A coalition of 13 grassroots organizations in Boston delivered a letter today to the Peruvian Consulate to raise concerns over the military and police aggression against a peaceful protest of indigenous people in Bagua, Peru. On June 5th, police forces opened fire on a protest of more than thirty thousand people, representing several indigenous groups, who had held a 57-day strike to contest the enactment of new laws that would open indigenous lands to the exploitation of their natural resources.
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Member of the Mining Impacted Communities Association of Peru. Photo: Ben Powless, Indybay
Photo: Sergio Reyes
Photo: Sergio Reyes
Photo: Sergio Reyes
Official numbers given by the Peruvian government of those killed were 10 indigenous people and 20 policemen, but people from the ground have reported as many as 80 indigenous people dead and 100 wounded, many others missing. Real numbers are hard to estimate because police forces, according to at least two witnesses, were allegedly burning corpses and throwing them to the Marañón River from helicopters.
"I think it really shows this backward way of this entire civilization, and that we are depending on going and stealing resources from other people," said Pete from Rising Tide Boston. "We have resource colonies all over the world. From the palm oil plantations of Indonesia, to the coal fuels of Appalachia, to the oil fields of Iraq."
For months indigenous people have been mobilizing against the Free Trade Agreement signed between the US and Peru, and in particular, the enactment of presidential decrees that superseded communal ownership of ancestral lands near the Amazon. However, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, set up by the International Labor Organization and ratified by Peru in 1994, obliges Peru to consult indigenous people in cases in which the State or a company plans to exploit the natural resources in their lands.
Susan Redlich, an environmental planner who has worked on the restoration of water resources in Massachusetts was present at the protest in Boston and said that the exploitation of already delicate lands and forests in the Amazon region should be a concern for all.
"Once an area has been degraded it is very difficult in terms of what you need to do to bring it back to its natural functions. There's often pollution involved and change in the landscape. Huge investments are needed to bring it back to a state where its ecosystem is functioning again," she said.
Susan has been to Peru many times as part of a water development project. She said much could be learned from the indigenous people.
"First of all, they know so much about the way resources, the habitats, the water, and the elements, how all those work because they have been observing them for generations. There's so much to learn from them. And also their self-sufficiency, their lifestyle in keeping with sustaining their resources," she said, "and then their bravery, their commitment to the earth.
In Boston, protesters delivered their message to the Peruvian Consulate asking for an investigation on the deaths in Bagua and that the right of indigenous for self-determination in their ancestral land is respected. Solidarity protests have been reported in several countries and in particular, from hundreds of indigenous groups across the Americas which in the past year have coalesced into an effective grassroots movement.
Their efforts paid up.
On Tuesday, under local and international pressure the Peruvian Congress repealed two of the most controversial decrees, 1064 and 1090. Prime Minister Yehude Simon said that he would step down in the next few weeks over the violence and opposed remarks by President Alan Garcia that indigenous peoples are "second class citizens" who are "uninformed" about the benefits of industrial development in the region. The derogation of those two laws is indeed a victory, but the indigenous people have promised to continue the pressure until an investigation on the massacre is carried out.
