[Marxism] Amazon protest

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21681

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21683

and


The New York Times
June 12, 2009
Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru’s Amazon
By SIMON ROMERO

IQUITOS, Peru — Faced with a simmering crisis over dozens of deaths in 
the quelling of indigenous protests last week, Peru’s Congress this week 
suspended the decrees that had set off the protests over plans to open 
large parts of the Peruvian Amazon to investment. Senior officials said 
they hoped this would calm nerves and ease the way for oil drillers and 
loggers to pursue their projects.

But instead, indigenous groups are digging in for a protracted fight, 
revealing an increasingly well-organized movement that could be a 
tinderbox for President Alan García. The movement appears to be fueled 
by a deep popular resistance to the government’s policies, which focused 
on luring foreign investment, while parts of the Peruvian Amazon have 
been left behind.

The broadening influence of the indigenous movement was on display 
Thursday in a general strike that drew thousands of protesters here to 
the streets of Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and to 
cities and towns elsewhere in jungle areas. Protests over Mr. García’s 
handling of the violence in the northern Bagua Province last Friday also 
took place in highland regions like Puno, near the Bolivian border, and 
in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.

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

The protesters’ immediate threat — to cut the supply of oil and natural 
gas to Lima, the capital — seems to have subsided, with protesters 
partly withdrawing from their occupation of oil installations in the 
jungle. But as anger festers, indigenous leaders here said they could 
easily try to shut down energy installations again to exert pressure on 
Mr. García.

Another wave of protests appears likely because indigenous groups are 
demanding that the decrees be repealed and not just suspended. The 
decrees would open large jungle areas to investment and allow companies 
to bypass indigenous groups to obtain permits for petroleum exploration, 
logging and building hydroelectric dams. A stopgap attempt to halt 
earlier indigenous protests in the Amazon last August failed to prevent 
them from being reinitiated more forcefully in April.

The authorities said that nine civilians were killed in the clashes that 
took place last Friday on a remote highway in Bagua. But witnesses and 
relatives of missing protesters contend that the authorities are 
covering up details of the episode, and that more Indians died. 
Twenty-four police officers were killed on the highway and at an oil 
installation.

Indigenous representatives say at least 25 civilians, and perhaps more, 
may have been killed, and some witnesses say that security forces dumped 
the bodies of protesters into a nearby river. At least three Indians who 
were wounded said they had been shot by police officers as they waited 
to talk with the authorities.

“The government is trying to clean the blood off its hands by hiding the 
truth,” said Andrés Huaynacari Etsam, 21, an Awajún student here who 
said that five of his relatives had been killed on June 5 and that three 
were missing.

Senior government officials repudiate such claims. “There is a game of 
political interests taking place in which some are trying to exaggerate 
the losses of life for their own gain,” said Foreign Minister José 
García Belaunde.

He said the ultimate aim of the protesters was to prevent Peru from 
carrying out a trade agreement with the United States, because one of 
the most contentious of the decrees that were suspended on Thursday 
would bring Peru’s rules for investment in jungle areas into line with 
the trade agreement.

“But,” Mr. García Belaunde insisted, “the agreement is not in danger.”

Still, the government’s initial response to the violence seems to have 
heightened resentment. A television commercial by the Interior 
Ministrycontained graphic images of the bodies of some police officers 
who were killed while being held hostage by protesters. The commercial 
said that the killings were proof of the “ferocity and savagery” of 
indigenous activists, but an uproar over that depiction forced the 
government to try to withdraw the commercial.

The authorities are struggling to understand a movement that is 
crystallizing in the Peruvian Amazon among more than 50 indigenous 
groups. They include about 300,000 people, accounting for only about 1 
percent of Peru’s population, but they live in strategically important 
and resource-rich locations, which are scattered throughout jungle areas 
that account for nearly two-thirds of Peru’s territory.

So far, alliances have proved elusive between Indians in the Amazon and 
indigenous groups in highland areas, ruling out, for now, the kind of 
broad indigenous protest movements that helped oust governments in 
neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia earlier in the decade.

In contrast to some earlier efforts to organize indigenous groups, the 
leaders of this new movement are themselves indigenous, and not white or 
mestizo urban intellectuals. They are well organized and use a web of 
radio stations to exchange information across the jungle. After one 
prominent leader, Alberto Pizango, was granted asylum in Nicaragua this 
week, others quickly emerged to articulate demands.

“There has been nothing comparable in all my years here in terms of the 
growth of political consciousness among indigenous groups,” said the 
Rev. Joaquín García, 70, a priest from Spain who arrived in Iquitos 41 
years ago and directs the Center of Theological Studies of the Amazon, 
which focuses on indigenous issues.

“At issue now,” he said, “is what they decide to do with the newfound 
bargaining power in their hands.”

Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.

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