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The Eco-Class-Race Struggles in

the Peruvian Amazon Basin: An
Ecofeminist Perspective
Ana Isla
Published online: 23 Sep 2009.
To cite this article: Ana Isla (2009) The Eco-Class-Race Struggles in the Peruvian
Amazon Basin: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 20:3, 21-48,
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CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 20 NUMBER 3 (SEPTEMBER 2009)
The Eco-Class-Race Struggles in the Peruvian Amazon

Basin: An Ecofeminist Perspective
Ana Isla
Introduction
Since the 1992 Earth Summit, there has been a growing recognition of the global
ecological crisis that threatens the future of life on the planet. In this debate sufficiency
has become a defining concept in contemporary environmental and feminist thought.
Ecofeminists maintain the view that there is a direct link between the exploitation of
women (women’s liberation) and the exploitation of nature (ecological justice). In
fact, a cornerstone of ecofeminist thought holds that women’s and nature’s liberation
are a joint project.1 Ecofeminists advocate collective ownership and a restoration of the
Commons. At the center of this ecofeminist analysis is the knowledge that capitalist
patriarchy creates an intersecting domination against ‘‘all unwaged’’ in its exploitation
of women, peasants, indigenous people, and nature. This exploitation takes place not
so much through low wages but by their provision of services and material input to
capital (land, forest, wood, water, fish, etc.) ‘‘free of charge.’’ Ecofeminists maintain
that nature is an exhaustible good that we must learn to conserve by living simply and
recognizing ‘‘sufficiency’’ as a good life.2 From this framework, subsistence needs
(food, water, shelter, clothing, affection, love, respect, learning, creativity, adventure,
company, friendship, enjoyment, pleasure, and work) are the same for people
everywhere in the industrial and underdeveloped worlds. This form of subsistence
1
Ynestra King, ‘‘Toward an Ecological Feminism and a Feminist Ecology,’’ in J.S. Dryzek and D. Schlosberg
(eds.), Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.
399407; Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (New York: Routledge, 2005);
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor
(London: Zed Books, 1986); Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Maria Mies, The Subsistence Perspective:
Beyond the Globalized Economy (New York: Zed Books, 1999); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology
and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989); H. Pietila and J. Vickers, ‘‘The UN System in the Vanguard of
Advancement of Women: Equality, Development, and Peace,’’ in C.F. Alger (ed.), The Future of the United
Nations System: Potential for the Twenty-first Century (New York: United Nations University Press, 1998), pp.
248281; Ariel Salleh, ‘‘From Eco-Sufficiency to Global Justice,’’ in Ariel Salleh (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency and
Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology (London and New York: Pluto Press, 2009), pp. 297312; Claudia
von Werlhof, ‘‘The Globalization of Neoliberalism, its Consequences, and Some of its Basic Alternatives’’
Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 19, No. 3, September 2008, pp. 94117; and Terisa Turner and Leigh
Brownhill, ‘‘We Want Our Land Back: Gendered Class Analysis, the Second Contradiction of Capital and
Social Movement Theory,’’ Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 15, No. 4, December 2004, pp. 2140.
2
Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, op. cit., p. 121.
ISSN 1045-5752 print/ISSN 1548-3290 online/09/030021-28

# 2009 The Center for Political Ecology www.cnsjournal.org
DOI: 10.1080/10455750903215720
22 ANA ISLA
embraces concepts like ‘‘moral economy’’: a new way of life that advocates joy in life,
happiness, and solidarity-bound societies.3
I call the ongoing struggle in Peru an eco-class-race4 struggle because it involves

the indigenous peoples’ ecological consciousness of nature’s destruction, labor
exploitation, and institutional racism. The actors engaged in this struggle include
indigenous people and bosquecinos (this term includes ribereños, or those living on the
river banks), international oil corporations (Occidental, Pluspetrol), the national oil
corporation (Petro-Peru), forest corporations (Bozovich and Schipper), and govern-
ment institutions. The geographical scope of this paper is the Peruvian Amazon
basin, which covers 78,282,060 hectares, representing some 61 percent of the
country.
Until 1973, bosquecinos used this entire territory for their livelihood. This
situation started to change gradually in the 1970s and much more rapidly in 1993
after Alberto Fujimori’s government changed the Constitution to expand oil and
forestry ‘‘concessions,’’5 official government agreements that allow domestic and
foreign firms to control indigenous territory and extract resources from within the
Amazon. This process has been accelerating during Alan Garcia’s second term as
president (2006 to the present), in which 56,131,862 hectares*72 percent of the
rainforest*have become hydrocarbon lots.
In 1993, indigenous people in the Amazon basin received a deed title covering
7,379,941.72 hectares and an additional 344,887 hectares reserved for the Nahua
and Jugapakon groups, who live in voluntary isolation.6 This forced indigenous
people to live on just 10 percent of their original land. Furthermore, the land title on
this dramatically shrunken territory only gave them the right to the soil, while
3
Vandana Shiva, op. cit.
4
The term ‘‘eco-class-race’’ is used here to indicate how, under the conditions of neoliberal capital’s growing
penetration of Amazonia, an interrelated complex of domination must be taken into account. First, given the
ever-growing pressure for resource extraction (including biofuels and other energy sources), ecosystem
destabilization on an expanding scale becomes a dominant feature of the social and natural landscape. Second
(and tied into this), numerous kinds of labor exploitation are drawn into the picture that then disrupt ancient
and stable cultural and communitarian patterns. And third, vicious racist ideologies are imposed, generally
speaking along the axes of ‘‘primitive U civilized,’’ which in turn are related to the core ecofeminist analysis
that reveals patriarchal capitalist concepts of ‘‘nature U female/civilization U male.’’ Clearly, these elements
have been present since 1492; however, there comes a time when the sheer amount of ecological damage yields
qualitative changes, mainly from advanced states of ecosystem decay that self-propagate and pose new threats to
both cultural and physical survival. These in turn provide new phases of resistance. We are witnessing one such
transformative moment in Peruvian Amazonia.
5
Concessions are a favorite imperial card trick. Historically, European, and then North American imperial and
colonial powers would often first occupy their colonies by using the system of concessions. Local rulers signed
concessions or ‘‘treaties’’ giving complete control over small areas to private parties for their use, allowing
colonizers to dispossess and disenfranchise thousands to millions of people.
6
Several indigenous groups are living in voluntary isolation. They rejected ‘‘civilization,’’ which reduced them to
slavery during the rubber exploitation times. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/04/peru-
amazon-rainforest-conservation, accessed on July 10, 2009.
THE ECO-CLASS-RACE STRUGGLES IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON BASIN 23
control over the subsoil of these lands (minerals and hydrocarbon) was vested in the
state and subject to privatization in the form of oil concessions. Areas not demarcated
for oil concessions were given away in forest concessions. Currently, approximately
332,975 indigenous people live in the lower and upper rainforest of Peru*all of
them in rebellion and actively struggling for their common territories.
Local struggles against concessions have a long history. The lower rainforest
portion of Loreto, Peru’s northernmost and largest ‘‘department’’ (state), has had
labor camps, roads, and pipelines to service oil concessions for more than 40 years.
Pollution and noise produced by seismic explosions have modified the land,
contaminated rivers, and destroyed ecosystems that indigenous communities depend
on for a living.7 In the southeastern department of Madre de Dios, forestry
concessions have decimated wildlife, as forestry concessionaries relentlessly hunt key

species such as huanganas, sajinos, majás, añujes, and achuni, varieties of turtles,
iguanas, and other native fauna, in order to feed their workers.8 They also use
machinery for forest extraction which, along with trees for timber, brings down fruit
trees, particularly palms that are a crucial part of the wildlife food chain.9 Besides
damaging the soil and watershed, these practices have displaced numerous wildlife
species and led others to extinction.10 As a result, approximately 60 percent of
indigenous people residing in the Amazon rainforest have become impoverished and
undernourished.11
As nature, indigenous people and ribereños are exploited under the patriarchical
capitalist concession system, where, for example, women have been forced into sex
work. During the first phase of oil concessions in the 1970s, hundreds of white
women prostitutes arrived in Iquitos, Loreto’s capital and the largest city in the
Peruvian Amazon basin, to ‘‘serve’’ men in oil labor camps. By 2000, young
indigenous and ribereña women had been incorporated into the sex market.
According to Rivadeneira,12 Achuar and Jibara girls, aged ten to fourteen, from
the Corrientes River are sold outright to oil workers. These young sex slaves serve the
oil workers in the oil camps, and when these men leave, the girls are abandoned.
7
Earth Rights International and Racimos de Ungurahui, published online at: http://www.achuarperu.org/en/
60petroleum_problems/block1ABand8-8x.htm?PHPSESSID23a0efee55b87129b813438609126f.
8
R.E. Bodmer, P.E. Puertas, C. Reyes, J.E. Garcı́a, and D.R. Dı́az. ‘‘Animales de caza y palmeras: integrando la
socioeconomı́a de extracción de frutos de palmera y carne de monte con el uso sostenible,’’ in T.G. Fang, R.E.
Bodmer, R. Aquino, and M.H. Valqui (eds.), Manejo de Fauna Silvestre en la Amazonı́a (UNAP, University of
Florida, UNDP/GEF, e Instituto de Ecologı́a, La Paz, 1997), pp. 7586.
9
R.E. Bodmer, ‘‘Strategies of Seed Dispersal and Seed Predation in Amazonian Ungulates,’’ Biotropica, Vol. 23,
1991, pp. 255261.
10
J. Thiollay, ‘‘Influence of Selective Logging on Bird Species Diversity in a Guianan Rainforest,’’ Conservation
Biology, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1992, pp. 4763. See also: A. Quevedo, ‘‘Barreras o causas que obstaculizan la
conservación y uso sostenible de la diversidad biológica en los bosques de Loreto. Informe para el Grupo
Regional de Manejo de Bosques de Loreto,’’ 2003, pp. 149.
11
José Álvarez, ‘‘Peru: Crisis forestal, Alguien piensa*realmente*en las comunidades amazónicas?,’’ La Razon,
February 6, 2009.
12
Harvey Rivadeneira, ‘‘Prostitución en las empresas petroleras,’’ Shamiro Decidores, March 8, 2001.
24 ANA ISLA
In Madre de Dios, a huge ring of child prostitution involving more than 400 girls
and boys operates around 100 bars.13
In 2008, the year Peru signed a free trade agreement with the United States and
began negotiations for one with the European Union, Canada, and China, the
government decided to change the concession system to expedite the privatization of
the rainforest commons. In response, indigenous people organized to fight back.
This paper analyzes the recent intensification of these struggles as the concession
system has been supplanted by global capitalist free trade agreements. This has
provoked a powerful indigenous movement grounded in the defense of what I call
here ‘‘the good life.’’ These struggles continue to rage right up to the composition of
this article in mid-2009 and have gained international attention and sympathy.
The Good Life in the Peruvian Amazon
Ecofeminists Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva14 argue that ‘‘the good life’’ and
freedom are possible when people and nature are not separated, since it is the
inhabitants’ subsistence know-how that helps to conserve the conditions of life
(nature) by valuing ‘‘sufficiency’’ and recognizing the need to live in harmony with
the natural world. The indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon have maintained
their age-old connection to nature with their ability to steward an unbroken forest
system. Endowed with one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, the
Amazonians in Peru inhabit more than 71 distinct indigenous communities and
mixed communities living on common land with a diversity of abundant wildlife.
Amazonian peoples derive their livelihoods from the forest and its waters and are
nourished by its clean and healthy air. This existence has nurtured complex socio-
economic and cultural systems that have distinct ways of describing and interacting
with the physical and natural world.
Jurg Gasché argues that in the modern capitalist market, these societies exist in a
context of two sets of objective conditions: 1) bosquecinos have free access to natural
resources, which are sustained with the knowledge and means of production to use
and transform them; and 2) dependence on the availability of market goods.15 The
combination of the market and free access to natural resources allows forest dwellers
to thrive and enjoy a ‘‘good life.’’ Anthropologists maintain that the concept of the
13
Miguel Gutierrez, ‘‘El reino de los ‘prostibares.’ Niñas y adolescentes son reclutadas a la fuerza,’’ La Republica,
August 8, 2008, pp. 1415.
14
Mies Maria and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (Halifax: Fernwood Publications, and London: Zed Books,
1993).
15
Jorge Gasché Suess, Napoleon Vela Mendoza, Julio Cesar Vela Mendoza, Erma Babilonia Cáceres, ‘‘Libertad,
Dependencia y Constreñimiento en las Sociedades Bosquecinas Amazonicas. ¿Que significa para los
Bosquesinos ‘autonomı́a,’ ‘ciudadanı́a’ y ‘democracia?,’ ’’ unpublished final report IIAP CONCYTEC,
Iquitos, Peru, 2006, pp. 1138.
good life is at the source of the different objective sociological arrangements we

observe today.16 According to Gasché et al., bosquecinos in the Amazon are
sophisticated and rational human beings who satisfy their needs with a minimal
impact on their environment. Bosquecinos organize their livelihood and their labor
according to their needs; their ‘‘work’’ of living is practiced with pleasure. Gashé
et al. point out that labor for bosquecinos (women and men) is a multitask activity
that relies upon learning several techniques of fishing, hunting, gathering and
transformation according to the seasonal rhythm of the climate (winter and
summer), hydrology (e.g., widening waters in the rainy season and narrowing in
the dry season), and biology (e.g., seasons of fruition, fattened animals, fish
spawning, fish schools). This labor is based not on compulsion, but rather on
enjoyment and community cooperation. It is an exercise of solidarity according to
social rights and obligations. It is founded in reciprocity with family members,

friends, and other members of the community as well as with nature spirits (mothers
of the forest*madre de monte and duenos de animales y plantas). It is grounded in the
appreciation of a respected community authority who is believed to be able to
influence the forces of nature through ‘‘visions,’’ ‘‘conversations,’’ and ‘‘healing.’’
Although the labor of women and men are equally important for their survival,
there are differences in how the various Amazonian societies view gender roles. The
Ashaninkas of the upper rainforest, for example, consider women’s labor comple-
mentary to men’s. However, their work is not perceived to be as valuable as men’s,
and Ashaninka women are subordinate to men. In contrast, the Shipibos, who dwell
in the lower rainforest, live in a matriarchal society where women are autonomous
beings who are entrusted with control of the resources of the community. Shipibo
women work alongside men in the commercialization of artisan work. Their
communal and household participation are recognized and valued by both their
partners and the larger Shipibo society.17
From the ecological point of view, ribereños do not separate themselves from
nature. Rivers are at the center of all their activities. Men gather at the river’s edge
before sunrise to fish and hunt, and women congregate there to wash the clothes,
collect water for cooking, take baths, and bathe their young children. In each town,
the river allows the women and men to grow and hunt food and raise cattle. Every
household has a piece of land and is responsible for ploughing, planting, and
harvesting its fruit. The slash-and-burn technique is used in agriculture, which is both
16
See Joanna Overing and Alan Passes, The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in
Native Amazonia (London: Routledge, 2000); Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, A incostância da alma selvagem
e outros ensaios de antropologia (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002); Janet Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds.),
About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Peter Gow, Of
Mixed Blood: Kinship and History in Peruvian Amazonia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); and Claude Marcel
Hladik (ed.), Tropical Forest, People and Food: Biocultural Interactions and Application to Development (New
York: UNESCO and Parthenon Publishing Group, 1993).
17
Marı́a Heise, Liliam Landeo, and Astrid Bant, Relaciones de Genero en la Amazonı́a Peruana (Peru: Centro
Amazónico de Antropologı́a y Aplicación Práctica, 1999).
26 ANA ISLA
an ideal practice for common land and a very sustainable system, because it allows the
forest to regenerate. In the afternoon after school, girls and boys gather at the river to
swim, bathe, catch shrimp and fish, collect drinking water, practice art with small
stones, canoe, and participate in jumping competitions from trees. Medicinal plants
that grow on the banks of the river are used in food and to cure illnesses. At night, the
river provides the quiet needed for a good night’s sleep. The river is always there. It
produces food and drink, medicine and entertainment; it gives rainforest inhabitants
life, livelihood, and freedom. The river and its products belong to everyone who
lives there; and thanks to the river, people grow up physically and mentally healthy.
This culture of abundance is subsistence, though the word has none of the negative
connotations attached to it in the possessive society or by the Peruvian elites and
industrial capitalism in general*everyone has what he or she needs.
The society of the Peruvian rainforest is the product of a particular ecological

balance with a diversified, fragile, and acidic soil. According to Flores et al., the context
of this ecosystem includes high temperatures (above 24 degrees Celsius), abundant
yearly rainfall (between 3,000 and 4,000 mm), and relative humidity (between 82 and
86 percent), all of which speeds the process of decomposition of organic material,
erosion, and soil deterioration.18 In response to these challenges, bosquecinos have
developed complex systems of forest management. In the lower lands of the Peruvian
rainforest, most communities settled on the banks of the Amazon, Marañon, Nanay,
Itaya, Tamishiyacu, Momón and Maniti rivers, which provide for their livelihoods as
artisan fisherman. In the upper lands of the Peruvian Amazon, more than 100,000
residents derive their occupation and income from agriculture. Agriculture in this
region is migratory due to the limited natural fertility of the soil. Like fishing, it is
subsistence-oriented in its trade on the local market. In this fragile and acidic soil, the
forest is the most stable vegetation, and it serves important functions in protecting the
viability of flora, fauna, and the ecosystem as a whole. Photosynthesis occurs at the top
of the forest, producing tall, closely packed, large-crowned, evergreen trees, which
nurture countless vegetable and animal species.19
Forest-dwelling farmers and fishers have been coexisting for centuries following
simple rules: fishers know which fish species develop under particular types of fruit
and trees surrounding the river banks, while agriculturalists obey ancestral
agricultural techniques, such as crop association and rotation. The slash-and-burn
system of cultivation imitates the natural ecosystem in three different ways: first,
through a high degree of food-plant diversification in which an extensive variety of
plant and animal species grow. Second, continuous cycles of rain and sun produce a
constant and rapid process of decomposition and regeneration of animal and
vegetable material. Third, subsistence farming and tropical rainforest ecologies
18
Salvador Flores, E. Gomez, and R. Kalliola, ‘‘Caracteristicas Generales de la Zona de Iquitos,’’ in R. Kalliola
and S. Flores (eds.), Geoecologı́a y Desarrollo Amazonico: Estudio Integrado en la Zona de Iquitos-Peru, Series A II.
(Turun, Finland: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, 1998), pp. 1732.
19
Flores et. al., op. cit., p. 20.
produce closed-cover protection of an already weakened soil against the direct impact
of rain and sun.20
From the biological point of view, Antonio Brack (who is respected for his
biological knowledge but discredited as the current Minister of Environment in
Peru) estimated in 1997 that indigenous communities knew 890 medicinal plants,
556 wood species, 1,500 ornamental plants, 102 dyes, 44 types of oil, 96 agro-
forestry species, 29 perfumes, 99 dressings, 37 cosmetics, 28 abortive and aphrodisiac
leaves, 115 toxic plants, 98 grains, and 261 fodders. In one indigenous community
alone, according to Brack, inhabitants know 31 kinds of cassava.21 José Álvarez, a
biologist from the Instituto Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana (IIAP), stated that the
impact of indigenous people on fauna was low due to their low-density population,
cultural and social control on hunting, absence of external demand, limited hunting
instruments, wide dispersion of wildlife, and diversified resources.22
This ‘‘good life’’ may seem to some to be a deplorable state of under-

development. Mainstream development experts see bosquecinos as irresponsible,
ignorant, backward, poor and needy. Following this perception, developers have
spread the ideological myth that Amazonian subsistence peoples are poor. But
poverty is far more than a crudely materialist term. It is relative to the measure of
human needs and in constant relation to nature. From this standpoint, bosquecinos
have lessons to offer the continent and the world: the capitalist crises did not affect
them because their habitat provides food, work, and entertainment. Indigenous
people’s struggle to retain their lands is also a struggle for recognition and respect.
An intuitively ecofeminist perspective emerges from Peruvian literature in the

1990s as both fiction and nonfiction writers on the rainforest confronted the
brutality of the concession system with their stories. Marcella Barcellos reminds us
that among natives, life is negotiated with nature according to certain rules that
recognize the ‘‘owners of things,’’ or ‘‘mothers’’: ‘‘Everything, from trees to humans,
has a mother. Mothers are stronger than men and have special powers,’’ she says.23
Barcellos argues that women in the rainforest provide use values and regenerate the
conditions of production and reproduction; as such, they are highly respected and
live in freedom. In reflecting on the tragedy of the concessions, Teddy Bendayan sees
the Amazon Mother as the only hope for life. He writes that ‘‘women are the only
20
Clifford Geertz, ‘‘Two Types of Ecosystems,’’ in Andrew Vayda (ed.), Environment and Cultural Behavior:
Ecological Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New York: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 328.
21
Antonio Brack, ‘‘Conocimientos tradicionales,’’ in GEF/PNUD/UNOPS Amazonia Peruana, comunidades
indı́genas, conocimientos y tierras tituladas (Lima, Peru: Atlas y Base de Datos. Proyectos RLA/92/G31,32,33,
1997).
22
José Álvarez, ‘‘Gestión comunal y territorio: Lecciones aprendidas de la cuenca del Nanay (Amazonı́a
NorPeruana) para el manejo de la fauna silvestre amazónica,’’ Manejo de Fauna silvestre en Latinoamérica, Vol.
1, No. 3, 2006, pp. 115.
23
Cecilia Barcellos, Munainini and Manguare. Relatos de la Amazonia (Lima: Entorno a la Selva Editorial,
1987), p. 16.
28 ANA ISLA
ones who can save the rainforest by teaching their children, from the time they are in
the womb, to shout for freedom.’’24 Roger Rumrill proposes to ‘‘remind women’s
children that nature is alive, that nature has ears, eyes, heart, sentiments, that if a
mountain falls, a tree is cut, a bird dies, a weapon is shot, everything is registered in
the jungle’s heart.’’25
But by the end of the 1990s, oil concessions in Loreto had significantly reduced
the abundance of wildlife. Subsistence living collapsed in the 35 communities26
living next to Occidental and Petro-Peru (now Pluspetrol) installations along the
Corrientes, Tigre, Pastaza, and Macusary rivers, and by streams, lakes, wetlands, and
in the flooded forests. Occidental and Petro-Peru pumped oil into those rivers and
degraded their pristine land, turning it into an oilfield with more than 150 wells,
over 1,000 kilometers of road, and a pipeline through these communities.
This situation sparked several rebellions.27 The Achuar community formed three
local organizations28 and two international organizations29 with about 12,500
people. In the Corrientes River area, Pluspetrol Norte S.A. counterattacked. The
company founded an organization called FEPIBAC, which divided the rebelling
community by providing money to mitigate some of the problems the company had
created. It funded micro-enterprises to clean up the pollution and sell locally
produced food. It also paid for small infrastructure projects such as a public tap to
collect water, which became necessary after Pluspetrol contaminated local
water supplies. FEPIBAC works in alliance with the Confederation of Amazon
Nations (CONAP),30 an indigenous association organized by the government. These
company-friendly organizations work to get the indigenous groups to accept
development projects but sit down and negotiate with the corporations and the
government over some of the details.
Dispossession by Oil and Forestry Concessions and Privatization Decrees
The descendents of the colonizers and mestizos (mixed descent, or so-called

white),31 who have taken power since independence (182124), have long-held racist
and exclusionary attitudes towards Peru’s indigenous people from both the Amazon
24
Teddy Bendayan, Germen the Luz (Cuentos y Poemas) (Iquitos, Peru: Bufeo Colorado Editorial, 1996), p. 68.
25
Roger Rumrrill, La Anaconda del Samiria (Lima: Bruno Editorial, 1997), p. 29.
26
Among those communities are Itayacu (Achual), Nuevo Porvenir (Quichua), Nuevo Andoas (Quichua),
Alianza Capalmari (Quichua), Andoas Viejo (Quichua), and Panayacu (Quichua).
27
See http://www.contaminacionpetrolera.com/, accessed July 12, 2008.
28
Achuarti Iruntramu (ATI), La Federación de Comunidades Nativas del Rı́o Corrientes (FECONACO), and
Organizacion Achuar Chayat (ORACH).
29
Federación de la Nacionalidad Achuar del Perú (FENAP) and Coordinadora Binacional de Nacionalidad
Achuar del Ecuador y Perú (COBNAEP).
30
See: http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/4731.
31
David Nugent, Modernity at the Edge of Empire: State, Individual, and Nation in the Northern Peruvian Andes,
18851935 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 58173.
and Andes. As such, they ignored the indigenous peoples’ struggles until they finally
rose up in arms. Peru’s current and two-time president, Alan Garcia, unabashedly
summed up the sentiment when he recently said indigenous people are ‘‘not first-
class citizens.’’32 Like many leaders in colonized countries, Garcia’s allegiance is to
Peru’s elite classes in perpetuation of the capitalist system from which they derive
enormous benefit.
But capitalism’s underlying philosophy of scarcity*i.e., that there is not

enough, so those able to do so better grab what they can while they can*puts it in
direct conflict with cultures of subsistence, which are based on the idea that the Earth
does provide enough for everyone. Capitalism causes poverty by destroying the
culture of subsistence.
32
Peruvian President Alan Garcia, speaking in a clip on ‘‘As Tensions Flare in Peruvian Amazon, Award-Winning
Actor Q’orianka Kilcher Heads to Peru to Support Indigenous Rights,’’ Democracy Now!, June 10, 2009.
30 ANA ISLA
The first long wave of dispossession in Peru started with the Spanish invasion in
1593. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the peoples and ecosystems of the Inca
Empire (now Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and parts of Chile and Brazil) fed the
growth and evolution of the colonial center, beginning with Spain and Portugal. The
industrial revolution also used Peru’s Andean gold, silver and potato production33 as
well as the rainforest’s mahogany, rubber, and barbasco (Lonchocarpus urucu, a plant
that is used as a pesticide and insecticide). Yet instead of appreciating these valuable
contributions by Peruvian Andean and rainforest subsistence cultures, they have been
dismissed and stigmatized as pre-scientific, traditional, primitive, or backward, and
their members have been assassinated, raped, kidnapped, poisoned, and massacred.34
A second wave of dispossession began in 1950 as Peru was incorporated into

the imperium of the United States. Legal provisions were introduced to weaken
indigenous people’s control over their lands.35 In 1970, during the military regime
of Velazco Alvarado, petroleum exploration and production began in indigenous
lands, in Blocks 1A-B with Occidental (Oxy) and Petro-Peru in Blocks 8-8X, both
in Loreto. In 1974, despite these agreements with capitalist outsiders, the military
government of Velazco Alvarado recognized the native community as a legal person
with collective property rights to their land. It declared that the indigenous peoples’
land rights were inalienable and permanent, and that their land could not be used
as collateral by the government. This meant that Amazon indigenous people were
then considered subjects with rights.36 But the declaration of rights for indigenous
people turned out to be hollow, since Velazco’s government also introduced the
legal system of concessions that has been used ever since to take indigenous lands.
Indigenous people, with Velazco’s support, began formally organizing for territorial
recognition and after several decades formed AIDESEP, the Asociacio´n Intere´tnica de
Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana [The Interethnic Association for the Development of
the Peruvian Rainforest].37 In 1979 during the regime of General Morales
Bermudez, who ousted Velazco in a military coup, Amazon forestry land was
33
Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World (New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1988).
34
Fernando Santos Granero and Federico Barclay, Tamed Frontiers: Economy, Society and Civil Rights in Upper
Amazonian (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000).
35
In 1957, supreme decree No. 003 set aside 98,128 hectares of land for ‘‘tribus selvicolas,’’ an average of 1,533
hectares per community. In 1964, the Agrarian Reform (Law No. 15037) promoted colonization of the
rainforest, outside of the indigenous land. At the time, the reform generated the largest and most aggressive
process of colonization and occupation of indigenous people’s land.
36
Stefano Varese, Salt of the Mountain: Campa Ashaninka History and Resistance in the Peruvian Jungle (Norman,
OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002).
37
AIDESEP is a network of indigenous people whose work is to preserve and teach indigenous language. It includes
several organizations such as Asociacion Regional de los Pueblos Indigenas de la Selva Central (ARPI S.C),
Coordinadora Regional de Pueblos Indigenas Region San Lorenzo (CORPI San Lorenzo), Federacion Nativa de Madre
de Dios y Afluentes (FENAMAD), Organizacion Regional de Pueblos Indigenas del Oriente (ORPIO), Organizacion
Regional AIDESEP Ucayali (ORAU), Organizacion Regional de Pueblos Indigenas de la Amazonia Norte del Peru
(ORPIAN P) and Consejo Machiguenga del Rio Urubamba. See also: Alberto Chirif and Pedro Garcı́a, ‘‘Amazonı́a
peruana: Organizaciones indı́genas: logros y desafı́os,’’ forthcoming in Asuntos Indı́genas, Grupo Internacional de
Trabajo sobre Asuntos Indı́genas (IWGIA).
designated as state property that was ‘‘handed over for use’’ by the indigenous
communities. Only land used in agriculture by communities was recognized as
communal property. A change to decisions regarding the sale of land was also
introduced at that time, framing them as ‘‘based on the community decision’’ and
‘‘solicited by two-thirds of the community members.’’ This provision opened the
way for massive manipulation and fraudulent ‘‘community decisions.’’
In 1993, Fujimori’s dictatorship (19902001) made further changes to the

Constitution that permitted communal land to be seized by the state if it was judged
to be abandoned. This decision was very problematic for the indigenous population,
since slash-and-burn cultivation is sequential; some years lands are in use, while
other years the land rests. Ignoring this fact, in 1995 the regime expanded oil
concessions and signed a contract with Atlantic Richfield Peru, Inc. (ARCO) for
production in Block 64, located in Achuar territory along the Morona River and the
Huituyacu and Huasaga rivers, two tributaries of the Pastaza River, near the
northern border of Peru. In 2000, the Achuar people forced ARCO to pull out of
the block, and Occidental took over production there. Between 1996 and 2000,
Pluspetrol Norte S.A. operated in Block 8-8X and Block 1A-B respectively. In
February 2001, Fujimori*before resigning from the presidency of Peru via fax*
granted 23 new oil concessions to Occidental, Repsol, and Burlington Resources. In
2003, the Achuar people’s resistance also forced Burlington Resources to withdraw
from Block 64. The dictator also granted forestry concessions of up to 10,000
hectares for 60-year contracts to those with deep pockets.
Traditionally, bosquecinos would cut a few trees during the rainy season to sell in
the city in exchange for basics such as sugar, salt, paraffin, matches, clothing, school
materials, medicine, and Christmas gifts. In this way, they extracted resources only to
meet their minimal, immediate needs. But as the system of concessions has expanded,
the laws have changed. Since 2000, bosquecinos’ logging activities have essentially been
made illegal by requiring them to buy a permit, which they cannot afford. ‘‘Illegal’’
trees cut without a license fetch lower prices, so they must extract a higher volume of
trees than they would otherwise need. Thus, bosquecinos who do not have access to
forest concessions or live far away from them have become criminalized.38
Permanent forest production has been superimposed on communal spaces,

which has created numerous conflicts, as companies with forest concessions quickly
began clear-cutting. Although Article 66 of the Peruvian Constitution grants forest
concessions only to individuals, in Madre de Dios and Loreto, mafias of foreign and
national traffickers (habilitadores)39 with powerful connections in government moved
in to take advantage of the business opportunity.40 Aside from being given to groups
38
José Álvarez, 2006, op. cit., p. 11.
39
Habilitadores operate a financial or food credit system that delivers wood to the financier.
40
José Álvarez, ‘‘Peru: Crisis forestal, Alguien piensa*realmente*en las comunidades amazónicas?,’’ La Razon,
February 6, 2009.
32 ANA ISLA
who are not legally entitled to them, the government is not able to monitor or
supervise these areas to make sure that concession holders respect the few restrictions
that exist. For example, with just one concession of, say, 5,000 hectares, an individual
can gain access to hundreds of square kilometers, which happened with the Schipper
family, a major player in the timber sector. In 1992 the family obtained the first
forest concession of 5,000 hectares in Iberia, the so-called ‘‘Madera Iberia or
Chullachaquis Investment.’’ In 1993, by investing in habilitation schemes, the family
secured another four concessions, which gave it control over 207,000 hectares out of
682,000 hectares authorized in Madre de Dios.41 The Schipper family also
administers three timber companies, Empresa Forestal Rio Piedras, Empresa Forestal
Monago, and Forestal Otorongo A and B, which export high-quality wood to the
U.S. According to Miluska Soko, Alan Schipper is the ‘‘man on the ground’’*or in
this case, the ‘‘man in the forest’’*for Drago Bozovich, the timber magnate who
heads Peru’s largest wood products exporter, Grupo Bozovich. The company exports
cedar (cedrela odorata), mahogany (swietenia macroprylla), and other woods to an
expanding international market, with export offices in the U.S. (Bozovich Timber
Products, Inc., [BTP]), Mexico (Bozovich S. de R.L. de C.V. [Bozomex]), and a
joint-venture in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. The company is
also eagerly eyeing China and Europe for future expansion, and it sells to the
domestic Peruvian market.42
In March 2004, the administration of Alejandro Toledo, who succeeded Fujimori,

approved the concession of Block 101 to Occidental Oil’s Peruvian subsidiary. Block
101 is adjacent to Block 64; together they total 1,698,230 hectares (16,982.3 square
kilometers, an area slightly less than half the size of Switzerland). By 2006, the
government had committed approximately 43 percent of Peru’s tropical rainforest to
oil concessions*some 27 million hectares in a five-year period. This included
contracts with Repsol (Spain) and Conoco Phillips (Canada/U.S.) to explore new
concessions in Loreto, Madre de Dios, and Ucayali, which borders Loreto to the north
and Madre de Dios to the south.43 In 2005, Toledo’s administration granted 196 forest
concessions in Loreto.
To make matters worse, the state is incapable of monitoring logging in the

Peruvian Amazon. One worker with the government agency that grants forestry
concessions, INRENA (Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales [the National Institute
of Natural Resources]), who asked not to be identified, described the situation this way:
41
Miguel Gutierrez, ‘‘El Rey de la Madera,’’ La Republica, July 22, 2008, pp. 1617.
42
See: http://www.peruexporta.com.pe/articulo.php?ia300, translated into English at: http://
translate.google.com/translate?hlen&sles&uhttp://www.peruexporta.com.pe/articulo.php?ia300&ei
AuVtSrrMKJCJtge4sMy-AQ&saX&oitranslate&resnum7&ctresult&prev/search?q‘‘Drago
Bozovich’’&hlen&rlsGGGL,GGGL:2006, accessed July 27, 2009; and Soko R. Miluska, ‘‘Peru. Los Barones
del Cedro y la Caoba: La Familia Bozovich y la Industria Maderera,’’ online at: http://www.
peru-amazonico.de/pam_esp/amazgo_es.htm, accessed February 19, 2009.
43
Dan Collyns, ‘‘Indigenous Groups Force Oil Company to Cut Pollution,’’ Guardian Weekly, December 8
14, 2006, p. 29.
There is no budget for conducting field evaluations, even though this is mandatory
by law. For instance, to check Islandia’s concessions, the personnel need to walk
eight days to go and eight days to come back, because there is no money for gas.’’44
As a result, concessions are granted with no knowledge of the area. José Álvarez, an
IIAP (Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonı́a Peruana [Peruvian Amazon Research
Institute]) biologist, proposes that organized indigenous and campesina communities
under their highest authority, the Communal Assembly, take over the monitoring
and enforcement of laws and regulations regarding logging in their areas. He points
out that indigenous communities are perfectly suited to this task, because they are
autonomous, sustainable, have a direct interest in the biological diversity, and have
the capability to monitor activities and the legal authority to direct internal affairs
and punish offenders.45 But they need to be empowered by the government.
Globalization Pressures on Dispossession
A third wave in the attack on Peruvian Amazon subsistence societies started with
the implementation of free trade agreements to expand commodification. Since
2006, during Alan Garcia’s second administration, privatization of the Amazon
rainforest became the main negotiation within the push for free trade agreements
with the United States, the European Union, Canada, and China, as the Amazon
rainforest became one of the last profitable frontiers for economic development.
A trade agreement negotiated with the U.S., the Peru Trade Promotion
Agreement (PTPA)46 frames its goals in terms of ‘‘sustainable development,’’ a
humane and ecologically responsible sounding code word that allows virtually
unchecked capitalist exploitation of the Global South. In keeping with the free
trade agenda, the government organized the Environment Ministry with two vice-
ministries: Natural Resources Development Strategy, and Environmental Manage-
ment (EM), which are financed by the International Bank of Development, the
regional arm of the World Bank. The EM is in charge of promoting
biotechnology/biopiracy, and ethanol, it encourages the use of agro-chemicals in
44
Author interview, July 2008.
45
José Álvarez, ‘‘Gestion Comunal y Territorio: Lecciones aprendidas de la Cuenca del Nanay (Amazonia
NorPeruana) para el manejo de la Fauna Silvestre Amazónica,’’ Revista Electronica Manejo de Fauna Silvestre en
Latinoamérica, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2006, pp. 115.
46
The PTPA was signed on April 12, 2006, though it didn’t come into force until February, 1, 2009. According
to the U.S. Trade Representative, the PTPA will result in ‘‘significant liberalization of trade in goods and services
between the United States and Peru. Under the PTPA, Peru immediately eliminated most of its tariffs on U.S.
exports, with all remaining tariffs phased out over defined time periods. The PTPA also includes important
disciplines relating to: customs administration and trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade, government
procurement, services, investment, telecommunications, electronic commerce, intellectual property rights, and
labor and environmental protection.’’ See http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/
peru-tpa.
34 ANA ISLA
farming, and guarantees private property in agrarian and forestry land. In addition
to promoting policies that dispossess the indigenous people of their lands, the
creation of these new organizations ignores the competence of regional govern-
ments and indigenous and peasant federations. Instead it authorizes the Central
Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) and the Supervision Office of Wood Forest
Concessions, or OSINFOR, an agency within INRENA, to privatize land.
OSINFOR was set up to supervise the implementation of forestry concessions
and protected areas, while MINAG authorizes changes in land use.
In an attempt to justify his racist policies of dispossession, in October 2007,

President Garcia wrote an article titled ‘‘El Perro del Hortelano’’ [The Syndrome of
the Orchard Dog] in which he likened bosquecinos to mad dogs who have resources
they neither exploit nor allow anyone else to exploit: ‘‘There are millions of
hectares that the communities have not cultivated as well as hundreds of mineral
deposits that cannot be worked . . . the rivers that run down both sides of the
mountain range pour into the ocean without producing electric energy,’’47 he
wrote. Garcia then equated modernity and progress with investment and
transnational corporations.
Secrecy has surrounded the negotiation of the trade agreements. To avoid

public scrutiny, Garcia sought special authority from the Congress to legislate in
favor of the PTPA. He then issued 92 decrees, which established the basis for the
next indigenous struggle; the decrees violate Covenant 169 of the International
Labor Organization (ILO), which the Peruvian government ratified in 1993.48
They also conflict with the Peruvian Constitution and communities’ legislation49
that protect native and campesina communities’ rights to agrarian development.
Furthermore, the decrees are widely condemned throughout indigenous society,
including by the Amazonia Parliamentary Representative. The decrees also contain
contradictory judgments produced by two government ministries.50
Despite all of these problems and conflicts, Garcia has been negotiating more
concessions. Oil concessions under negotiation include Block 109 to the Spanish oil
47
Javier Diez Canseco, ‘‘Colmillos del perro del hortelano,’’ La Republica, June 7, 2007.
48
With Legislative Resolution No. 2653, Peru agreed formally to recognize the property rights and the concept
of territory for indigenous land, meaning a place where indigenous communities exercise patrimonial control
and socio-cultural ascendancy.
49
Law No. 22175 (Community Natives and Agrarian Development of the Upper and Lower Rainforest), and
Law No. 24657 (Boundaries and Title Deeds of Campesina Communities).
50
The Agrarian Commission in April 2007 approved a selling regime to enable privatization in order to assure
investment and employment. In October 2007, the Economy Commission expressed disapproval of the selling
regime, instead favoring the continuation of the concession system. The Loreto Regional Government prefers
the concession system, because it maintains that transferring property rights introduces incentives that could
promote deforestation and put the natural rainforest at risk. The International Union of Forestry Research
Organizations (IUFRO) also favors concessions over privatization, because it believes the resulting deforestation
and replacement of the native Amazon forest with exotic species of homogenous plantations would negatively
impact the biological diversity of the Amazon.
giant, Repsol; Block 67 to the private French/Anglo oil and gas company, Perenco;
Block 64 to the independent Canadian oil and gas concern, Talisman; and Block 143
to Texas-based backer of George W. Bush, Hunt Oil. Garcia is also negotiating more
areas for ethanol production, gold mining concessions with Dorato Resources, Inc.
and areas for hydroelectric plants with the Brazilian oil and gas giant, Petrobras. The
hydroelectric plants under discussion are at Nambari (2,000 MW), Sumabeni (1,074
MW), Paquitzapango (2,000 MW), Urubamba (940 MW), Vizcatan (750 MW),
and Chuquipampa (800 MW).
Following is a chronology of the extended rebellion that has erupted in

increasingly serious confrontations in the past decades.
Recent Eco-class-race Struggles to Defend the Commons
The struggle in the Peruvian Amazon basin is the first organized Peruvian
indigenous peoples’ rebellion since the 1780 Tupac Amaru II rebellion against the
Spanish colonizers. This quintessentially 21st century rebellion has grown over the
course of many years in response to the attack on indigenous people’s life by
multinational oil, mining, and forest corporations in alliance with the Peruvian
government.
Since the first rebellion, indigenous men, women, and children have had a
common agenda: the liberation of their territories. In 2003, the first eco-class-race
uprising took place after heavy metals such as lead and cadmium were found in
Achuar drinking water, rivers, ecosystems, and in the blood of people. One
anonymous indigenous informant with whom I spoke in 2008 had this to say about
the situation:
Down well water pours directly into the rivers Pastaza, Macusary, Corrientes and
Tigre. The contamination is expanded toward the Marañon and Amazon rivers
because these four rivers are their tributaries. Pollution produced by oil spills
sticks to the trees and bushes. Medicinal plants and ‘‘pan llevar’’ are weakened and
their fruit instead of ripening becomes rotten. Drinking water is contaminated
resulting in people and animal poisonings. The contamination of ecosystems has
put our communities close to extinction.51
In 2006, the second eco-class struggle began as an international revolt when 800
Achuars from Ecuador and Peru, ignoring national borders, arrived by boat and
canoes and formed a peaceful blockade in Pluspetrol-operated Lot 1A-B and Lot 8 to
prevent road traffic to the site. For two weeks, they stopped oil production of 40,000
barrels of oil per day. The Peruvian government and Pluspetrol were pressured to
51
Author interview, August 2008.
36 ANA ISLA
agree to the Dorissa Agreement, which contained promises to assess the situation and
stop the contamination of their communities from the oil production.52 Among other
provisions, the agreement gave the company twelve months to clean the areas polluted
by Occidental’s abandoned oil wells; initiate a process of reforestation; and begin re-
injecting into the subsoil the contaminated ‘‘down well water’’53 that is poisoning the
waterways. Every day the oil companies dump about a million barrels of down well
water into rivers and streams. To help them cope with the illnesses resulting from
exposure to these toxins, local people demanded a hospital be built within two years
and that the government conduct an epidemiological study to assess the impacts on
indigenous workers.
Despite the Dorissa Agreement, by 2009 nothing changed, and the contamina-
tion continues. Pluspetrol has re-injected only small amounts of the contaminated
waste water. Further, several oil spills have made life unbearable in affected
communities. On July 8, 2007, one spill contaminated 16 kilometers of the Macusari
River, and on July 25, 2007 another despoiled 5 kilometers of the stream in
Antoquia village. According to Harvey Rivadeneira, a local chemist:
Toxic substances modified the pH of the surrounding watersheds, devastating

the hydrobiology of rivers surrounding oil exploitation. Oil covering the river
water made mirrors [that reflected the sunlight], making impossible its
oxygenation and condemning to death its plankton, animals and its native
people.54
In March 2008, as conditions continued to deteriorate, the struggle escalated.

With the destruction of their means of livelihood by lack of access to their areas of
hunting, gathering, and fishing, indigenous people are forced to become wage-
laborers at the oil companies, since oil corporations are the only income providers in
the area. Thus an exploitative relationship forms through a process of structural
devaluation of indigenous people’s work.
Mies observes that in the Third World, the fate of the subsistence producer is
‘‘housewifization’’*that is, treatment as feminine or feminized workers who are
either unpaid or poorly paid. Victims of racist discrimination, indigenous wage-
laborers receive the lowest salary compared with other oil production workers. They
are only given one-month contracts and then must wait a year until all members of
the 35 communities in the area have earned a month’s salary before they are re-hired.
52
See letter from César Garcı́a Sandy, on behalf of the Native Communities of the Corrientes River Federation
(FECONACO), the Racimos de Ungurahui Working Group (Racimos), and the Forest Peoples Programme to
the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), February 3, 2009, online at: http://
www.forestpeoples.org/.../peru_cerd_update_achuar_feb09_eng.pdf.
53
Down well water, also referred to as production water, is the water in an oil well that is separated and left over
from oil extraction. It is heavily contaminated with hydrocarbons and heavy metals.
54
Author interview, July 2008.
Following the Dorissa Act, Pluspetrol contracted the service of the Peruvian
corporation, Graña y Montero, which is involved in energy, mining, and oil
production, to remediate the destruction Pluspetrol caused in the forest. Graña y
Montero employs between four and five individuals per community. The
corporation knows that these workers are capable of remediating the soil
contamination because of their experiential knowledge of the soil taxonomy
identified in the Amazon.55 However, because of the classism and racism against
indigenous people, they are not respected as thinking or problem-solving human
beings, and their knowledge is dismissed.
Tired of the poor conditions, in late March 2008 workers complained of their
situation to the 24 Apus, community leaders, who according to indigenous tradition,
are consulted before any activity is carried out in the community’s territory. After
listening to the workers, the Apus decided to call a meeting with Graña y Montero.
The first meeting was set in Titayacu, but the Graña y Montero negotiators did not
show up. Instead they sent police who militarized the area. At the second meeting,
this time in Nueva Jerusalen, three negotiators did attend. The Apus proposed an
equal payment of 2,500 nuevo soles (US$800) to indigenous laborers who are given
only 28 days of paid employment a year, but the proposal was rejected. At the third
meeting, no negotiators arrived.
In support of their members/workers, on March 20, 2008, the Apus and their
communities initiated a strike for better pay. Workers, community members, and
Apus congregated at an abandoned airport hoping to discuss their issues with any
institutions*the enterprise, the government, and the ombudsperson56*interested in
helping to resolve the problem. None bothered to come. Instead, armed police arrived
and attacked. In this encounter, three indigenous people were injured, one was killed,
and three ‘‘disappeared.’’ During the police rampage, one police officer was also
killed. The police used a Pluspetrol installation as a detention center. Fifty-three men,
including an eleven-year-old boy and a priest, were held in a container and beaten for
three days. Afterwards, the ‘‘prisoners’’ were taken to jail in Iquitos where local people
and the church intervened to gain their freedom. Of those 53, four indigenous men
were accused of police assassination and terrorism and kept in jail.
In August 2008, in Guayabamba jail in Iquitos, I interviewed these four men.

They identified themselves as belonging to the Quichua and Achuar communities
located on the El Marañon River. They disputed the accusations against them, and
three of the four said they had not even participated in the airport demonstration,
since the police had taken them from their houses the day before the march. After five
months in prison, it was revealed that the officer had not died in the airport as the
55
Gobert Paredes, Sjef Kauffman and Risto Kalliola, ‘‘Suelos Aluviales Recientes de la Zona Iquitos-Nauta,’’ in
R. Kalliola and S. Flores (eds.), Geoecologı́a y Desarrollo Amazonico: Estudio Integrado en la Zona de Iquitos-Peru,
Series A II. (Turun, Finland: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, 1998), pp. 231251.
56
The ombudsperson is a government watchdog over the people’s and community’s constitutional rights.
38 ANA ISLA
police had originally claimed, but in the backyard of a 60-year-old woman during a
police attack on the small farms and households adjacent to the airport. In an
interview with a national media outlet, the woman said she was so afraid of the
violence of the police raids that she hid to keep safe and did not see what happened in
her backyard. Despite this new information, which should have cleared the four
suspects, as I write this essay, two of the four indigenous men are still being held in jail
without charge. A month after the revolt, Carlos Curitiva Chuge, a cousin of one of
the detainees, was killed by a police bayonet as he was fishing in a communal pond.57
Between 2006 and 2008, several other local eco-class-race struggles took place
against oil concessions, but the government chose to ignore them. During this same
period, the negotiations over the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement with the U.S.
increased pressure to take indigenous land. Separate free trade agreements with the
European Union, Canada, and China are still under negotiation. Under the PTPA,
land privatization was proposed to replace the Concession System.
In 2008, indigenous people became aware of the new scheme to privatize their
lands. Before taking action against the new decrees, indigenous people through
AIDESEP called for dialogue, which again the government ignored. The continued
government stonewalling inflamed the struggle against the privatization of the
rainforest, turning a local eco-class revolt into a regional battle as knowledge about
the privatization of the commons spread and expanded into a larger eco-class
consciousness among bosquecinos.
On July 6, 2008, indigenous people in the upper rainforest area of Madre de

Dios initiated a three-day strike against the Garcia government’s decrees,58 by
demanding the abolition of all new legislation promoting the privatization of the
rainforest. This strike coincided with a national strike organized by the largest union
in the country, Central General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP). On July 8, 2008,
the day of the national strike, the regional government headquarters in Puerto
Maldonado, the capital city of Madre de Dios, was burned to the ground. Twenty-
three indigenous people were detained and accused of starting the fire.59 During the
national strike, Peruvian journalists revealed that the dispute over the privatization of
the rainforest was a central issue for the strikers.60 The press coverage put indigenous
people’s land claims in a new light, as their pictures were shown on the front page of
newspapers all over the country.
On August 9, 2008, International Indigenous Peoples Day, AIDESEP,

representing 57 indigenous communities, announced that after several months of
57
Informe especial, ‘‘Què pasa realmente en Andoas?,’’ La Primera, July 7, 2008, pp. 1213.
58
Legislative decrees: 1011, 1013, 1020, 1039, 1048, 1064, 1079, 1081, 1089, 1090, and several others.
59
‘‘Paro en Madre de Dios fue violento, Campesinos incendian sede del gobierno regional. Hieren policias a
flechazos,’’ Ojo, July 10, 2008, p. 1; also see: ‘‘Multitudes piden cambio de rumbo. Informe especial,’’ La
Primera, July 10, 2008, p. 1.
60
Juan de la Puente, ‘‘El fracaso ausente,’’ La Republica, July 9, 2008, p. 3.
calling for dialogue and negotiation, indigenous people were taking to the streets.
The uprising began without incident as indigenous people exercised their
constitutional right to engage in civil disobedience against the privatization laws
and say ‘‘No!’’ to the free trade agreement. They barricaded the road to Camisea61
and took control of several areas, including the pipeline in the lower rainforest, the
hydroelectric installation near Bagua, and the gasline in Urubamba.62
In an attempt to find a way forward in this expanding crisis, a roundtable was

organized in the town of Datem del Maranón in Loreto state. Participants in the
dialogue were, on the one side, the President of the Loreto Region, the Minister of
Environment, and two members of the Council of Ministries. On the other side were
leaders of seven native confederations represented by AIDESEP, the president of
INDEPA (Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de Pueblos Andinos, Amazonicos y

Afroperuano [the Institute for Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples]), an
indigenous organization affiliated with the Peruvian government,63 and leaders of the
Frente Patriotico de Loreto (FPL [the Patriotic Front of Loreto]), a civil society
organization that includes unions, teachers, university professors, and business
people. After eleven days of strike action in which indigenous people paralyzed 60
percent of the country amidst on-and-off negotiations, the Peruvian Parliament in
charge of Indigenous Issues voted to eliminate two legislative decrees: 1015 and 1073.64
By law, President Garcia had 40 days to reply to this parliamentary action.
The struggle was highly politicized. In October 2008 a plot organized by the
Garcia government and functionaries from the Energy and Mining Ministry and
Petro-Peru was uncovered.65 They secretly negotiated to provide concessions in
Reserva Kugapakori, Nahua, and Nantis, located in Cuzco and Ucayali, to Discover
Petroleum, a Dutch oil corporation. These reserves were created by the Ministry of
Agriculture supposedly to protect voluntarily isolated indigenous people. However in
2009, President Garcia conceded 49 million hectares for oil production, citing
‘‘national interest.’’66 Revelations of these underhanded deals fueled support for
indigenous peoples’ claims.
61
Peru’s Camisea Gas Project is one of the most damaging projects in the Amazon Basin. Located in the remote
Lower Urubamba Basin in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon, the $1.6 billion project includes two pipelines to
the Peruvian coast, cutting through an Amazon biodiversity hotspot. This is another Pluspetrol project.
62
Petro-Peru, station 5 facility in el Pongo de Manseriche (Loreto); hydro-electric Amarango in Amarango,
Mayo Zone (Amazonas); nine Pluspetrol oil ferries in Echarate/Bajo Urubamba (Madre de Dios and Cuzco).
63
Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indı´genas, Amazónicos y Afroperuano (INDEPA), online at:
http://www.indepa.gob.pe/index.php?id 66,0,0,1,0,0, accessed on April 20, 2009.
64
These decrees related to the percentage required for their lands to be concessioned off and the requirements
for the sale of indigenous land.
65
‘‘La Mención al Presidente, (Todos los Audios de la Corrupción),’’ La Republica, October, 12, 2008, online
at: http://www.larepublica.pe/node/167161.
66
‘‘Según Investigación de Cientı́ficos de Organizaciones Estadounidenses y Universidad de Duke. El 72
percent de la Amazonia Peruana está cubierta de concesiones de petróleo y gas,’’ La Republica, July 16, 2008,
p. 7.
40 ANA ISLA
The indigenous struggle got another boost in February 2009 when the
International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Committee of Experts on the Application
of Conventions and Recommendations asked the Peruvian government to comply
with Covenant 169. The ILO requested that the government:
. guarantee the participation and consultation of the indigenous people in a
coordinated and systematic manner;
. identify urgent situations related to natural resource exploitation that put people,
institutions, goods, work, cultures, and environments at risk; and
. adopt special measures in order to protect them.

Despite the indigenous uprising, Parliament’s action to rescind two of the legislative
decrees, and the ILO resolution, the government ignored the constitutional mandate to
reply within 40 days and instead continued selling-out indigenous land to corporations.
On March 12, 2009, IADESEP wrote to the Congress and the President of the
Council of the Ministries again requesting a dialogue, which both institutions ignored.
On April 9, 2009, with their demands still unmet, the indigenous people declared a
permanent uprising in defense and protection of their territories and rose up in arms
again. In this most recent uprising, new demands were incorporated, which included:
. to reform the constitution to reinstate the principles of indigenous peoples’
inalienable, permanent rights to their territories;
. to prohibit the government from using their land as collateral;
. to recognize collective property among indigenous people;
. to accept and include in the Constitution the UN declaration on Indigenous

Peoples’ Rights, and ILO edict 169;
. to incorporate into the Constitution the right to previous consultation in every

procedure that affects indigenous people;
. to rescind the government resolution that criminalizes protest;
. to eliminate resolutions that privatize water and divert the rivers toward
agribusiness projects; and,
. to establish a national dialogue roundtable to implement the indigenous people’s

demands to rescind the decrees.67
67
See: http://www.aidesep.org.pe/editor/documentos/648.jpg, accessed April 12, 2009.
The uprising had a significant impact in that it was able to incorporate all
bosquecinos, including Regional Patriotic Fronts that include unions, municipalities,
army reservists, and cities from every corner of the rainforest. These new forces
converged to expose the oppression of the Garcia government. Two main cities,
Yurimaguas (in Loreto) and Pucallpa (in Ucayalli), staged general strikes, while
Iquitos, the capital city of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, organized a march.
According to FORMABIAP (Formación de Maestros Bilingües de la Amazonı́a Peruana
[the Amazon Bilingual Teacher’s Association]), river boats carrying oil on the rivers
surrounding the Amazon basin*the Amazonas, Napo, Marañon, and Ucayali*were
blockaded.68 In Loreto, these actions forced Petro-Peru S.A. to shut down the North-
eastern pipeline, which cut off the shipment of crude oil for export. It also forced
Pluspetrol to shut operations in Block 1A-B and Block 8.69 In Bagua 300 indigenous
people took control of Petro-Peru installations, and thousands blocked highways at

the Devil’s Curve to stop delivery of supplies to Lima, the Peruvian capital.
In response to this widespread rebellion, the government declared a 60-day state-

of-siege on May 9, 2009 in four departments: Loreto, Amazonas, Cuzco, and
Ucayali. This declaration suspended the constitutional rights of rainforest citizens
living close to oil and gas pipelines. The government violently attacked the
Ashaninkas with tear gas grenades, and marine gunboats on the Napo River
destroyed the wooden canoes of the Quichuas and Arabelas peoples.
The bosquecinos saw the government actions as a declaration of war. The conflict
escalated to the national level and brought Andean indigenous people into the
struggle, since they are also affected by several of the legislative decrees. The
repression continued. On May 12, 2009, while meeting in preparation for the IV
Continental Summit of People and Indigenous Nationalities from Abya Yala
(CSPN) scheduled at the end of the month, Amazon and indigenous groups united
and announced their planned response. On May 13, 2009 for the first time,
AIDESEP, the indigenous peoples’ network from the Amazon basin, marched on the
streets of Lima accompanied by the most important indigenous Andean associations,
such as the peasant federation, CCP (Confederation Campesina del Peru), CON-
ACAMI (Confederacion Nacional de Comunidades en Contra de la Minerı́a [The
National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining in Peru]), MCP
(Movimiento Cumbre de los Pueblos [the Peoples Summit Movements]), and
ANAMEBI-Peru (Asociacio´n Nacional de Maestros en Educación Bilingüe [the
National Association of Bilingual Teachers]). Support has also come from
the highest levels of the Catholic Church in the Amazon basin, which condemned
the land takeovers and declared support for the right of the indigenous people to
defend themselves against this injustice. Other political organizations have expressed
68
FORMABIAP, April 24, 2009, personal communication.
69
FORMABIAP, May 12, 2009, personal communication.
42 ANA ISLA
solidarity with this uprising and are calling for the creation of a National Political
Front.70
On May 28, at the IV Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala Summit in Puno, 7,000
indigenous people from Canada, Europe, and Africa arrived and pledged their
support to the struggle. At this Summit, the Amazon indigenous women in
association with 2,000 international women presented a document in which they
stated:
We, indigenous women gathered in the sacred lands of Lake Titicaca, after two
days of discussions and deliberation raise our voices in these times when Abya
Yala’s71 womb is once more with childbirth pains, to give birth to the new
Pachakutik72 for a better life on our planet. We, indigenous women, have had a
direct input into the historical process of transformation of our peoples through
our proposals and actions in the various struggles taking place and engendered
from the indigenous movements.
We are the carriers, conduits of our cultural and genetic make-up; we gestate
and brood life; together with men, we are the axis of the family unit and society.
We join our wombs to our mother earth’s womb to give birth to new times in this
Latin American continent where in many countries millions of people,
impoverished by the neoliberal system, raise their voices to say ENOUGH! to
oppression, exploitation and the looting of our wealth. We therefore join in the
liberation struggles taking place throughout our continent.
We gather here at this summit, with our hearts, minds, hands and wombs, for the
purpose of seeking alternatives to eliminate injustice, discrimination, machismo
and violence against women, and to return to our ways of mutual respect and a
life of harmony with the planet. Whereas women are part of nature and the
macrocosm, we are called to defend and take care of our mother earth, because
from her comes our ancient history and culture, that make us what we are:
indigenous peoples under the protection and spiritual guidance of our parents and
grandparents who gave life to all the human beings that now inhabit this
wonderful planet, even though a few oligarchs and imperialists seek to plague it
with death in their quest for their god called greed. Therefore, before the memory
of our martyrs, heroes, leaders, we present to our extended families (Ayllus73),
communities, peoples and nations of the world the conclusions of our rebellious
hearts.74
70
FORMABIAP, May 16, 2009, personal communication.
71
‘‘Abya Yala’’ means ‘‘Continent of Life’’ in the language of the Kuna peoples of Panama and Colombia. See:
http://abyayala.nativeweb.org.
72
Pachakutik is a Quechua word that signifies change, rebirth, transformation, and the coming of a new era.
73
Ayllu is a word in both the Quechua and Aymara languages referring to a network of families in a given area.
74
See: http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/12228.
Indigenous women and men called for a National Uprising to be initiated on July
7, 2009 until victory is reached*i.e., until the decrees are revoked and/or
President Garcia resigns. Indigenous people maintain that Garcia is unfit to lead
the country, since he has demonstrated an inability to resolve the conflicts between
the corporate world of free traders and the commoners and subsistence producers
of Peru.
The Garcia government responded to this challenge with violence. On June 4,

2009 the Congress postponed the urgent debate of Decree No. 109075*one of the
most objectionable decrees, because it allows the vague and overly broad rationale of
‘‘national interest’’ to open land to oil extraction, mining, biofuel production, and
other exploitative projects. At 4:30 a.m. on June 5, 600 police attacked 3,000
Awajun and Wampi indigenous people with tear gas and machine guns from
helicopters and on land with artillery while they were occupying part of the highway,
the Devil’s Curve, in Bagua, killing an unknown number when they ran for cover.
The police then forcibly took an unknown number of wounded and dead to the
military barracks of El Milagro.
The attack on Awajun and Wampis, appears to be a direct response to a peaceful

but effective protest initiated in December 2008 against the Canadian mining
company, Dorato Resources, Inc. Marco Huaco,76 the legal counsel to the Awajun
and Wampis, argues that this attack had been directed against these particular ethnic
groups because they proved that the government and Dorato Resources, Inc., have
been violating ILO Covenant 169.77
75
Decree No. 1090, Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre, Article 6 reads ‘‘there would not be change in land use of
any category in the forestry inheritance, unless projects are declared of national interest, in that case the
Environment Ministry in coordination with the correspondent Public Entity Sector will proceed to the change
in land use.’’
76
A. Marco and P. Huaco, ‘‘Testimonio: Pueblos guerreros provocados hasta el genocidio,’’ online at: http://
www.servindi.org/actualidad/12902-more-12902Le"do.
77
According to Huaco, in December 2008, thirteen indigenous community patrols that included hundreds of
people walked seven days to examine the environmental damage in an area Dorato was mining. They discovered
4 hectares of deforested area and two underground mines inside two military camps, Tambo and Ciro Alegria.
They also encountered narrow paths that crossed the military bases as well as their communal-titled land located
in Cerro Sagrado Kumpanan (1,250 meters above sea level) and Cordillera del Condor. Hortez Baitue, an ex-
soldier, alleges that lieutenant Marco Antonio Bravo had been receiving $250 a week plus food and prostitutes,
courtesy of the corporation. See: ‘‘Peru: Mineras se asientan en Cordillera del Condor,’’ online at: http://
www.servindi.org/actualidad/14171-more-14171le"do. On December 14, 2008, Awajun indigenous
people wrote a letter to Dorato Resources, Inc. giving it 48 hours to abandon their ancestral territories. Since the
corporation ignored the demand, on January 12, 2009, ODECOFROC, a local indigenous organization,
requested a meeting with the Prime Minister’s Office and other ministries to discuss revoking the mining
contract, but they, too, were ignored. On January 21, 2009, the Prime Minister’s Office indicated the
government might be willing to talk, but no meeting was scheduled. Tired of waiting, that month 300
indigenous people in Huampami, Cenepa district siezed and held an executive of Dorato Resources Inc. and
five security agents for seven days.
44 ANA ISLA
According to FORMABIAP,78 during the regional uprising on April 23, 2009,

300 Awajun and Wampis marched to Petro-Peru installations in Imasita near Bagua
and requested that the company stop oil pumping until their demands were met.
Petro-Peru’s management and the indigenous people reached an agreement in which
oil pumping stopped while the protesters peacefully protested outside the
installations. On the same day, 38 policemen were sent by the government to
protect the installations. For 42 days until the attack on June 5th, policemen and
indigenous people peacefully sat outside the installations. When indigenous people
posted in Imasita learned about the massacre taking place a few kilometers from
where they were located, they took eleven of the 38 policemen and assassinated them.
Another group of indigenous people opposed to the vengeance decided to liberate the
remaining police hostages.79
Belgian volunteers working in Bagua circulated photos of dead civilians that

contradicted the government’s initial claims that only the police suffered casualties.80
An eye-witness account provides a startling estimate of the casualties. At an
AIDESEP press conference that was televised on Canal N on June 7, 2009, Nelida
Calvo, an indigenous leader whose brother and uncle were killed in the massacre,
described the scene:
Although we indigenous people only had spears, we were attacked by the

police, and hundreds of my brothers were killed . . . The government says that
only 25 were killed, but local witnesses saw hundreds of dead bodies spread on
the road. In addition, hundreds more have disappeared . . . I will continue
struggling to retrieve their bodies and to stop the execution of the hundred
who have been captured by the police . . . .We are still counting our family
members in order to clarify how many of our people are dead, disappeared, or
in jail.81
The human rights association APRODEH (Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos) has so
far confirmed 61 missing, 133 detained, and 189 injured, but the numbers continue
to rise.82 On TV screens everywhere, we witnessed the suffering following the
massacre in Bagua. A tormented mother, whose son was killed, speaking loudly in
her dialect, impeached Garcia with these words:
Please, listen Mr. Alan Garcia: You are guilty of this extermination! You are
killing us! You are selling us! You are a terrorist! We defend our territories without
78
FORMABIAP, April 9, 2009, personal communication.
79
Fernando Rospigliosi, ‘‘Negligencia Criminal,’’ La Republica, June 13, 2009, online at: http://
www.larepublica.pe/controversias/14/06/2009/negligencia-criminal.
80
See: http://catapa.be/en/north-peru-killings.
81
Nelida Calvo, Press Conference at AIDESEP, Canal N, June 7, 2009, online at: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?veWCDwH_yTMA.
82
See: http://www.aprodeh.org.pe/.
arms, our only defenses are spears and sticks, and they are not made to kill as you
have done to us. You have exterminated us with arms, bullets, helicopters, and
you have killed our brothers, sisters, students, teachers, sons! Alan, we ask you
to come to our territories to pay your debts to us! Alan, you are selling our
territories, indigenous people’s resources: gold, oil, water, and air. You pollute
our environment and in this way you make us poor as you now see us. We, the
Awajun-Wampis, did not elect you to exterminate us, but to help, to educate our
children who now have been killed. We have not taken your private property, nor
have we killed your children, your family. Why are you annihilating us? You have
extinguished life from us, we have nothing!83
This cowardly and bloody attack is a familiar hallmark of Garcia’s presidency. In

June 1986, during his first term (19851990), a massacre of 300 prison inmates took
place in Lima. In 1988, Andean farmers were executed by the army.84
President Garcia’s racist, sexist, and classist governmental style has its roots in
the Spanish Inquisition. In the current struggle, the prime minister and other
government ministers initially supported their president’s offense against humanity
by repeating false versions of the facts that were then countered by eye-witness
accounts of dead bodies being dumped in rivers. Orders for the arrest of the leaders
of AIDESEP, including its president, Alberto Pizango, who was charged with
sedition and terrorism, were issued on Friday, June 6, 2009. Pizango sought and was
granted asylum at Nicaragua’s embassy.
The call for a regional uprising beginning on July 7 was moved up to start
earlier in response to the massacre in Bagua. AIDESEP and Amazon Regional
Organizations called for a regional general strike starting June 11th. AIDESEP
vice-president, Daysi Zapata, a Yine woman, took over the leadership of the
regional uprising. In the Amazon basin, thousands of indigenous people began
leaving their traditional lands to gather in the four rainforest cities of Iquitos,
Pucallpa, Yurimaguas, and Bagua in preparation. Indigenous people reorganized
their forces; new oil compounds were occupied, and more highways were closed in
preparation for the regional uprising.85 In Iquitos, an Army General attempted to
intimidate the people with this message: ‘‘Stay in your houses, we do not want to
kill you, but we have orders from our superiors to kill you if you continue with
your rebellion.’’86 This message was broadcast by RPP, Radio Programas del Perú, a
national private news station.
83
See: http://www.betoortiz.com/index.php?optioncom_seyret&Itemid80&taskvideodirectlink&id366.
Also see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?vSiILsx9fSn8&NR 1.
84
See: http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php.
85
Genaro Alvarado, ‘‘Nativos toman lotes petroleros y un aeropuerto de Pluspetrol,’’ La Republica, June 8,
2009, online at: http://www.larepublica.pe/bagua-masacre/08/06/2009/nativos-toman-lotes-petroleros-y-un-
aeropuerto-de-pluspetrol.
86
Radio Programas del Peru, afternoon coverage on ‘‘Preparaciones para el levantamiento en Loreto,’’ June 9,
2009.
46 ANA ISLA
Following the massacre, a Communitarian Front in Defense of Life and

Sovereignty was organized. Members called for Garcia and his ministers to resign,
the adoption of a new Constitution that includes indigenous people’s territorial
rights, and trials for guilty parties. Garcia’s government responded with televised
propaganda in which indigenous people and bosquecinos were accused of being
‘‘violent,’’ ‘‘savages,’’ ‘‘terrorists against the democratic system,’’ and ‘‘manipulated
by international interests.’’ The government provocation prompted the resignation
of Carmen Vildoso, Minister of Women and Human Development, which created
a ministerial crisis. At the same time, another crisis developed in Parliament with
the members affiliated with the Partido Nacionalista Peruano (PNP),87 a socialist-
oriented nationalist party that opposes the country’s ruling elite and the neoliberal
project. Most of its members are indigenous and mix-raced children of the
Amazon as well as the Andes. In response to the wishes of their constituents, they
insisted that the decrees be rescinded. The government then temporarily
suspended two decrees, 1064 and 1090, for 90 days. Eighteen members of the
PNP then challenged the government by carrying banners inside the Parliament to
protest the government decision. On June 11, seven members of the PNP were
suspended without pay for 120 days, and eleven were warned that they would be
next.88
The bosquecinos began the uprising on June 11, 2009 with 24 hours of solidarity
actions across the country. Thousands of people*old and young, women and men,
political organizations and independent individuals, students and community
organizations*united on the streets and plazas to reject the decrees and in every
language express their indignation against the president.89 They chanted ‘‘We do not
have a president. We do have a race murderer.’’ Meanwhile, international marches in
solidarity with the Amazon struggle took place in Uruguay, Italy, Spain,
Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Common demands were: ‘‘Stop abuse and
government indifference!’’ ‘‘Stop humiliations and dispossession!’’ ‘‘Stop blood and
death!’’ Eight members of the European Parliament weighed in by presenting a
motion to postpone the next round of free trade negotiations. They sent the
following communiqué to the Peruvian government:
We condemn these grave acts of violence that are totally contradictory to the
maintenance of a stable democracy and the rule of law, as well as the racist
overtones made by President Alan Garcia following the events.90
On June 16, 2009, desperate to end the conflict and clean up his image as a
brutal, racist thug, Garcia forced his party to vote again, this time to get rid of the
87
The PNP has 24 MPs in the Peruvian Parliament. See: http://www.partidonacionalistaperuano.com/.
88
See: http://www.larepublica.pe/bagua-masacre/12/06/2009/suspenden-7-congresistas-nacionalistas.
89
See: http://www.larepublica.pe/bagua-masacre/12/06/2009/unidos-por-la-amazonia.
90
‘‘TLC: Europeos Piden Suspender Negociaciones,’’ La Republica, June 12, 2009, available online at:
http://www.larepublica.pe/economia/12/06/2009/tlc-europeos-piden-suspender-negociaciones-0.
two laws. The Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, brought government-affiliated

indigenous organizations to the negotiating table, but tried*unsuccessfully*to
exclude AIDESEP leaders. Days later, Garcia accused six other PNP Parliament
members of engaging in a continental Cold War against his government as agents
of Hugo Chavez and threatened them with impeachment. The PNP, along with
other small opposition parties, formally called for the impeachment of Prime
Minister Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas. They got 56
out of the 61 votes needed to remove Simon and Cabanillas, and would have had
enough if not for the seven suspended PNP members. But then, Simon and his
Cabinet were removed after more solidarity mass movement actions over 72 hours
on July 7, 8, and 9, 2009, in which citizens throughout the entire country
participated.
The persecution of indigenous people continues, and on July 12, 2009, four
AIDESEP leaders were charged with sedition and terrorism. As a result, brothers Saúl
and Cervando Puertas Peña, requested asylum in the Nicaragua embassy, while two
other members are still in hiding.
In contrast to the reaction to the Peruvian government’s murderous attempts

to lay claim to Amazonian indigenous lands, AIDESEP has convoked unity among
social movements and political parties*an unprecedented achievement in Peru. Its
direct action campaign marked the emergence of Amazonian indigenous peoples as
an influential and autonomous force in Peru’s current political landscape. The
mobilization also sparked a public realization that the defense of Amazonian
resources is an issue of national and international importance, not only a regional
or indigenous problem. The indigenous uprising has increased public awareness of
the predatory nature of free trade, the need for the prioritization of the commons
over private interests, and the meaning and importance of the subsistence
perspective.
Conclusion
The neoliberal model*that everything is for sale*was confronted in the

Peruvian Amazon basin. Indigenous people have risen in defense of their territories
as common land and their society as sufficient. Their subsistence perspective has
produced ‘‘the good life,’’ which is based on simple and practical knowledge that
for millennia conserved a healthy forest, wildlife, biodiversity, and society in
general. This indigenous subsistence perspective holds the secret of abundance,
sufficiency, security, a good life, preservation of the economic and ecological base,
and cultural and biological diversity. Their ecosystem knowledge has for centuries
allowed them to co-exist in and maintain the forests and the photosynthesis needed
to produce tall, closed-packed, large-crowned, evergreen trees, preserving thousands
of plant and animal species, which in turn provide a rich and abundant physical
and spiritual life.
48 ANA ISLA
The recent capitalist global financial crisis, the escalating global ecological crisis,
and neoliberal globalization*the pillar of free trade politics*are pushing the course
of change in the Peruvian Amazon. Large national and international corporations
overwhelmingly favor rapid privatization of the Amazon. Corporate projects of oil
drilling, logging, mining, biofuel production, carbon credits, ecotourism, and
biotechnology (biopiracy) are under negotiation. This model is not only destructive
for bosquecinos but for the entire planet, since it involves the destruction of an
ecosystem critical to the stability of the earth’s climate.
What happens in the Amazon rainforest over the next decades will depend on
the outcome of the struggles between the indigenous, national, continental, and
international forces. Stopping the calamity in the rainforest requires a political will
that simply does not exist in Garcia’s government. Instead of allowing the
government and its international associates to destroy the commons of the Amazon,
local scientists and bosquecinos (women and men) are empowering themselves to use
their ancestral knowledge (slash-and-burn technique) in combination with new ways
to preserve their own means of subsistence and well-being*as well as humanity’s
future*which depends directly on the health of these forests. Internationally,
indigenous people’s struggles for their territorial rights can be seen as a critical
element of the fight against global warming. Privatization of the rainforest transforms
the Amazon forest which sustains an average of 1,000 metric tons of biomass per
hectare, 150 to 200 metric tons of CO2, and produces 30 percent of our fresh water.
Thus, global solidarity with the Peruvian Amazon struggle strengthens the chances
of succeeding in mitigating global warming. But international participation
cannot include aid and nongovernmental organizations that push international
market models. Nor can it include rainforest pirates91 who promote the ‘‘buying of
the forest to save the planet,’’ all under the corporations’ and corporate
environmentalists’ rhetoric of the ‘‘Global Commons.’’92 Instead, this call is for
people globally*including activists in the global justice movement*to build
democracy by dismantling their national corporations and embracing ‘‘sufficiency’’
as a way to survive.
Ecofeminists have long argued for a new theory of society in which the unseen
‘‘feminine’’ or unwaged*indigenous people, peasants, and nature, along with
women household workers*are recognized as necessary to the maintenance of
natural and social systems that underpin human life on earth. This unseen and
underdeveloped feminine is essential to the process of capital accumulation and
therefore availed of tremendous power to interrupt the destructive path of
industrialization and replace it with the ‘‘art of a good life.’’
91
Rainforest pirates are expanding. Among them is ‘‘Cool Earth,’’ See: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
article664544.ece, accessed on January 10, 2009.
92
The Global Commons’ rhetoric of universality of the industrial world makes the claim that private property is
acting in the general interest of ‘‘human kind.’’

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The Eco-Class-Race Struggles in

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The Eco-Class-Race Struggles in the Peruvian Amazon

ISSN 1045-5752 print/ISSN 1548-3290 online/09/030021-28

I call the ongoing struggle in Peru an eco-class-race4 struggle because it involves

concessions have decimated wildlife, as forestry concessionaries relentlessly hunt key

The Good Life in the Peruvian Amazon

good life is at the source of the different objective sociological arrangements we

social rights and obligations. It is founded in reciprocity with family members,

The society of the Peruvian rainforest is the product of a particular ecological

This ‘‘good life’’ may seem to some to be a deplorable state of under-

An intuitively ecofeminist perspective emerges from Peruvian literature in the

over 1,000 kilometers of road, and a pipeline through these communities.

Dispossession by Oil and Forestry Concessions and Privatization Decrees

The descendents of the colonizers and mestizos (mixed descent, or so-called

But capitalism’s underlying philosophy of scarcity*i.e., that there is not

A second wave of dispossession began in 1950 as Peru was incorporated into

In 1993, Fujimori’s dictatorship (19902001) made further changes to the

Permanent forest production has been superimposed on communal spaces,

In March 2004, the administration of Alejandro Toledo, who succeeded Fujimori,

To make matters worse, the state is incapable of monitoring logging in the

and punish offenders.45 But they need to be empowered by the government.

Globalization Pressures on Dispossession

In an attempt to justify his racist policies of dispossession, in October 2007,

Secrecy has surrounded the negotiation of the trade agreements. To avoid

Following is a chronology of the extended rebellion that has erupted in

Recent Eco-class-race Struggles to Defend the Commons

Toxic substances modified the pH of the surrounding watersheds, devastating

In March 2008, as conditions continued to deteriorate, the struggle escalated.

In August 2008, in Guayabamba jail in Iquitos, I interviewed these four men.

On July 6, 2008, indigenous people in the upper rainforest area of Madre de

On August 9, 2008, International Indigenous Peoples Day, AIDESEP,

In an attempt to find a way forward in this expanding crisis, a roundtable was

INDEPA (Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de Pueblos Andinos, Amazonicos y

. adopt special measures in order to protect them.

. to prohibit the government from using their land as collateral;

. to recognize collective property among indigenous people;

. to accept and include in the Constitution the UN declaration on Indigenous

. to incorporate into the Constitution the right to previous consultation in every

. to rescind the government resolution that criminalizes protest;

. to establish a national dialogue roundtable to implement the indigenous people’s

people took control of Petro-Peru installations, and thousands blocked highways at

In response to this widespread rebellion, the government declared a 60-day state-

The Garcia government responded to this challenge with violence. On June 4,

The attack on Awajun and Wampis, appears to be a direct response to a peaceful

According to FORMABIAP,78 during the regional uprising on April 23, 2009,

Belgian volunteers working in Bagua circulated photos of dead civilians that

Although we indigenous people only had spears, we were attacked by the

This cowardly and bloody attack is a familiar hallmark of Garcia’s presidency. In

Following the massacre, a Communitarian Front in Defense of Life and

two laws. The Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, brought government-affiliated

In contrast to the reaction to the Peruvian government’s murderous attempts

The neoliberal model*that everything is for sale*was confronted in the

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The neoliberal modelthat everything is for salewas confronted in the