Authorities in Peru say National Police rescued 293 women from sexual exploitation in raids in the country’s Amazonian region of Madre de Dios. Four were arrested in the regional capital Puerto Maldonado on human trafficking charges.
Indigenous protesters in Bolivia resumed their cross-country march, a week after their progress was halted by a police assault. Scattered confrontations were reported along the way, as demonstrations were held in their support across the country.
Bolivia’s Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti became the latest cabinet member to resign in the wake of National Police repression of an indigenous protest march in the eastern Amazonian rainforest region of the country.
Bolivian Defense Minister Cecilia Chacón resigned in protest the day after National Police used tear gas and mass arrests to halt a cross-country march by indigenous protesters in the Amazonian department of Beni.
Indigenous protesters armed with bows and arrows in the Bolivian Amazon broke through a police blockade to continue their cross-country march on La Paz—with Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca in the vanguard of their charge.
Meeting in Manaus, indigenous representatives from across the Amazon approved an action plan that calls for a pan-Amazonian “consolidation” for the survival of ancestral knowledge and the protection of forests, water, biodiversity and the climate.
Isolated indigenous peoples in remote areas of Peru’s Amazon rainforest are being ‘bribed’ with painkillers and pens, as industry giants seek to open up their land to explore for gas, according to Survival International.
Standard & Poor’s raised its outlook on Bolivia, citing new investment in the mining sector—as unprecedented forest fires ravage the country’s Amazon basin, and violence is feared as peasant colonists bar the progress of an indigenous march on La Paz.
Two Shipibo indigenous communites in the Peruvian Amazon have broken off negotiations with Maple Gas Corporation over the health and environmental impacts of six oil spills on their territory over the past three years.
The administration of Ollanta Humala has imposed a two-yea deadline for the Camisea consortium to find new gas reserves to meet its export obligations, saying all gas from existing fields will be used to meet domestic demand.
Guerilla attacks on oil operations in Colombia have been escalating since President Juan Manuel Santos threatened to expel those companies that do not halt payment of protection money to the guerilla army.
Peru’s Congress unanimously approved a new law that guarantees indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent to any projects affecting them and their lands. President Ollanta Humala has 15 days to sign the bill into law.
