Some 4,000 living in communities on the banks of the Rio Marañón in Peru’s northeastern Loreto department have been affected by an oil spill caused by the Argentine firm Pluspetrol.
President Alan García refused to sign an historic new law to recognize Peru’s obligation to consult with indigenous peoples before proceeding with resource extraction projects that affect them.
Bolivia’s Minister of Autonomy, Carlos Romero, appealed to the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Oriente of Bolivia (CIDOB) to call off its cross-country march for territorial autonomy.
Upon his return from 11 months in political exile, Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango slammed oil company Perenco for denying the existence of uncontacted Amazon tribes.
After 16 years, Peru’s congress finally passed into law the rights enshrined in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which commits nations to protecting indigenous and tribal peoples.
Alberto Pizango, exiled president of Peru’s national organization for Amazonian indigenous peoples, AIDESEP, was arrested at Lima’s airport as he returned from Nicaragua.
A reserve for uncontacted tribes in the Peruvian Amazon has been made off-limits to oil and gas companies—but development plans are moving ahead on other lands inhabited by uncontacted peoples.
Talks are underway in Lima between small-scale miners and Peru’s Ministry of Mines following deadly repression of a protest campaign by miners to demand land and prospecting rights.
A second rancher was sentenced for his role in the murder of Dorothy Stang, the US-born nun who was gunned down in retaliation for her efforts on behalf of poor farmers in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
Spanish-Argentine oil giant Repsol-YPF has applied to Peru’s government to cut 454 kilometers of seismic lines and construct 152 heliports in its search for oil on uncontacted tribes’ land.
A group of indigenous Kichwa men from the community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadoran Amazon were attacked with dynamite and firearms by invaders illegally encroaching on indigenous lands.
An army sergeant was killed and another wounded in a Sendero Luminoso attack on Bajo Somabeni Counter-Terrorist Base in Peru’s conflicted Río Apurímac-Ene Valley (VRAE).
