The Indigenous World 2024: Peru
The Peruvian State recognizes 47 Indigenous languages spoken by 55 different peoples in the country. In the 2017 National Population Census, almost six million people (5,972,603) self-identified as belonging to an Indigenous or native people, representing slightly more than a quarter of the total population. Of these, 5,176,809 consider themselves to be Quechua and 548,292 Aymara. The Amazonian census population that self-identifies as Asháninka, Awajún, Shipibo, and other Amazonian peoples amounted to 197,667. Some 50,000 consider themselves as belonging to other Indigenous or native peoples. Census under-registration in the Amazon region is known to be an 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 rights on top of communal territories, the enormous pressure from the extractive industries and their contaminating effects, the absence of land-use planning and the lack of effective implementation of prior consultation are all exacerbating territorial and socio-environmental conflicts in Peru, a country that has signed and ratified ILO Convention 169 and which voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007.
This article is part of the 38th 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 man harvesting quinoa in Sunimarka, Peru. This photo was taken by Pablo Lasansky, and is the cover of The Indigenous World 2024 where this article is featured. Find The Indigenous World 2024 in full here
2023 was a year of permanent resistance for the Indigenous Peoples of Peru. Several threats previously reported in this Yearbook, which it was thought had been averted by the start of the year, reappeared with tenacity, albeit with varying degrees of danger. Others that had been up in the air finally came to fruition and, finally, there were new acts of violence against Indigenous leaders who are defending the security of their territories and the environment. However, during the year, and based on that same strength to resist, an initial space for dialogue was opened up with the Peruvian State on the right to self-determination, a hugely important step.
A large part of this scenario is a direct result of the political situation and institutional crisis in the country whereby the government of Dina Boluarte, heir to Pedro Castillo’s government mandate, has given in and negotiated public policies and norms of all kinds with the Congress of the Republic to the benefit of the private interests of members or close associates of the Legislature or its Prime Minister. The President’s weakness is such, and her distancing from civil society so great, that the government is now in the hands of an alliance that almost no-one hesitates to call a mafia.[1]
To the effects of this unusual alliance, in a country where Congress has permanently obstructed the Executive over the last decade and this latter has been the object of repeated attempts to shut it down, with the political parties becoming irrelevant, must be added the control that Congress has gained over the Constitutional Court, with its election of lacklustre and malleable judges. Congress also committed to electing a new Ombudsman and, since taking office, this person has been busy dismantling all the key areas for defending citizens' rights, particularly those of Indigenous Peoples. Evidence or illustration of this clear undermining of the balance of powers can be seen in the decision of the Constitutional Court to exempt Congress from constitutional control, putting on hold for the time being the various appeals filed against the actions of the Legislature. The appointment of a new head of the Attorney General's Office with unexplained links to the criminal organization known as the “cuellos blancos del puerto” [White Collars of the Port] who, throughout 2023, took several steps to repudiate the members of the National Board of Justice, has only aggravated the institutional crisis and, in this context, private interests are easily able to find support among actors in Congress and the Executive.
The malaise within the general public can be seen in its disapproval of both branches of government throughout 2023. President Dina Boluarte, who began the year with a 71% disapproval rating, ended it with 85%; Congress went from 88% disapproval to 91%.[2] Also contributing to this malaise is the level of public insecurity, which has spread throughout both urban and rural areas of the country; inflation; the economic crisis; and widespread corruption within Congress. Calls for the resignation of the President and for new elections met with an exasperating stratagem played out by both branches of power aimed at neutralizing the calls and continuing the status quo until 2026, a period which, in view of the institutional crisis, will seem endless and repetitive.
Protests and mobilizations continue
President Castillo’s departure at the end of 2022 due to his attempted coup was followed by strong protests and road blockades throughout the country which, in the south, resulted in 28 deaths due to the disproportionate use of force. A Christmas truce ended on 4 January when the Aymara communities of Puno resumed their protests, suffering a high number of injuries in the process. The anger of the Indigenous people of Puno, the most Indigenous department in the country, continued to grow as a result of President Boluarte's comment that “Puno is not the country”, in an attempt to dismiss the value of their protest.
The protests in Puno, largely fuelled initially by demands for the release of Castillo from pre-trial detention, his reinstatement as President and constitutional reforms, flared up again in the rest of the country and spread to the cities. Large delegations from Puno and other regions arrived in the capital for what was called “the taking of Lima”, resulting in their eviction from the national universities that were giving shelter to the demonstrators. The participation of Indigenous women, some accompanied by their children, was evident in these demonstrations. The Minister of Education responded with an inflammatory remark when he said that Indigenous women were “worse than animals”. The protests only subsided in March, when the El Niño phenomenon and the presence of an unusual cyclone on the Peruvian coast caused extensive damage, river flooding and landslides. But the rejection in the south, which coined the slogan “Puno will not forget”, remained firm until the end of 2023.
As of 23 January 2023, the working visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had reported 57 deaths resulting from the demonstrations, due to a disproportionate use of force.[3] Its report bears witness to social demands of a structural nature resulting from a context of discrimination and inequality, which has resulted in people being unable to enjoy their economic, social, cultural and environmental rights (ESCR). This has affected Indigenous Peoples and peasant communities in the provinces located in the south of the country in particular. The report draws attention to the stigmatization of Indigenous people, the labelling of those involved in the protest and their supporters, and even journalists, as terrorists (a practice known in Peruvian slang as “terruquear”) and the failure to investigate political and criminal responsibility for these deaths. The independent press did nonetheless manage to document how some killings had occurred outside the actual setting of the protests, which sometimes turned violent.
Illegal mining continues to threaten Indigenous territories
Throughout 2023, illegal mining remained the scourge of many of the Indigenous territories of the Peruvian Amazon. Emboldened by the 2022 regulation (DS 010-2022-MINEM) and announcements regarding an easing of the requirements for registering in and remaining on the REINFO Mining Formalization Registry, groups of miners have invaded large parts of the Amazon basin, causing not only environmental destruction but also acute social conflict. It is now clear throughout all of Latin America, and including Peru, that the expansion of gold mining that has been encouraged by these legal protections is intrinsically linked to the financing of drug trafficking, which finds gold mining to be an efficient system for laundering illegal income.[4]
As in the previous year, in 2023 the Awajún and Wampís territories came under permanent attack from illegal miners. Although collective efforts, either on their own or with the support of the police and other public forces, managed to temporarily dislodge the miners, the financing they have access to and the corruption of some of their agents mean that the attacks are simply repeated over and over again, each time with more sophisticated equipment and weaponry. Some of these invasions are occurring under the protection of mining concessions granted on communal territories that cover stretches of the rivers.
These interests are increasingly global, as are their mechanisms for protection, intimidation and punishment. And these global interests have their protectors in the country. Over the course of 2023, several legislative initiatives were tabled in the Peruvian Congress to extend the deadline for formalizing mining status, either indefinitely or for an extended period. Threats to leaders and communities that resist their presence are a daily occurrence.
Logging interests attempt to take over the reserves for peoples living in isolation
Just when the battle seemed to have been won against the logging interests in Loreto that have their eye on the rich forests in the Indigenous reserves for peoples in isolation and initial contact, a new legal initiative was announced in July 2023 in favour of just that.[5] This time, the actors concerned argued the need to protect the rights of neighbouring native communities, appealed to nationalism in the face of the “internationalization” of Peruvian territory and continued to argue that the presence of the so-called peoples in isolation and initial contact was an invention of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and sectors labelled “caviares” [“champagne socialists”] in order to delegitimize any resistance, including that of regional and national Indigenous organizations.[6] The new regional government, in office since January 2023, openly united with these logging interests. In May, sectors of Congress demanded, and then repeatedly insisted, that Bill No. 3515 should first be discussed in committees before being approved in plenary.
It took a huge national and international media campaign and statements from the countries that are funding initiatives to stop deforestation and mitigate climate change (Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom) to put a stop, for now, to these interests.[7] These same interests are demanding that that opportunities to promote alluvial mining in Loreto should not go to waste, as these would contribute more than oil production. It is clear that Indigenous Peoples, their organizations and civil society will need to brace themselves for further attacks in the future against the territories of these highly vulnerable native peoples.
Environmental packages return
Environmental packages are Trojan horses in Peru that raise their heads from time to time. In 2023, two proposals emerged in this area: the reform of the Forestry and Wildlife Law and the proposal to modify the Natural Protected Areas Law (NPA).
The “suggestions” for amendments to the forestry law were made public in January and the issue, accompanied by great media pressure, was resurrected several times throughout the year, forcing the Indigenous organizations to act persistently to point out that, as the original regulations had been approved through a consultation process then so should any reform. Although Congress shelved the initiative in March, one sector managed to get it back on the agenda of the plenary house at the end of the year for reconsideration and accelerated approval. The argument made to the public was that it was due to this law that thousands or even millions of small farmers had no land titles and were therefore being denied benefits such as agricultural credit. The law, approved right at the end of the 2023 legislature, establishes three radical changes: first, the suspension of forest zoning; second, the exclusion of the Ministry of Environment from processes that were formerly under its jurisdiction in forestry matters; and third, the repeal of the procedure for authorizing changes of use in private areas. The specialists warned of a risk of massive deforestation and impacts on the country's climate change goals.
Towards September, it became evident that CONFIEP, the business confederation,[8] was behind the law and that its purpose was to launder or regularize, without more ado, the thousands of hectares deforested without any authorization by corporate oil palm and cocoa interests, and to allow for their expansion. Although secondary, the rule also has the alleged purpose of ensuring that production from estates that were originally established irregularly would not encounter obstacles due to the European regulation, approved in May 2023, that prohibits the purchase of products from areas unlawfully deforested since 31 December 2020, or from land obtained through violence.
In a new game played between the Executive and Congress, the former made public several substantive observations creating the illusion that, if the bill were approved, it would be viewed or even presented as unconstitutional. This was not the case so the law has entered into force and its impact on forests could be huge. Several large companies which, in recent years, have been carrying out deforestation processes on the ground will benefit immediately. These include Ocho Sur, Tamshi and their associates who, in the face of criticism, have not hesitated to criminalize their opponents, in addition to intimidating communities that resist their actions.
The alleged need for economic recovery has also served to propose another dimension to the weakening of the environmental regime. At Perupetro's request, in the first half of the year, and then again in October, the energy and mining sector proposed an amendment to Law No. 26,834 on Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) via supreme decree.[9] The objective of the reform is to allow oil exploitation in NPAs, and to establish automatic compatibility in the buffer zones of NPAs and Regional Natural Conservation Areas.[10] As pointed out by various specialists, the proposal would largely void the law of any content. Many of the areas where oil exploitation would be unconditionally permitted are found on Indigenous territories. This threat remained as we entered 2024. This proposal to superimpose oil activity on top of protected areas is all the more worrying given the country’s record of oil pollution.[11]
The third element of this package is the reintroduction of the so-called one-stop shop, which is intended to facilitate and expedite the approval process for large projects by merging several autonomous agencies that provide opinions on environmental impacts. It is not a new idea but it is new to locate this in the Presidency of the Council of Ministers where it could be subject to non-technical whim. By merging these agencies, including the National Service for Environmental Certification of Sustainable Investments (SENACE), not only would the skills and technical procedures for the approval of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) be reduced; the right of those who could be affected by the projects and plans, including native and peasant communities, to express their opinion on the EIAs would also disappear.
Environmental defenders killed or prosecuted
It is deplorable that, in so many countries, IWGIA's Indigenous Yearbook has to include a section devoted to reporting on or analysing the dangers faced by Indigenous environmental defenders. In Peru, the assassination of Santiago Contoricón Antúnes was mourned in April 2023. An Asháninka teacher from the Tambo basin, he had played an important role in fighting the attacks and forced recruitments of the Shining Path group and the pacification of his communities and held the position of mayor from 2003-2006.
Two other brutal murders occurred in December: that of Kichwa leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado in Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu in the San Martín region, and that of Benjamin Flores Ríos, a Kakataibo leader from Ucayali. What all these cases have in common is that the authorities had been alerted to the risks they were running because they had already received threats from loggers and drug traffickers. Their families were left defenceless, however, because there were no appropriate mechanisms with which to support them or to neutralize the threats against the communities.
In May, there was an armed attack on the premises of the Awajún organization, ODECOFROC, the Organization for the Development of the Border Communities of Cenepa, which was resisting an invasion from illegal miners. This was an event that could have resulted in many deaths. Similar threats have taken place in various places at the hands of illegal loggers whose freedom to act with impunity is being challenged, as in the case of the Wampís communities of the Santiago (or Kanús) River in the Amazon region.
In both the forest and in the highlands, lawsuits issued by extractive companies against Indigenous defenders were witnessed in 2023. In May, several leaders were accused of defamation and prosecuted by Glenncore's Antapacay mining company, being sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of 10,000 soles (approx. EUR 2,400). The same argument, this time of “damage to honour, reputation and image” was used by Maderera Canales Tahuamanu against Julio Cusurichi Palacios, then leader of FENAMAD, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries, now leader of AIDESEP, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Forest, for denouncing the company’s entry onto lands in which groups of peoples in isolation were living during the Covid pandemic.
In Loreto, the 18 Kichwa community members from the Tigre River basin who have been on trial since 2022 at the behest of Pluspetrol, for a case that occurred in 2008, continued to be subject to trial throughout 2023. A decision is expected in 2024. This case was followed by another equally unfair case: in October 2023, Petroperú's Piura office prosecuted 16 people for attacking the pipeline earlier that year in collusion with remediation companies.[12] The lawsuit included Kukama community members from the Marañon River, without any evidence of their involvement. An arrest warrant was issued, without warning, against two Kukama members from San Pedro. At the end of 2023, ACODECOSPAT, the organization representing their community, succeeded in getting them released from the Lima prison to which they had been sent – with no right to communicate or to seek legal counsel – but the time limit for investigation is 36 months. Increasingly audacious methods of intimidation are being used against those who oppose the extractive activities that are affecting Indigenous territorial rights and their impact on the environment. In this context, the case of engineer Lucila Pautrat of the Kené Institute is worthy of note, who had been the subject of a lawsuit from Tamshi SAC since 2019 for “aggravated defamation” due to her documentation of the deforestation of more than 2,500 hectares of forests in Tamshiyacu for cocoa cultivation. Finally, in October 2023, the Transitory Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the higher court’s ruling ratifying a previous conviction that had sentenced her to a two-year suspended sentence and the payment of civil reparations of 50,000 soles.
Towards a dialogue on the right to self-determination
Together with the resistance and resilience that the Indigenous Peoples of Peru have shown throughout 2023, a note of hope was set by a forum co-organized by the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights through its Mission in Lima on 9 November. Various autonomous governments of the Amazon and representatives of the Peruvian State were invited to the event entitled “The challenge of the right to self-determination of Indigenous and native peoples in Peru. Dialogue with the State”. It included a presentation of the “Report on the legal status of Autonomous Indigenous Governments under the principle of self-determination” and interventions via videoconference from Jens Dahl, former Vice-Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Gam A. Shimray, Secretary General of the Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), and a representative of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, together with Peruvian academics. Despite the current climate of crisis and deinstitutionalization, in which such an initial dialogue could not really be expected to bear substantive fruit, this initiative has set out a road map towards a better realization of collective rights.
Frederica Barclay is a Peruvian anthropologist and historian. She currently runs the Centre for Policy and Human Rights - Perú Equidad.
This article is part of the 38th 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 man harvesting quinoa in Sunimarka, Peru. This photo was taken by Pablo Lasansky, and is the cover of The Indigenous World 2024 where this article is featured. Find The Indigenous World 2024 in full here
Notes and references
[1] Hidalgo Bustamante, M. “Aliados de la minería ilegal: los proyectos y la investigación fiscal que revelan los nexos en el Congreso”. El Comercio, 4 February 2024. https://elcomercio.pe/politica/congreso/mineria-ilegal-los-proyectos-y-la-investigacion-fiscal-que-revelan-los-nexos-en-el-congreso-noticia/
[2] “El 72% de la ciudadanía considera que Dina Boluarte no defiende la autonomía del Poder Ejecutivo ante el Congreso”. La República, November 2023. https://data.larepublica.pe/encuesta-iep-peru-aprobacion-desaprobacion-presidencia-congreso-de-la-republica-ejecutivo-legislativo/noviembre-2023/
[3] Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Situation of Human Rights in Peru in the context of social protests, 23 April 2023. https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/informes/pdfs/2023/Informe-SituacionDDHH-Peru.pdf. The report was presented in April. That same month, Human Rights Watch also spoke out about the disproportionate use of force and uninvestigated deaths: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/26/peru-egregious-abuses-security-forces. Since then, Congress and authoritarian sectors have periodically proposed that Peru withdraw from the Inter-American Human Rights System.
[4] Carrere, M. "La minería ilegal que permite lavar dinero del narcotráfico se expande en las regiones de triple frontera de la Amazonía". Mongabay, 18 August 2023. https://es.mongabay.com/2023/08/mineria-ilegal-lavar-dinero-narcotrafico-triple-frontera-amazonia/ “Illegal mining and money laundering in Latin America". Acams Today, 2 August 2023. https://www.acamstoday.org/la-mineria-ilegal-y-el-lavado-de-activos-en-america-latina/; Amazon Watch, InfoAmazonia, Amazon Underworld. Amazon Underworld. Economías criminales en la mayor selva tropical del mundo. November 2023. https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2023-11-amazon-underworld-es.pdf.
[5] Evidence of this interest can be seen in the no less than 47 logging concessions that they have attempted to superimpose on the reserves for people living in isolation and initial contact since 2015.
[6] Territorio Encendido. "No a los PIACI. No a los enclaves territoriales. Ministerio de Cultura Racista y vendepatria”. YouTube, 10 December 2023. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3t8K_eQSO_M&feature=shared
[7] These sectors had determined that the parliamentary Culture and Decentralization committees should rule on it, thus bypassing the Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Indigenous Peoples, Environment and Ecology committee. Culture abstained and recommended that the latter intervene. The Decentralization Committee spoke out against and abstained from voting.
[8] National Confederation of Private Business Institutions, founded in 1984.
[9] The PNA law dates back to 1997. Only its regulations could be approved by Supreme Decree. Perupetro is the body behind the legal initiative and holder of the oil lots, and the organization that awards them to third parties for exploration/exploitation.
[10] In 2006, a communal reserve (Tuntanain) was established and the regulation creating it indicated that the oil lot that was established in parallel would take precedence. Interestingly, in 2019, Petroperú and the National Service for State Natural Areas Protected (SERNANP) signed an agreement. According to Petroperú's president, the purpose of this was to “promote the care of our biodiversity in areas neighbouring our operations of influence. It is everyone's duty to take care of our environment for future generations and this requires us to be aware, to act seriously and with great social and environmental responsibility.” “PETROPERÚ firma convenio con SERNANP para preservar la biodiversidad.” Petroperú, 28 August 2019.https://petroperu.com.pe/petroperu-firma-convenio-con-sernanp-para-preservar-la-biodiversidad.
[11] A. León Cépeda and M. Zúñiga Lossio. 2022. Actualización de la información sobre sitios con daño hidrocarburífero en el Perú: 1997-2021. Lima: Oxfam / CNDDHH. The oil spills continued in 2023: from the pipeline, and from oil wells in the forest and along the coast. It was estimated in 2023 that the cost of remediation of the priority sites in Lot 1AB would cost no less than USD 1.447 billion. Zúñiga, M. and Díaz, D. “Miseria del petróleo: Más de 5 mil millones de soles pagará el Estado peruano por la remediación del ex Lote 1AB”. Observatorio Petrolero, 6 February 2023. https://observatoriopetrolero.org/miseria-del-petroleo-mas-de-5-mil-millones-de-soles-pagara-el-estado-peruano-por-la-remediacion-del-ex-lote-1ab/).
[12] In 2017, a Congressional Investigation Committee was established that identified the participation of staff who had been working at Petroperú in the attacks on the pipeline, with the aim of accessing remediation contracts. In 2019, Congress dismissed the report. “Perú: las claves del informe del Congreso sobre los derrames de petróleo en la Amazonía”. Mongabay, 12 January 2018. https://es.mongabay.com/2018/01/peru-congreso-informe-derrames-petroleo/.
Tags: Land rights, Business and Human Rights , Protest , Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Defenders, Conservation
