[Indigsol] Articles: Canada and Peru

[Indigenous Peoples' Solidarity Movement -Ottawa]

Americas Energy and Climate Symposium,
Sheraton Hotel & Convention Center
Lima, Peru, June 15-16, 2009

The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, through its
Department of Sustainable Development, is collaborating with the Institute
of the Americas (IOA), the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE), the
Caribbean Central America Action (CCAA), the Ministry of Energy & Mines of
Peru, the Department of Foreign Affairs and international Trade of Canada
(DFAIT) and the Departments of Energy (DOE) and State (DOS) of the United
States in the organization of the Americas Energy and Climate Symposium, to
be hosted on June 15-16, 2009 at the Sheraton Hotel & Convention Center in
Lima, Peru.

The Americas Energy and Climate Symposium is taking place in response to the
mandates of the Fifth Summit of the Americas hosted in Trinidad and Tobago
on April 17-19. At the Summit, hemispheric leaders agreed to advance
collaboration to guarantee energy security, promote alternative energy
sources, and to act in unison to confront the effects of global climate
change. In this regard, the Symposium’s main objective is to identify
concrete collaborative actions to address the principal energy and climate
change challenges in the Americas.

For more information about the Symposium please follow this
link<http://www.iamericas.org/emails/energy/peru_esp.html>(Only in
Spanish)

----
CIDA is supporting work in the oil and gas sector in Peru.  See the recent
journalistic article from CIDA's web site from March 2009.  See also the
Americas section of the attached CIDA article
(http://www.cida-ecco.org/CIDARoadMap/RoadMapEnvoy/documents/DevOilandGas%20
Sector.pdf<http://www.cida-ecco.org/CIDARoadMap/RoadMapEnvoy/documents/DevOilandGas%20%0ASector.pdf>)
and the CIDA recent powerpoint on energy in the Americas
(http://arpel.clk.com.uy/ppt/VIERNES%2024/Mesa%20redonda%207/Ragusa.pdf).

http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/En/EMA-21812732-N8J

Taking a Second Look: The Potential of Peru's Oil and Gas Reserves

Off the west coast of Peru, about 1500: Spanish conquistadors sight oil
slicks on the water. They're not quite sure what to do with them, eventually
using them to season the wood on their ships. Fast forward to the 20th
Century: satellite images confirm the presence of the oil seeps. Oil
companies send drilling ships to probe the ocean bed under very deep water
to locate the source. They spend millions, collect mountains of data about
the geology underlying the ocean floor, but fail to find an economically
viable basin to exploit.

With exploratory drilling costs running at about $25 million per hole in the
ocean, and $10 million per hole in the jungle, oil companies need to find
significant reserves to justify the expense. They've run up against a brick
wall: all throughout the 1990s, companies used the same data and ended up
drilling dry wells. No one disputes the fact that there's oil -- under the
Pacific, up north and in the jungles of Peru. What's at issue is exactly
where it is, how much there is of it, and how easy it is to extract, refine
and transport.

Creating the Incentive

In a poor country like Peru, where one in five people cannot even meet their
basic survival needs, petrodollars could mean a huge shot in the arm. The
Government of Peru is playing a major role in promoting these potential
oilfields, and CIDA, through the Canadian Petroleum Institute, is helping
create the incentive for the private sector to take the risks.

The Energy Regulatory Assistance Project's aim is to help the Government of
Peru to regulate and monitor activities in its oil and gas sector. Training
is being provided in regulatory issues, management practices, environmental
standards and guidelines and natural gas technology as well. To get the ball
rolling on the exploration side, Canadian computers, equipment and technical
assistants - geologists, economists and petroleum engineers - are shedding
new light on the geological information that once showed so much promise.
They're also sharing the latest in Canadian exploration techniques to
sweeten the incentive.

"What we're doing is re-packaging the data to attract new investments," says
Calgary-based Gary Wine, Leader of the Basin Evaluation Component of the
project. Gary's group is taking existing seismic and well data, loading it
into sophisticated computers and using high-end software to find new
patterns or new geological "stories" that will help attract exploration
companies.

Getting the Message Out

It's a mammoth project. Sorting through the seemingly endless data on
sandstone, rock, shale and other materials is a specialty. So is presenting
it in a way meaningful to potential investors. "I've been in the industry
for 25 years," says Mr. Wine. "I have a pretty good idea of what the oil
companies are looking for."

The UNIX computer is helping sort through the maze of information. The
mountains of data, some on tape, and some even in hard copy, is not only
being manipulated to show new relationships; it's also being presented in
new and more attractive ways. Software, including a specially designed
program to generate highly sophisticated maps, is creating a variety of
formats: reports, presentations, prospectuses and other publications. Mr.
Wine and other experts use the material at meetings, conferences and
promotional events.

Strictly speaking, the information belongs to the Government of Peru; but it
is provided, often free of charge, to interested petroleum companies. That
includes Canadian companies, some of whom are already participating in the
project and gaining a competitive edge in the process.

It's a long walk from persistent oil seeps in the ocean to a producing and
thriving oilfield. But CIDA is helping Peru prepare for just that
eventuality - strengthening the technical and managerial expertise within
government and industry, creating a supportive and healthy legislative
environment and building a promising economic climate. The rest is up to the
private sector.
"No, there's no guarantees," says Mr. Wine. "But everything in my experience
tells me that there's enough oil there to take a second look."


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian K. Murphy [mailto:brian at radicalroad.com]
Sent: Mon 6/8/2009 2:12 PM
To: Recipient List Suppressed
Subject: Peru: excellent backround and update on Peru conflict

https://nacla.org/node/5879
North American Congress on Latin America

Blood at the Blockade: Peru's Indigenous Uprising by Gerardo Rénique June 8,
2009

Beginning with a series of protests last year, Peru's Amazonian indigenous
groups are now leading a full-fledged rebellion against the pro-business
policies of President Alan García. The government has responded with brutal
violence to the protests, which are demanding that a series of decrees to
promote extractive industries in the jungle be overturned among other
things. Amazonian groups, who are being joined by an ever-widening swath of
society, are now calling for García's resignation.

On June 6, near a stretch of highway known as the Devil's Curve in the
northern Peruvian Amazon, police began firing live rounds into a multitude
of indigenous protestors - many wearing feathered crowns and carrying
spears. In the nearby towns of Bagua Grande, Bagua Chica, and Utcubamba,
shots also came from police snipers on rooftops, and from a helicopter that
hovered above the mass of people. Both natives and mestizos took to the
streets protesting the bloody repression.

 From his office in Bagua, a representative of Save the Children, the child
anti-poverty organization, reported that children as young as four-years-old
were wounded by the indiscriminate police shooting.
President Alan García had hinted the government would respond forcefully to
"restore order" in the insurgent Amazonian provinces, where he had declared
a state of siege on May 9 suspending most constitutional liberties. The
repression was swift and fierce.

By the end of the day, a number of buildings belonging to the government and
to García's APRA party had been destroyed. Nine policemen and at least 40
protestors were killed (estimates vary).
Overwhelmed by the number of wounded, small local hospitals were forced to
shutter their doors. A Church official denounced that many of the civilian
wounded and killed at the Devil's Curve were forcefully taken to the
military barracks of El Milagro. From Bagua, a local journalist told a radio
station that policemen had dumped bagged bodies into the Utcubamba River.

Indigenous leaders have accused García of "genocide" and have called for an
international campaign of solidarity with their struggle.
Indigenous unrest in the Peruvian Amazon began late last year. After an ebb
of a few months, the uprising regained force again on April 9.
Since then, Amazonian indigenous groups have sustained intensifying
protests, including shutdowns of oil and gas pumping stations as well as
blockades of road and river traffic.

The Devil's Curve massacre is not the only instance of repression.
García recently sent in the Navy to violently break through indigenous
blockades on the Napo River, also in northern Peru. But few expected such a
violent reaction from the government. García says the response was
appropriate and blamed the indigenous for thinking they could decide what
happens in their territories: "These people don't have crowns. They aren't
first-class citizens who can sayS 'You [the government] don't have the right
to be here.' No way." The president called the protestors
"pseudo-indigenous."

Indigenous representative Alberto Pizango called Devil's Curve the "worst
slaughter of our people in 20 years." And added, "Our protest has been
peaceful. We're 5,000 natives [in the blockade] that just want respect for
our territory and the environment."

Protestors' top demand is the repeal of a series of decrees, known
collectively as the "Law of the Jungle," signed by García last year.
The President decreed the legislative package using extraordinary powers
granted to him by Peru's Congress to enact legislation required by the 2006
U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. Indigenous groups are also demanding the
creation of a permanent commission with indigenous representation to discuss
solutions to their territorial, developmental, health and educational
problems.

One of the most controversial aspects of the decrees is that they allow
private interests to buy up indigenous lands and resources.
Following a colonial logic of "progress," García's decrees foster the
commodification of indigenous territories, ecological reserves, communal and
public lands, water, and biogenetic resources to the benefit of powerful
transnational interests. What's more, the "Law of the Jungle" implicitly
conceives of indigenous Amazonia as an open, empty, bountiful, and
underdeveloped frontier and its inhabitants as obstacles to neoliberal
modernization and investment schemes.

History of Plunder and Resistance
Neoliberal elites are apparently oblivious to indigenous historical agency
and political activism in Peru, where there is a long-standing trajectory of
Amazonian insurgency. Since the eighteenth century, indigenous groups in the
rainforest have successfully rolled back the incursions of colonial
missionaries, rubber barons, gold miners, lumber contractors, Sendero
Luminoso guerrillas and others whose expansion represented a direct and
serious threat to their cultural autonomy and territorial integrity.

García and his predecessors have tried to give transnational companies -
logging, oil, mining, and pharmaceutical etc. - unfettered access to the
Amazon's riches. The potential plunder not only poses a threat to the very
existence of indigenous peoples, but also presents a serious danger to the
region's diverse and fragile ecosystems.

Protests have occurred in the past, but this time is different: The scope of
the ongoing mobilizations, which cover almost the totality of Peru's
Amazonian territories, is historically unprecedented, as is the government's
violent reaction. Coordinating the mobilization effort is the Inter-Ethnic
Development Association of the Peruvian Amazon (Aidesep), an umbrella group
of indigenous organizations.
Established almost three decades ago through the incorporation of more than
80 federations and regional organizations, Aidesep's reach and strength
rests on its 1,350 affiliated communities representing
65 different Amazonian peoples.

Under mounting pressure from the protests, the government finally agreed to
a closed-door meeting held the morning of May 27 in Lima with indigenous
representatives. (Aidesep had demanded such a meeting for years.) Prime
Minister Yehude Simon - himself a former leftist and political prisoner -
and Aidesep representative Alberto Pizango held a brief press conference
after the sitdown announcing the start of formal negotiations.

Following weeks of a racist and dirty government campaign against indigenous
leaders, a subdued Simon acknowledged both the García administration's "bad
communications" and - more importantly - "the lack of a state policy towards
Amazon communities for over a century." He also emphasized government
willingness to revise and modify Garcia's decrees.

Meanwhile, a defiant Pizango maintained that Aidesep's campaign of civil
disobedience would only be lifted with the total repeal of García's "Law of
the Jungle." Pizango also announced a platform of issues that indigenous
representatives planned to bring to the table, including points on
indigenous territorial rights, self-determination, health and education,
development, and cultural integrity.

Failed Talks, Failed Government
The last time the government agreed to negotiations in August 2008 - again,
under pressure from an indigenous uprising - the talks collapsed due to
government unwillingness to engage indigenous representatives in a
respectful and honest manner. Aidesep withdrew from the talks when the
government tried to undermine the group's position by inviting (unannounced)
groups of indigenous leaders and academics aligned both with the
government's discredited Development Institute for Andean, Indigenous,
Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples
(INDEPA) and the Confederation of Amazonian Nationalities (CONAPA), which
groups together a small number of opportunistic Indigenous leaders.

Using INDEPA and CONAPA, the government has initiated "cooperation
agreements" between friendly indigenous communities and foreign oil and gas
companies. Outraged by their presence at the negotiating table Aidesep
denounced the move as a "smoke screen" covering up the government's spurious
collusion with the gas and oil industries.

Meanwhile, Aidesep kept open negotiations with members of Congress, where
its demands received support from the left-of-center opposition and even
some members of García's ruling party. With the start of formal negotiations
(Mesa de Diálogo), Aidesep honored the compromise and halted protests on
August 20, ending the 11-day uprising. With growing popular sympathy with
indigenous demands and support from the political opposition in late
September, congress passed a law that canceled two of the most odious
presidential decrees that sought to diminish indigenous territorial rights
and political autonomy.

Aidesep's 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 importance and
not only a regional or indigenous problem.
The indigenous uprising has also increased public awareness of the predatory
nature of free trade, the prevalence of public good over private interests,
and the meaning and importance of citizen participation in the formulation
of a sustainable and democratic future. All of this constitutes a healthy
questioning of the toxic neoliberal paradigm based on the commodification of
life and resources as the only possible alternative to "progress" and
"modernization."

In October 2008, video recordings surfaced of conversations between
high-ranking officials from the García administration and a lobbyist for
transnational gas and oil companies. The recordings show the men negotiating
the fraudulent concession of oil rights in natural reserves and indigenous
territories. The video not only starkly revealed the real intentions behind
the "Law of the Jungle" and Peru's handful of recently negotiated free trade
agreements, but also further boosted Aidesep's legitimacy and the moral
authority of its struggle. The scandal also helped catalyze the current
Amazonian insurgency, coalescing an emerging popular and autonomous
anti-systemic bloc and further diminished García's popularity, which has
been abysmally low. (Approval ratings have hovered at 30 percent in the city
of Lima and are even lower in rural areas, especially the
Amazon.)

Amazon 'Insurgency' Declared
By late March, triggered by renewed incursions into their territories,
abusive labor conditions in the gas and oil industry, high levels of
contamination and government reluctance to address their demands, indigenous
peoples in various Amazonian localities staged a number of marches,
demonstrations, blockades, and hunger strikes. Incensed by the government's
repressive response to their demands and its threat to declare a state of
emergency in the most combative Amazonian provinces, Aidesep renewed
mobilizations, blocking ground and river traffic, and occupying hydrocarbon
installations.

In an April 9 declaration, Aidesep demanded that Congress rescind the "Law
of the Jungle," establish a genuine Mesa de Diálogo, and promote the
creation of new branches of government charged with implementing
"intercultural" solutions to indigenous health and education problems. The
document also calls for the recognition of indigenous collective property
rights, guarantees for special territorial reserves of communities in
voluntary isolation, and the suspension of land concessions to oil, gas,
mining, lumber, and tourism industries.
Indigenous organizations are also demanding a new constitution that
incorporates the United Nation's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples and the International Labor Organization's Convention 169, both of
which guarantee indigenous rights to territorial and cultural autonomy.
Finally, the April declaration also calls for the suspension of the
government's free trade agreements with the United States, the European
Union, Chile, and China, all of which endanger indigenous territorial rights
and Amazonian biodiversity.

As indigenous groups escalated their direct action campaign, the government
declared a state of siege on May 9 in four of the most militant provinces of
Amazonia. Despite the crackdown, Aidesep has gained sympathy and solidarity
from broad sectors of Peruvian society. Unions, popular organizations, and
highland peasant and indigenous groups have staged "civic strikes" and other
protest actions. Elected municipal and regional authorities across the
country have also expressed their support. While Catholic bishops across the
Amazon region have called on the faithful to support indigenous demands,
stating the "rich cultural and biological diversity" of the region
represents a "source of life and hope for humanity."

On May 27, Peru was rocked by a national day of protest called by the
country's largest trade union federation and other social movement umbrella
groups. Thousands took to the street protesting García's neoliberal policies
and to express their solidarity with Aidesep's struggle. In Lima a massive
march arrived to the steps of Congress, demanding that the Law of the Jungle
be declared unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the just-concluded Fourth Continental Indigenous People's Summit
of Abya-Yala, which was held in southern Peru, called for an international
day of action in solidarity with the Amazonian uprising. The Communitarian
Front in Defense of Life and Sovereignty established by Aidesep together
with labor, Andean indigenous, campesino and popular organizations have
called for a day of protest and mobilization on June 11.

The Law of the Jungle
A report from the government's Ombudsman Office not only declared the
unconstitutionality of García's decrees, but also noted the legitimacy of
indigenous people's campaign of civil disobedience. In Congress, the
Constitutional Committee declared two of the presidential decrees
unconstitutional. But under pressure from the executive, García's APRA
party, with support from followers of jailed former President Fujimori and
other right-wing political parties, has blocked discussion of the
Constitutional Committee's resolution.

At the beginning of June, the situation deteriorated. Aidesep walked away
from the incipient talks with the government, citing the executive's refusal
to acknowledge broadening public rejection of the decrees. The government
responded with increased repression that culminated - so far - with the
Devil's Curve massacre. García also lashed out against Radio de la Selva, an
Amazonian radio station that has been critical of the government. The
attorney general is considering charging the station with inciting public
unrest. When the military violently broke up the river blockade on the Napo
River, spontaneous protests erupted against the Navy.

The declaration of martial law in the provinces of Bagua and Utcubamba,
where the bloodiest repression took place, and the trumped-up charges of
rioting have forced many of Aidesep leaders underground. But the repression
drove many non-indigenous sectors into the fold of the Aidesep-led
resistance. A newspaper report interviewed a teacher who described how many
non-indigenous locals joined the June 6 protests after the Army blocked
villagers from attending to the wounded and bringing water to the natives at
Devil's Curve. The indiscriminate shootings only fueled further hostility
toward the government. The growing unrest among a broad range of popular
forces has coalesced into the Communitarian Front in Defense of Life and
Sovereignty, formed on June 4. Among other actions, the new coalition has
called for a national general strike if the Law of the Jungle is not
repealed by June 11.

Catholic clergy have rejected the repression and reiterated their support
for indigenous demands. In a joint-letter the Ombudsman's Office and
high-ranking clergy called on the government to privilege peace and
negotiation over repression and violence in resolving the conflict. In a
previous statement the priests expressed their discontent with the "attitude
taken by the government, foreign and national businessmen and a large sector
of the media" against "the just demands of Amazonian indigenous peoples."
(These conservative sectors have ridiculously dismissed the protests as the
work of presidents Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.)

La Lucha Sigue
The outcome of this current crisis is highly uncertain. Indigenous are
calling for García to resign, while a chorus of groups (newspapers, unions,
opposition figures) are at least demanding that García sack cabinet members,
particularly Prime Minister Simon and the Minister of the Interior. The
police union issued a statement lamenting the death of both the officers and
their "Indian brothers,"
while placing the blame for these deaths squarely on García.

One thing, however, is certain: The recent repression laid bare García's
naked slavishness to foreign capital investment and his double-talk of
feigning negotiation and dialogue, while implementing an evidently
well-planned counter-insurgency operation. Much of the national media has
obediently obliged with a fear-mongering campaign.
Under the government's current plan, oil and gas concession blocs alone
would cover 72 percent of Peru's Amazon, according to a recent study by Duke
University.

Will energy, agribusiness, lumber, and mining corporations gain exclusive
benefit to one of the largest repositories of fresh water, biodiversity, and
other resources? Will the indigenous succeed in protecting their lands - a
final frontier - from the rule of global capital? The answers to these
questions will depend on many things, including indigenous people's ability
to sustain protests and their growing allegiances with other sectors as well
as the government's willingness to use brute force.

Indigenous peoples in Peru have reconfigured - perhaps irreversibly -
popular anti-systemic forces in the country from their weakness and
dispersion of recent years. In the immediate future, however, the next weeks
will be crucial for determining the outcome of the crisis.
International solidarity with the Aidesep struggle will be central in
deterring the predatory advance of the government and capital. The defense
of Amazonia, as Peruvian clergy pointed out, "is not of the exclusive
concern of Peruvian citizens but of all humanity."
*******
Gerardo Rénique teaches history at City College, New York. He edited "The
Uprising in Oaxaca," a special section in Socialism and Democracy 44, July
2007 (vol. 22, no. 2).

Source URL: https://nacla.org/node/5879