Karl Cosser
Although the struggle for the Amazon has been very hard for the indigenous community it is a great example of what can be achieved with great effort and solidarity. The June 11 demonstration in solidarity with the Amazon prompted the mobilzation of many various unions, students and even a left wing Christian political organisation who believe that Jesus was the first revolutionary. There was also of course a significant contingent of people from Amazon regions. Contingents converged from different streets to form one big demonstration of approximately 15.000 people at the dos de mayo plaza where the May day rally was held a few weeks before.
There was a lot of energy and passion in the rally as we marched the streets of Lima with banners and chanting "la selva no se vende", (the jungle is not for sale). Banners and graffiti also stated "APRA asesino" and "Garcia genocida", rightly placing the responsibility for the Bagua massacre on the Garcia government. The demonstration reached a fever pitch as it approached the police blockade several blocks away from congress and the plaza de mayo where the presidential palace is, with an increased intensity of percussion from the Amazon indigenous contingent.
Aggressively the police repressed the right to protest against the government when they opened fire with rubber bullets, tear gas bombs, batons and shields. The police response was indiscriminate; protesters aged as old as 65-70 were affected by the tear gas and had great difficulty breathing. In defense some demonstrators responded with sticks and stones, which the police threw back at the protesters. One Molotov cocktail was thrown. Most people were forced to run away from the police possibly in fear of similar aggression to that in Bagua.
However, once the tear gas blew away many came back to the police barricades to continue the protest in solidarity with many other demonstrations and blockades occurring all over Peru against the decrees 1090 and 1064, "the laws of the jungle" allowing international corporations to exploit the Amazon for resources.
Two days after the national strike there was a "pro democracy rally" in support of the Garcia government, which was allowed to begin three blocks ahead of where the police attacked protesters on June 11. The pro-rightwing rally was escorted by police and passed congress with no repression at all. The hypocrisy of promoting democracy in support of a brutally repressive government is ridiculously obvious with those supporting Garcia given greater freedom to mobilise while those against the government are attacked.
The private media in Peru are supporting the government and police reports of nine civilians killed in Bagua and 11 police killed, however, it has also been independently reported that there are many people still missing and over 150 civilians injured, of which most were from bullet wounds. One survivor of the Bagua massacre was treated for eight bullet wounds as he and many others were shot at while running away from the police.
The current Peruvian government is not a great example of democracy when those responsible for the death and injuries of many civilians are writing the reports and the private media are swallowing it up as it represents their own economic interests.
However, in he face of a repressive neo-liberal government, through relentless strikes, protests and blockades the 1090 and 1064 decrees were repealed demonstrating to the rest of the world what can be achieved through people power, especially for indigenous struggles such as in Australia. Prime Minister Yehude Simon has stated that he will be resigning over the Amazon conflict The confidence of recent gains is becoming apparent as protests and blockades continue throughout the country and there is ongoing solidarity between unions, campesinos and students to get rid of the rest of the ministers.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Censure motion against Peruvian Cabinet Chief defeated due to suspension of Nationalist Party legislators.
Kiraz Janicke
The Peruvian congress today rejected a censure motion against the Cabinet Chief Yehude Simon and Interior Minister, Mercedes Cabanillas, in relation to their handling of indigenous protests which lead to the Bagua massacre on June 5. Although the measure had majority support it did not count with the required number of votes to make it binding.
The censure motion against Simon counted with 56 votes in favor, 32 against and 11 abstentions.Similarly the censure motion against the interior minister received 55 votes in favor, 35 against and nine abstentions. According to parliamentary regulations, the motions required a majority of more than half the number of full members of congress, which is 61 votes.
The majority of opposition parties from Lourdes Flores’s rightwing National Unity party, the supporters of former president Alberto Fujimori, the Parliamentary Allianceand the Popular Bloc to the left-wing Nationalist Party voted in favor of the censure motion, which placed political responsibility for the clashes at Bagua, which left scores dead and hundreds disappeared, on Simon and Cabanillas.
President Garcia’s APRA party voted against the censure motion and parliamentarians from the Union for Peru (UPP) abstained, with the exception of legislator Isaac Serna who voted in favor of the motion.
However, seven Nationalist Party members, who were suspended for protesting Garcia’s unconstitutional decrees, which would have opened up vast swathes of indigenous peoples land in the Amazon for exploitation, were not permitted to exercise their right to vote. With the votes of these legislators the censure motion would have been passed.
The Peruvian congress today rejected a censure motion against the Cabinet Chief Yehude Simon and Interior Minister, Mercedes Cabanillas, in relation to their handling of indigenous protests which lead to the Bagua massacre on June 5. Although the measure had majority support it did not count with the required number of votes to make it binding.
The censure motion against Simon counted with 56 votes in favor, 32 against and 11 abstentions.Similarly the censure motion against the interior minister received 55 votes in favor, 35 against and nine abstentions. According to parliamentary regulations, the motions required a majority of more than half the number of full members of congress, which is 61 votes.
The majority of opposition parties from Lourdes Flores’s rightwing National Unity party, the supporters of former president Alberto Fujimori, the Parliamentary Allianceand the Popular Bloc to the left-wing Nationalist Party voted in favor of the censure motion, which placed political responsibility for the clashes at Bagua, which left scores dead and hundreds disappeared, on Simon and Cabanillas.
President Garcia’s APRA party voted against the censure motion and parliamentarians from the Union for Peru (UPP) abstained, with the exception of legislator Isaac Serna who voted in favor of the motion.
However, seven Nationalist Party members, who were suspended for protesting Garcia’s unconstitutional decrees, which would have opened up vast swathes of indigenous peoples land in the Amazon for exploitation, were not permitted to exercise their right to vote. With the votes of these legislators the censure motion would have been passed.
‘What kind of reconciliation are you taking about, Mr Garcia?’
Mario Huamán Rivera *
President Garcia mentioned in his most recent message, the need for reconciliation to overcome these difficult moments, a consequence of his unhappy decision to repress the Amazon peoples in Bagua, that caused the tragic deaths of indigenous peoples and police. This discourse is a new demonstration that a double discourse continues functioning in the APRA regime.
While Garcia speaks of reconciliation, Alberto Pizango remains in exile in Nicaragua and seven parliamentarians from the National Party remain suspended for demanding to the end that [decrees 1090 and 1064] be repealed. To this is added the campaign to deiscredit diverse organisations such as the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGPT), the closure of Radio La Voz de Bagua, the attempt to liquidate NGO’s and cut democratic liberties.
On the other side, Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas mock the victims of the tragedy and continue denying their responsibility.
Therefore we can’t speak of reconciliation, when actions like those described persist. Garcia, his ministers and the APRA parliamentary bench are only trying to “cool the atmosphere” to once again repress the social sectors and impose the neoliberal framework.
Nothing has changed for the government, which only seeks to gain time to continue deteriorating democracy in benefit of the rich as always. The supposed denunciations made about links between social sectors and unions with violent sectors corroborate and are a signal that a new repression against the opposition is being prepared, once the new ‘puppets’ installed by Simon entertain and silence the country.
However, bad luck for Garcia, because the country changed on June 5 [the day of the Bagua Massacre]. Dispersion is converting into articulation and unity in action of the various social movements, which despite cultural differences aim to construct a country with equality and development
For these reasons, on July 8 we will hold a national day of struggle to demand the repeal of the rest of the legislative decrees that damage the interests of the country, in solidarity with the Andean and Amazonian peoples, the union is conflict (such as Doe Run), for the solution of the regional problems and to reject the campaign to discredit the people and their organizations.
* Mario Huamán Rivera is the secretary general of the CGPT
Translated by Kiraz Janicke, originally published in La Primera 26 June 2009
Monday, 29 June 2009
Peru: Blood for rubber, blood for oil
David T. Rowlands
At the turn of the twentieth century, global demand for rubber from the upper reaches of the Amazon (encompassing Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian territory) was at its height.
Capitalising on this profitable opportunity, the agents of an international consortium known as the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company enslaved virtually the entire local indigenous population to maximise output and reduce labour costs.
Over a decade, tens of thousands of indigenous men, women and children were worked to death. When eyewitness reports of the company’s brutal methods reached the outside world, public opinion eventually forced the British government in 1910 to convene a formal inquiry in the Peruvian rubber port of Iquitos.
The investigation found that the company “forced the Indians to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration; that they give them nothing to eat; ... that they rob them their crops; their women, and their children to satisfy their voracity, lasciviousness and the avarice of themselves and their employees, for they live on the Indians food, keep harems and concubines, and sell these people at wholesale and retail in Iquitos; that they flog them inhumanly, until their bones are visible; that they give them no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten by maggots, or to serve as food for the chiefs’ dogs; that they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms and legs; that they torture them by means of fire, of water, and by tying them up, crucified, head down; that they burn and destroy their houses and crops; that they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; that they have the old folks killed when they can work no longer; and finally, that to amuse themselves, to practice shooting…they discharge their weapons at men, women, and children, or in preference to this, they souse them with kerosene and set fire to them to enjoy their desperate agony.”
Entire tribes were exterminated. The horror remains a collective memory in the upper Amazon.
Atrocities such as the Amazonian genocide were a product of rapidly expanding capitalism. The voracious appetite of the European and North American industrial powers for the natural resources of the global South led to the systematic displacement and massacre of expendable “surplus” populations in Asia, Australasia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
The parallels between then and now are striking. In the present era, the forces of capitalist globalisation still hold the most vulnerable populations of the “developing” world in their exploitative grip.
This is nothing short of a global war of conquest, waged by capital against the dispossessed inhabitants of resource-rich regions in the global South.
The war has many fronts. One of them remains the upper Amazon, where the international hunger for hardwood timber and fossil fuel has led to another devastating boom.
Mindful of their history, the people of Utcubamba in northern Peru recently mounted a gallant stand against the international oil and gas companies who plan to desecrate their land and contaminate their rivers.
The government of President Alan Garcia passed a number of decrees opening up the Amazon to greater exploitation by oil and gas giants — sparking the uprising.
For millennia, the rainforest realm in Utcubamba has been safeguarded by the Aguaruna people and other tribal groups. The beauty of Utcubamba and the bond between the land and its people means nothing to the Garcia, elected in 2006 with the financial backing of the US.
Garcia returned the favour by enacting a US-Peru “free trade agreement” in 2007. The inhabitants of regions such as Utcubamba, long ear-marked for fossil fuel extraction, were denied a say in the “developmental” future of their lands.
As far as the government in Lima was concerned, the Amazon now belonged to the various international consortia to whom vast blocks of territory have been assigned. Unfortunately for these powerful interests, the indigenous people had other ideas.
The people of Utcubamba responded by blocking a section of highway near Bagua Grande (the capital of Utcumbamba) in an attempt to defend themselves and their land.
On June 5, the Peruvian police initiated a pitched battle in an attempt to end the blockade. At least 34 people were killed with many more disappeared. The total number of protesters killed remains unclear. Several police also died in the battle.
Using the June 5 clash as a pretext, the Garcia administration authorised a full-scale campaign of repression in Utcubamba to serve as a warning to other potential dissidents. Hundreds, at the least, are reported to have been summarily executed.
Despite the high toll, indigenous resistance achieved an important victory. A June 22 Counterpunch.org article by Laura Carlsen said: “Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies ...
“Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.”
In the upper Amazon, blood for rubber has given way to blood for oil. The region’s indigenous people have shown they will not accept it.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
At the turn of the twentieth century, global demand for rubber from the upper reaches of the Amazon (encompassing Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian territory) was at its height.
Capitalising on this profitable opportunity, the agents of an international consortium known as the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company enslaved virtually the entire local indigenous population to maximise output and reduce labour costs.
Over a decade, tens of thousands of indigenous men, women and children were worked to death. When eyewitness reports of the company’s brutal methods reached the outside world, public opinion eventually forced the British government in 1910 to convene a formal inquiry in the Peruvian rubber port of Iquitos.
The investigation found that the company “forced the Indians to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration; that they give them nothing to eat; ... that they rob them their crops; their women, and their children to satisfy their voracity, lasciviousness and the avarice of themselves and their employees, for they live on the Indians food, keep harems and concubines, and sell these people at wholesale and retail in Iquitos; that they flog them inhumanly, until their bones are visible; that they give them no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten by maggots, or to serve as food for the chiefs’ dogs; that they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms and legs; that they torture them by means of fire, of water, and by tying them up, crucified, head down; that they burn and destroy their houses and crops; that they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; that they have the old folks killed when they can work no longer; and finally, that to amuse themselves, to practice shooting…they discharge their weapons at men, women, and children, or in preference to this, they souse them with kerosene and set fire to them to enjoy their desperate agony.”
Entire tribes were exterminated. The horror remains a collective memory in the upper Amazon.
Atrocities such as the Amazonian genocide were a product of rapidly expanding capitalism. The voracious appetite of the European and North American industrial powers for the natural resources of the global South led to the systematic displacement and massacre of expendable “surplus” populations in Asia, Australasia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
The parallels between then and now are striking. In the present era, the forces of capitalist globalisation still hold the most vulnerable populations of the “developing” world in their exploitative grip.
This is nothing short of a global war of conquest, waged by capital against the dispossessed inhabitants of resource-rich regions in the global South.
The war has many fronts. One of them remains the upper Amazon, where the international hunger for hardwood timber and fossil fuel has led to another devastating boom.
Mindful of their history, the people of Utcubamba in northern Peru recently mounted a gallant stand against the international oil and gas companies who plan to desecrate their land and contaminate their rivers.
The government of President Alan Garcia passed a number of decrees opening up the Amazon to greater exploitation by oil and gas giants — sparking the uprising.
For millennia, the rainforest realm in Utcubamba has been safeguarded by the Aguaruna people and other tribal groups. The beauty of Utcubamba and the bond between the land and its people means nothing to the Garcia, elected in 2006 with the financial backing of the US.
Garcia returned the favour by enacting a US-Peru “free trade agreement” in 2007. The inhabitants of regions such as Utcubamba, long ear-marked for fossil fuel extraction, were denied a say in the “developmental” future of their lands.
As far as the government in Lima was concerned, the Amazon now belonged to the various international consortia to whom vast blocks of territory have been assigned. Unfortunately for these powerful interests, the indigenous people had other ideas.
The people of Utcubamba responded by blocking a section of highway near Bagua Grande (the capital of Utcumbamba) in an attempt to defend themselves and their land.
On June 5, the Peruvian police initiated a pitched battle in an attempt to end the blockade. At least 34 people were killed with many more disappeared. The total number of protesters killed remains unclear. Several police also died in the battle.
Using the June 5 clash as a pretext, the Garcia administration authorised a full-scale campaign of repression in Utcubamba to serve as a warning to other potential dissidents. Hundreds, at the least, are reported to have been summarily executed.
Despite the high toll, indigenous resistance achieved an important victory. A June 22 Counterpunch.org article by Laura Carlsen said: “Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies ...
“Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.”
In the upper Amazon, blood for rubber has given way to blood for oil. The region’s indigenous people have shown they will not accept it.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
US Drug War Money Funded Peru Indigenous Massacre
Kristin Bricker
US Government Trained the Police Department that Participated in the Operation and Invested "Heavily" in the Killer Helicopters
On June 5, the Peruvian National Police (PNP) massacred up to fifty unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous people in Bagua who had blockaded roads in protest of land reforms related to a recently implemented US-Peru free trade agreement. Witnesses report that the PNP shot live ammunition from the ground, rooftops, and police helicopters. Anywhere between 61-400 people are reported missing following the attack.
Narco News has discovered that US drug war money is all over the massacre. The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the PNP in "riot control."
The Peruvian National Police
The Peruvian National Police is a militarized police force and Peru's only national police force, meaning that Peru lacks a civilian federal police force. For this reason, the militarized PNP carries out regular policing functions in Peru, such as maintaining the peace and providing public security. Furthermore, "Counternarcotics operations in Peru are implemented primarily through the Ministry of the Interior by the Peruvian National Police," according to the US Government Accounting Office (GAO, now known as the Government Accountability Office). For this reason, the PNP receives a significant chunk of US drug war aid to Peru.
Basic details of the Bagua massacre such as exactly which police departments participated and how many indigenous protesters died remain unavailable two weeks after the massacre. Peru's La Primera newspaper--the only news outlet to provide information on specific police departments that participated in the massacre--writes, "The police operation was carried out by about 600 armed police from the Dinoes [Special Operations Department] and from the Anti-Drugs Department (DINANDRO), who shot head-on at protesters' bodies." Dinoes and DINANDRO are two forces within the Peruvian National Police.
Of particular interest is the participation of the anti-drugs police force, known as DINANDRO in its Spanish abbreviation. Between 2002 and 2007, the United States spent over $79 million on the PNP. 2002-2004 funds were for "training and field exercises to enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct basic road and riverine exercises, as well as to provide security for eradication teams in outlying areas. These enhanced law enforcement efforts will require additional vehicles, communications, field gear, emergency/safety reaction gear, and drug detector canines." In 2007, the US government's funding for the DIRANDRO was expanded to "enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct advanced road interdiction, riot control, greater security for eradication teams, and interdiction in hard-core areas." [emphasis added]. In 2007 the US government also debuted the first of at least four "Pre-Police Schools" for students that have completed secondary school education (that is, these schools are an alternative to high school). The "Pre-Police Schools" are free and designed to recruit and train young people to be members of the PNP.
Counterinsurgency
As Peru became further militarized under the pretense of the drug war, the US State Department justified its 2008 budget request for Peru by noting, "The major change in the FY 2008 police program will be the requirement to support a much-enlarged presence of the Peruvian National Police anti-drug police (DIRANDRO) in the coca growing valleys." While the region in which the massacre occurred is not by any means a major coca-growing region, it is certainly on the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) map (PDF file--see page 192).
The US government has a propensity to fund "anti-narcotics" operations in rebellious territory, which is then used, either overtly (note the DIRANDRO's US-provided training in riot control) or covertly, to fund counterinsurgency operations. The mere mention of the region on the UNODC's coca cultivation map combined with the presence of indigenous resistance organizations practically assures a military-police build-up in the region. In fact, a 1991 GAO report stated, "The [Peruvian] executive branch policy is to use counternarcotics aid against drug traffickers and insurgent groups linked to the drug trade....we believe the policy is reasonable." The GAO report goes on to say:
"Of the 702 police trained for counternarcotics purposes since 1989, only about 56 per cent were from units having a counternarcotics mission. The remaining 44 per cent were from police units having a primary mission of counterinsurgency. These units include the Sinchis and the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales [Dinoes, who also participated in the massacre]....In December 1990, the State Department instructed the Embassy that it could not train certain types of units, including the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales, because they were not directly involved in counternarcotics missions. Despite this notification, the Narcotics Affairs Section provided training to 32 personnel who should not have been trained; these 32 made up almost 14 per cent of the total number of police trained after the instruction was issued. According to section officials, providing special operations forces with training would help US efforts to solicit their support for future operations.... Although police from the Sinchis and the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales may perform some counternarcotics operations, their primary mission is recognized to be counterinsurgency."
While the GAO report is from the Fujimori era, the right wing presidents that followed him have done little to rectify past wrongs. One of the more blatant examples of this fact is Peru's amnesty law that protects dirty war criminals. Furthermore, current Peruvian President Alan Garcia is currently serving his second non-consecutive term; he served his first term in 1985-1990, when Peru's dirty war was in full swing. The Garcia administration has always been characterized by massacres in the face of social unrest: the current president presided over the Accomarca massacre in August 1985 (47-74 dead peasants), the Cayara massacre in May 1988 (about thirty dead and more disappeared), and various prison riots in which over 200 inmates were executed.
Unfortunately, Garcia's massacre of the Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples at the Bagua blockade is only the latest in a series. Garcia himself seems entirely unrepentant regarding the latest massacre, reportedly calling the indigenous organizations that participated in the Bagua blockade "ignorant" and relying on typical racist arguments to downplay the indigenous movement. Implying that indigenous people are incapable of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions regarding their well-being, he told press that the indigenous organizations were being manipulated by foreign leftist forces.
Helicopters
Witnesses to the Bagua massacre claim that police fired tear gas and live ammunition from police helicopters. The helicopters, Russian-made Mi-17s, were not purchased with US dollars, but US drug war money has maintained them for years.
As part of the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, a George H.W. Bush program that spawned the infamous Plan Colombia, the US government undertook the task of upgrading Peru's fleet of police aircraft. Peru's La Republica reported that the US government aimed to upgrade the PNP's entire fleet. The US began providing funds for Peru's aircraft under the auspices of counternarcotics efforts in 1988. In 2004, the US government provided "funding for pilots, aircrews, and support personnel for 15 USG-owned UH-1H helicopters and 14 Peruvian Mi-17 helicopters," the latter being the same type of helicopter used in the Bagua massacre. Given that US foreign aid can be delayed for several years before it arrives in the recipient country, it is within the realm of possibility that the US government funded the pilots and crew that were in the Mi-17s that were allegedly used to murder indigenous Peruvians in Bagua.
In 2007, the State Department mentioned the Mi-17s amongst other PNP aircraft in its budget justification, writing that "FY 2007 funds will also cover fuel, maintenance, hangars and warehousing, aircraft rental when needed, and operational support for PNP Aviation (DIRAVPOL) personnel." A year later, the State Department wrote, "FY 2008 will continue heavy investment of funds in training and career development of PNP aviation personnel in addition to budgeting for increased flight hours."
In addition to funding Peru's existing Mi-17 helicopters, the United States has donated about 24 armed Huey II (UH-II) helicopters to the PNP. Hueys were not used in the Bagua massacre, but the massacre should make the US government think twice about donating combat helicopters with multiple guns and rocket launchers mounted all over the aircraft. The donated Huey II's came with the M16 armament system, which includes a combination of M6 flexible quad M60C 7.62mm machine guns and two seven-tube 2.75 inch MK-40 rocket launchers.
Republished from Narco News
US Government Trained the Police Department that Participated in the Operation and Invested "Heavily" in the Killer Helicopters
On June 5, the Peruvian National Police (PNP) massacred up to fifty unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous people in Bagua who had blockaded roads in protest of land reforms related to a recently implemented US-Peru free trade agreement. Witnesses report that the PNP shot live ammunition from the ground, rooftops, and police helicopters. Anywhere between 61-400 people are reported missing following the attack.
Narco News has discovered that US drug war money is all over the massacre. The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the PNP in "riot control."
The Peruvian National Police
The Peruvian National Police is a militarized police force and Peru's only national police force, meaning that Peru lacks a civilian federal police force. For this reason, the militarized PNP carries out regular policing functions in Peru, such as maintaining the peace and providing public security. Furthermore, "Counternarcotics operations in Peru are implemented primarily through the Ministry of the Interior by the Peruvian National Police," according to the US Government Accounting Office (GAO, now known as the Government Accountability Office). For this reason, the PNP receives a significant chunk of US drug war aid to Peru.
Basic details of the Bagua massacre such as exactly which police departments participated and how many indigenous protesters died remain unavailable two weeks after the massacre. Peru's La Primera newspaper--the only news outlet to provide information on specific police departments that participated in the massacre--writes, "The police operation was carried out by about 600 armed police from the Dinoes [Special Operations Department] and from the Anti-Drugs Department (DINANDRO), who shot head-on at protesters' bodies." Dinoes and DINANDRO are two forces within the Peruvian National Police.
Of particular interest is the participation of the anti-drugs police force, known as DINANDRO in its Spanish abbreviation. Between 2002 and 2007, the United States spent over $79 million on the PNP. 2002-2004 funds were for "training and field exercises to enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct basic road and riverine exercises, as well as to provide security for eradication teams in outlying areas. These enhanced law enforcement efforts will require additional vehicles, communications, field gear, emergency/safety reaction gear, and drug detector canines." In 2007, the US government's funding for the DIRANDRO was expanded to "enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct advanced road interdiction, riot control, greater security for eradication teams, and interdiction in hard-core areas." [emphasis added]. In 2007 the US government also debuted the first of at least four "Pre-Police Schools" for students that have completed secondary school education (that is, these schools are an alternative to high school). The "Pre-Police Schools" are free and designed to recruit and train young people to be members of the PNP.
Counterinsurgency
As Peru became further militarized under the pretense of the drug war, the US State Department justified its 2008 budget request for Peru by noting, "The major change in the FY 2008 police program will be the requirement to support a much-enlarged presence of the Peruvian National Police anti-drug police (DIRANDRO) in the coca growing valleys." While the region in which the massacre occurred is not by any means a major coca-growing region, it is certainly on the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) map (PDF file--see page 192).
The US government has a propensity to fund "anti-narcotics" operations in rebellious territory, which is then used, either overtly (note the DIRANDRO's US-provided training in riot control) or covertly, to fund counterinsurgency operations. The mere mention of the region on the UNODC's coca cultivation map combined with the presence of indigenous resistance organizations practically assures a military-police build-up in the region. In fact, a 1991 GAO report stated, "The [Peruvian] executive branch policy is to use counternarcotics aid against drug traffickers and insurgent groups linked to the drug trade....we believe the policy is reasonable." The GAO report goes on to say:
"Of the 702 police trained for counternarcotics purposes since 1989, only about 56 per cent were from units having a counternarcotics mission. The remaining 44 per cent were from police units having a primary mission of counterinsurgency. These units include the Sinchis and the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales [Dinoes, who also participated in the massacre]....In December 1990, the State Department instructed the Embassy that it could not train certain types of units, including the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales, because they were not directly involved in counternarcotics missions. Despite this notification, the Narcotics Affairs Section provided training to 32 personnel who should not have been trained; these 32 made up almost 14 per cent of the total number of police trained after the instruction was issued. According to section officials, providing special operations forces with training would help US efforts to solicit their support for future operations.... Although police from the Sinchis and the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales may perform some counternarcotics operations, their primary mission is recognized to be counterinsurgency."
While the GAO report is from the Fujimori era, the right wing presidents that followed him have done little to rectify past wrongs. One of the more blatant examples of this fact is Peru's amnesty law that protects dirty war criminals. Furthermore, current Peruvian President Alan Garcia is currently serving his second non-consecutive term; he served his first term in 1985-1990, when Peru's dirty war was in full swing. The Garcia administration has always been characterized by massacres in the face of social unrest: the current president presided over the Accomarca massacre in August 1985 (47-74 dead peasants), the Cayara massacre in May 1988 (about thirty dead and more disappeared), and various prison riots in which over 200 inmates were executed.
Unfortunately, Garcia's massacre of the Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples at the Bagua blockade is only the latest in a series. Garcia himself seems entirely unrepentant regarding the latest massacre, reportedly calling the indigenous organizations that participated in the Bagua blockade "ignorant" and relying on typical racist arguments to downplay the indigenous movement. Implying that indigenous people are incapable of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions regarding their well-being, he told press that the indigenous organizations were being manipulated by foreign leftist forces.
Helicopters
Witnesses to the Bagua massacre claim that police fired tear gas and live ammunition from police helicopters. The helicopters, Russian-made Mi-17s, were not purchased with US dollars, but US drug war money has maintained them for years.
As part of the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, a George H.W. Bush program that spawned the infamous Plan Colombia, the US government undertook the task of upgrading Peru's fleet of police aircraft. Peru's La Republica reported that the US government aimed to upgrade the PNP's entire fleet. The US began providing funds for Peru's aircraft under the auspices of counternarcotics efforts in 1988. In 2004, the US government provided "funding for pilots, aircrews, and support personnel for 15 USG-owned UH-1H helicopters and 14 Peruvian Mi-17 helicopters," the latter being the same type of helicopter used in the Bagua massacre. Given that US foreign aid can be delayed for several years before it arrives in the recipient country, it is within the realm of possibility that the US government funded the pilots and crew that were in the Mi-17s that were allegedly used to murder indigenous Peruvians in Bagua.
In 2007, the State Department mentioned the Mi-17s amongst other PNP aircraft in its budget justification, writing that "FY 2007 funds will also cover fuel, maintenance, hangars and warehousing, aircraft rental when needed, and operational support for PNP Aviation (DIRAVPOL) personnel." A year later, the State Department wrote, "FY 2008 will continue heavy investment of funds in training and career development of PNP aviation personnel in addition to budgeting for increased flight hours."
In addition to funding Peru's existing Mi-17 helicopters, the United States has donated about 24 armed Huey II (UH-II) helicopters to the PNP. Hueys were not used in the Bagua massacre, but the massacre should make the US government think twice about donating combat helicopters with multiple guns and rocket launchers mounted all over the aircraft. The donated Huey II's came with the M16 armament system, which includes a combination of M6 flexible quad M60C 7.62mm machine guns and two seven-tube 2.75 inch MK-40 rocket launchers.
Republished from Narco News
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Peru: discontent rages on
Kiraz Janicke
Social unrest intensified this week in Peru, with the blockade of an important highway by mine workers, as well as strikes and demonstrations in the southern regions of Cusco and Andahuaylas. The demands of the protestors ranged from wage rises for school teachers, repealing the Water Resources Law and revoking mining concessions to fixing roads and blocking the construction of the Salca-Pucará hydroelectric plant.
The protests occurred in the wake of massive mobilizations by indigenous communities in the Amazon that forced the Peruvian government to back-down and revoke legislation linked to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement, that would have opened up vast swathes of indigenous lands to transnational oil and gas, mining and logging companies.
However, the indigenous victory did not come without bloodshed as President Alan Garcia’s administration sent police and troops on June 5 against demonstrators to break up road blockades near Bagua in the Amazon, leaving at least 34 dead and scores disappeared.
Garcia’s brutal response to the protests sparked national outrage and the latest Ipsos Apoyo poll shows his approval rating has dropped 9 percentage points to 21 percent since the Bagua massacre.
Garcia's Cabinet chief Yehude Simon offered to resign over the incident however, Garcia has refused to accept his resignation although discontent with the government continues to rage on around the country.
The financial collapse of the U.S.-owned Doe Run Peru mining company prompted more than 3000 workers to blockade the main highway linking Lima with the country’s interior on June 22 demanding that ongoing labor issues be resolved.
Union leaders representing workers at Doe Run’s smelter in La Oroya, located 185 kilometers east of Lima, agreed at a meeting on June 20 to declare an indefinite strike and block roads.
The secretary-general of the metalworkers union representing La Oroya workers, Roberto Guzman, has called for government intervention to reactivate the plant and save jobs.
Meanwhile thousands of campesinos from Canchis and other provinces converged in Cusco on June 22 threatening to take over the local airport and demanding the repeal of the Water Resources Law, which would facilitate privitisation of water, as well as the cancellation of mining concessions and the construction of the Salca-Pucará hydroelectric plant.
In Andahuaylas thousands of campesinos that have been on indefinite strike since June 11 have blockaded roads demanding that the Ayacucho-Andahuaylas-Abancay highway is fixed and are also calling for the repeal of the Water Resources Law.
More than 5000 coca-growers have also threatened to blockade highways in Tingo María, Aucayacu, Tocache, Progreso and Tarapoto from June 29.
The announcement was made by coca-grower leaders in Alto Huallaga, Rosa Obregón and Miguel Martínez, after the government re-initiated eradication of coca crops, which indigenous communities use as part of there tradional way of life.
Obregón said that the government had signed accords with the coca-growers to suspend eradication programs while integral development plans for the Huallaga were being discussed, but has violated the accords.
If the government doesn’t listen to their demands highways in Pucallpa, Puerto Inca, and Huánuco would also be blockaded he said.
The General Confederation of Peruvian Workers has also called a national day of protest involving regional strikes and street mobilizations for July 8 in solidarity with the protests in the south of the country and an end to persecution of social movement leaders in particular those from indigenous communities.
Although the government has agreed to dialogue with the protesters, it has also authorized the mobilization of the Armed Forces in the Apurímac, Cusco and Junín regions – zones with strong social conflict - for ten days.
While it lifted the state of emergency in Bagua (decreed on May 9), it remains in place in the cities of Quimbiri and La Convención, in Cusco.
“Don't threaten too much. Don't think that the state or the government is weak,” Simon told protesters before agreeing to hold talks with them on Tuesday.
However, Simon who has been described as a “political cadaver” faces questioning in congress over the Bagua massacre, with both the left Nationalist Party and rightwing supporters of former president Alberto Fujimori calling for a censure motion and his resignation.
Garcia’s hold on congress is also tenuous, as his party, APRA, lacks a majority, and up to now he has relied on support from other right-wing parties such as Lourdes Flores’ National Unity, and Fujimori supporters to push through his neoliberal free-trade agenda.
Garcia cannot run for re-election in 2011 and in the context of economic contraction and rising social discontent he will find it increasingly difficult to implement his neoliberal agenda as indigenous communities, workers, campesinos and the poor organize to defend their interests against those of rapacious transnational capital.
Social unrest intensified this week in Peru, with the blockade of an important highway by mine workers, as well as strikes and demonstrations in the southern regions of Cusco and Andahuaylas. The demands of the protestors ranged from wage rises for school teachers, repealing the Water Resources Law and revoking mining concessions to fixing roads and blocking the construction of the Salca-Pucará hydroelectric plant.
The protests occurred in the wake of massive mobilizations by indigenous communities in the Amazon that forced the Peruvian government to back-down and revoke legislation linked to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement, that would have opened up vast swathes of indigenous lands to transnational oil and gas, mining and logging companies.
However, the indigenous victory did not come without bloodshed as President Alan Garcia’s administration sent police and troops on June 5 against demonstrators to break up road blockades near Bagua in the Amazon, leaving at least 34 dead and scores disappeared.
Garcia’s brutal response to the protests sparked national outrage and the latest Ipsos Apoyo poll shows his approval rating has dropped 9 percentage points to 21 percent since the Bagua massacre.
Garcia's Cabinet chief Yehude Simon offered to resign over the incident however, Garcia has refused to accept his resignation although discontent with the government continues to rage on around the country.
The financial collapse of the U.S.-owned Doe Run Peru mining company prompted more than 3000 workers to blockade the main highway linking Lima with the country’s interior on June 22 demanding that ongoing labor issues be resolved.
Union leaders representing workers at Doe Run’s smelter in La Oroya, located 185 kilometers east of Lima, agreed at a meeting on June 20 to declare an indefinite strike and block roads.
The secretary-general of the metalworkers union representing La Oroya workers, Roberto Guzman, has called for government intervention to reactivate the plant and save jobs.
Meanwhile thousands of campesinos from Canchis and other provinces converged in Cusco on June 22 threatening to take over the local airport and demanding the repeal of the Water Resources Law, which would facilitate privitisation of water, as well as the cancellation of mining concessions and the construction of the Salca-Pucará hydroelectric plant.
In Andahuaylas thousands of campesinos that have been on indefinite strike since June 11 have blockaded roads demanding that the Ayacucho-Andahuaylas-Abancay highway is fixed and are also calling for the repeal of the Water Resources Law.
More than 5000 coca-growers have also threatened to blockade highways in Tingo María, Aucayacu, Tocache, Progreso and Tarapoto from June 29.
The announcement was made by coca-grower leaders in Alto Huallaga, Rosa Obregón and Miguel Martínez, after the government re-initiated eradication of coca crops, which indigenous communities use as part of there tradional way of life.
Obregón said that the government had signed accords with the coca-growers to suspend eradication programs while integral development plans for the Huallaga were being discussed, but has violated the accords.
If the government doesn’t listen to their demands highways in Pucallpa, Puerto Inca, and Huánuco would also be blockaded he said.
The General Confederation of Peruvian Workers has also called a national day of protest involving regional strikes and street mobilizations for July 8 in solidarity with the protests in the south of the country and an end to persecution of social movement leaders in particular those from indigenous communities.
Although the government has agreed to dialogue with the protesters, it has also authorized the mobilization of the Armed Forces in the Apurímac, Cusco and Junín regions – zones with strong social conflict - for ten days.
While it lifted the state of emergency in Bagua (decreed on May 9), it remains in place in the cities of Quimbiri and La Convención, in Cusco.
“Don't threaten too much. Don't think that the state or the government is weak,” Simon told protesters before agreeing to hold talks with them on Tuesday.
However, Simon who has been described as a “political cadaver” faces questioning in congress over the Bagua massacre, with both the left Nationalist Party and rightwing supporters of former president Alberto Fujimori calling for a censure motion and his resignation.
Garcia’s hold on congress is also tenuous, as his party, APRA, lacks a majority, and up to now he has relied on support from other right-wing parties such as Lourdes Flores’ National Unity, and Fujimori supporters to push through his neoliberal free-trade agenda.
Garcia cannot run for re-election in 2011 and in the context of economic contraction and rising social discontent he will find it increasingly difficult to implement his neoliberal agenda as indigenous communities, workers, campesinos and the poor organize to defend their interests against those of rapacious transnational capital.
Peru: Blood Flows In The Amazon
James Petras
In early June, Peruvian President Alan García, an ally of US President Barack Obama, ordered armored personnel carriers, helicopter gun-ships and hundreds of heavily armed troops to assault and disperse a peaceful, legal protest organized by members of Peru’s Amazonian indigenous communities protesting the entry of foreign multinational mining companies on their traditional homelands.
Dozens of Indians were killed or are missing, scores have been injured and arrested and a number of Peruvian police, held hostage by the indigenous protestors were killed in the assault. President García declared martial law in the region in order to enforce his unilateral and unconstitutional fiat granting of mining exploitation rights to foreign companies, which infringed on the integrity of traditional Amazonian indigenous communal lands.
Alan García is no stranger to government-sponsored massacres. In June 1986, he ordered the military to bomb and shell prisons in the capital holding many hundreds of political prisoners protesting prison conditions – resulting in over 400 known victims. Later obscure mass graves revealed dozens more. This notorious massacre took place while García was hosting a gathering of the so-called ‘Socialist’ International in Lima. His political party, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) a member of the ‘International’, was embarrassed by the public display of its ‘national-socialist’ proclivities, before hundreds of European Social Democrat functionaries. Charged with misappropriation of government funds and leaving office with an inflation rate of almost 8,000% in 1990, he agreed to support Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori in exchange for amnesty. When Fujimori imposed a dictatorship in 1992, García went into self-imposed exile in Colombia and later, France. He returned in 2001 when the statute of limitations on his corruption charges had expired and Fujimori was forced to resign amidst charges of running death squads and spying on his critics. García won the 2006 Presidential elections in a run-off against the pro-Indian nationalist candidate and former Army officer, Ollanta Humala, thanks to financial and media backing by Lima’s rightwing, ethnic European oligarchs and US overseas ‘AID’ agencies.
Back in power, García left no doubt about his political and economic agenda. In October 2007 he announced his strategy of placing foreign multi-national mining companies at the center of his economic ‘development’ program, while justifying the brutal displacement of small producers from communal lands and indigenous villages in the name of ‘modernization’.
García pushed through congressional legislation in line with the US-promoted ‘Free Trade Agreement of the Americas’ or ALCA. Peru was one of only three Latin American nations to support the US proposal. He opened Peru to the unprecedented plunder of its resources, labor, land and markets by the multinationals. In late 2007, García began to award huge tracts of traditional indigenous lands in the Amazon region for exploitation by foreign mining and energy multinationals. This was in violation of a 1969 International Labor Organization-brokered agreement obligating the Peruvian government to consult and negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants over exploitation of their lands and rivers. Under his ‘open door’ policy, the mining sector of the economy expanded rapidly and made huge profits from the record-high world commodity prices and the growing Asian (Chinese) demand for raw materials. The multinational corporations were attracted by Peru’s low corporate taxes and royalty payments and virtually free access to water and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates. The enforcement of environmental regulations was suspended in these ecologically fragile regions, leading to wide-spread contamination of the rivers, ground water, air and soil in the surrounding indigenous communities. Poisons from mining operations led to massive fish kills and rendered the water unfit for drinking. The operations decimated the tropical forests, undermining the livelihood of tens of thousands of villagers engaged in traditional artisan work and subsistence forest gathering and agricultural activities.
The profits of the mining bonanza go primarily to the overseas companies. The García regime distributes state revenues to his supporters among the financial and real estate speculators, luxury goods importers and political cronies in Lima’s enclosed upscale, heavily guarded neighborhoods and exclusive country-clubs. As the profit margins of the multinationals reached an incredible 50% and government revenues exceeded $1 billion US dollars, the indigenous communities lacked paved roads, safe water, basic health services and schools. Worse still, they experienced a rapid deterioration of their everyday lives as the influx of mining capital led to increased prices for basic food and medicine. Even the World Bank in its Annual Report for 2008 and the editors of the Financial Times of London urged the García regime to address the growing discontent and crisis among the indigenous communities. Delegations from the indigenous communities had traveled to Lima to try to establish a dialogue with the President in order to address the degradation of their lands and communities. The delegates were met with closed doors. García maintained that ‘progress and modernity come from the big investments by the multinationals…,(rather than) the poor peasants who haven’t a centavo to invest.’ He interpreted the appeals for peaceful dialogue as a sign of weakness among the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon and increased his grants of exploitation concessions to foreign MNCs even deeper into the Amazon. He cut off virtually all possibility for dialogue and compromise with the Indian communities.
The Amazonian Indian communities responded by forming the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP). They held public protests for over 7 weeks culminating in the blocking of two transnational highways. This enraged García, who referred to the protestors as ‘savages and barbarians’ and sent police and military units to suppress the mass action. What García failed to consider was the fact that a significant proportion of indigenous men in these villages had served as rmy conscripts, who fought in the 1995 war against Ecuador while others had been trained in local self-defense community organizations. These combat veterans were not intimidated by state terror and their resistance to the initial police attacks resulted in both police and Indian casualties. García then declared ‘war on the savages’ sending a heavy military force with helicopters and armored troops with orders to ‘shoot to kill’. AIDESEP activists report over one hundred deaths among the indigenous protestors and their families: Indians were murdered in the streets, in their homes and workplaces. The remains of many victims are believed to have been dumped in the ravines and rivers.
Conclusion
The Obama regime has predictably not issued a single word of concern or protest in the face of one of the worst massacres of Peruvian civilians in this decade – perpetrated by one of America’s closest remaining allies in Latin America. García, taking his talking points from the US Ambassador, accused Venezuela and Bolivia of having instigated the Indian ‘uprising’, quoting a letter of support from Bolivia’s President Evo Morales sent to an intercontinental conference of Indian communities held in Lima in May as ‘proof’. Martial law was declared and the entire Amazon region of Peru is being militarized. Meetings are banned and family members are forbidden from searching for their missing relatives.
Throughout Latin America, all the major Indian organizations have expressed their solidarity with the Peruvian indigenous movements. Within Peru, mass social movements, trade unions and human rights groups have organized a general strike on June 11. Fearing the spread of mass protests, El Commercio, the conservative Lima daily, cautioned García to adopt some conciliatory measures to avoid a generalized urban uprising. A one-day truce was declared on June 10, but the Indian organizations refused to end their blockade of the highways unless the García Government rescinds its illegal land grant decrees.
In the meantime, a strange silence hangs over the White House. Our usually garrulous President Obama, so adept at reciting platitudes about diversity and tolerance and praising peace and justice, cannot find a single phrase in his prepared script condemning the massacre of scores of indigenous inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon. When egregious violations of human rights are committed in Latin America by a US backed client-President following Washington’s formula of ‘free trade’, deregulation of environmental protections and hostility toward anti-imperialist countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Obama favors complicity over condemnation.
Republished from Countercurrents.org
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