Peruvian Democracy Agonizes at the Devil's Turn: June 5th and June 17th, 2009—Same Actors, But a Very Different Script

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By Leon Portocarrero, Claudia Viale, Carlos Monge of RWI Latin America

	Protesters and police special forces clash in early June outside Bagua in Peru's Amazonas region. Photo: powless/Flickr

On June 16, 2009, citizen leaders and politicians gathered in Lima as a new process was announced for public dialogue on the development of the Amazon region. A new arrival in Lima would find it hard to imagine that the parties gathered and smiling for a photograph today were two weeks ago engaged in an all out confrontation that would lead to the death of at least 34 policemen and native activists, leave the country highly polarized and seriously damage the democratic regime.

June 5th, 2009 was the 55th day of a massive general strike by indigenous organizations all over the Peruvian Amazon basin. The groups were demanding that the National Congress repeal several decrees they held to be grave threats to the Amazon region and communities. Around 5:30 a.m. police and army forces attacked the Awajun Wambis natives blocking the Fernando Belaunde highway in a place known as Devil's Turn, near the provincial capital of Bagua, in the northeastern region of Amazonas. A few hours later, with army support, police also seized back the Pozo 6 oil pumping station that had been taken over by another Awajun Wambis group, who had in addition captured 38 police guards assigned to the station.

The results of this violence, according to official figures, include 24 policemen killed along with 10 indigenous activists. Shortly after the fighting, President Alan García, Prime Minister Yehude Simon and the APRA leadership in the Congress claimed that the natives, the leadership of the  Asociación Interétnica para el Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP)¹, and the political opposition were part of an international conspiracy against Peruvian development and Peruvian democracy. Other government actions such as National TV spots that denounced the killing of policemen and the general Attorney's office accusing the native leaders of insurgency and sedition suggested the prospect of a continuing open confrontation seemed likely.

Local accounts and independent analyses presented things quite differently: 24 policemen killed, most by natives enraged after the takeover of the Pozo 6 station, over 100 hundred activists and leaders killed,² and the exact number of dead and wounded still to be determined.³ They also highlighted that the indigenous movement had managed to regroup under new AIDESEP leader Lidia Rengifo, a shipibo leader who took on the role after Alberto Pizango went into exile, that the strike continued through the bloody confrontation and held until the government conceded defeat and Congress agreed to repeal the contested decrees⁴ and that public perception was the government handled the crisis very poorly and, therefore, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet should resign.⁵

On June 17, a group of indigenous leaders formally visited the National Congress in order to watch Prime Minister Simon present a measure repealing the decrees that the natives had protested and that the government had defended fiercely to the end.⁶ On the same day, President Garcia appeared on national TV and insisted that the Government's intentions had been to bring development and prosperity to the Amazon Region despite an international conspiracy marshaled against democracy and development. But Garcia also acknowledged that mistakes had been made and that a fresh start was needed, and formally called on Congress to repeal the decrees.

Two days earlier, Prime Minister Simon met with the Apus and native leaders from throughout the region, in the central Amazon city of San Ramon, and agreed to request from National Congress the repeal of the decrees challenged by AIDESEP.

Immediately afterward, President García announced that a National Coordinating Group for the Development of Amazon Peoples would be set up, with the participation of representatives of the Executive's office, Regional Presidents and Provincial Mayors of the Amazon regions and representatives of the Amazon Native communities.

While the Government pursued this dramatic change of course, its conservative allies in the Congress denounced Alan García for betraying a commitment to pro business and pro investment policies, and for giving in to the demands of activists he himself had been denouncing only the day before. AIDESEP, meanwhile, said that while it welcomed the new attitude of the government, it also wanted to make clear that repealing two decrees was far from enough, and demanded an end to the judicial and political persecution of its leaders, freedom for detained activists, and a comprehensive review of all decrees denounced by AIDESEP, among other things.

The events leading to the June 5th confrontation
The following is a summary of events leading up to the June 5th confrontation. Different analysts have produced summaries that are more or less similar in terms the chain of decisions and events that led to this tragedy. We have taken one produced and posted online by Ana María Vidal, a well respected lawyer and analyst.⁷

1. November 2007: President García publishes "El perro del hortelano," a set of three articles that ran in El Comercio daily newspaper where he clearly stated that indigenous and peasant communities and small land owners were an impediment to efficient use of natural resources.
2. December 12, 2007: President García requests from Congress extraordinary powers to legislate on matters relevant for the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
3. December 19, 2007: The Congress grants the powers requested.
4. June 28, 2008: The Executive publishes over 100 Legislative Decrees, many of them reaching way beyond FTA matters.
5. July 2008: AIDESEP denounces twelve of the legal decrees and calls for their repeal.
6. August – September 2008: AIDESEP launches a general strike demanding repeal of the decrees.
7. August 2008: Congress repeals DL 1015 and DL 1073 because they violate the Constitution, negotiates with AIDESEP for an end to the strike and announces that a Commission will be set up to assess the rest of the decrees.
8. December 2008: The congressional Commission in charge of assessing the decrees presents its report, but debate is postponed until February, due to lawmakers' vacations.
9. February 2009: No debate occurs in the Congress.
10. March 12, 2009: AIDESEP sends letters to the Congress and the Prime Minister reminding them of their promise to review the decrees and demanding the Commission's report be presented and debated.
11. April 9, 2009: Lacking any response, the AIDESEP local and regional leaders decide to re-launch the strike.
12. April 20, 2009: Prime Minister Yehude Simon and AIDESEP meet and an agreement is reached to set up a multi-stake-holder commission to revise the decrees, but later the Prime Minister says that the strike needs to be terminated first, something which AIDESEP refuses to do.
13. April 24, 2009: The President of the Congress announces that Congress will debate the report on the decrees, but that such debate needs to follow due process and cannot be rushed. President García remains silent, but meets with owner of Perenco, an oil company affected by the blockade of the rivers in Ucayali.
14. May 4, 2009: Marines break the blockade in Rio Ucayali, allowing Perenco transports to transport oil.
15. May 9, 2009: The Government imposes a State of Emergency in five regions.
16. May 11-13, 2009: Prime Minister Simon and AIDESEP leader Pizango meet again, but no agreement is reached.
17. May 15, 2009: AIDESEP declares that they will exercise their constitutional right to insurgency against dictatorial governments, but backs away from this position after meeting with the Beatriz Merino, head of the Ombudsman's Office.
18. May 19, 2009: The congressional Commission receives and debates the report and agrees that DL 1090 violates the Constitution and recommends it be repealed.
19. May 22, 2009: Minister of Justice Rosario Fernández formally accuses Pizango of rebellion, sedition and conspiracy.
20. June 4, 2009: APRA, the party of President García, halts the debate in the Congress, requiring that the still nonexistent Commission submits a technical report on the decrees. This new refusal by Congress to discuss the legal decrees is bitterly denounced by AIDESEP.
21. June 4, 2009: The Ombudsman's Office formally announces its demand against DL 1064 in Constitutional Court for violations on matters of process and content, and its intent to review the rest of the decrees.⁸
22. June 5, 2009: 369 members of the DINOES (National Special Operations Forces) with army support attack the native's blockades at Devil's Turn and Pozo 6.

A Bit of Background I: The Lands of the Peruvian Amazon Region⁹
As illustrated in Table 1, the Amazon Region has an area of 78,282,060 Has., of which 13.40% already belongs to the 1,232 native communities who have been legally recognized and formally titled.¹⁰ Another 8.6% belongs to Territorial Reserves for Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation that already exist or are to be created.  In addition to lands belonging to or set aside for indigenous peoples, 20% of the Amazon Region belongs to the National System of Natural Areas Protected by the State.

Summing up, around 42 million hectares of the Amazon Region, or 52.69% of its total area, are supposedly off limits for large scale investment projects.

Area Hectares Number Percentage Amazon Region 78,862,060.00   100.00 Native Communities titled land 10,564,258.00 1232 13.40 Native Communities in process of titling   300 - Indigenous reserves (existing) 2,812,686.00 5 3.57 Indigenous reserves (proposed) 3,976,168.00 6 5.04 Natural Protected Areas 21,220,900.00 25 26.91 Natural reserves 2,980,100.00 5 3.78 Total lands off limits for large scale investments 41,554,112.00   52.69 Forestry concessions 7,802,660.00 1228 9.89 Oil blocks 56,131,862.00 81 71.18 Deforested land for agribussiness 8,369,610.00   10.61 Total lands given away to large scale investments 72,304,132.00   91.68

Source: Margarita Benavides, El Reclamo de la Selva, in El Comercio, 08/06/09. Abundant data the Amazon Region and the Peruvian indigenous peoples can be found at Instituto del Bien Común.

On the other hand, the government has granted 1,228 forestry concessions and 81 hydrocarbon concessions, which add up to 81% of the total Amazon area. On top of that, it has expressed its interest in legally zoning an additional 10.61% of the Amazon as deforested area, which would allow the land to be used to develop agro-industrial projects.

Clearly, there is an overlap. Clearly, the government is giving away lands for private investment that are supposedly off-limits for this kind of allocation. With the comparative success of the environmental sector at "protecting the protected areas,"¹¹ the fact is that indigenous lands have been more vulnerable to government giveaways of oil blocks and forestry concessions. This trend is at the very core of the recent conflict, a trend created not by the indigenous peoples but by a succession of governments that have given away the land to large-scale investors.

The speed with which this process has taken place also helps to explain the angry nature of the indigenous response. Indeed, between 2004 and 2006, the amount of the Amazon Region already allocated to oil interests jumped from 15% to 68%. Today, according to the statistics above, the figure has reached over 80% and could approach 90% if the government succeeds in giving away deforested lands to agro-industry projects.

A Bit of Background II: The Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon Region and the Asociación Inter Etnica para el Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP)
The Amazon rural areas are the poorest in the country. Indeed, according to 2007 economic indicators, 55% of rural Amazonians are poor and 23% live in extreme poverty. In Metropolitan Lima, the country's capital, these figures stand at 18.5% and 0.5%, respectively.¹²

The Amazon Region has a total population of 3,675,292, out of which 332,975 are indigenous peoples, or 9% of the total. This population is composed of 56 ethnic groups who belong to 17 linguistic families,¹³  including the Maijuna, Secoya, Bora, Huitoto, Yagua, Jebero, Achuar, Kichwaruna, Wangurina, Shipibo, Cacataibo, Ashaninca, Cashinahua, Sharanahua, Cukina, Amahuaca, Amarakaeri, Kechuas, Aguaruna, Chayahuita, Cocama, Cocamilla, Huambisa, Shapra, Candoshi, Yine, Yami Matsiguenga, Yanesha, Arasaire, Toyoeri, Harakmbut, Asheninca, Nomatsiguenga, Ese-Eja, Huachipaeri, Ocaina, Ticuna, Urarina, Yaminahua, Yora, Nahua and Muratu.

These ethnic groups are located in 11 of our 26 current regions.¹⁴ Amazonas, the region where the events of June 5th took place, ranks third in indigenous population, with Loreto and Junín ranking first and second. But Amazonas is the region where the indigenous peoples constitute the biggest part of the total population.

The Asociación Inter Etnica para el Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP), which has lead the recent indigenous strike, was established in early 1980, as an outgrowth of several organizing efforts, including those of the Central de Comunidades Nativas de la Selva Central (CECONSEC) of the Ashaninkas, the Federación de Comunidades Nativas de Ucayali (FECONAU) of the Shipibos, and the Consejo Aguaruna y Huambisa (CAH) of the Awarun Wambis.

AIDESEP is currently based on 6 decentralized bodies located in different sectors of the Peruvian Amazon region, which in turn are comprised of 48 native federations representing 1,340 native communities.¹⁵

A Bit of Background III: President García and his Perro del Hortelano¹⁶ vision for development
Peru went through a center-left military revolution in the 70s, emerging with strong regulation over most markets and a strong government presence in the economy. The decade of the 80s was dominated by internal armed conflict and macroeconomic mismanagement, after which, in the early 90s, President Fujimori implemented drastic macroeconomic adjustments, eventually deregulating all markets, privatizing most state assets and services and promoting large scale private investments in the exploitation of the country's rich hydrocarbon and mining resources.

Since the demise of Fujimori's regime¹⁷, Presidents Toledo and García have each maintained the basic economic principles observed during the 90s. Though President García may have won the 2006 election running on a center-left platform and promising pro-poor economic changes, he has in fact reinforced and radicalized such policies. El Perro del Hortelano, a text published in three parts by President Garcia in late 2007, is the clearest expression of the radical market oriented policies he has embraced in his second administration; it is a true neoliberal manifesto.

To illustrate how these principles inspired the recently repealed decrees and therefore the conflict in the Amazon Region, we have translated key paragraphs of El Perro del Hortelano, selected by respected rural analyst Fernando Eguren.¹⁸

"There are millions of hectares for timber which are idle, millions of other hectares that communities and associations have not sown or will ever sow, also, more than a hundred mineral deposits that cannot be exploited and millions of hectares of the sea where mariculture and production do not take place.”

"For investment to take place, a secure property [of land] is necessary, but we have fallen into the deception of giving away small parcels of land to poor families who do not have a penny to spend...”

"But demagoguery and deceit say that such land cannot be touched because they are sacred objects and that this communal organization is Peru’s original organization...”

"This is what you find throughout Peru, land lying idle because the owner has no training or economic resources, therefore their ownership is only an illusion. That same land, if sold in large parcels, would bring the technology which would also benefit the peasant.”

"...here, we are still debating whether mining technology destroys the environment, which is a subject from last century, clearly it destroyed it before and environmental problems today are basically due to mines of yesterday, but now, mines coexist with cities without any problems...”

"...The old anti-capitalist communist from the nineteenth-century has put on the disguise of protectionist in the twentieth century and has changed his shirt again in the twenty-first century to be an environmentalist.”

"...there are real peasant communities, but also artificial ones that have 200 thousand hectares on paper, but only use 10 hectares for agricultural produce and leave the rest idle, while its inhabitants live in extreme poverty, waiting for the State to give them all the help instead of placing value on their hills and land by renting them or trading them because even if they are unproductive for them, they could be productive with a high level of investment or knowledge which a new buyer brings.”

Eguren summarizes his own analysis, saying: "It is clear that president García goes to the core issue: Who should dispose of the country's natural resources, which constitutionally belong to the whole nation? Large-scale investors. Who should not dispose of them? Communities. Why? Because they don't have enough education or economic resources. And since they don’t have education or resources, their property rights are not complete, apparently."

These principles inspired the decrees that fueled the conflict. Then the government was defeated and backed off. But will Garcia's view change in substance or is he just allowing himself additional time in the face of the current climate of resistance? This is a key question, because if the President persists in his views and the policies do no change, while the decrees might have been repealed today, the conflict will re-emerge tomorrow.

The Bottom Line¹⁹
The immediate cause of the strike is of course the rejection by the regional indigenous organizations of the Law Decrees and subsequent territorial regulations, which these organizations feel threaten their communal lands and open the way for a variety of large-scale developments on what they consider their ancestral territories.

But the underlying issues are more much more complex, and can be traced to two strategic decisions that Peru needs to make as a nation. One involves the true place of indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Nation. The other involves the unique role that the Amazon region will play in the global economy of the 21st Century.

First: Is Peru prepared to recognize itself as a nation that is truly made up of various nations? Is Peru ready to give the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region the right to make decisions about their territories, including the resources under the ground? Is Peru ready to give them national political representation through indigenous electoral districts?

Second: Is Peru prepared to set aside its vision of the Amazon region as a provider of wood, agribusiness resources and fossil fuels that sustain the unsustainable consumption and development patterns of the North and the emerging BRICs nations? Is Peru ready to decide instead that the Amazon's role is to provide the world with oxygen and fresh water, the two scarce resources of the future?

These are the more profound structural conflicts at the root of the indigenous peoples' strike in the Amazon. That's what lies beneath.

What now? What development and what democracy now?
With the two sides in the recent deadly struggle now attempting to cooperate, a shift has obviously taken place. The government's initial reaction to the strike included a high profile political and legal campaign against indigenous leaders-which in turn led to the exile in Nicaragua of AIDESEP President Alberto Pizango. Now, authorities have yielded to the indigenous movement and to the pressure of public, and repealed the decrees.

As these lines are written, the executive, the regional authorities and the indigenous organizations are preparing for a negotiation process that has been established to discuss a new development strategy for the Amazon Region and its peoples. The results of this process will not only to define a new relationship between the indigenous movement and the government and (hopefully) a new public policy for the Amazon Region, but it will also define the very nature of our democratic system for the years to come.

After a decade of struggle against the authoritarian regime of the 90s, Peruvians achieved a democratic transition, which began in 2000. Its promise was one of reconciliation and inclusion, of a democracy where all Peruvians could find a place and be heard. That vision for democracy was badly wounded at the Devil's Turn, and remains in agony after the massive confrontation between the Amazon's regional sectors and a Central Government that sought to force its views on the locals without listening to them.

There is hope that the government, forced to recognize that it cannot impose its ideas on the people, will now be willing to listen, and that 40 unnecessary and tragic deaths can help point the way towards a more inclusive democracy, where all sides have a say, and where indigenous peoples are not treated as second-class citizens "waiting for the State to give them all the help" and relying on Lima elites to dictate their opinions for them, "for their own good."

If such a change is possible, democracy will take on new meaning for those who have always been left behind. However, if this latest promise of inclusion is merely a way to buy time, distract native leadership, and find a new way to impose an agenda driven by a few companies and the development view of the urban elites, then democracy will once again be stripped of its meaning for those who have never yet experienced its benefits.

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¹ AIDESEP is the representative organization of the Amazon indigenous peoples. See www.aidesep.org.pe and www.coica.org.ec.
² The wounded include Santiago Munuin, a well respected Awajun Wambis leader closely associated with the Catholic Church, and who had been recently awarded the Queen Sofia Price in recognition of his peaceful efforts to strengthen Awajun Wambis indigenous identity and rights in the area. He has been served his "capture" order by the police at the hospital where he is recovering from eight bullet wounds.
³ Local activists and leaders denounce that corpses have been burnt or thrown into the nearby rivers by the police forces.
⁴ After the confrontation on June 5th, the Trompeteros airport in Loreto Region was taken over; the Tarapoto–Yurimaguas road between the San Martin and Loreto regions was blocked again; the Ucayali Shipibo and Asahaninka announced they would will block the river and stop all fluvial commerce; and a Amazon Region general strike was starting, with support from the regional and local authorities and almost all civil society sectors.
⁵ Even center-right newspaper El Comercio, which in the day of the events carried a front page accusing the opposition politicians of stirring up the conflict in the Amazon region is now calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and all of his Cabinet (www.elcomercio.com.pe) and Yehude Simon has announced that he will resign after the conflict is solved and the country is pacified.
⁶ See here.
⁷ See www.servind.org.
⁸ See www.defensoria.gob.pe.
⁹ Includes all or part of the territories of the Loreto, Amazonas, Ucayali, Madre de Dios, Junin, Pasco, Huánuco, Cusco, Apurimac, Ayacucho, Puno, and Cajamarca Regions.
¹⁰ The total number of native communities is of 1,509, but 300 and more are still in the process of being recognized and titled. And all of them consider that this lands are insufficient because titling has  been based on the land they use for permanent productive purposes, but not taking into account the hunting, recollecting and fishing lands they need for their reproduction  and claims as territories.
¹¹ We must stress the "comparative" here. For example, one the factors that enraged the Awaruna Wambis against the government is that an area of the Awajuna Wambis National Park has been cut to give out gold mining concessions to Dorato, a mining company owned by Canadian investors.
¹² All data quoted in this article has been provided by Instituto del Bien Común, local think tank specialized in Peruvian indigenous peoples (see www.ibcperu.org), and summarized in Ideele, No.193 La amazonía número por número. See www.idl.org.pe.
¹³ See www.aidesep.org.pe.
¹⁴ The breakdown of the  indigenous peoples by region is as follows: Loreto: 105,900 (31.0%), Junín: 73,637 (22.1%), Amazonas: 52,153 (15.7%), Ucayali: 40,407 (12.1%), San Martin: 21,416 (6.4%), Pasco: 16,414 (4.9%), Cusco: 15,230 (4.6%), Madre de Dios: 4,005 (1.2%), Huánuco: 2,594 (0.8%), Cajamarca: 988 (0.3%), Ayacucho: 231 (0.1%).
¹⁵ See "Por qué y cómo se construye AIDESEP," in www.aidesep.org.pe.
¹⁶ Perro del Hortelano is the title of one of Spanish author Lope de Vega's comedies, published in 1618. It popularly refers to someone who doesn't use something, but does not allow others to use it either. President's García’s articles on the matter were published by Diario El Comercio in October 2007.
¹⁷ His third election in 2000 was very much resisted as unconstitutional and fraudulent, and when evidence about high level corruption under his administration emerged, he fled the country to Japan. He is now in jail in Peru, having been sentenced for human rights violations and is currently under trial for corruption.
¹⁸ Fernando Eguren is the Director of the academic journal Debate Agrario and President of CEPES, a think tank devoted to rural policies. See www.cepes.org.pe.
¹⁹ This section is taken from the note already published by us in the RWI website before the June 5th events. See www.revenuewatch.org.

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