The Indigenous World 2023: Peru

Written on 28 March 2023. Posted in Peru

The Peruvian State recognizes 47 Indigenous languages spoken by 55 different peoples. According to the 2017 National Population Census, almost six million people (5,972,603) self-identify as belonging to an Indigenous or native people, representing just over a quarter of the total population. Of these, 5,176,809 identify as Quechua and 548,292 as Aymara. The Amazonian population in the census who self-identify as Asháninka, Awajún, Shipibo, or other Amazonian peoples total 197,667. In addition, some 50,000 identify as belonging to other Indigenous or native peoples. Census under-registration in the Amazon region is, nevertheless, a known and ongoing problem.

More than 20% of the national territory is covered by mining concessions, which overlap with 47.8% of the territory of the peasant communities. In the Peruvian Amazon, hydrocarbon concessions cover 75% of the region, affecting almost all villages. The superimposition of these concessions on top of communal territories, the enormous pressure from the extractive industries and their polluting effects, the absence of land-use planning and the lack of effective implementation of prior consultation are all exacerbating the territorial and socio-environmental conflicts in the country.

Peru has signed and ratified the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.

This article is part of the 37^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. The photo above is of an Indigenous person in Tanzania. This photo was taken by Geneviève Rose, and is the cover of the Indigenous World 2023 where this article is featured. Find the Indigenous World 2023 in full here.

2022 was a year of great challenges and threats for Indigenous Peoples. During the second year of former President Pedro Castillo’s mandate, whose election enjoyed massive Indigenous support in both the Amazon and the highland regions, several laws and policies promoted by the Executive and Congress were found to be in violation of fundamental rights, generating a robust response from the organizations and civil society. In turn, in 2022, the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 seriously affected all Indigenous regions due to poor vaccination rates, albeit this time causing low mortality.

Policies against intercultural bilingual education

The International Decade of Indigenous Languages and the return to in-person classes following COVID-19 was heralded by a government onslaught against the policy of intercultural bilingual education (IBE). The focus has been on converting IBE schools into non-bilingual rural schools in order to recruit for positions that should have been reserved for teachers with Indigenous language skills, under the pretext of ensuring that the positions are rapidly covered in the short-term. Although a prompt and massive reaction led to a reversal in this policy, the government insisted on new and similar regulations throughout the course of the year, which it supplemented with the appointment of principals of IBE schools with non-bilingual teachers.

Indigenous organizations and peoples have stressed that any reclassification of schools would require a process of Free, Prior and Informed Consultation (FPIC). The national Indigenous organization, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), has filed an injunction against these anti-IBE measures. It is clear that the measures approved by means of Ministry of Education resolutions are aimed specifically at favouring teachers from the union created by Castillo, the Federation of Peruvian Education Workers (FENAFE). These measures are taking place in a context in which several Indigenous organizations are using technical and legal arguments to justify the need to set up intercultural units for local educational management in areas with a high concentration of Indigenous population and, at the same time, provide strong support for the training and professionalization of Indigenous teachers.

In favour of illegal mining on Indigenous lands

Another surprising policy on the part of a government elected with Indigenous support was the protection offered to informal mining, thus encouraging its entry onto Indigenous territories. Preceded by announcements in various presidential speeches, Supreme Decree 010-2022-MINEM has relaxed the rules for formal mining operations thereby allowing individuals previously charged with the crime of illegal mining to be registered and remain on the Formal Integrated Mining Registry. In addition, informal miners thus registered can legally obstruct inspections of mining sites. The requirement to peacefully carry out their activities is also eliminated. The miners, emboldened by official announcements and regulations in August and December, have moved back en masse into different areas from which law enforcement officers had previously removed them, in particular the Indigenous territories of the Awajún and Wampís peoples, who have been checking their attempts to take over basins rich in alluvial gold deposits for years.    

In October, in the Cenepa basin, Awajún territory, these miners dared to attack the premises of the Organization for the Development of the Cenepa Border Communities (ODECOFROC), fortunately resulting in no deaths on that occasion. In this and other contexts, Law 31,494, which the Congress of the Republic insisted on enacting even though the previous government had been persuaded not to, is a matter for concern. The law refers to the formation of Rural Self-Defence and Development Committees, allowing private individuals and the army to equip themselves with weapons, opening up the risk of paramilitary armies being formed in the context of disputes with invaders of Indigenous territories and the presence of illegal loggers.

Reserves for peoples living in isolation targeted by logging interests

What began at the start of 2022 as a demonstration by logging interests supported by the Governor of Loreto against the establishment of Indigenous reserves for peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact in October became a proposal to modify Law 28,736 on the Protection of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI Law). Among other initiatives, the bill, sponsored by the Loreto Development Coordinator, seeks to transfer the procedures for declaring PIACI Indigenous Reserves to the regional governments.

As denounced by Indigenous organizations, in particular the Regional Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the East (ORPIO), several proposals for the creation of such reserves were submitted more than a decade ago without the Ministry of Culture ever examining the files. Several of these proposals would now be in jeopardy should such a bill prosper.

Fortunately, in 2022, after 18 years of waiting, the Ministry of Culture approved the study for the recognition of the Napo and Tigre villages of Indigenous Peoples living in isolation, villages which have for years been disputed by oil interests supported by the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Oil spills and more oil spills

In January 2022, a large oil spill on the north-central coast helped raise awareness among the authorities and civil society of the environmental impact of poorly regulated oil activities and irresponsible companies. This spill occurred when an ocean tanker was unloading oil for the La Pampilla refinery owned by Repsol, located north of Lima. It was initially claimed that the spill had been caused by the effects of a tsunami following an earthquake on the island of Tonga, and it was alleged that it had involved less than a third of a barrel of oil. In the end, it was ascertained that 11,900 barrels had been spilled.

This crime, which dismayed the country, has continued to be a daily occurrence in lots 192 and 8, which are not operational, and along the NorPeruvian Oil Pipeline, all of whose facilities are in a state of disrepair. The pipeline was the cause of almost a dozen spillages in 2022, contaminating the territories of the Wampís, Awajún, Chapras, Kukama and Achuar peoples. The operators of lots 192 and 8 have refused to acknowledge any of the impacts caused by the spills in 2022 or previous years, or those caused by the abandonment of hazardous substances and scrap metal, leaving the Achuar, Kukama, Kichwa and Quechua organizations that make up the platform known as Indigenous Amazonian Peoples in Defence of their Territories (PUINAMUDT) with the burden of having to demand remediation.

For these plots, the Peruvian government has undertaken to increase the remediation fund for the affected sites but the companies have not been held responsible. However, detailed characterization and engineering studies for the first 32 of more than 1,800 sites are progressing at a snail's pace, resulting in constant uncertainty for the Indigenous families who are forced to live exposed to heavy metal contamination.

Criminalization of and attacks on Indigenous defenders

In April 2022, the death of Asháninka leader Ulises Lorenzo Rumiche Quintumari, in the central rainforest of Pango, added to the growing list of environmental defenders being threatened by illegal mining, forestry and drug trafficking economies. These threats do not come only from illegal actors, however. Fourteen years after the protests that occurred (2008) on the Tigre River, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has moved to hold the trial of 18 community members and Kichwa authorities in response to a lawsuit filed by the Pluspetrol company, which the Public Prosecutor's Office revived in 2017.

The situation caused by threats to leaders and community members who are defending their rights to a healthy territory has led to a recommendation to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights that protection mechanisms should henceforward include collective measures of attention and protection, as measures currently have to be requested individually for each person, often overlooking those defenders with less visibility along with their family members. It has also been recommended that, as a protection measure for criminalized defenders, they should be provided with a comprehensive public defence service in the corresponding investigations.^[1]

Setbacks in the area of consultation

In relation to an “amparo” lawsuit filed by two Aymara peasant communities in the Puno region (Chila Chambilla and Chila Pucará) calling for the cancellation of mining concessions on their lands, the Constitutional Court declared the lawsuit inadmissible in its ruling in March 2022, in a clear roll-back of its own jurisprudence and that of the Inter-American Court, and in contradiction with the current Constitution. Such was the opinion of the Ombudsman's Office, recalling that the right to consultation is a fundamental right that is “enshrined in ILO Convention 169, which has been ratified by the Peruvian State by means of Legislative Resolution No. 26,253 since 2 February 1995”. In turn, it emphasized that the sentence was in contravention of the Constitution, which establishes that “norms relating to rights and freedoms recognized by the Fundamental Law shall be interpreted in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with international treaties and agreements ratified by Peru in this regard”.^[2] The Court itself had recognized the validity and rank of this law in several rulings in the past. After such a violation of their rights, it is not surprising that it was the Aymara communities of Puno – who in April marched on Lima to protest the sentence – that spearheaded the demonstrations and challenged the established order, paralysing the country come the end of 2022.

Progress amidst setbacks

The Awajún Autonomous Territorial Government, which ratified its statute and elected its authorities at the end of 2021, began to exercise its functions in 2022. The scope of the autonomous Awajún government covers around three million hectares in the regions of Cajamarca, San Martín, Amazonas and Loreto, in which 247 communities have been recorded. With this new territorial structure, there are now almost a dozen such governments determined to exercise governance of their territories and defy the wilful State decision to ignore the existence of Indigenous Peoples as political rights-holders.

Frederica Barclay is a Peruvian anthropologist and historian. She is currently serving as President of the Centre for Public Policy and Human Rights - Peru Equidad.

This article is part of the 37^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. The photo above is of an Indigenous person in Tanzania. This photo was taken by Geneviève Rose, and is the cover of the Indigenous World 2023 where this article is featured. Find the Indigenous World 2023 in full here.

Notes and references

^[1] ERI et al. “Funcionamiento de la política pública de protección de defensoras y defensores indígenas criminalizados y amenazados”. EarthRights International, May 2022, p.28. Available at https://earthrights.org/publication/informe-funcionamiento-de-la-politica-publica-de-proteccion-de-defensoras-y-defensores-indigenas-criminalizados-y-amenazados/

^[2] “Defensoría del Pueblo rechaza sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional que desconoce consulta previa a los pueblos indígenas como derecho fundamental”. Ombudsman's Office of Peru, 5 March 2022. Available at https://www.defensoria.gob.pe/defensoria-del-pueblo-rechaza-sentencia-del-tribunal-constitucional-que-desconoce-consulta-previa-a-los-pueblos-indigenas-como-derecho-fundamental/

Tags: Global governance, Climate, Human rights, Criminalisation