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
Showing posts with label mining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mining. Show all posts
Monday, 5 April 2010
Friday, 26 March 2010
The Militarization of the Peruvian Countryside
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.
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.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Peru: Suspension of Mining Operation Merely a Placebo
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
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
Peruvian State Protects Mining Company Instead of Citizens: Interview with Mario Tabra Guerrero
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
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
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Avatar is real: Pandora is located in Central and South America and Africa.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Peru: Violence Targets Anti-Mining Activists
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
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
Monday, 5 October 2009
Masked gunmen kill ten peasants in the south-east of Peru
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
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
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Peru: Protests against Gold Fields in Hualgayoc leave 5 people injured
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
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
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