More than 5,000 agricultural workers blocked the Trans-Amazonian highway in the northern Brazilian state of Pará to push demands for land, government aid and an end to violence against activists.
Quechua indigenous leaders won an accord from Peru’s government to study the impacts of oil leasing in the Pastaza river basin—while on the Ecuadoran side of the basin, local residents held angry protests over hydro development plans.
Skeptical community activists in Peru’s conflicted Puno region charge that the government’s official cancellation of the giant Inambari hydro-electric dam is a “trick” to defuse protests and buy time to move ahead with the project.
Protesters called off their roadblocks in the Peruvian province of Carabaya as the government announced a suspension of the Inambari hydro-compex—after the project’s contractor expressed concerns about regional unrest.
Officials in Peru this week denied claims by UK-based Survival International that the government plans to abolish the Murunahua Territorial Reserve, created in 1997 to protect “uncontacted” bands of the Murunahua and other native peoples.
The survival of the “uncontacted” tribe whose images caused a worldwide sensation in February is in jeopardy, after the Peruvian government announced plans to abolish the reserve that protects their territory.
Local timber interests are suspected in the slaying of Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria Do Espirito Santo da Silva, two activists seeking to protect the rainforest of Brazils’ Para state.
Brazil’s lower house passed a bill to loosen rules on deforestation and instate an amnesty for prior violations. The bill is pushed by the Communist Party, which charges that smallholders bear the brunt of current law.
Indigenous bands living in voluntary isolation in remote regions of the Peruvian Amazon again fired arrows at intruders—as the national government announced new oil exploration blocs in the disputed territory.
Ecuador’s national indigenous organization announced that is filing a legal complaint against the government, including President Rafael Correa, for complicity with “genocide” against indigenous people in the Amazon.
Peruvian indigenous forest dwellers have been forced to set up a guard post to protect a reserve established for “uncontacted” peoples, after the authorities ignored their repeated pleas for action.
The UK-based indigenous rights group Survival International noted the 100th anniversary of an historic report by Irish investigator Roger Casement finding that 30,000 Amazon Indians were enslaved by British rubber interests.
