“6/10/2009, 11:51am EST”
Peru’s indigenous people are fighting back
Rainforests and their inhabitants have long been exploited to destruction by greedy states and corporations.
Maybe that’s why Alan García, Peru’s new president, never expected indigenous communities to be so organized against his plans to open up huge amounts of Peru’s rainforests to oil exploration, logging and mining operations, and industrial farming.
The protesters have pursued a coordinated strategy of shutting down the country’s energy infrastructure:
The protests have disrupted oil production and pipelines, blocked commerce on roads and waterways, and halted flights at remote airports. While shortages of fuel and food have been reported in some jungle areas, the real concern is that the protests will succeed in cutting energy supplies to major coastal cities.
On June 5th, state “security forces” and protesters clashed, leaving a dozen police and two dozen indigenous people dead. President García probably failed to consider that these people’s lives are on the line anyway — certainly their ways of life, the lives of countless non-human forest-dwellers, and the diverse ecological whole.
Notice how he couches extreme exploitation, predictably, in disingenuous humanist populism and nationalism:
Explaining the government’s position last month, Mr. García said, “We have to understand when there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don’t belong only to the people who had the fortune to be born there, because that would mean more than half of Peru’s territory belongs to a few thousand people.”
This statement displays a deep ignorance in matters of ecology and sustainability while betraying a common greed. His proposed wealth is really composed of short-term gains for a few — even if it truly is intended for most Peruvians at the expense of some Peruvians and all non-human citizens — accompanied by severe environmental and economic consequences down the road. These cost the public — non-human citizens included — immensely but are rarely factored in ahead of time. The national and multinational corporations will make a clean getaway with their substantial profits, leaving local messes for local inhabitants to suffer.
We’ve heard this story many times before. But while modern human hubris seems to know few bounds except those which natural limitations impose, maybe so does the proper outrage being expressed by Peru’s indigenous peoples this time, who seem to have learned from other struggles in other places.
Hopefully, they are ultimately unconcerned with seeking a stronger seat at the bargaining table for industrial profits and focused more on preserving sustainable ways of life for whole communities of ecologically-interconnected beings.
Never leave home without it.
