Peru – CounterVortex

The Andes

Peru: local dissent to China’s ‘megaport’ scheme

China and Peru are set to sign an updated free-trade agreement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which opens this week in Lima. President Xi Jinping also inaugurated a Chinese-financed “megaport” in Chancay, a fishing town some 60 kilometers up the coast from Lima. The $1.3 billion project is to be overseen and majority-owned by the Chinese shipping giant COSCO, with an overland link to Brazil foreseen, providing an exit port for resources from throughout the continent. But the official boosterism is being met with a skeptical response by impoverished local villagers, who say the project is cutting them off from fishing waters and bringing them no economic benefit. Dredging for the port has already destroyed fish breeding grounds, locals say. (Photo: CADAL)

The Amazon

Amazon wildfires release record greenhouse emissions

The Amazon rainforest has seen a record-setting wildfire season this year, fueled by an historic drought and scorching temperatures. In Brazil, the cumulative total estimated carbon emissions from the fires so far in 2024 has reached 183 megatons, according to Europe’s Copernicus atmospheric monitoring service—equivalent to the total annual emissions of the Netherlands. The unprecedented fires come even as overall deforestation (defined as the permanent conversion of forest for another use, such as logging, mining or farming) has dropped in Brazil since President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva took office in January 2023. Fires now account for a much higher proportion of forest loss. (Photo: Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace via Mongabay)

The Amazon

Peru: ‘uncontacted’ tribe attacks loggers

Peru’s reclusive Mashco Piro people used bows and arrows to attack loggers encroaching on their territory in the Amazon, according to a regional indigenous organization. FENAMAD, representing 39 indigenous communities in Cuzco and Madre de Dios regions, said that it believes illegal logging was taking place on Mashco Piro territory and that one logger was injured in the attack. Days before the incident occurred, photos emerged of some 50 members of the isolated tribe apparently searching for food on a river beach—which advocacy group Survival International said is evidence that logging concessions are “dangerously close” to its territory. (Photo: Survival International)

The Andes

Peru ordered to compensate mine pollution victims

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued a judgment in the case of Comunidad de La Oroya v. Peru, addressing the Peruvian state’s responsibility for damages suffered by 80 residents of La Oroya mining district, and ordering the payment of compensation to the victims. The site of the economically troubled metal smelting complex is considered one of the most polluted locales on Earth. Community residents filed a compliance suit with the IACHR after Peru’s government failed to uphold a Constitutional Court ruling in their favor, ordering mitigation measures. The IACHR found that Peru failed to comply with environmental protection standards, leading to extremely high levels of lead and other contaminants in the blood of children and pregnant mothers in the community. (Photo: Maurice Chédel via Wikimedia Commons)

The Andes

Peru: ‘impunity’ bill for crimes against humanity

The Constitutional Commission of the Peruvian Congress approved Bill No. 6951/2023-CR, which establishes that no one may be prosecuted, sentenced or punished for crimes against humanity or war crimes committed before July 1, 2002. As a result, emblematic cases from the period of internal conflict in Peru between 1980 and 2000, which are still awaiting a judicial response, could be closed. The bill is next to be debated in the Plenary of the Peruvian Congress for final approval. If passed, the bill will be sent to President Dina Boluarte for enactment within 15 days. (Photo: Protontorniyo via Wikimedia Commons)

Planet Watch

2023 hottest year on record —by ‘alarming’ margin

The year 2023 is officially the warmest on record—overtaking 2016, the previous warmest year, by an alarming margin. According to new data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Earth was 1.48 degrees Celsius hotter last year compared with pre-industrial levels—dangerously close to the 1.5-degree threshold set by the Paris climate deal. 2023 also marked the first year in which each day was over one degree warmer than the pre-industrial average. Temperatures over 2023 likely exceeded those of any year over the past 100,000 years. This was partially due to the year’s El Niño climate phenomenon, but those impacts only began in June—and every subsequent month last year was the warmest on record for that particular month. September represented the largest climatological departure since record-keeping began over 170 years ago. (Image: blende12/Pixabay)

The Andes

Peru protests: one year later

A year after the height of a protest wave that swept Peru, demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, we finally see an initial step toward justice for the some 50 slain by security forces in the repression unleashed by her regime. Judicial Power, Peru’s justice department, ordered the “preventative detention” of an officer of the National Police, as he is investigated in the slaying of a Cuzco youth last January. On the other hand, there is outrage that Luis Flores Solís, a National Police general and a former agent of the elite Special Intelligence Group, has been named as the new chief of the Counter-Terrorist Directorate (DIRCOTE)—despite the fact that he is under internal investigation by the police force in the killing of protesters in Andahuaylas. Meanwhile, Pedro Castillo, the president whose removal from power and replacement by Boluarte in December 2022 sparked the protest wave, remains imprisoned on pre-trial detention orders. But ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was serving a 25-year term for corruption and human rights abuses, was released last month on order of the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru’s highest court. (Photo: Wayka)

Southern Cone

Hezbollah operative indicted in Buenos Aires bombing

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment filed against Hezbollah operative Samuel Salman El Reda for his alleged involvement in a bomb attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina three decades ago. The 20-page indictment concerns the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and caused hundreds of injuries. The US government claims El Reda collaborated with the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) in the attack.

The Amazon

Ecuador: court orders return of Siekopai homeland

In what is being hailed as an historic decision, an appeals court in Ecuador ordered the return of a 42,360-hectare expanse of the Amazon rainforest to the Siekopai indigenous people, generations after they were driven from the territory by the military. The Provincial Court of Sucumbios ruled that the Siekopai retain indigenous title to their ancestral homeland, known as Pë’këya, which lies along the border with Peru in remote country. The lands were seized by Ecuador’s army during the war with Peru in 1941, and remained a military-controlled zone until being incorporated into Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in 1979. Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment has been given 45 days to deliver a property title to the Siekopai Nation, and make public apologies for the usurpation of their homeland. (Photo: Amazon Frontlines)

The Amazon

Amazon rainforest loss approaches new height

Within just five years, the Amazon rainforest could lose half the total forest cover that it lost in the first 20 years of this century, a recent study by the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) has revealed. Deforestation rates are accelerating in nearly all of the nine Amazonian countries, but especially in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia—mostly due to road development, agricultural expansion and mining. (Photo via Mongabay)

The Andes

Peru: opposition protests US troop deployment

Peru’s Congress voted to approve Legislative Resolution 4766, authorizing US troops to be stationed on the national territory from June 1 to Dec. 31. Lima lawmaker Alfredo Azurín, president of the Commission on National Defense, Internal Order & Anti-Drug Struggle, said the soldiers will carry out training missions and joint exercises with Peru’s armed forces and National Police. The vote was harshly condemned by former foreign minister Héctor Béjar, who said the estimated 700 US troops will be disposed to support operations by the security forces against Peru’s social movements, now preparing a new mobilization: “It is obvious that the presence of these soldiers is a deterrent, part of a policy of intimidation of the Peruvian people, who have announced new protests for next July.” (Photo: IndymediaArgentina)

The Andes

Peru: ‘egregious abuses’ by security forces

Peru’s military and police likely carried out extrajudicial or arbitrary killings and committed other “egregious abuses” against demonstrators as well as bystanders during protests that swept the country from late last year through February, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. While some protesters were responsible for acts of violence, security forces responded with “grossly disproportionate” force, including with assault weapons. Forty-nine protesters and bystanders, including eight children, were documented as killed in the unrest. The report emphasizes “the entrenched political and social crisis that is eroding the rule of law and human rights” in the Andean country. The administration of President Dina Boluarte “seems to have looked the other way for weeks as security forces killed protesters and bystanders,” HRW said. (Photo: Renato Pajuelo via Indymedia Argentina)