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 [2] 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 day.  Later that night, with friends and colleagues from partner organizations Racimos de Ungurahui, Shinai, AIDESEP, and Amazon Watch, as well as actress and activist Q’orianka Kilcher, I took part in a candlelight vigil outside the Nicaraguan embassy to show our support for Alberto and the struggle of indigenous communities of Peru.

A candlelight vigil in Lima following the Bagua massacre in June 2009

In the weeks afterwards, the legislative decrees 1090 and 1064 that gave rise to the Amazon-wide protests were repealed by the Peruvian congress, and just this week, days before the one year anniversary of the Bagua massacre, Alberto Pizango returned to Peru from exile in Nicaragua.  He was arrested on arrival, and later released from detention; however, the charges against him have not been dropped. Several international groups [3] are now pressuring the Peruvian government to ensure that Pizango "receives a fair trial and that all unsubstantiated charges against him are dropped [4]."

Despite these victories, the threat of further environmental destruction and human rights violations in the Peruvian Amazon are as present as ever.  The Peruvian government continues to auction off new oil and gas concessions throughout its Amazon region, even as communities like the Achuar, Quichua and Urarina of the Corrientes River basin in Block 1AB continue to feel the toxic effects [5] of decades of irresponsible oil exploitation.  Looking back on the events of the past year, I hope that the Peruvian government learns to respect the rights and territories of all its citizens equally, and allows Amazonian communities to follow a path of economic development on their own terms.