Last Friday a brutal clash occurred between Peruvian police attempting to open up a highway and the hundreds of Amazonian indigenous protesters that had been blocking the road for weeks. At least a dozen police and 9 protesters – though possibly many more – were killed during the protests; Saturday brought the discovery of another dozen dead police who had been held hostage by protesters. The protests, which have mobilized a number of different tribes throughout the vast Peruvian Amazon, are based on a series of decree laws issued by the government in the first half of 2008. The protesters perceive that these laws will violate their ancestral territorial rights by opening their lands to resource exploitation. In addition, they were not consulted – as is necessary under international agreements to which Peru is a party, including International Labor Organization Convention 169 – prior to the enactment of the decrees. Thus, their stance was that the laws must be rescinded entirely. The government refused to cede, arguing that the laws were necessary for Peru’s modernization and that the violence was entirely the fault of the protesters. President Alan Garcia has been particularly aggressive in declaring that the violence was the result of a conspiracy carried out by malign forces, both international and domestic, that who do not wish to see Peru advance.
No proof has been offered for what appear to be these absurd accusations. Moreover, while the government is absolutely correct that the killings of the police are unacceptable and must be investigated and perpetrators held accountable, the government’s own attitudes and actions have been determinant during the course of the conflict. President Garcia’s statements, which repeatedly state that the indigenous are being manipulated by outsiders, treat them like sheep and deny them all agency. The government also seems to lack any context – regardless of the content of these specific decrees, the government should be able to understand why a group of people who have been excluded from policy decisions regarding their ancestral lands for hundreds of years might have justifiable suspicions regarding their future. The protesters have undoubtedly made serious mistakes, but the government’s attitude has represented the worst facets of a state that is prone to Lima-centric political fiddling while the jungle (or mountains, or anywhere else outside the capital) burns. Below is the translation of a column from Tuesday’s La Republica in which the well-known, centrist Peruvian political scientist Martin Tanaka provides some of that context.
The State, Organizer of the Protest
Martin Tanaka, La Republica (Lima), 6/9/09
Social organization in the Amazon, like the country as whole, has been marked in recent years by localism and fragmentation. It could be argued that the broad protest movement throughout the Amazon is the consequence of government action: the adoption of the DL [decree laws] without indigenous consultation created the perception that the indigenous way of life was at risk, triggered the memory of historical grievances and feelings of regional exclusion and distance from the state, and laid the foundations for a conflict in which the general identity and dignity of the Amazon was at stake. It also created a common demand (the repeal of the DL) and a single adversary, the central government, which must be addressed. AIDESEP ended up circumstantially channeling these demands, as it was the organization best positioned to lead the demands of the widely heterogeneous groups.
The demand for the repeal of the decrees is also the creation of the state. Since the protests of September of last year and until very recently the government gave signals that it would repeal the decrees in question (like 1090, which was declared unconstitutional by the [congressional] Constitutional Commission on May 20). It was only in recent weeks that the government took the position of defending the constitutionality of the decrees, and proposed a comprehensive revision of these decrees in the PCM [council of ministers].
Too late: the government created the image of having been “rocking” the indigenous peoples. This led to the radicalization of the protests. The violence unleashed as a result of attempting to clear the Fernando Belaunde roadway is also the creation of the state; many leaders in the area are reserve soldiers, former patrolmen and members of self-defense groups, ex-soldiers from Cenepa [ed.: a reference to the brief 1995 war between Ecuador and Peru]. The existence of these capabilities for mobilization explains why the resistance to police action has been so fierce.
The government’s mishandling of the whole situation can help one to understand the ease with which extremist speeches are propagated, irresponsible leaders are exalted, false information is taken as true (such as the information that speaks of the killing of tens or even hundreds of indigenous people), all of which results in the brutal assassination of policemen. Those who sympathize (and we do sympathize) which the demands of the indigenous population should be the first to say clearly that no protest, no matter how just it may be, that confronts a democratic government, however misguided it may be, justifies the murder of unarmed policemen.
The worst thing is that even today the government’s answer continues to create conditions for more protests and violence. The persecution of indigenous leaders, the talk of manipulation, ignorance, misinformation, and the presence of foreign interests only increase the anger and annoyance of the Amazonians. The president of the republic himself has made frankly irresponsible declarations. A path of relaxation, prudence, and dialogue such as that being promoted by the Ombudsman must be opened.
Photo Credit: Flickr user powless
