By: Eduardo Nugkuag
Peru is a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual country. From this perspective, when speaking of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, it is important to know the fundamental aspects that revolve around their lives and decisions, among which are their worldview, beliefs, customs, values and moral principles, which are born from the territory and constitute the basis of their way of life, the territory itself being the central element of their historical claim. In this sense, it must be considered that the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples have been constantly displaced from their territories since colonial times, and currently face new forms of colonization called «concessions» granted by the State for the extraction of oil and other natural resources.
Facing the scenario of the 21st century, the Peruvian Amazon finds itself in an economic, social and political conflict over oil extraction issues, between what the West calls «development» and where the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples seek a «development with greater Identity”, given the historical negative impacts of oil activity on their environment with dead rivers, contaminated land, deforested forests, disappearance of biodiversity and fragmentation of their culture; installing conditions impossible to reverse for those who previously lived in harmony with the forest for thousands of years.
Thus, we open a brief parenthesis mentioning that, throughout the 20th century, Communities enjoyed a regulatory regime of special protection granted by the Peruvian Constitution of 1920, in which the principles of non-seizure were instituted (communal lands could not be seized), inalienability (they could not be sold) and imprescriptibility (their lands could not be declared abandoned).
This communal property regime was maintained in all subsequent constitutions until the 1993 Constitution, in which, adhering to the neoliberal paradigm, these principles were eliminated, keeping only the figure of imprescriptibility, although modified since it now recognizes the abandonment of land under certain conditions. In short, the intention to dispossess Indigenous communities of their lands for their incorporation into the market is almost explicit in the current Constitution.
Thus, in recent years in the Peruvian Amazon there has been a massive increase of oil operations, as is the case of the Loreto region, which produces 60% of the country’s oil. Many of these companies devastate natural resources in their operations, seriously affecting the Indigenous riverside populations that live off what the forest produces.
An emblematic case that we can highlight in this region is what is currently happening to the Achuar people of the Corrientes River, who have been enduring more than 40 years of pollution in their environment and in their health, because at the beginning of the seventies, without any sort of consultation process, the ancestral lands of these Indigenous communities were framed within two oil exploitation lots, currently called Lot 1AB and Lot 8. This contamination was initially caused by the operations of the oil companies Occidental Petroleum Co., then Petroperú, and finally by the Argentine company Pluspetrol.
The rivers of the Corrientes basin (Loreto) were affected by approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil wastewater, characterized by its high salinity and high temperatures (90°C), composed of hydrocarbons, chlorides and heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, chromium, barium, nickel, mercury, arsenic, etc. that can cause genetic alterations and cancer. These wastewaters contaminate the oxbow lakes and lakes, which provide the Achuar communities with fish and cover their daily food, turning them into dirty puddles that no longer harbor life. The oil activity has also caused the animals of the forest to move away or completely disappear.
Currently, the Loreto region continues to suffer from new oil spills, the last one being reported this year on September 17th in the district of Urarinas, province and region of Loreto, at the 24th kilometer of the Norperuano Pipeline, seriously affecting the Cuninico River and moving towards the Marañón River. This has not been the first time that a spill has occurred there, the same thing happened 8 years ago with 2,358 barrels of oil spilled, affecting more than 100 native communities. This latest spill has seriously affected the Chapra nation, located in the Datem del Marañón Province, Loreto region. The responsible company, Petroperú, has only issued written statements without taking effective actions for the necessary contingency and the rapid halting of the advance of the oil spill in the rivers in order to avoid further endangerment of the Indigenous population and their environment. Thus, the different Indigenous Peoples that inhabit Loreto, in defense of the little land that remains healthy in their territory, find themselves in a new struggle with the Peruvian State to order companies a reinjection of 100% of their wastewaters, reparation of the pipes, and dealing with the remediation of environmental liabilities.
FIGURE N° 01
Oil contamination in Loreto
Graphic No 02
Lots of Oil Operations Contracts
Graph No 2 shows the trend of growth of lots under oil contracts. In the same way, we can analyze and deduce that many of these contracts and concessions are located within protected areas, making the State’s permits questionable since there is no certainty that they have been granted in accordance with national and international regulations or other binding instruments.
Undoubtedly, these events have become a clear form of violation of individual and collective rights of the Indigenous population, as well as the generation of social conflicts in the Peruvian Amazon. This undermines what is expressed in international agreement 169[1] of the International Labor Organization – ILO, which has been ratified by the government in Peru through Legislative Resolution No. 26253, where it establishes the obligation on the part of the government to consult the involved communities if they foresee measures that may affect them directly and must establish the means through which they can freely establish collective decisions and other organisms (Art.6, sub. 1 literals a and b).
In this process, the legitimate representative organizations of the Amazonian Indigenous peoples in Peru, grouped in AIDESEP[2], made the respective requests to the Peruvian State due to their concern about the harmful effects of the concessions and spills that have been taking place within their communities and, at the same time, the Indigenous movement requested the prompt remediation of said activities that seriously affect the preservation of their culture, their life and future generations.
For these reasons, the Peruvian State and the representative organizations of the Indigenous Peoples of Peru have the obligation to deal, in a bipartite manner and under equal conditions, with all types of intervention within Indigenous territories, as stated in international agreements and the Peruvian Law since 1993 by Legislative Resolution No. 26253, which these days is a dead letter.
[1] Agreement 169, was ratified by the Peruvian State and establishes the duty to consult the legislative and administrative measures likely to directly affect the original peoples, establishing appropriate procedures for consulting the interested peoples, in good faith and with the purpose of reaching a agreement or gain consent to the proposed measures.
[2] AIDESEP is a national indigenous organization that watches over the economic, social and environmental rights of the Amazonian indigenous peoples of Peru
By way of reflection
Drawing from the Political Constitution of Peru as well as Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization – ILO and internal regulations, it follows that the right of ownership and possession over the lands or territories traditionally occupied by Indigenous Peoples must be organized in native communities and must be specially protected and guaranteed by the State to safeguard the peculiar cultural, spiritual and collective relationship that these human groups have with their lands, given that the Indigenous right to life depends fundamentally on their territory.
The concessions or extractive activities in Indigenous territories (even more so in the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and/or initial contact whose population is highly vulnerable to diseases brought by external agents), should proceed with the consultation which has to be approved by the Indigenous Peoples with participation of its representative organizations in all its regional bases.
To guarantee the follow-up of the established agreements, it is recommended to set up a National Working Group on Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, with the participation of the State, private sector, and Indigenous Peoples.
This space must generate public policies on issues of Identity-based development , considering the perspective of the communities and not only for the benefit of the extractive activity, as has been happening for decades.