New Law Endangers Survival of Peru’s Indigenous Peoples
HAVANA TIMES – “The territory is of vital importance to us. It guarantees us life and the lives of our future generations; it gives us food and medicine, but the authorities want to destroy it,” Indigenous Amazonian leader Julio Cusurichi told IPS, denouncing the new reform of the “Forestry and Wildlife Law” recently approved by the Peruvian parliament.
In December 2023, two articles of this law – formally known as Law # 29763 – were modified to authorize measures he feels will damage the Amazon territories, already experiencing accelerated degradation from the deforestation caused by drug trafficking, logging, mining, and monoculture.
“Our existence is wrapped up in the territory, but they don’t respect it. We’re threatened by the illegal activities and by everything the government frames as “development,” said Cusurichi, speaking by telephone from Peru’s southeastern city of Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon department of Madre de Dios. The population of the area – estimated at 187,000 – are already living in a zone where extensive biodiversity exists side by side with illegal, and generally informal, mining activities.
Cusurichi, 53, is a member of the Shipibo tribe. In 2007, he received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his defense of the rights of the uncontacted indigenous tribes. He currently serves as treasurer of the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep).
Aidesep brings together nine organizations and 109 federations from the Amazon region, representing over 2,400 native communities that are home to 650,000 people in the Peruvian jungle. The tribal languages there have been classified into 19 linguistic groups.
Peru as a whole has a total population of 33 million and possesses the fourth largest jungle area on the planet. Over 60% of its territory is covered in Amazonian rainforest, rich in forest and animal species. Yet despite the indigenous people’s struggle to conserve the land, deforestation is advancing, and the recent parliamentary decision is a heavy blow.
“This law worries us, because it represents the interests of the large investors who wish to continue destroying the Amazon; it will trigger the massive invasion of our territories, and we’ll be left unprotected,” affirmed the Shipibo leader.
Among the eight countries whose territory includes part of the Amazon basin, Peru has the second largest tract of Amazon territory with 13% of the total – second only to Brazil with 60%. The Amazon jungle area covers nearly 302,318 square miles, 62% of the Peruvian territory, divided among six departments where 66 original tribes and subgroups live.
Indigenous peoples’ territories now face greater legal insecurity
On December 14, 2023, on the eve of the closure of the annual legislative period, a majority of the Peruvian Congress voted in favor of a change to the Forestry and Wildlife Law. Among other things, this “reform” suspends for up to three years, “the obligation to demand that the land remains forested as a requirement for granting valid land titles.”
It prohibits the granting of titles during that period in areas where the recognition, titling or expansion of native communities is in process; and in areas where the establishment of territorial reserves is being processed for peoples in voluntary isolation or undergoing initial contact.
It also establishes that private parcels with land titles or certifications of possession can be considered “in an exceptional manner” as areas zoned for agriculture and ranching.
The changes affect Articles 29 and 33 of the current law. Two complementary dispositions of this specifically oriented reform – scandalously so, according to its critics – facilitate the appropriation and titling of private ownership while hindering the legalization of the territory’s ancestral inhabitants.
“For over 15 years, we indigenous peoples have been demanding the geo-positioning of the native communities to establish their land titles. However, instead of attending to us, they pass this law that will not only increase land invasions, but also validate it,” Cusurichi alerted.
It’s estimated that only a third of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon have received titles. This subjects the rest to legal insecurity and leaves them vulnerable to the large economic interests.
Cusurichi added that now the authorities will issue certificates of possession to private owners from outside the territory, be it only for six months; further, according to the framework of the new law, titles will no longer be granted to the original indigenous community that has been there since ancestral times.
“The violence against the environmental defenders will grow – 33 indigenous people have died in the last ten years for defending their territory. With this law, we’re all in danger,” he warned.
Francisco Cali Tzay, UN special rapporteur for the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples denounced that the new norm could threaten the survival of the indigenous peoples in Peru.
Aiesep denounced that it would promote large-scale deforestation and facilitate the granting of rights “over our forestlands to third parties.” The group accused the Peruvian Congress of violating the indigenous peoples’ right to be consulted and to give free, prior, and informed consent, which Peru has committed to in international agreements.
Deforestation for African palm monoculture
The backroom interests behind the law became clearly evident when a letter from the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions was made public. This Confederation, which brings together the businesses with the greatest economic power in the country, sent the letter to Alejandro Soto, president of Congress, one day before the bill appeared on the legislative agenda.
The document alludes to the need to offer the established growers more legal security, as they seek to adapt to the “European norm of importing only products that imply zero deforestation,” and that they would only “legalize activities already in existence on degraded lands.”
One of the activities that has produced the most deforestation has been the cultivation of African palm (Elaesis guineensis), a plant whose fruit is used to produce palm oil for cooking, used widely in the food industry.
African palm is a monoculture that has spread widely in the Amazonian departments of Peru. A study done by Oxfam revealed that the cultivation of palm fruit increased more than 700% in Peru between 2000 and 2019.
“Now anyone can obtain their individual title, and the companies can buy 10, 15, 20 of these titles and obtain any amount they want. They’re going to legalize monoculture and the destruction of the land, as occurred in the Ucayali department with the African palm,” Cusurichi expressed.
“They want to kill us with this law”
Marisol Garcia, leader of the Ketchwa people and president of the Ketchwa Chazuta Amazonia Federation of Indigenous Peoples, a grassroots member of Aidesep, expressed her frustration over the approval of the new law.
She believes that the violence already being experienced due to deforestation, drug trafficking, land trafficking, logging, mining, and the planting of African Palm will all increase.
Marisol Garcia lives in the “Tupac Amaru” native community. She spoke with IPS by telephone from the Chazuta municipality in Peru’s northeastern department of San Martin, which has a little over 930,000 inhabitants and where there’s been an expansion of the African Palm Oil plantations.
She revealed that she’s received death threats for denouncing the practices that damage the land and violate the rights of the indigenous peoples. Although she’s been granted protective measures, she doesn’t trust them: “They’re nothing but two sheets of paper.”
“We’re still in shock here after that assassination of apu (leader) Quinto Inuma, who was a Ketchwa like myself, from the native community of Santa Rosillo. We can’t get over it,” she stated.
Inuma was killed in November 2023 after denouncing the illegal activities that had invaded his territories. He was assassinated despite the protective mechanisms that the Peruvian Ministry of Justice and Human Rights granted, and despite his constant pleas for support.
Garcia recalled that in December 2022 they met with representatives from the European Union to make them aware that the cultivation of African palm was stripping the Peruvian indigenous peoples of their territory, and putting their lives in jeopardy.
The encounter occurred during the climate summit held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheij. The conversation with the European bloc is important, because one of its members, the Netherlands, is among the largest buyers of palm oil from Peru.
“They committed themselves to regulating the purchase of the product if it was violating the rights of the indigenous peoples, and they did so. But what’s the use – with this law, [Peru] has formally legalized the illegal, and they’ll continue buying without caring that nature is being destroyed,” Marisol lamented.
She added: “this law is like saying, ‘we have to kill off the indigenous people once and for all, so they won’t continue bothering us and we can come in and extract everything there is.’ We’re the only ones that are hindering them.”
Marisol Garcia is 38 years old and mother of two children, six and eight, who she’s raising with the help of her mother and her partner. She points to the legal and illegal economic interests as the principal threat they’re facing, and one that the government doesn’t take any steps to stop.
“We have no alternative; I can’t put on my advocate’s hat today, then tomorrow take it off because I don’t want to anymore. Every indigenous person who’s born, inherits this commitment, this responsibility that’s inherent to us and passed down,” she stressed.