opened up vast swathes of indigenous peoples’ lands — including the Amazon rainforest — to exploitation by transnational oil, mining and logging companies.

The laws were decreed by President Alan Garcia under special powers granted him by Congress to bring Peruvian law into line with the requirements of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed with the United States in 2007.

In August 2008, the government was forced to repeal two of the decrees following 11 days of mass demonstrations. Indigenous protesters blockaded roads and a river, shut down oil pipelines and took control of major gas fields in southern Peru.

Then in April, after months of stalled negotiations over the remaining decrees, indigenous people began an uprising. Roads and rivers in the Amazon region were blockaded.

The government responded with a brutal crackdown, culminating in a massacre in Bagua on June 5. Dozens were killed and many more disappeared.

Once again mass mobilisations forced the government to back down, with another two of the most worst decrees repealed.

Since the Bagua massacre, the situation in Peru “continues to remain tense”, Blanco said.

He said indigenous people continued to demand the remaining decrees be revoked.

They are also calling for an impartial international commission to investigate the Bagua massacre. During the uprising, the police opened fire on 5000 indigenous protesters in the Amazonian town.

Government officials claim only 34 people were killed; 23 police and nine indigenous protesters. However, the Interethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP), which spearheaded the rebellion, said at least 40 indigenous people were killed.

Eyewitnesses said bodies were dumped in a nearby river and others incinerated at the local army barracks. More than 60 indigenous people are still.

“The United Nations and other international organisations have asked that an impartial investigation commission be established”, Blanco said. However, “this has not occurred”.

A senate commission, as well as a commission organised by the agriculture ministry, have been organised to deal with the issue, “ but they lack all credibility because they are comprised solely of government representatives. There are no representatives from AIDESEP, which organised the strike.”

In a positive development, Indian Country Today said on October 14 that a seven-person commission was agreed to by the government and AIDESEP. It will involve three representatives from AIDESEP, three from the executive branch, and one representative from Peru’s regional governments.

In Bagua, the situation is particularly tense, Blanco said. “The police stations are currently without police because the police are afraid to be seen there. Some of the police live in the area but they go around without their uniforms.”

Other struggles are also being waged against transnational mining companies operating in Peru. “In parts of the mountainous regions, conflicts continue against the mining companies.

“Some indigenous people have declared that they will not allow mining companies in.

“Because these communities have received a large amount of solidarity, the government does not dare attack them. But the rivers continue to be patrolled by the navy, threatening local communities.

“There are also peasants in a jail located in the area who the government is attempting to transfer to Lima, something which is illegal.”

The government is also persecuting indigenous leaders, with 41 AIDESEP leaders facing charges. Eight have already been detained.

AIDESEP leader Alberto Pizango, along with two other activists, is in exile, facing charges of sedition and rebellion against the state. Many others are in hiding.

The government has attempted to stage farcical negotiations with hand picked, unrepresentative indigenous leaders.

The Garcia government “has demonstrated itself to be a faithful servant of the multinational companies”, Blanco said.

These companies “plunder the jungle and mountain regions, poisoning the rivers, destroying the soil and using agrochemicals”.

“It is this commitment to defending imperialist companies that explains why the government has been waging this campaign of intimidation against the indigenous peoples.”

Indigenous peoples “have responded with indignation”.

Blanco said that while the recent upsurge became national in scope, struggles tend to be regionalised, with a local leadership.

“Some people belong to organisations, such as my group the Peasant Confederation of Peru, others to CONACAMI [National Coordinating Committee of Communities Affected by Mining], but in essence they are local leaders.”

Unlike Bolivia, where the indigenous movement has been able to create a powerful united national force, Blanco said in Peru, “the movements and struggles are not led by any of the national organisations”.

In this context, Lucha Indigena aims to be “one more voice for indigenous people”, Blanco said it tries to unte “the mobilisations, the struggles that the people are waging”.

With presidential elections scheduled for 2011, and with polls placing “anti-neoliberal” candidate Ollanta Humala among the top two preferred candidates, some on the left are arguing that an electoral victory for Humala could be an important breakthrough in Peruvian politics.

In the last presidential elections, Garcia narrowly won out against Humala, who heads the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP).

However, Blanco, who is also director of the monthly Lucha Indigena newspaper, doesn’t believe “a government like that of Morales [in Bolivia] or Correa [in Ecuador]” will emerge from these elections.

“We have to remember that in those countries, they overthrew various presidents before electing such governments. We are only now overcoming 20 years of internal war and great repression, where some 70,000 Peruvians died — particularly indigenous and popular leaders.”

Blanco said the reason Humala polled so well in the last elections was because he “appeared as the only serious opposition to neoliberalism. He talked about the issues that people felt strongly about. while the left was shifting to the centre.

“He maintained a radical discourse, but it was radical in words only.”

For example, the Socialist Party and other organisations collected signatures to call a referendum on the issue of the US-Peru FTA.

“They collected the signatures and presented them. Humala did not move a single finger during that campaign.

“But paradoxically, in the election campaign, he talked about the FTA but the left parties didn’t.

“That is why the people voted for him.”

Blanco also criticised Humala’s “top down” approach to naming leaders and candidates of the PNP.

“It’s interesting to note that despite the fact that he won a high vote in his campaign to become president, in the regional and municipal elections that occurred afterwards, the PNP vote was a failure because he imposed the candidates.

“They were not candidates that had support from the people or even the ranks of the party.”

As well as the PNP, a new political formation has emerged, Peru Plurinational, which aims to build a political instrument of the indigenous peoples and social movements.

“The idea that the indigenous population should have a single political expression, that they are not trailing behind others, is a positive proposal”, Blanco said.

“But this has been organised in a very apparatus-based manner and it also seems to not be moving forward.”

Blanco said that the only important force really promoting Peru Plurinational was CONACAMI.

It was announced on October 12 that Pizango would stand as the PP candidate for president.
Blanco told GLW on October 15 that this was a positive development: “Pizango is [a representative of] the energetic and prolonged Amazonian struggle and his candidacy strengthens the indigenous and popular movements.

“The simple launching of the candidacy is a triumph of those movements, even if we do not win.”

Blanco said victory would be difficult, “because we need a lot of money for the campaign and because Humala and [progressive priest and presidential candidate Father Marco] Arana will take votes away from him.”

However, Blanco said Pizango’s campaign will help “bring together all those who believe that it is through struggles like those of the Amazonian peoples that we can confront big multinational capital”.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Hugo Blanco: Indigenous people are the vanguard of the fight to save the earth

2009-10-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

LeftViews: an interview with Hugo Blanco

“The amazonicos are teaching the Peruvians and all the world how to defend nature and defend the survival of the human species.”

Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco, who now edits the newspaper La Lucha Indigena1, was interviewed on August 28 in Arequipa, in southern Peru. The previous day he gave a presentation at a conference entitled “40 Años de la Reforma Agraria” at the city’s Universidad Nacional de San Agustín.

You said last night that today the indigenous peoples of the Amazon are in the vanguard of the struggle in Peru. Can you say more about this?

The struggle is no longer just to free the land, but to defend the land against the poisoning taking place at the hands of the mining companies in the Sierra [mountains], and the oil and gas operations in the Selva [rainforest] – poisoning the rivers, killing the fish, killing the birds, and killing the people too. There are still many struggles in the Sierra-in Cajamarca, in Piura. Just yesterday there was a struggle in this department [Arequipa] at Islay, where several people were hurt. But these struggles are scattered, dispersed. In turn, the amazonicos, despite having 50 different nationalities and languages, have united-the amazonicos of the north, the center the south. The have united to coordinate a democratic and peaceful struggle. Last year, they had a struggle and won concessions from the government. Now they are waging another struggle, and the government has responded with arms. But again, the government was forced to retreat and overturn these two laws. They have gained another triumph.

This was a peaceful struggle that was treasonously attacked by the government, but the indigenas captured arms from the police and defended themselves. So I think this is a lesson – and not just for Peru, but for the world. Throughout the world, many people are concerned about the environment-and with good reason, because as the United Nations has recognized, in another 100 years there could be no humanity. Due to global warming, provoked by the big corporations, whose only imperative is to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible. We can protest, publish articles, but the big corporations keep doing what they want, defended by the world’s governments. The way to resist this is the path taken by the amazonicos.

And this struggle is not over. Their leaders are meeting this month to evaluate the next step. Probably they will not return to the road blockades they have been carrying for the past months. But they will not allow the companies to enter their territories. So I say the amazonicos are teaching the Peruvians and all the world how to defend nature and defend the survival of the human species.

But your own heritage is as a leader of the campesino struggle…

Yes, we had to struggle. The Spanish came here looking for spices, but they didn’t find spices, they found gold and silver. But in agrarian question, they applied the feudal system of Europe-where the feudal lords had the best lands, and they were worked by the serfs in exchange for a little piece of land to work for themselves. And this survived the revolution for independence; nothing changed for the indios. It was done away with in Mexico with the uprising of Zapata. It was done away with in [the altiplano of] Bolivia in 1952, with the Bolivian uprising that year. But here it persisted. In 1962, we began a struggle to recuperate the land for those who work it. And when the government violently attacked us we were obliged to take up arms. But finally the government was forced to pass an agrarian reform law recognizing that the land belongs to the campesinos.

I was in prison for eight years. The wanted to give me the death penalty, but thanks to the international solidarity I won, they were not able to kill me. And it was thanks to that international solidarity that after eight years I was liberated. So now I feel that my obligation is to struggle for those who are imprisoned in the struggle for the Amazon-to fight for them as others fought for me.

Until now, the Amazonian peoples have been very isolated, and have not been involved in the class struggle in Peru. Do you think now, with the process of globalization, they are becoming a part of the broader social struggle in the nation?

Their struggle is not about class. Their struggle is to defend the natural environment where they have lived for millennia. But now this nature – which they regard as their mother – is under attack. The timber companies cutting the trees, the oil companies poisoning the rivers-this is what their uprising is against. They do not understand it as a class struggle. But nonetheless, it is a struggle against the multinational corporations which are defended by the government. So we understand that it is related to the class struggle.

In your 1968 book Tierra o Muerte, there is a lot of the ideology of Trotsky. Are you still a Trotskyist?

This book is a polemical work that I wrote, because we were in debate against Stalinism, which then took the line of only working within the law, struggling through the judicial process and so on. Whereas we took the position that a guerilla movement was necessary for revolution. So it was a debate between these two positions-the reformist position and the guerillerista position, which holds that the people must organize themselves, and when the people decide that there is no other option but to take up arms, they should take up arms. But it is the people who must decide, not any group or party.

So I defended Trotsky because the struggle was against Stalinism. Am I still a Trotskyist? I’m not sure. In certain senses I am, and in others I am not. Trotsky believed in defending the revolutionary ideas of Marx and Lenin against bureaucratic tendencies. He defended world revolution against the ideas of “socialism in one country” and a “progressive bourgeoisie” and “revolution by stages” and the other Stalinist ideas promoted in the name of Marxism-Leninism. So I was right to be a Trotskyist in this epoch.

One thing Trotsky said which has been vindicated is that if the working class doesn’t take power from the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy will be displaced by capitalism. This is what has happened. Today the principal directors of the Soviet Communist Party are the big neoliberals in Russia. Trotsky said that either the working class will triumph, or the bourgeoisie will, that the bureaucracy is not a social class and has no historical future. Unfortunately, its power was not broken by the working class, so it was broken by the bourgeoisie.

But now that there is no Stalinism, why do I have to be a Trotskyist? I don’t feel the same imperative. Of course, there are things I have learned from Marx, things I have learned from Lenin, things I have learned from Trotsky – and from other revolutionaries, from Rosa Luxemburg, from Gramsci, from Che Guevara. But now I do not feel it is logical to form a Trotskyist party.

The youth who organized the conference yesterday – they want answers to the questions of today. We don’t have to resuscitate old debates from the last century. It is enough to still believe that another world is possible. I am old, and if I can teach something about Marx, Lenin and Trotsky and so on, this is something I can contribute. I still believe in standing up and struggling and not pleading with the government, so in this sense I am still a Trotskyist. But I don’t feel the need to say, “Listen everybody, this Trotskyism is the answer!”

And when I speak of the indigenas of the Amazon as a the vanguard, I do not mean it in the Marxist-Leninist sense, that others should copy their methods. And when I speak to indigenous peoples, I speak of “collectivism,” not “communism.”

You are perhaps best remembered in Peru as a guerilla fighter, although this was just one brief period of your life. What is your view of armed struggle in the current situation?

I think the amazonicos are teaching us that struggles need to be massive and peaceful-but if we are attacked, we have the right to defend ourselves. At the blockades, the amazonicos are armed with their spears and bows and arrows and blowguns. But they only use them to defend themselves and their territory from those who invade their territory. If you are attacked with arms, you have the right to defend youself with arms.

For instance, I do not agree with Sendero Luminoso – and neither with those who believe in taking power by elections. Whether by arms or by elections, both are struggling to take power. In this sense, I am a Zapatista. I do not believe in struggling to take power, but to build it…. The villages in the Sierra that are standing up to the mining companies arebuilding power. The indigenas in the Selva who are now controlling their own territory are building power.

But when the people feel they have to defend themselves with arms, they have the right to take this decision. The rightists in Santa Cruz, in Bolivia, do not want to let the people govern, and meet their peaceful struggle with bullets; so the people have the right to meet this force with bullets, to defend democracy with bullets.

You say that there is a new “industrial latifundio” emerging today.

That’s right. Big companies of industrial scale on the coast, tremendously exploiting the agricultural proletariat, the majority of which is not unionized. They get no vacation, they have no social security. And these industries use agro-chemicals that kill the soil. And it is all for export to the United States, it is not for internal consumption.

So this new new “industrial latifundio” is of both agriculture and mining?

Of course – agriculture, mining, oil, timber. All of this is preying on the natural environment. A new agrarian reform is needed to do away with these predatory corporations.

Now nearly every government in South America except Peru and Colombia has gone over to the left to one degree or another. What is your perspective on this phenomenon?

Well, the struggle must continue, no? Like the struggle against the coup in Honduras, the struggle against the mining companies in the Sierra, the oil companies in the Amazon. Probably in the next elections here in Peru, another servant of neoliberalism will win. But what interests me are the social struggles, which must continue under any government.

What do you think of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador? You said last night that you consider these to be “governments of transition.”

Yes, of course. Chávez and Correa and Morales are very good sometimes, with their discourse against the empire. But we still cannot say that these are governments of the people of below [gente de abajo]. For example, Chávez wants the entire workers’ movement to be an instrument of his government. But the movement must remain independent and take its own positions. So in this I am not in agreement with him. And for this reason, I have not been invited to Venezuela! [Laughs]

I do not like the compromises that were made in the referendum following the constituent assembly in Bolivia, where they decided that 5,000 hectares constitutes a latifundio. To speak of this in Peru would be considered scandalous. This was a compromise with the reactionary governments of the Media Luna.

And when Santa Cruz held its referendum on independence, Morales said, All the the people of Bolivia should mobilize to Santa Cruz and block this illegality. The Bolivian people were advancing, but then Morales said, Oh no, better not to go. The campesinos were ready to block the roads; Morales said, No, please don’t block the roads.

These breaks on the social movements remind me of the breaks applied by Allende in Chile that facilitated thepinochetazo. These breaks indicate counter-revolutionary attitudes. I oppose this. But these attitudes do not mean the government of Bolivia is counter-revolutionary-no! The indigenous councils that are being organized and so on-these are advances. But it is still not a full manifestation.

So when you say “governments of transition,” you mean transition towards what?

A government of all the people. Towards “Good Government Juntas” [councils] in Bolivia and Ecuador and Venezuela!

This is a reference to the governing bodies of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. So you see the Zapatista movement as a model?

I completely support the Zapatista movement; that appears to me the correct path. They represent an example of the kind of society that we want to build in the future. They represent an example of government that is accountable to the people. If one of the indigenous leaders in the Good Government Juntas is not functioning well, he can be recalled at any time. And the Zapatista National Liberation Army doesn’t govern in their territory. It assures that the Mexican national army doesn’t molest the people. The Good Government Juntas govern, providing education and so on, without one centavo from the government.

And the wanted this system constitutionally recognized through the San Andres Accords, and when this was rejected by the Mexican congress in favor of the government’s proposal, they declared all the political parties of Mexico to be traitors, and they participate in no elections. Instead, during the presidential race [in 2006], they held the Other Campaign, and traveled throughout the country asking people what problems they had, and how can we confront them. Not putting forth a line, but coordinating with the people.

And they are also doing this at the international level. For example, the people from New York who are trying to save their homes, also participated in the Other Campaign. This year, at the Festival of Dignified Rage that was held in Zapatista territory, they showed a video from this group.

Yes, the Movement for Justice in El Barrio. You went to Mexico for this meeting?

Yes. This appears to me the correct way of building power.

Well, there have been criticisms on the Mexican left that the Zapatistas’ ethic of refusing to participate in elections has allowed the right to win.

Yes, but all the parties are trying to trick the people. Elections are not the way to build power. The communities in the Sierra that are confronting the mining companies, and the peoples in the Amazon who are standing up to the oil companies-they are building power, like the Zapatistas.

You said last night that in the ’60s you were struggling for a more just society, but today it is a more grave issue-the survival of the human race.

That’s right. The amazonicos are struggling against global warming. If you ask them, they will say they are struggling to defend their territories. But in effect, they are struggling against global warming too. Indigenous peoples have been fighting for eco-socialism for 500 years.

LeftViews is Socialist Voice’s forum for articles related to rebuilding the left in Canada and around the world, reflecting a wide variety of socialist opinion.

Republished from Socialist Voice

Duke Energy and the Disappearing Waters of Peru

2009-10-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

By Kristina Aiello

The battle over the waters of Lake Parón, in the Northern Andes of Peru, came to a head during the late afternoon hours of July 29, 2008, when over 100 farmers from Huaylas province of the Department of Ancash took over the hydraulic operations of the Cañón del Pato Hydroelectic Center. The farmers were protesting the nearly 50% drop in Lake Parón's water levels following the center's release of the lake's water in order to enhance its power production capabilities. Cañón del Pato is operated by Egenor Duke Energy, a large, private energy corporation owned by Duke Energy International, a subsidiary of Duke Energy headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Egenor administers two hydroelectric plants and several thermal-electric plants in northern Peru.

Located at 4,185 meters above sea level, Lake Parón is the largest glacial lake in the Huascaran National Park. It serves as a vital water and irrigation source for the residents of Huaylas province's capital city Caraz and its surrounding agricultural communities. It also serves as an important feeder for the Santa River that flows down through the fertile valley known as the Callejón de Huaylas, emptying into the Pacific Ocean at the coastal city of Chimbote.

Efforts to drain Lake Parón began during the 1970s as a safety measure. The lake is located in a geologically active region and is surrounded by five glacial peaks that easily fill its banks. Together, these forces combine to create the potential for disastrous mudslides, a danger all too real for local residents who remember the earthquake and subsequent mudslide of 1970 that destroyed the town of Yungay. In 1983, the government-run Electroperu completed construction of a drainage tunnel that would release the lake's waters in a controlled manner, around one meter per second (m/s), in order to diminish this threat.

The licensing of Lake Parón's waters for energy development in 1994 coincided with the enactment of structural reforms under the administration of then President Alberto Fujimori, who sought to attract foreign investment through privatization and pro-business economic policies. As part of this process, the government privatized Electroperu's operations in 1996 to form the Northern Peru Electric Generation Company (Egenor). Three years later, Duke Energy bought the company.

During its acquisition of Egenor, Duke Energy engaged in several indirect mergers that allowed it to ultimately purchase up to 90% of Egenor's assets in such a manner as to benefit from investor tax exemptions that were protected by the Fujimori government's Legal Stability Agreements (LSAs). The LSAs also granted the right to free repatriation of invested capital, profits and royalties, the right to equal treatment and non-discrimination, the right to free convertibility of foreign currency, and perhaps above all, the right to resolve disputes by international arbitration. According to Duke Energy records, the company also complied with the necessary environmental protections requirements, including the development of an Environmental Impact Study concerning Egenor's operations at that time.

Duke's investments were part of an explosion in Peru's energy development sector. Hydroelectric power constitutes 71% of Peru's energy production. This sector has grown steadily since 2001 as the country's strong economic growth resulted in a surge in energy demand that expanded an average of 8% annually and is expected to reach double-digit annual increases by 2015. Accordingly, energy producers must add nearly 350 megawatts (mw) of power each year to meet the country's growing energy consumption needs. Governmental officials assert that this will not be a problem. They estimate that Peru could produce 60,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity from hydro resources alone, or more than ten times current production levels. Egenor's operations at the Hydroelectric Center are intended to meet this growing demand.

While Duke Energy has reaped solid economic rewards for its investment in Huaylas province, the Ancash Department maintains very high poverty levels despite its vast hydro and mineral resources. In 2007, approximately 42% of the Department's population was living in conditions of poverty, with 17% living in conditions classified as extreme.

The problems with Lake Parón first began on July 13, 2007 when Egenor announced that it was going to exercise its rights under its water usage license and begin increasing the release of water from the lake beyond current 1m/s levels. This announcement spread alarm throughout the communities of Huaylas province. According to local reports, the maximum sustainable release of water from the lake is 4m/s. Local leaders feared that any significant increase beyond that figure would negatively impact the Lake's water levels and the increased flows would erode downstream irrigation systems and negatively impact municipal water quality. The lake is also a popular site for tourists and any damage to its beauty might impact an important input into the local economy.

In response to Egenor's announcement, the mayor of Caraz petitioned the Autonomous Authority of the Santa Basin to issue a resolution to suspend the company's license, a request granted on August 7, 2007.

Egenor challenged the resolution's legality and appealed the decision in Lima, and on October 19, the Lima court authorized the company's use of the lake's waters according to its water use permit. Egenor announced that it would begin the water release of October 24 with a maximum flow of 5.5m/s. The water release began shortly after that.

Dialogue between local governmental officials and the company over the water release continued into the following year. In January 2008, the municipality of Huaylas enacted a local ordinance the approved a Rational Use Water Policy in Huaylas Province, which outlined specific guidelines for usage of the province's waters during the rainy and dry seasons. The new policy had little effect, however, as by July of that year, the water levels of Lake Parón had dropped by 50%, the result of what many believe to be the release of water at rates of up to 10 m/s. Fearing the eventual loss of their primary water source, on July 29, local farmers picked up their tools and headed for Egenor's hydraulic machinery to shut down Duke's operation. They vowed to keep it shut down until the ATDR and the Regional Department of Agriculture suspended Egenor's water usage permit.

The shut down created a crisis that national government officials could no longer ignore and resulted in a series of negotiations held in Lima between local and national government officials to find a resolution to the conflict. Congressional representatives from Ancash introduced a bill to declare Lake Parón in a state of emergency and local leaders demanded a new environmental impact study concerning the release of the lake's waters. They also demanded the establishment of an administrative body comprised of various governmental and residential stakeholders to manage the lake's resources.

In order to assist the province with economic development, local leaders demanded the creation of a development fund for the province that would be financed by 30% of Egenor's profits from utilities. A similar fund already exists nationally for mining projects.

Despite these efforts, the intense negotiations that occurred that fall resulted in little progress. In fact, relations between the company and local residents deteriorated in early 2009 when Egenor urged the local prosecutor's office to file criminal charges against the farmers who remained in control of the company's hydraulic machinery. Local leaders denounced Egenor's actions and urged the company to find a resolution to the conflict through negotiations.

On April 17, governmental, provincial, and corporate stakeholders in the conflict met for further negotiations and agreed to establish a multi-sector commission to supervise the National Water Authority's development of a water use plan for Huaylas province and find a resolution to the conflict. All parties agreed to accept the decision of the National Authority.

In late august, the governmental agency tasked with overseeing all energy and mining investment, put out a bid for a consultant to evaluate the dangers to Lake Parón and the usage of its waters. If conducted in an independent and transparent manner, the study could be a positive step forward, even if it comes almost two years after Duke Energy's initial decision to increase the release of Lake Paron's waters. This study should consider the impact of climate change in the Callejón, while the region's principal water recharge sources, the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, continue to recede every year.

One bright spot in this cloudy situation is Peru's interest in harvesting energy from wind. Duke Energy, with no investment in wind power, has argued against this idea, claiming that the country does not have the resources for such development. For the sake of the residents of Huaylas Province, let's hope the company is wrong.

Kristina Aiello is a NACLA Research Associate

Republished from NACLA

Masked gunmen kill ten peasants in the south-east of Peru

2009-10-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

Telesur

October 5, 2009. – An armed attack by a group of masked gunmen against a peasant assembly discussing legal proceedings over lands where mineral deposits are located in Puno, in the southeastern Andes of Peru and near the Bolivian border, left at least 10 dead and several wounded, police said Sunday.

The incident occurred last Saturday when about 300 farmers discussed possession and territorial demarcation of the Winchumayo mines located in the Puna district of Ituata and the Valencia mine in the district of Ayapata, both in the province of Carabaya, the epicentre of informal mining in the southeast of the Latin American nation.

Minister of Interior, Octavio Salazar, told the local media “there are five wounded,” but said he could not confirm any deaths.
Contrary to the official version residents of the site area have confirmed the deaths to the local press and have provided the names of those killed in the hamlet of Chacayaje, Ituata district.

According to Leoncio Huamaní Condon, a resident of the area, some of those killed include Jorge Beltran, Christopher Ramos, Camac and Gabriel Ricardo Barraza.
Puno police chief, General Antonio Wivina Oracio, who was quoted by El Comercio, was cautious, saying: “In relation to the deaths, we can not confirm or deny this account.”

“We are waiting for criminal prosecutors to make the necessary investigations,” he added.

It should be noted that the attack occurred in an area of Peru where its people have been struggling for years to reclaim their land, and this has presented difficulties because the deposits are in districts under territorial dispute.

Last June, the farmers of the southeast of the nation went on strike, rejecting a series of government decrees, such as the repeal of the Water Law, which states that resource is a national heritage and sets priorities for its use, and also calling for the cancellation of mining concessions in the region.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke, republished from Telesur

Peru: ‘A political defeat for the government’

2009-09-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

Kiraz Janicke

In April, Amazonian indigenous peoples in Peru began an uprising to demand the repeal of more than a dozen neoliberal decrees by President Alan Garcia. The decrees opened up vast swathes of indigenous peoples’ lands to exploitation by transnational oil, mining and logging companies.

On June 5, the government unleashed a brutal crackdown on protesters in the Amazonian town of Bagua. At least 60 indigenous people were massacred.

A nation-wide backlash forced the government to repeal three of the most controversial decrees.

Tito Prado, head of the international commission of the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) and PNP Congresswoman Yanet Cajahuanca spoke to Green Left Weekly about the situation in the country after the Bagua massacre and the political program of the PNP, led by Ollanta Humala.

“The political situation of the country has changed in many ways” since the Bagua massacre, said Prado, who also edits La Lucha Continua. He is a member of the PNP’s Governmental Plan and Political Program Advisory Council.

“It was a political defeat for a government that dared to suppress the indigenous protests, but in the end had to repeal the neoliberal decrees.”

Cajahuanca was one of seven indigenous parliamentarians suspended for supporting the indigenous struggle and protesting against the decrees. She told GLW that the PNP opposed the decrees, which were apart of implementing the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.

“These legislative decrees are totally detrimental to the interests of indigenous and rural areas”, she said. “Why? Because, the neoliberal model clashes with the property rights of indigenous communities.

“These legislative decrees aimed to expropriate the land of indigenous and peasant communities, as well as giving the state the freedom to grant concessions without having to inform, to consult or hold dialogue with and involve those communities in whose subsoil the resources are located.”

Cajahuanca said the issue of indigenous land rights “has historically generated considerable unease in our country. Today indigenous and farming communities say that the large corporations that come to settle in their territories, worsen rather than improve the quality of life.

“They don’t want them to come into their territories at all.

“The 12 legislative decrees are prejudicial to the sovereignty and the rights of peasant communities, and are against their way of life. They do not respect the environment.”

Indigenous peoples have been calling for dialogue over the decrees for a year and a half, but “there has been no willingness for dialogue by the central government”.

The intransigent position of the government “has generated considerable social conflict … created a confrontation, a climate of instability. The response by the executive has been the spilling of blood: 64 Peruvians dead and many more missing.”

The PNP parliamentarians, Cajahuanca said, “have had the opportunity to visit the indigenous communities in their place of origin, where they live, after three days of travel from the capital to these sites.

“All they are asking is that the water is not contaminated and that the forests are looked after, because that’s where they live. I don’t think that’s much to ask.

“All we are asking for is the right to life, something that this economic model and Mr Alan Garcia do not want to understand.”

However, the fact that the government was forced to repeal three decrees represents “a major defeat for the government”, Prado said. As the struggle occurred on a national level, it was “a triumph not only of indigenous people, but all the Peruvian people”.

“It was a national struggle that drew a dividing line across the country: on one hand you have the government, rightist parties, armed forces, the US. And on the other hand, the indigenous peoples and the settlers, farmers, workers, students came out en masse to support them.

“It is a struggle that divided and polarised the country.”

As a result, “the government was isolated … because even sectors of their allies had to condemn the fact that they had not used consultation and avoided this political crisis.

“Not only were the decrees defeated, but the cabinet fell. All the ministers had to resign, for the second time.”

Prado said this has left the government badly weakened and “the popular movement with more confidence that, through struggle and unity, important victories can be achieved — albeit partial”.

However, Cajahuanca said: “The government of Alan Garcia is still persecuting the leaders who have been leading the indigenous and peasant struggle. Many have been jailed, others are seeking asylum.

“And not only does Garcia not respect the leaders, but he also even managed to attack us in Congress. He suspended seven parliamentarians whose crime was to defend our people, because ultimately, we come from them, we were elected simply because we offered to defend their rights.”

Prado said the Garcia government had not learned the lesson of the Bagua confrontation, and continued to insist on implementing the same neoliberal policies as part of its agreement with the US.

The cabinet has been reconstituted with people even farther to the right, he said. And, rather than seeking to engage in genuine dialogue with indigenous communities, the government is pushing for more confrontation.

It is attempting to divert attention from its role in the Bagua massacre by blaming the indigenous protests on a supposed “international conspiracy” headed by the left-wing governments in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Prado said Peru is “heading towards major confrontations. The Indigenous people have only suspended their demonstrations ... and several other sectors are moving.”

He pointed to recent strikes and protests in the southern cities of Ica, Pisco and Chincha, where two years after a massive 7.9 Richter earthquake devastated the region thousands remain living in tents and the cities look like they have been bombed.

“They have opened up a process of social confrontation, increased political polarisation. This will continue through to the electoral process of 2011.

“The Peruvian people will have to choose between the continuity offered by the neoliberal right or a big change that only the PNP is able to express, because it has managed to cohere a large majority of the population.”

Cajahuanca said: “Our project is a project of change that wants win government.”

Cajahuanca said in the social sphere, the PNP aims to promote social inclusion “that respects the differences of all our indigenous peoples” and “improves the quality of life” of all Peruvians.

In the economic sphere, Cajahuanca said a key platform of the PNP is for the state “to be more involved in strategic activities, I refer to sectors that are related to natural resources, mining, gas, oil”, and for resources to be directed “towards the development of our country”.

“We want to improve education, provide support in agrarian affairs, because it is this sector that is the poorest, and begin to industrialise our country.”

Cajahuanca said it was necessary to implement policies “to stimulate the national market”, and introduce tax reform to force large multi-national mining companies to pay taxes and royalties.

“We also want to provide opportunities to our Peruvian entrepreneurs to upgrade their activities, in order to give greater opportunities for them to go forward faster.”

Prado said one of the central proposals of the PNP “is the convening of a constituent assembly, to dismantle the constitution we inherited from the dictatorship of [former president Alberto] Fujimori, which locked-in the neoliberal model.

“We cannot make the changes we want as long as this constitution persists. Therefore we propose a democratic constitution where the people can introduce fundamental changes against this model, against state corruption ... to recover and use energy resources for the benefit of the whole country.

“Right now, the Fujimori constitution prevents the state from taking an active role in economic life.”

Prado said the PNP program is “an essentially anti-imperialist and democratic program. The project, however, opens up a dynamic that can place tasks of a much greater magnitude on the agenda, such as is happening in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

“In that sense, part of our program is integration with Latin America, particularly with countries that have opted for change. We want to participate in ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas anti-imperialist bloc of nations led by Venezuela and Cuba].

“And, therefore we reject FTAs as absolutely colonialist, including with the US, Europe, China and Chile.

“So we are facing a historic opportunity, because if successful, we would encourage the process of change that exists all over Latin America. It would signify a better balance of forces across the continent.”

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Peru: The strugle for the Amazon

2009-09-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

By Karl Cosser, Bagua

An indigenous uprising in the Peruvian Amazon has forced the US-backed government of President Alan Garcia to repeal key decrees that aimed to open the region to greater exploitation by oil and gas corporations. However, indigenous people faced violent repression from security forces as they tried to defend their land and the environment. On June 5, a brutal massacre occurred in Bagua, with dozens of indigenous people murdered by police.

Karl Cosser, a member of the Socialist Alliance from Australia currently in Peru, recently visited Bagua. He was part of a small group led by Hugo Blanco, a veteran revolutionary and fighter for indigenous and peasant rights. Blanco is the director of the Lucha Indigena newspaper. Blanco is keen to establish links between the struggles of Peruvian indigenous peoples and Indigenous people in Australia. He is asking Indigenous rights activists and Aboriginal leaders to email him at hugucha@yahoo.com.

* * *

After an overnight bus ride thorough the Andes mountain range, we arrived at the town of Bagua just before the sun came up. Standing in the main plaza looking out into the park, it seemed surreal at how peaceful it was this time of morning, considering the brutal slaughter of local indigenous people that happened there only a few weeks before.

Overlooking the park was a two-storey high police station from which shots were fired killing and injuring dozens of civilians. Many locals had gathered around the police station after they heard that protesters had been killed by police at Curva del Diablo, just out of town. The protesters had been blocking the road.

From observations and statements by local people, it was clear the police at the station were not acting in self-defence when they fired on the crowd. The walls of the station were solid brick and concrete. There was no evidence of bullet marks on the walls.

Later in the day we travelled further into the Amazon jungle. We visited the village of Chiriaco, from where many people were reported killed, missing and injured.

Several community members displayed injuries as evidence of police repression, including wounds from beatings and bullet marks on their bodies. Local community members said they had no firearms, but carried their traditional carved hardwood timber spears. A community member said the spear was ornamental artwork as a cultural expression, not a practical weapon.

Although the people protesting had ornamental spears as an expression of indigenous pride and identity, they did not represent a genuine threat to the police that would justify an armed attack.

Holding on to his spear in a bamboo hut, a Chiriaco community member told us of further atrocities committed by the state that day. Police rounded up people who were taken away and are still missing. Up to 200 indigenous people could be dead.

Reports made state that police chased after people as they were trying to escape into the jungle, all within full view of children and other family members. It is highly likely that the children forced to witness such brutality will be traumatised by experiencing such events.

At this stage, it is difficult to get an accurate number of those who have disappeared or died. This was an act of terrorism carried out by the Peruvian people’s own government in the name of neoliberalism.

Chiriaco, among many other indigenous communities in Peru, has been the victim of neoliberal policies imposed upon it without consideration or respect for its rich culture and history.

One resident of Chiriaco told us they have their own concept of socialism and collectivism. They don’t support a system that does not include them in economic decision making for the benefit of the community.

Hugo Blanco, the director of the Lucha Indigena newspaper, said that when a multinational corporation sought to use the land of the Amazon indigenous people, they had no respect for the long term sustainability of the land and have the freedom to move on to somewhere else in the world once all resources had been consumed.

The laws of use of chemicals for agriculture in Peru are relaxed, which corporations exploit. The Amazon indigenous people, who have lived in harmony with their environment for many years, are being forced off their land. This is the reason for the urgency in the struggle for defence of the Amazon — the lungs of the earth.

The Peruvian government shows more respect for those with money to buy the Amazon than for the rights of indigenous people. Therefore, the indigenous struggle and the defence of the environment is a class struggle.

Neoliberalism, among other things, is part of a global project seeking to exploit the resources of indigenous land all over the world — including the land of Aboriginal people in Australia.

Most recently, in the form the “Northern Territory intervention”, there is an attempt to drive Indigenous communities off their land. Australian scientist Helen Caldicott said the land grab was for the purpose of uranium mining and using the Northern Territory to dump nuclear waste.

Blanco, who is from the Quechua indigenous people, is encouraging Australian Indigenous activists to contact him to extend solidarity between the indigenous peoples of Peru and Australia.

Republished from Green Left Weekly

Peruvian Cited for “Most Racist Article of the Year”

2009-09-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

LONDON – A column in the Peruvian daily El Correo that appeared to suggest the use of napalm against Amazon Indians was cited Wednesday by indigenous-rights watchdog Survival International as the most racist article of 2009.

“I don’t know what keeps the president from providing the air force with all the napalm necessary,” Andres Bedoya Ugarteche concludes in a June 13 piece that followed a police crackdown on Indian protesters.

The writer referred to the Amazon Indians involved in the protests as the “same people who perfected the art of shrinking the heads of their enemies and wearing them on the belts holding up their loincloths.”

“If the ‘natives’ didn’t shrink the heads of the policemen they killed (in the protests) and eat their remains, it was only because there wasn’t time,” Bedoya wrote.

He complained that the “savages” and “Palaeolithics” maintain that “oil – which belongs to all Peruvians – shouldn’t be exploited if it lies under what they call ‘their’ land. What a cheek! They’re against logging for the same reason.”

Bedoya also ridiculed three indigenous congresswomen as “the three starlets of the parliamentary sewers.”

Survival cited Bedoya’s column as part of its Stamp it Out campaign, “which aims to challenge racist descriptions of indigenous peoples in the world’s media.”

The London-based group plans to send Bedoya a certificate inscribed with a quotation from Lakota Sioux author Luther Standing Bear: “All the years of calling the Indian a savage has never made him one.”

Peru’s Congress voted overwhelmingly in late June to repeal two laws that sparked two months of protests by Amazon Indians in which as many as 85 people may have lost their lives.

The laws gave Lima the power to grant mining, logging and drilling concessions on Indian lands without consulting residents.

Starting April 9, indigenous people opposed to the legislation disrupted transport links and seized control of oil-industry installations, effectively shutting down a pipeline that carries crude oil from the Amazon interior to Peru’s northern coast.

The dispute became violent on June 5, when police used force to evict the protesters from a key highway near Bagua.

President Alan Garcia’s government said 24 police and nine Indians died. Aidesep, the indigenous peoples’ association that organized the protests, put the death toll among the protesters at between 30 and 40, and a leading Peruvian human rights organization said that 61 people remained missing in the wake of the violence. EFE

Republished from the Latin American Herald Tribune

Defending the defenceless: Peru's most wanted refuses to be silenced

2009-09-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

From her jungle hideaway, Teresita Lopez tells Guy Adams why she won't give up fighting for her persecuted people.

Teresita Lopez is in hiding. "Somewhere in the Amazon" is as much as she is willing to reveal about her current location now she has been placed on the Peruvian government's most-wanted list.

The authorities in Lima have charged her with inciting murder, sedition and insurrection. Nonsense, she says. All she has been doing is protecting the rights of Peru's 350,000-strong Amazonian Indian community and helping them safeguard their traditional way of life, under threat from a President keen to open the Amazon to international mining, logging and oil companies.

"The indigenous people of the Amazon don't ask anything of the government because it has never supported us," Lopez said in an interview. "All we demand is respect for our ways of life, and respect for our rights as citizens to live on our land – where we were born and where we will die."

The tensions in this corner of South America burst onto the international radar in June, with a massacre that became known as "the Amazon's Tiananmen". Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded when Peruvian police fired on crowds demonstrating on a highway near the northern town of Bagua Grande against plans to sell swathes of their homeland to foreign-owned corporations.

That spiralled into a political crisis for President Alan Garcia. His popular Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, resigned, apparently in protest at how the whole affair was handled. Now, more than two months after these grisly events, the President's still wobbly government has turned its attention to the business of exacting serious revenge.

Ms Lopez, a community leader from the Yanesha tribe, is just one of the Amazonian Indian's most prominent leaders to have been forced into hiding as a result. She could face life imprisonment if arrested and convicted.

"We have been charged with sedition, rebellion, and insurrection," she explained. "The accusations were announced at a press conference. This violates all legal procedures. The government is effectively persecuting us, the leaders, for working with indigenous people and voicing their demands."

Peruvian authorities have accused her of being responsible for sparking the Bagua massacre on 5 June. But Ms Lopez says she was 900 miles away in Lima on that day.

The basis of the charges against her is that she attended a televised press conference in the capital in May, which prosecutors say helped inspire the unrest. "I have been denounced, and a warrant for my arrest has been issued, for sitting at a table during a press conference," Ms Lopez said. "I didn't even say anything. Imagine if I had!"

The 48-year-old, from the Oxapampa region in central Peru, says she is being sheltered by "brothers, family and colleagues in the indigenous movement". She has been advised to remain in hiding or seek asylum, rather than emerge to clear her name. "I have no possibility or guarantee of defending myself legally because the executive is interfering in what the judiciary is doing," she said.

At the heart of the dispute are 13 laws unveiled by President Garcia last year. They threatened to open 67 million hectares of Peru's undeveloped rainforest to exploitation by foreign-owned logging, mining and energy companies. The Indians were outraged and staged protests to demand they be repealed. Four of the 13 controversial laws have now been dropped. However, that still leaves nine in place.

Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a human rights organisation that supports tribal peoples, says that Teresita's case clearly illustrates what is going on in Peru right now. "Garcia's government is determined to sabotage the indigenous movement by driving the real leaders into exile or trying to imprison them," he said.

Alberto Pizango, the leader of AIDESEP, a group representing Peru's 56 tribes, was granted asylum in Nicaragua, along with two colleagues, in the aftermath of the violence on the grounds of political persecution. The Central American nation believes that the men are unlikely to get fair trial in their homeland. The number of Amazonian Indians facing charges – in relation to a massacre they blame on the police – has soared to 120.

Among those being prosecuted, rights groups say, are 48 native Indians who are still receiving hospital treatment for injuries sustained when security forces opened fire in June. Armed guards are stationed outside the medical facilities, so the Aguaruna and Wampi Indians can be arrested and whisked to jail the moment doctors agree to sign their discharge papers.

One indigenous leader, Santiago Manuin, was shot in the stomach at Bagua by at least four bullets. From his bedside, a plastic pouch still draining his intestines, and five AK-47-toting guards at the door, he told the Associated Press last week: "Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake."

Although Peru insists that just 33 people died at Bagua – of which 10 were protesters and 23 were armed police officers – several observers claim scores of other tribes-people remain unaccounted for. News reporters at the scene estimated the death toll at 60.

Peru's government has faced widespread international criticism in the wake of the killings. Its justice minister was hauled before a UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva this month and the UN special envoy on indigenous rights has called for an independent investigation.

Somewhat belatedly, given its speed in filing charges against the indigenous leaders, Peru this week finally announced action against some of the armed officials who were present at Bagua, charging two police generals and 15 other officers with homicide.

Whether that will be enough to appease Mr Garcia's opponents and repair his reputation remains to be seen. Since the events at Bagua, the President's approval ratings have dropped to 25 per cent, and his former ally Yehude Simon is said to be considering a hostile bid for his job.

Republished from The Independent

Peru: Protests against Gold Fields in Hualgayoc leave 5 people injured

2009-09-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

By Isabel Guerra

The protests in Vista Alegre, Hualgayoc (Cajamarca region) against the mining company Gold Fields have left five injured people so far (three policemen and 2 farmers), when the police was trying to clear a road that the protesters were blocking.

According to El Mercurio de Cajamarca, a group of approximately 300 farmers were not only preventing Gold Fields workers to get to Corona mine, but also tried to take hostages, so the police had to intervene using the force and even tear gas.

The farmers, who have been protesting at a spot called Coimolache (in the Cajamarca-Hualgayoc road) since last Wednesday, demand Gold Fields to meet its promise to provide water service for the town, since water reportedly disappeared in the district once the company started operations in the area more than two years ago.

Since then, Gold Fields has been providing water for the community through a water tank truck.

Gold Field issued an statement promising they would honor the promise, but the villagers continue partially blocking the road, halting any vehicle related to the company.

Republished from LivinginPeru

Peru: Thousands protest to demand earthquake reconstruction funds

2009-09-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

The aftermath of the earthquake (Foro Ica)

By Kiraz Janicke

Thousands of residents of Ica, Pisco and Chincha marched through their respective cities on Monday as part of a regional strike called by the Ica section of the General Confederation of Workers of Peru, the Civil Construction union and Sutep [teachers union], among others, to demand the delivery of reconstruction funds and an audit of domestic and international donations more than two years after a 7.9 rictor earthquake devastated the region.

Many of the regions residents are still living in tents and say their cities look like they have been bombed. Protesters say corrupt government officials have embezzled donations and government relief money destined for reconstruction efforts.

Protest organisers denounced that more than 25 scaffolding workers were arrested during the protests in a clash with the National Police and that APRA [President Alan Garcia's political party] leaders intervened to pressure the local judiciary and law enforcement bodies to repress the protests and keep the workers in jail. In particular, they dennounced local APRA leader and COFOPRI official, Erick Garcia.

Street vendors, housewives, students and truck drivers also participated in the protests in the region, which is often promoted by the García government as an example of economic growth and the sucess of neoliberal policies. The earthquake brought to light the lies of these statements and the failure of a mining boom that has privileged only a tiny minority the protesters said.

The organizers said their would be further protests such as an indefinite strike in the coming days until their demands are met.

The CGTP called on the government to immediately release the 25 workers and attend to the demands of the eathquake victims who are still suffering the ravages of disaster and the APRA regime's inability to resolve the problems.

Peru: Kichwa Peoples say no to PERENCO and call for the immediate suspension of its operations.

2009-09-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

AIDESEP

The Alta Napo Kichwaruna Wangurina Organization - ORKIWAN denounced that the French oil company PERENCO, after its entry into their area without any consultation and through questionable dealings with a corrupt sector of leaders and officials, seeks to divide and weaken the local organization and its links with the national organization AIDESEP, in order to avoid any claim or action in defense of indigenous lands.

An example of this is the behaviour of the oil company representative Italo Flores, who at the meeting in the community of Puerto Elvira, said that “some regional and national leaders are misinforming the public about the good work of the oil companies because they do not want the development of peoples, so the government has ordered to go after these bad leaders because they are whipping up the population which is manipulated by organizations opposed to progress.”

The comments of Flores (from PERENCO) created bad feeling in the assembly, causing the Indigenous attendees to decide unanimously, with 133 community authorities present, to not allow PERENCO to enter [the area] and for the immediate suspension of all activities being undertaken by the company. Later, they renewed the ORKIWAN leadership, now chaired by Professor Henry Coquinche Coquinche from the Angoteros native community, who was sworn in office in the course of this week, with all decisions to be sent to the roundtable which will take place between the Central Government and indigenous organizations in the Peruvian Amazon, as well as the Minister of Energy and Mines and President of the Republic.

The PERENCO representatives then left the area, promising to return within a month to continue their activities but the Alto Napo Kichwa brothers say they will not let them operate further – a scenario of social confrontation in the Peruvian Amazon in which the government is not acting as it should.

They also gave support to the Educational Program of Training of Bilingual Teachers-FORMABIAP that AIDESEP promotes and fosters. Thus, the pedagogical work that the FORMABIAP promotes through the CEBES (Communities and Schools for Well Being), in the village of Alto Napo Kichwa, in some schools in that jurisdiction, is moving ahead with public support.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke, republished from AIDESEP.

Peru Natives complain of persecution, may restart protests

2009-08-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

By Renzo Pipoli

Peru Native groups keeping ancestral ways of life may restart protests unless President Alan Garcia makes good on promises to heal dozens of Natives with bullet wounds following the June 5 clash with police armed with assault rifles, and stops harassment and persecution.

More than 300,000 Natives from the Peruvian Amazon organized through the Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP) claim Garcia’s government is doing the opposite of what it said it was going to “consider,” including suggestions by the United Nations to respect rights of indigenous Peruvians.

Natives and their leaders have faced arrests and taken the blame for the June 5 clash following two months of protests that left more than 30 dead and nearly 100 people injured while top indigenous leaders have been forced into exile.

“It is clear that Alan Garcia has started a campaign to silence the legitimate aspirations of people to their free will and to their wellness and to their proposals for the defense of life and of the planet Earth,” AIDESEP leader in exile Alberto Pizango said in La Primera, a Lima newspaper.

Pizango said the Peruvian government has used the little-known National Institute for the Development of Andean, Amazon and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (INDEPA) as an instrument to get rid of AIDESEP, an organization Natives created to organize themselves.

AIDESEP joins diverse groups including the biggest tribes of Awajun, Ashaninka and Machiguenga with myriad smaller groups. It serves as a development tool and a channel for foreign aid, which is the tribe’s main source of revenue, since those groups are often neglected by government.

“They use our indigenous brothers that do not have conscience and behave as ‘Felipillos’ who betray the alignments and world vision of the indigenous people,” Pizango explained why a group of Natives want to take his leadership away. Felipillo was an infamous Peruvian Native who walked alongside conquerors in the 16th century serving as a translator.

According to the organization’s Web site, Pizango remains the head of the group.

Stolen identity

Pizango said Alexander Teest, who the Peruvian government now recognizes as AIDESEP president, was a former indigenous leader who tried to continue his term as head of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Northern Amazon despite the end of his period. Teest didn’t call elections, was ousted by his people, so found himself at loggerheads with AIDESEP.

Pizango said Teest has now sided with the government, and is posing as a false Native leader using the organization’s name.

Pizango also criticized Peruvian Justice Minister Aurelio Pastor for his presentation before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva because he said foreign conspirers, non-governmental organizations and the church were responsible for the deadly June 5 clash. Pastor described Garcia’s government as a victim of violence, and Pizango as violent.

“They call me violent to clean their bloody hands,” Pizango said. Natives have demanded an international investigation and strongly denied accusations of being violent.

Carlos Navas, spokesperson for Native Peoples of the Northern Amazon, said on AIDESEP’s Web site that as a result of these problems several Native communities in areas of the Amazon are unhappy with the lack of government compliance with agreements intended to secure peaceful living.

Navas said the government had fully agreed to help some 70 indigenous people, injured by bullets June 5, pay for medical treatment, but is not making good. Indigenous people are also upset about many arrest warrants issued.

The organization is also facing a bureaucratic government crackdown over supposed infractions committed years ago, and AIDESEP could be closed for good, leaving Natives without their key organization.

The alleged “serious infractions,” according to AIDESEP spokeswoman Augustina Mayan, are not over misuse of donations but “for missing a letter, a word in the name of a project and this is called by APCI (Agency for International Cooperation) false information.” APCI regulates agencies that receive donations.

Carlos Pando, APCI director, said he wants to sanction AIDESEP over infractions and is not acting politically to look good before party colleagues and superiors.

Pando has assured that he is an independent technician, though at one point, he was vice president of the APRA Party, led by Garcia; a mid-level ranking position in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance.

Republished from Indian Country Today

PERU: Former Minister Should Answer for Massacre in the Amazon

2009-08-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

By Ángel Páez

LIMA, Aug 28 (IPS) - "Did I have a feather on my head and kill the policemen myself?" Mercedes Cabanillas responded when journalists asked her if, as interior minister of Peru, she assumed responsibility for the operation that led to the deaths of 24 members of the police and at least nine indigenous protesters near the Amazon jungle town of Bagua.

Thirteen days later, she promoted 11 police officials who took part in the Jun. 5 crackdown on a roadblock that native demonstrators had manned for a month along a key Amazon highway near Bagua, in the northern province of Amazonas.

When the press reported that the police officials had been commended for their "distinguished service" that day, the now former minister suspended the promotions until the national police force’s Office of the Inspector General – which was carrying out an internal probe into the incident - had declared whether or not the officers were implicated in the killings.

The Office of the Inspector General then issued a report indicating criminal negligence on the part of regional police chief General Javier Uribe and General Elías Muguruza, head of the special operations unit, DIROES.

The report was a bombshell.

The leader of the Nationalist Party legislators, Daniel Abugattás, announced that his party was studying whether to bring charges against Cabanillas for her participation in the incident.

Testimony contained in the report indicates that Cabanillas played a decisive role in the police operation. It was the then interior minister herself who relieved Uribe and sent Muguruza in from Lima, with orders to lift the traffic blockade.

The indigenous demonstrators were protesting a number of controversial decrees that opened up the rainforest to oil, mining, logging and agribusiness companies.

The operation, involving 600 heavily armed DINOES policemen backed up by an Mi-17 helicopter and an armoured vehicle, opened fire on the peaceful crowd of indigenous people at dawn on Jun. 5 at the spot on the highway known as the Curva del Diablo (Devil’s Curve), where the protesters were manning the roadblock.

According to sources at the national police directorate who spoke with IPS in June, the operation was carried out despite the fact that two local police chiefs had signed a non-aggression pact with the leaders of the protests.

The head of the protest, Awajún chief Salomón Aguanash, told IPS that under the agreement, General Uribe had given the demonstrators until 10:00 AM to clear out, which they were planning to do that morning at 8:00 or 9:00 AM. But the police arrived, and started shooting, at around 5:00 AM.

Meanwhile, when they heard that the police were shooting their fellow protesters, indigenous demonstrators at the nearby Petroperu oil pumping station No. 6 seized the police officers guarding the installations, stripped them of their weapons, and killed several of them in reprisal for the security forces’ failure to respect the peace agreement.

Indigenous leaders say the number of protesters killed was higher than the official death toll of nine civilians. In addition, around 100 people were injured and 80 arrested during the clash.

Protesters said they saw the police collecting the bodies of dead demonstrators, putting them in bags and throwing them in the river from a helicopter, to reduce the estimate of the number of people killed.

In a Jun. 8 appearance before Congress to explain what happened, Cabanillas said the police acted with complete autonomy and that the outcome of the operation was the responsibility of the police commanders.

But in statements to the police force's National Disciplinary Tribunal, Generals Uribe and Muguruza said the then interior minister took part in the decision-making process.

According to the Disciplinary Tribunal minutes to which IPS had access, Uribe said that although he was regional police chief in Tarapoto – where Bagua is located – "an order came from Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas for General Elías Muguruza to assume responsibility for the operation."

Muguruza, for his part, told the Tribunal: "Yes, I was in charge of the operation. The clearing of the road was entirely a police operation. At that time, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas was aware that the operation was going to be carried out, but she did not know on what date or at what time."

The two police chiefs are being prosecuted by the National Disciplinary Tribunal because the police Office of the Inspector General, after a two-month investigation of the incident, found that they had committed extremely serious infringements by failing to adopt the measures necessary to avoid the deaths of police officers and civilians in Bagua, according to the report, to which IPS also had access.

In addition, the Office of the Inspector General found that they even disregarded an intelligence report stating that there were a large number of indigenous protesters and that they would react violently if attacked.

Despite the warnings, Muguruza decided to sweep down on the demonstrators at around 5:00 AM on Jun. 5.

After the administration of Alan García and parliament refused to revoke the controversial decrees facilitating investment by oil, mining and logging companies in traditional indigenous lands in the jungle, the national police chiefs received the government's order to lift the roadblock by force.

But Cabanillas has publicly stated that the police commanders acted in accordance with their own "professional criteria," and that she did not order them to kill anyone.

In her explanations to Congress, the former minister argued that it was the indigenous people, not the police, who were responsible for the violent clash. She pointed out that more police officers than protesters were killed.

In the wake of the tragedy, the government partly backed down, repealing two of the decrees, which had already been declared unconstitutional in December 2008 by a multi-party parliamentary commission because they undermined the right of native people to prior consultation with respect to mining projects or other economic activities affecting their communities and their collectively-owned territories.

Attorney General Gladys Echaíz said she would ask for the Office of the Inspector General's report in order to study who was responsible for the deaths. She added that if evidence against any government official or agent was found, "believe me: I won't hesitate" to call a preliminary hearing.

The report by the Office of the Inspector General quoted police officers who survived the violence at Petroperu oil pumping station No. 6 as saying that Muguruza had promised to warn their chief, Miguel Montenegro, ahead of time if the government was going to order the lifting of the roadblock by force.

But Muguruza did not warn them. Montenegro was among those killed by the protesters in retribution, because he had promised that there would be no violent crackdown.

As a result, the Office of the Inspector General recommended that the National Disciplinary Tribunal fire Muguruza and Uribe.

In his testimony to the Tribunal, Muguruza said he scrupulously followed the operation plan and was in constant contact with the different police contingents.

But the head of one of the contingents, commander Juan del Carpio, said the general failed to respond when he called him to ask for reinforcements after realising that the protesters outnumbered the police.

When the police opened fire on the demonstrators, who were only armed with spears, some of them seized the police officers' AK-47 assault rifles and shot them. Although del Carpio survived, he lost 11 of his men.

Uribe and Muguruza have now made it clear that Cabanillas knew about the characteristics of the operation, and that she even sent Muguruza from Lima to Bagua to carry out the plan. (END/2009)

Republished from IPS

Alan García minimizes achievements of UNASUR and defends U.S. bases in Colombia

2009-08-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, 28 Ago. ABN.- Peru's President Alan García, on Friday downplayed the achievements of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) saying at the meeting of that body in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, in the region "there is more conflict," that when there was no supranational organization.

The Peruvian president said the seven military bases in Colombia that the US will administer, “do not appear to be a threat” if they are to "support transportation and other areas," provided that "have nothing to do with the international deployment of a superpower in our region. "

"I do not consider it to be very serious," reiterated Garcia, who dismissed the efforts of UNASUR saying that before its existence, there had not been "so many conflicts" between the countries of the region.

However, he said, "I don’t think it would be bad in the continent if a commission took place in Colombia, to see that you are doing with those bases."

He recommended that the UNASUR Defense Council not only evaluate negotiations between countries of the region and others but also "any kind of military alliance that exists between us."

However, despite having downplayed the organization, Garcia said "the positive side in this situation, that seems very difficult, is that we have the opportunity to make a stronger institutional relaunch of our UNASUR.”

The Peruvian president praised the work of his Colombian counterpart, Álvaro Uribe, saying "I have no doubt that President Uribe is a Latin American patriot who wants to go down in history as a man who solved the terrible problems in Colombia."

Garcia referred to the speech by his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez, [who released] a White Paper on Aerial Mobility Command and Global Strategy of Bases of Support for the United States Government, and said, despite it being an official document of the Government U.S.: "I will not believe a letter released in such a manner."

Translated by Kiraz Janicke

Peru: witch hunt against indigenous protesters

2009-08-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

Peru's government not only ordered the brutal massacre of indigenous peoples protesting to defend the environment and their way of life from rapacious transnational companies, in Bagua on June 5, (from which at least 60 people remain "disappeared"), but has also launched racist witch hunt, forcing 2 indigenous leaders into exile, and charging a further 120 with "murder" and "sedition" in its drive to carve up the Amazon and flog it off to oil, mining and logging companies.

President Alan Garcia has cynically claimed "foreign interference" from Venezuela and Bolivia is behind the indigenous protests, while at the same time whipping up racism against indigenous communities, referring to them as "second class citizens" and saying they are like "dogs in a barnyard," in order to ram through his agenda.

Read article below about how indigenous leader Santiago Manuin, who is lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life after receiving at least 4 bullet wounds, is hounded by police armed with AK47 assault rifles.

Jail and trial are next for wounded Peru Indians

By ANDREW WHALEN (AP) Aug 3 2009

CHICLAYO, Peru — Santiago Manuin is lucky to be alive. On June 5, the Awajun Indian leader was hit by at least four bullets when police broke up a protest by Indians over government plans for large-scale economic development of their ancestral lands in the Amazon.

Inside his hospital room, Manuin lies in a bed while a plastic pouch drains his intestines. Outside the door, five police officers lounge on wooden benches, AK-47 assault rifles resting across their knees.

Manuin is the most prominent of 48 protesters wounded in the June melee who face jail the moment hospital doctors sign discharge papers, according to Peru's main Amazon Indian federation.

Critics of the government say it is no way to treat people who engaged in peaceful civil disobedience — blocking roads and rivers — to protect their traditional lands from the oil drilling, mining, farming and logging projects envisioned by President Alan Garcia.

Negotiations to resolve the dispute, involving 350,000 Amazon Indians, will be difficult if the government treats the protest leaders as criminals, the U.N. special envoy on indigenous rights, James Anaya, said last week.

The dark, wiry Manuin is more blunt.

"Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake," the 53-year-old apu, or tribal leader, said from his hospital bed.

The government's mistake, Indian leaders and sympathizers say, has been to vilify protest leaders while failing to consider that police might have used excessive force. At least 10 civilians and 23 police officers were killed in the violence, while 200 civilians were wounded, 82 by gunshot, according to Peru's ombudsman's office.

"It's very surprising that while there are criminal investigations against people accused of killing police, no one has been arrested or implicated for the abuses that led to the death of the indigenous protesters," said Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas program. Amnesty says it has gathered testimony telling of police abuses.

Peru's justice minister, Auerelio Pastor, defended the police action before a U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva on Monday and said the government has no plans to drop any charges.

The government's request that protesters clear the road "by no means justifies acts of violence, and the seizure of highways and interruption of public services is illegal," he said.

Pastor also echoed a claim repeatedly voiced by Garcia: that unidentified foreign elements have incited the Indians to instigate the violence.

The president of AIDESEP, the Indian federation that organized the protests, says 120 Indians have been charged with crimes including murder and sedition. Many wounded Indians have not sought medical attention for fear of arrest, the federation's president, Daysi Zapata, told The Associated Press.

AIDESEP's top leader, Alberto Pizango, and two other officials of the organization have taken asylum in Nicaragua from sedition and rebellion charges.

In a July report following a visit to Peru, Anaya, the U.N. envoy, called for an independent, internationally backed investigation into the violence.

The government has yet to publicly respond.

Manuin is expected to be released from the main hospital in Chiclayo shortly after an operation this week to close the hole in his stomach and reconnect his intestines. He will then be jailed and tried on charges of inciting murder and unrest, which carry a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. His lawyer has appealed to reduce his arrest warrant to an order to appear in court.

The Jesuit-schooled Manuin is an internationally recognized activist who met with Spain's Queen Sofia in 1994 after leading Awajun resistance to leftist rebels who tried to get his people to grow coca, the basis of cocaine.

On June 5, when heavily armed police advanced toward nearly 5,000 protesters at a highway blockade, he says he approached the officers seeking to talk.

"I never made it because they opened fire when I was about 50 meters (yards) away," Manuin said. Bullets tore open his left side.

Other protesters saw he was hurt, and "hand-to-hand combat broke out to remove the guns from police," he added.

Erroneous reports of Manuin's death spurred a bloody reaction hours later when Awajun protesters killed 12 police officers they had taken captive at an oil pipeline station.

Manuin faults the government, not the police officers, who he says told Indian leaders on June 4 that their superiors in Lima had ordered them to clear the highway.

The Cabinet chief at the time, Yehude Simon, said the entire Cabinet voted to issue the order. He and the then-interior minister were replaced last month as Garcia sought to allay public criticism of his handling of the protests.

The Indians had been blockading jungle highways and rivers on and off since last August, demanding the revocation of 11 decrees issued by Peru's president last year under the rubric of a free trade pact with the United States.

Peru's Congress repealed two of the decrees after protests last year and two more after June's bloodshed. Indians feared the decrees would lead to a widespread land and resource grab by private companies.

Despite the revocations of some of the decrees, 75 percent of Peru's Amazon remains carved up into oil concessions, with the government owning all subsoil rights.

"If they want to put the Amazon up for sale, they'll do it by spilling blood. Period," Manuin said.

Indigenous Communities Angered by Peru Environment Minister

2009-07-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Indigenous communities from the Peruvian Amazon are angry over recent comments from Peru’s environment minister that Pluspetrol’s Lote 8 on the Corrientes river, is a “shining example” of how oil projects can benefit local communities.

The only thing “shining” in Lote 8, as evidenced in the photograph attached, is coming from the four major oil spills that have occurred in the region, just this year.

The spills were witnessed by FECONACO, the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes, who runs an environmental monitoring project in Corrientes.

As a result of the spills, FECONACO explains in a press release dated July 24, local communities and the environment are being forced to carry a toxic burden: water and food supplies are being diminished, “wildlife is being contaminated and dying, and biodiversity is being wiped out.”

FECONACO wants the minister, one of the few ministers to retain their position after the recent violence in Bagua, to travel to the region and bare witness to the pollution of lote 8, and “speak to the people here to find out the truth.”

Indigenous Communities Angered by Peruvian Environment Minister

Iquitos, 24 July 2009 – Indigenous communities in the Amazon jungle have been angered by recent statements by Peru’s environment minister, Antonio Brack Egg. In an interview with the newspaper El Comercio, Brack stated that petrol exploitation is having minimal environmental impact. He also referenced Pluspetrol’s Lote 8, on the Corrientes river, as an extraction site which was not causing contamination and was having a positive impact on the nearby communities.

In fact, the monitoring project run in Corrientes by FECONACO (the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes) has evidence of four major oil spills in Lote 8 in the first half of 2009.

Wilson Sandy Hualinga, indigenous coordinator of the monitoring project, said, “I see these things because I live there, in the community of San Cristóbal in Lote 8. The oil spills pollute the rivers and ecosystems. The fishermen in these areas are finding less fish and developing unknown diseases. Wildlife is being contaminated and dying, and biodiversity is being wiped out.”

“We know our territory, because we were born and raised there. We also know how petrol companies work, how they cheat and hide from the authorities. Antonio Brack should come and speak to the people here to find out the truth.”

Antonio Brack Egg was one of few ministers to retain their position in a major cabinet reshuffle designed to restore confidence in the Peruvian government. In recent months Peru has been shaken by a series of events, most notably the violent conflicts in Bagua between indigenous protesters and police which resulted in at least 34 deaths.
Notes

FECONACO represents indigenous communities on the Corrientes river, a major oil production region of Peru.

FECONACO’s monitoring programme has run since 2005, training indigenous people to record evidence of pollution in and around their communities, with the aim of improving the environmental practices of oil companies working in the area.

Republished from Intercontinental Cry

Peru's Fujimori sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for corruption

2009-07-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

Alejandra del Palacio

LIMA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced on Monday to seven and a half years in jail on charges of embezzling 15 million U.S. dollars from state funds to pay his intelligence chief.

This is the third conviction Fujimori has received since he returned to Peru from exile in 2007.

Fujimori, who ruled the country from 1990 to 2000, has previously received a penalty of 25 years in prison for violation of human rights, and a six-year imprisonment for abuse of power.

So far, Fujimori, 70, will have to spend a maximum of 25 years behind bars, as prison sentences are served concurrently in Peru.

Fujimori exiled himself to Japan in 2000 after his government collapsed after corruption scandals. He was arrested in Chile and was extradited to Peru in 2007.

A SERIES OF TRIALS

Fujimori acknowledged in court that he had paid 15 million dollars to his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, but refused to accept any legal responsibility, saying he made the payment because Montesinos was then planning a coup against him.

"I was obligated to do it because the stability of the country was at risk ... given the total control that ex-adviser Vladimiro Montesinos had over the military leadership," Fujimori said.

In 2007, Fujimori was accused of having ordered an illegal raid on the home of Montesino's wife. He was convicted of abusing power and sentenced to six years in jail.

In April this year, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for authorizing death squads that killed 25 civilians in two bloodbaths in 1991 and 1992, as well as ordering the kidnapping of a businessman and a journalist in 1992.

Fujimori still faces another trial on charges of authorizing illegal phone tappings and congressional bribes, and using state funds to purchase a TV station to air political propaganda.

TEN YEARS IN OFFICE

Fujimori had ruled Peru for 10 years before his dramatic resignation in 2000 after a corruption scandal involving his administration was exposed.

During his first term from 1990 to 1995, Fujimori ambitiously launched neoliberal reforms and privatization campaigns to revive the country's lagging economy. At the end of 1994, Peru's economy reported a world-leading growth rate of 13 percent.

Facing difficulties in combating the guerilla Sendero Luminoso, Fujimori carried out a coup of his own government in 1992, whereby he shut down the Congress and suspended the constitution.

Polls at that time showed the coup was largely welcomed by the public, although it was condemned by the Organization of American States (OAS) and other countries.

In 1995, Fujimori won a second term with almost two thirds of the votes.

According to the Peruvian Constitution in 1993, the presidency was limited to two terms. However, the Congress passed a law to allow Fujimori to run for a third term.

Fujimori won the 2000 elections with a bare majority. However, his standing was hurt by a corruption scandal in September that year when a cable TV channel broadcast a video showing Montesinos bribing an opposition congressman.

Fujimori's popularity collapsed and he escaped to Japan, from where he sent his resignation in Novermber 2000.

Fujimori has been credited by many Peruvians for ending the fight with guerilla Sendero Luminoso, although his controversial iron hand methods such as granting the military broad powers to arrest suspected rebels, were widely criticized.

Under his rule, Peru's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by a total of 44.6 percent from 1992 to 2001, or an average of 3.76 percent per year.

The country also managed to reduce the national malnutrition index by about 29 percent from the period 1990-1992 to 1997-1999, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Despite a raft of accusations against Fujimori, his daughter Keiko Fujimori, who will run for president in 2011, maintains roughly a 20 percent lead in opinion polls.

Keiko, an opposition legislator, said she wants to win the election to clear the accusations against her father.

Republished from Xinhua

Peru's Army continues recruiting minors

2009-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Isabel Guerra

Reportedly, Peru's Army keeps on recruit minors despite claiming this practice has ended, according to several media Peruvian media.

Both Coordinadora Nacional de Radio and La Republica report the case of a 16 year old soldier, who was one of the casualties registered last week due to the accidental explosion of a grenade.

One of the injured soldiers is also under age.

According to the newspapers, the Ombudsman has asked the Prosecutor's Office to investigate these events, that add up to several complaints of illegal and sometimes forced recruitment of minors.

Peru's Defense Minister, Antero Flores Araoz, acknowledged last May (after a similar incident) that it is possible that “minors who have no documents enroll the Army by giving false information about their age,” as a way to get “ousing, clothes and free food.”

Reùblished from LivinginPeru

The ‘Disappeared’ in Peru

2009-07-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

Derek Wall of Another Green World reports on the victims of Peru’s war against the indigenous people of the Amazon region of Bagua.

I am just reading ‘Los Companeros’ or ‘Comrades.’ ’Los Companeros’ is about the war in Guatamala in the 1960s, ten of thousands of indigenous people ‘disappeared.’ Well it;s 2009 and indigenous people are still disappearing in Latin America, in fact in many parts of the world they are being killed.

Just had this. Let people know, Alan Garcia’s government will kill, if killing gets oil companies contracts.

The people who protect the world’s rainforest are killed….we must stop the killing

* * * * *

Here are the names of us missing and we believe killed after the massacre at Bagua ….. the fear is that the media will collude with the powerful and refuse to investiage these disappearances …. the indigenous in the Amazonas region of Peru have asked that the names are spread through the web.

Eber Quispe Vásquez, Lorenzo Castillo Abad, Arcadio Peña López, Jovino Urbi Carrillo, Benito Soro Orrega, Saúl Wachapa, Cenepo Auarpa, Tiberio Nansh, Elmer, Kuja, Luis Manuel Usha, Rubén Wauhapa, Marga Reátegui, Savaría Timias, Eloy Ismiño, Eeraldo Mashianda, Suamut Fterpekit, Armanado Fterpekit, Pablo Yagkup, César Chumpi, Evelin, Leonardo y Rolando Kaje Kuja, Luis Jintach Esamat, Fidel Vilchez Tsejem, Grimaldo Najantai Kuja, Enrique Asangkay, Dasec, Nena Yagkug Nugkum, Wiles Nugtum Wilchez, Abercio Yagkum Vilchez, Amalia Sejekam Nugkum, David Yagkum, Artemio Yagkum Tsejem, Sicto Orechuela, Teófilo Baitag, Lazardo Asagkay, Delia Atamain, Liceth Yagkum, Nugkum, Saúl Pape Niumpataim, Pablo Sejekam Asangkay, Marcmino Agkuach, Julián Uwarai, Isaac Sabio, Silvanio Carlos, Emilio Dawau, Segundo Sabio, Gilberto Sabio, Narciso Sabio, Virgilio Anag, Agustín Nankabai, Escequias Carlos, Santiago Yuub, Wasum Vuracusa, Ernesto Sejekam, Vícto Sejekam Kukush, Eugenio Segekam, Ernesto Esash

Where are they? They are not in the lists of injured or arrested.

The accounts of the burning corpses and helicopters throwing corpses into the jungle are now more credible.

We must not let the genocidal murder Alan Garcia continue, with the madness of bribery.

Some links

* http://www.flickr.com/photos/34173573@N08/with/3599476632/
* http://picasaweb.google.es/spacio.libre.peru/FotosMasacreEnBagua
* http://www.flickr.com/photos/34173573@N08/show/with/3599464188/
* http://www.informalisimo.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=1&fun…
* http://catapa.be/en/north-peru-killings
* http://www.telurica.com/videopost/genocidio-en-bagua-peru-por-que
* http://connuestroperu.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6483…

Ollanda Humala: "Peru needs to change the relationship between the state and capital"

2009-07-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Interview by Gorka Castillo

The image projected by Ollanta Humala (born in Lima, 1963) is that of a reflective and qualified politician. At the leadership of the Nationalist Party, he is preparing to face the challenge of reaching the presidency in 2011. His aim is to transform the current economic system in Peru.

What caused the outbreak of violence in the June 5 in the Amazon?

The violent confrontation between two visions of the country, on the one hand the government and certain sectors of the economy believe that the ownership of the Amazon territories does not belong to the communities because they lack education and investment capacity. Moreover, they argue that we need to reinforce the export matrix to create value, that is to say, the sale of natural resources. Against this view are the original peoples who claim ownership of a territory in which they have lived for longer than the existence of the Republic itself.

What is your position on this crisis?

We believe that the correct way to create value in this area is through a process of industrialization of the country that serves development, not only to growth. In the Amazon, investment must respect the property of the communities living there, it must respect the environment and allow the participation of residents as partners.

But the indigenous worldview is complex. In Ecuador, President Correa also has problems.

We have been working here a long time to form an electoral alliance to govern. That is, we realize that we need the cooperation of social forces to carry out a process of nationalist transformation of the country.

Where would you begin?

We are talking about the re-foundation of the republic and a constituent assembly to re-define relations between the State and capital.

Do you think the dismissal of Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, and the appointment of Javier Velásquez will help defuse the tense situation?

It is a change of faces but not policy. A change in the cabinet resolves a crisis in government but not a crisis of the regime. The system of representation has collapsed in Peru because many people in the interior of the country do not trust their representatives because they are constantly swindled.

The protests are directed against the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the U.S. that Alan García promised not to sign as a candidate, but ended up signing.

Garcia also promised to rescue the democratic Constitution of 1979 and we continue with the [Constitution of Alberto] Fujimori, but with the aggravating circumstance that Garcia has expanded it with 99 legislative decrees, where it is left clear that the State claims no ownership of natural resources. Peru today grants the right to land to companies that extract gas, oil, gold and silver, ie to multinational capital that has the technology to do so. With the sale of these lands the communities go.

But the image Peru presents is that of a successful social-democratic model.

The model of Alan García has nothing social democratic about it. Growth is artificial because the benefits belong to the transnationals. The province of Cajamarca has the highest GDP of the country because it's Yanacocha mine, which provides half of gold production in Peru. However, it is the department with the third highest level of poverty.

How can Spain contribute to improve this situation?

For me, the efforts of the Spanish Government to be present in all forums in Latin America are positive. What I believe is lacking to complement this is to look at what its multinational companies are doing, that the concept of corporate social responsibility be applied. In this area there is plenty to do - above all, because if this improves, the relationship between communities and companies will be very smooth.

Should the current Constitution, drawn up by Fujimori, be abolished immediately?

Of course! It is a criminal Constitution, it was written by Vladimiro Montesinos, General Hermosa Ríos and Fujimori himself, all of them now in prison. But it also broadens an ultra-liberal model that has entrenched the subsidising of capital by the State, which is exhausted.

However, the daughter of Fujimori, today a legislator, heads the polls in popularity.

That’s true, although it is decreasing. But I would not rely on surveys two years out from presidential elections and we do not know who is paying for them.

You were also accused of violating human rights.

It is curious that before entering politics, I was a respected citizen, but once the presidential campaign started, there were eleven criminal proceedings on my back. I did not flee the country like Fujimori, nor like Alan Garcia. I decided to confront them, and came out acquitted of all them.

Alan García maintains the Act of Subjection, a pact signed between Fujimori and the armed forces to consecrate impunity for the military. The Army has so much power?

In 2001 I rose up against Fujimori for this act and denounced the high military officials for supporting this document. Generals who signed this aberration are still active.

Do you think that with the way things are in Latin America with the coup in Honduras that they will permit you to reach the presidency?

I realize that if we had a pro-system discourse, we would not have much trouble. I reaffirm my brotherhood with the processes of transformation that are occurring in Latin America. But the case of Honduras is creating an unfortunate precedent that could enshrine that the simple proposal of a constituent assembly can be a valid reason for a coup d’etat.

In Honduras the days pass and everything stays the same.

Exactly, and as long as there are politicians who call for arbitrators they will be validating an irregular situation. My question is: Will the U.S. administration take action to be consistent with their words?

Translated by Kiraz Janicke, republished from Spanish daily, Público

Justice for Santiago Manuin- OPEN LETTER TO ALAN GARCÍA

2009-07-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

APRODEH – Peruvian Association for Human Rights

Dr. Alan García Pérez
President of the Republic of Peru

Through this letter, the citizens of the world, and Peruvians, who subscribe below, write to you to say that due to the disproportionate and violent police raid to evict the Indigenous peoples who were protesting in the town of Bagua, Amazonas, Santiago Manuin Valera,52 year-old Awajun indigenous leader, who at the time of the shooting was disarmed and calling for peace, was seriously injured.

Santiago Manuin, chief of the Apus of the five Cuencas de Maria de Nieva, is one of the most important leaders of the Aguaruna-Huambisa communities. A pacifist, a founder of the Jesuit Social Center SAIPE, he was also President of the Aguaruna-Huambisa Council (CAH) and a member of the struggle committee for the respect for indigenous peoples of the Province of Condorcanqui - Amazonas. Has been recognized internationally for his commitment to the environment and human rights.

On June 5, Santiago Manuin received 8 bullets from an AKM rifle all over his body. As a result of the disproportionate use of force by DINOES troops, the Awajun leader was taken to the Las Mercedes de Chiclayo hospital.

Despite this, last June 13, Judge of the First Criminal Court of Utcubamba, Francisco Miranda Caramutti ordered the search, location, capture and drive [through court order] No. 0610-09-1 of Santiago Manuin, for his responsibility in the clash in "The Devil's Curve", which killed dozens of people, including police and indigenous people. Given the trajectory of Manuin, it is surprising and offensive that they try to assign to him responsibility for the unfortunate death of the police.

In recent weeks, some authorities have pressed for this pacifist indigenous leader to be discharged [from hospital] and sent to jail, even though his health is delicate and requires medical attention. Manuin has 8 bullet holes in his body and a severe infection. As a result of the bullets, his colon is separated from his body and requires a prolonged and intense treatment. He is also diabetic, which complicates the healing of his wounds and requires further surgery. At the moment the doctors in the hospital have indicated that Manuin should not be discharged until he is fully restored.

In addition to the case of Santiago Manuin, there are other cases of leaders who face criminal proceedings, ongoing investigations and are subject to judicial prosecution, in an attempt to hold them, materially and intellectually responsible for various acts of violence. These include Alberto Pizango Chota, Saul Puerta Peña, deer Puerta Peña, Antazú Teresita Lopez, Marcial Mudarra Taki, Daysi Fasabi Zapata, Walter Kategari Iratsimery, Milton Silva, among other leaders, even though there are no valid elements that sustain the charges hanging over them.

In this regard, in the recent report on the events of Bagua and Utcubamba, the UN Special Rapporteur on the issue of Peoples, James Anaya, “reiterates his recommendation to revise the criminal charges against individuals and indigenous leaders, and urges the State to carefully justify future claims, given the special circumstances that arise in the alleged crimes and the need to create adequate conditions for dialogue.”

The Special Rapporteur also emphasized that “while recognizing the need to preserve public order and to investigate and punish those responsible for crimes and / or human rights violations, the resort to or use of the criminal proceedings should not be the ordinary way to deal with social unrest and protest, but should be applied as a last resort and should be limited strictly to the principle of urgent social necessity in a democratic society.”

We have no doubt that behind the arrest warrant against Santiago Manuin and other leaders, there are pressures that not only respond to a legal motivations, but also political motivations, which aim to criminalize social protest. Therefore, the citizens of the world, exercising our right and ethical duty to defend life and human rights against all types of abuse, ask through this open letter:

1.That investigations are initiated into the attempt on the life of Santiago Manuin Valera-ID 337600081, 52 years of age, and that the perpetrators and intellectual authors be punished.

2. That this Awajun leader be economically compensated, that an independent medical examination be carried out and that the State guarantees his safety and full recovery, assuming the costs of medical care for injuries suffered.

3. An end to the judicial harassment against Santiago Manuin, as well as other social leaders and effectively a change of the arrest order for a court appearance.

We reiterate our belief in the innocence of Santiago Manuin, to who we express all our solidarity.

To sign on to this statement email: justiciaparasantiago@aprodeh.org.pe
In the case of individuals, include the following information:
1) Name and Surname
2) Passport number
3) Country

In the case of organisations, please indicate:
1) Name of the organization
2) Country

You can also visit the following link:
http://www.presidencia.gob.pe/cartas_presidente.asp

And insert the following text:
JUSTICIA PARA SANTIAGO MANUIN
El dirigente indígena Santiago Manuin recibió 8 impactos de bala, el 5 de junio, cuando intentaba frenar la violencia en Bagua. Hoy, el Poder Judicial ha ordenado su detención. Los derechos de nuestros hermanos de la amazonía deben ser respetados y sus demandas, escuchadas.
Ver Carta: www.aprodeh.org.pe/casomanuin.html

[JUSTICE FOR SANTIAGO MANUIN]
[The indigenous leader Santiago Manuin received 8 bullet wounds, on June 5, while trying to curb violence in Bagua. Today, the judiciary has ordered his arrest. The rights of our brothers in the Amazon must be respected and their demands heard.]
See open letter: www.aprodeh.org.pe/casomanuin.html

Please also send a copy to: justiciaparasantiago@aprodeh.org.pe

Peru's 'Cold War' Against Indigenous Peoples

2009-07-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

Kristina Aiello

The recent conflict in the Peruvian Amazon is only the most violent symptom of an ongoing cold war being waged by President Alan García and his ruling Aprista party against indigenous groups. Besides a racist propaganda campaign and violent repression, the government has tried highly suspect legal mechanisms to disarticulate indigenous power.

Government propaganda is aimed at pushing a free market economic development model with a strong focus on trade and natural resource exploitation. García has issued a series of decrees required by the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement (FTA) to open up the Amazon to exploration and exploitation of its natural resources. A recent study shows García's initiative projects to concession off blocs covering up to 72 percent of Peru's Amazon to oil and gas companies.

In the process, the García administration has placed its free market ideology on a collision course with collective indigenous land and natural resource rights, which are protected under international law. But the plan backfired amid the government's response to opposition and its brutal repression of indigenous protestors. A recent poll found that 92 percent of Peruvians support the indigenous cause against the Amazon decrees.

The most despised of García's decrees were repealed. But the government has nonetheless continued a low-intensity conflict against Peru's indigenous groups. For García, a central tactic has involved trying to associate indigenous groups with Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. In a recent statement, clearly alluding to his left-leaning rivals, García said, "Peru is living a cold war against foreign leaders."

But even before the violence broke out in the Amazon, the real cold war was the one being waged by García against Peru's indigenous peoples. The battle in the Amazon was the violent culmination of months of government harassment and low-intensity conflict. Despite stirring up intense opposition, García seems intent on pushing forward with his unpopular agenda.

The Propaganda War

Even prior to the formal implementation of the FTA with the United States last February, García was already laying down the foundation for his cold war. In October 2007, he penned an opinion piece titled "El syndrome del perro del hortelano," or the syndrome of the barnyard dog, for the Lima-based daily El Comercio. The title compares those advocating for the protection of the Amazon’s resources to a barnyard dog growling over food that it does not eat but will not let others have. Besides insinuating a racist comparison between indigenous peoples and dogs, García blamed his opponents – singling out indigenous – for standing in the way of Peru’s development via foreign capital.

Since Peru's congress ratified the FTA, García has twice faced off against Amazon indigenous groups over the natural resources in their territories. On both occasions – in August 2008 and the recent uprising in June – García's decrees sparked large public protests principally led by the Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (Aidesep), Peru’s largest national organization of Amazonian indigenous communities. The President responded to both protests by suspending constitutional guarantees in the restive provinces and the mass deployment of security forces to the regions.

García also made statements intended to frighten Peruvians who have only recently begun to recover from twenty years of political violence. He evoked images of dangerous armed insurgents in an attempt to paint indigenous protests as part of a larger plot to destabilize the country. He resorted to the language of Peru's brutal civil war in which 75,000 people lost their lives by absurdly blaming the protests on "international communism."

A police general even blamed indigenous protestors for firing on a helicopter, an act that in reality occurred hundreds of miles of away in an incident with drug-funded Shining Path guerrillas, according to Ideele Magazine. The deliberate confusion of the two events was a clear attempt to draw correlations between the indigenous protests and the armed group that terrorized Peru for so many years.

'The Communist Threat'

The García administration made outlandish accusations that the main opposition party and the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments were behind the protests. And in an apparent attempt to weaken political opposition, one government-aligned leader of the Congressional Ethics Committee stated her intention to investigate whether sufficient evidence existed to take action against opposition legislators with ties to Alberto Pizango, Aidesep's President. The indigenous leader was recently forced to flee Peru after the government filed sedition and rebellion charges against him for the violence in Bagua, which was the epicenter of the most recent mobilizations.

García has portrayed the protests as part of a communist plot initiated by Venezuela and Bolivia, but he has publicly admitted to having no evidence for the accusation. Prime Minister Yehude Simon, who has been a key figure of the government's propaganda campaign, echoed the baseless charges. (Amid public pressure, Simon has since been replaced.) For Simon, it was all part of a vast conspiracy in which Bolivia and Venezuela were trying to weaken Peru's hydrocarbons industry in an effort to boost their own.

García has backed these accusations with actions. His administration recently launched an investigation into Aidesep by the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI). The President modified APCI’s authority through a much-criticized 2006 statute that greatly enhanced governmental controls over the operations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This is the second time Aidesep is being investigated by the APCI.

The Legal Machinations

APCI’s mandate includes monitoring NGO projects and activities to ensure that they are in line with the government's own development goals – in the case of the García administration, free trade and the exploitation of natural resources. As part of this process, the agency requires NGOs receiving international funding and certain state benefits to register with the agency. The law also introduced new enforcement measures that allowed the agency to fine NGOs and even revoke their legal status, barring them from receiving outside funds for non-compliance with ACPI registration and government development directives. In a September 2007 opinion, a Peruvian high court declared parts of the law unconstitutional, but many of the stipulations introduced by García remain.

The timing of the investigations and statements made by APCI officials indicate strong political motivations. The first APCI investigation was launched in August 2008 during intense negotiations between indigenous protestors and the government. At that time, APCI executive director Carlos Pando advised NGOs to abstain from involving themselves in social conflicts because that went against the nature of their work. He expressed being concerned about the influence that certain NGOs had over indigenous communities by providing them with false information that often led them to protest government actions. He also warned them that these activities could lead to the cancellation of NGO's legal status. By the end of August, however, Congress repealed the controversial decrees and the APCI investigation concluded without result.

The second investigation was announced in May 2009 in the middle of the 60-day standoff in the Amazon. Its announcement sparked widespread condemnation by human rights groups angered by its apparent arbitrariness. Critics of the move noted that APCI was strictly barred from using its fiscal authority to threaten the daily workings of an NGO. They also asserted that the second APCI investigation appeared to violate governmental assurances of objectivity made during an October 2008 thematic hearing on the subject held at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C.

At the same time, the administration was trying to portray indigenous peoples as a threat to the country’s national security, García again labeled indigenous protesters as simple people who failed to understand the true purpose of the decrees opening up the jungle for resource extraction. He asserted that contrary to harming indigenous lands, the decrees were designed to actually protect the Amazon from coca producers, contamination from illegal mining and illegal logging. These assertions were repeated in proclamations published by Peruvian embassies abroad, likely in an attempt to quell the huge global recrimination of his government’s actions.

Local Media Complicity

The national Peruvian media, often accused of representing the interests of the politically and economically powerful, eagerly supported the racist stereotyping of indigenous peoples. Indigenous were routinely portrayed as uneducated or ill prepared and therefore not qualified to participate in any national debate over the future of their country.

A particularly egregious example was a front-page photo of indigenous congresswoman Hilaria Supa, a representative from Cuzco, that appeared in the April 17, 2009, edition of the Peruvian daily El Correo. The photo, published in the middle of the Spring protests, shows a close-up of her handwritten notes that were obviously presented to ridicule the native Quechua speaking congresswoman for her Spanish writing abilities.

The accompanying articles insinuated that congresswoman Supa’s limited Spanish skills were evidence of her lack of preparation for high office, something she only achieved, said the newspaper, because of racial politics. The articles attacking Supa’s credibility did not stop there. They also referenced her previous stands against the García administration’s aggressive free trade policies as examples of her “poor” work as a congresswoman. García echoed these same sentiments when he referred to indigenous protesters as "second-class citizens" who dared to block Peru’s progress.

García's Utter Failure

Despite all his efforts, García appears to have lost yet another battle in this long cold war against indigenous groups. Once again, the Peruvian Congress has decided to repeal the controversial Amazon decrees – an action García now states he supports in the name of national unity. But the cold war continues and could possibly intensify into open battle, as happened the last time the government provoked the indigenous to protest.

In late June, a congressional committee approved a bill that amends the APCI statute to again allow for broad governmental regulation of NGOs. The new bill allows for the agency to regulate funding from private foreign sources. The law also expressly prohibits NGOs from making any kind of statement that could incite violence – an incredibly broad standard that could be used to criminalize NGOs as well as impose limits on their right to the freedom of expression and association.

Rolando Souza, a congressional ally of disgraced and jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, used the Bagua violence as an example of why the government should monitor the foreign financing of local groups. Congressman Souza singled out Aidesep as the principle reason for the legislative action. Still, those making such arguments have not presented a shred of evidence to support the claim of any foreign involvement.

Meanwhile, a June poll found that García's approval rating has sunk to a meager 21 percent. Broad sections of Peruvian society continue to take to the streets in protest of the García administration’s policies. In Cuzco campesinos recently declared a general strike to protest the granting of mining concessions totaling 70 percent of their province. Protestors were also demanding the enactment of a new Water Resources Law that declares water a national resource with its usage regulated by the state. Again, the government sent in troops to remove the protestors, resulting in the death of a campesino.

The government also continues to face the repercussions of the events that occurred in Bagua. On July 10, the Peruvian Ombusdman's Office announced its investigation into the disappearance of Lewis Wassum, a member of an Amazon indigenous community. Wassum was last seen in a photograph published June 8 that showed him being led into a police station in handcuffs. The government and indigenous leaders have also agreed to initiate an investigation into the events in Bagua.

The question remains as to whether or not García will continue his cold war against the country's indigenous peoples. But one thing seems certain: His administration has refused to back down on its goal of extracting resources from the Amazon, whatever the consequences. Less than two weeks after the Bagua violence, which some rights groups have called the Amazon's Tiananmen, the government gave a green light to a French oil company to begin drilling for oil in an area of the Amazon inhabited by uncontacted indigenous groups.

Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which advocates for indigenous rights worldwide, said, "Anyone who hoped that the dreadful violence of the past few weeks might have made Peru’s government act with a bit more sensitivity towards the indigenous people of the Amazon will be really dismayed at this news."

Corry continued, "The timing couldn’t be worse – the government is trying to present a more friendly image in public, but as far as the oil companies are concerned, it looks like business as usual."

Kristina Aiello is a NACLA Research Associate and a human rights advocate.

Republished from NACLA.

The political tepidity of Alan García Pérez when faced with Honduras

2009-07-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

Raul Weiner

In 1989, the United States conducted a violent occupation of the territory of Panama to arrest by military means the commander general of the Armed Forces of that country, Manuel Antonio Noriega accused of drug trafficking, after having had a long collaboration with the same character for years. In Lima, the young president Alan García Pérez planted a Panamanian flag in the courtyard of the Palace of Government and entoned the anthem of that country, in protest against the imperialist intervention. And on the initiative of the Peruvian government a coalition of Latin American governments was born, known as the Rio Group.

Twenty years later, anolder, fatter and more rightwing Garcia, has experienced once again from the Palace, an act equivalent to the brutal rape of democratic principles and political intervention of a sovereign country. This time it was the military coup in Honduras, carried out with special treachery by the oligarchy in combination with the Latin American right wing and state sectors and the policy of United States. But now the president does not say anything on this very serious event.

The Peruvian government has simply regretted the interruption of democracy in Honduras and expressed their hope for a speedy return to normalcy, and has carefully avoided directly demanding the restitution of President Zelaya in his position and an end to the coup government. This tepidity has contrasted with the positions taken by other governments expressed in the OAS and the UN, where condemnation of the coup has been unanimous and decisive. None of the Peruvian spokespeople in international forums have stood out for their speech.

Meanwhile, APRA leaders who have spoken verbally or in writing to the subject, have been less ambiguous by placing the emphasis on developments on the supposed Chavista responsibility in the political crisis in Honduras, which has dragged the President Zelaya to confront sectors which are defined as "democratic" but do not hesitate to organize and carry out a coup. Formally the government deplores that the constitution has been violated, politically the ruling party blames the victim and third countries, for what happened, and the most loquacious president on the planet has lost his tongue specifically on this topic.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke. Republished from Raul Weiner's Blog