The clamor of indigenous peoples for recognition of their ancestral lands resounded among the delegates of 195 countries at the climate summit taking place in the Peruvian capital. “I want my land…that’s where I live and eat, and it’s where my saintly grandparents lie,” Diana Ríos shouted with rage. […]
Plans are afoot to abolish a reserve for vulnerable indigenous peoples in Peru’s Amazon in order to exploit massive gas deposits and facilitate Christian evangelization, according to a report by Lima-based NGO Perú Equidad – Center for Public Policies and Human Rights. Established in 1990, what is now called the Kugapakori-Nahua-Nanti and Others’ Reserve (KNNOR), is officially intended to protect the lives and territories of indigenous peoples living in what Peruvian law calls “isolation” and “initial contact.”
The leading mining companies in Peru have brought a rash of lawsuits to fight an increase in the tax they pay to cover the costs of inspections and oversight of their potentially environmentally damaging activities.
When states act to facilitate the business of multinationals and leave communities unprotected, as with mining, those communities have no choice but to defend themselves by their own means–through self-defense organizations, mobilization of affected communities, or the creation of new ways to prevent dispossession. […]
The Peruvian Congress approved a packet of laws on July 3 which critics say subjects the country to neoliberal reforms that threaten to undermine environmental and labor protections and is a gift to the extractive industry. Despite the outcries and protests, the packet was approved with surprising ease.
The Bayóvar mining complex exported 3.7 million tons of phosphate concentrates in 2013, but its environmental impacts may jeopardize the local fishing industry. As mining expands, a vital estuary is left unprotected, while the local Defense Front says the Bayóvar contract needs to be reviewed.
The fight over the Conga mining project is one of Peru’s largest current social conflicts. Today, the local population continues resisting the imposition of one of Latin America`s largest gold mining projects – Minas Conga. The situation remains tense, and the resistance continues, but with an intensified sense of urgency because as the battles are won and lost, many feel that the conflict is nearing its conclusion.
Stopping the planned eradication in the VRAE and replacing it with an effective anti-drug trafficking deterrent is now one of the most important decisions to be made.
Oil and gas company Repsol is selling its stake in controversial oil operations in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon inhabited by indigenous people in ‘voluntary isolation’ (IPVI), just across the border from the ITT oil fields in Ecuador.
“They took us in trucks. We got in quite innocently and contentedly. But then we heard screams and I ran… The doors were padlocked. They carried me off in a stretcher, tied my feet and cut me,” said Micaela Flores, then a mother of seven from Anta province in the southern region of Cusco.
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