Blog de Alek Nomi

One year ago, on June 5th 2009, more than 30 people were killed in Peru’s northern Amazon province of Bagua when security forces violently clashed with indigenous protestors on a narrow strip of highway called “Devil’s Curve”. Early that morning, Peruvian security forces opened fire from helicopters into a crowd of several thousand protestors in an attempt to break through a road block, one of many throughout Peru’s vast Amazon region that indigenous communities had set up in protest to legislative decrees 1090 and 1064 that would have opened up the indigenous territories to increased mining, oil, natural gas and hydropower development.

I was in Lima during this time waiting to travel to the city of Iquitos in Peru’s northern Amazon to meet with local indigenous leaders, but my trip was delayed by the two months of protests leading up to the massacre at Bagua.  Transport into and out of the Amazon came to a standstill as communities barricaded roads, blocked waterways, and shut down an oil pipeline from lucrative Block 1AB deep in the northern Peruvian Amazon, in protest of the model of development being imposed by a government in faraway Lima.

As news of the massacre in Bagua spread, tensions rose and protests broke out in the rest of the country.  As I waited in Lima, I remember watching huge crowds gather in the center of the city to show their support for Amazonian communities, and watching security forces fire rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds.

Amidst these protests, the Peruvian government charged Alberto Pizango, president of the national organization Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP in Spanish), with advocating revolt and sedition.  Fearing arrest, Alberto Pizango fled to the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima seeking asylum, which was granted the following . . .

Last week, Achuar leaders traveled from deep in the Peruvian Amazon to Calgary, Canada to attend Talisman Energy’s Annual General Shareholder Meeting and demand that the company cease all oil development on their territory, immediately withdraw from their Amazonian homeland, and respect the collective rights of the Achuar people. The Achuar know first-hand the damaging effects of oil development on their land and their communities, which is why they are resisting Talisman’s attempts to further exploit their land. 

The Achuar are just one of the many indigenous communities living in the northern Peruvian Amazon whose livelihoods and lands are threatened by oil development.  Since 1971, when US-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) arrived on Achuar territory to develop a concession known as Block 1AB, indigenous communities have witnessed the darker side of development, including environmental destruction, lead and cadmium poisoning, oil spills, and loss of livelihood. Oxy's legacy is the subject of on-going litigation brought by EarthRights International on behalf of the Achuar against Oxy in U.S. Federal Court.

The threat posed by oil development to indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon has only become more serious as the government continues to encourage investment in oil and natural gas projects. Last year, the Peruvian government passed legislative decrees to open up the Amazon to increased oil, natural gas, mining, logging and hydropower development, ultimately leading to countrywide strikes by Amazonian communities, and a violent clash between police and protestors on a blocked highway in Bagua Province, resulting in deaths on both sides and leaving hundreds of protestors injured. 

Unlike Oxy, Talisman Energy is still in the early stages of drilling new exploration wells on Achuar Territory, and it's not too late to stop it. This is not the kind of development indigenous communities . . .