The Peruvian government is aggressively touting claims that international oil majors are about to return to the country’s rainforest after being scared off by political instability for nearly a generation.
The Peruvian government’s unprecedented attempt to destroy the country’s Amazon indigenous movement has been condemned by indigenous leaders from Africa, the Arctic and around the world.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell nearly 46% to the lowest annual loss on record in 2009, the government reports—but environmentalists warn that the rainforest is still being destroyed.
Some 200 indigenous people have gathered at the settlement of SalvaciĂłn, the local base for Hunt Oil in the rainforest region of southeast Peru, in an ongoing occupation to halt the company’s operations.
Seven Yanomami Indians in Venezuela have died from an outbreak of suspected “swine flu” in the last two weeks. Another 1,000 Yanomami are reported to have caught the virulent strain of flu.
After a week of marches and road blockades, Ecuador’s national indigenous movement and the government of President Rafael Correa have opened talks on issues including the new water law.
Peru’s Indigenous Affairs Department, INDEPA, discovered evidence of an uncontacted tribe in a remote region of the Amazon. President Alan GarcĂa has denied the existence of such tribes.
Chevron asked the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to shift responsibility to Ecuador for paying any money that Amazon residents might win in a suit over environmental damage.
Harakmbut leaders in Peru’s Amazon region of Madre de Dios issued a statement imposing a one-week deadline for Hunt Oil to quit their territory before indigenous communities physically expel them.
An Ecuadoran judge has recused himself from a case brought against Chevron by Amazonian indigenous groups after the company released videos allegedly incriminating him as biased.
Hugo Blanco, who led Peru’s first armed resistance struggle of the radical left in in the 1960s, is today a leading voice in support of the indigenous movement in the Amazon.
Peru’s indigenous alliance AIDESEP brought suit before the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to halt an oil concession in a vast area of the Amazon designated as Block 67.
