Peru's Indian groups gain strength, push for change

Peru’s indigenous movement, which was dormant for years, has burst to life and could become a powerful political force like those in Andean neighbors Ecuador and Bolivia.

A coalition of tribes in Peru’s Amazon rain forest led months of blockades that turned into bloody clashes with police and forced Congress to overturn two laws that indigenous leaders said would put ancestral lands in the hands of foreign mining and oil companies.

President Alan Garcia’s cabinet chief, Yehude Simon, said this week he will resign for botching the negotiations with tribes and failing to avert the violence that killed at least 34 people earlier this month.

The political fallout has demonstrated the emerging strength of indigenous political movements in Peru, reinforcing recent gains made by Indian groups across the Andes.

Evo Morales was elected as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006, while Indian protests helped force out two presidents during economic crises a decade ago in Ecuador.

Throughout the region, Indian groups are pushing for greater control over natural resources and a bigger share of their countries’ wealth. Many oppose foreign investment in the mining and energy industries.

“The Peruvian indigenous movement is no longer weaker than others in the Andes,” said Miguel Palacin, general coordinator of CAOI, an Indian rights group active throughout the Andes.

“We have very good organizations here in Peru now, with new groups, and we want to take advantage of this to gain political influence.”

Peru was roiled by a war between the government and the Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s. Maoist rebel leaders recruited indigenous people, and other Indians were organized in vigilante squads to fight the guerrillas in a brutal conflict that claimed nearly 70,000 lives.

Indigenous towns and villages were hardest hit and the violence discouraged Indians from venturing beyond their villages to organize nationwide political networks.

Since the end of the war, indigenous groups have put together networks with sophisticated legal, communications and fund-raising teams, often assisted by international aid groups.

To consolidate its position, analysts say Peru’s indigenous movement could organize into a political party, formally align itself with an existing left-wing party, or field more candidates and become a sizeable bloc in Congress.

Estimates of Peru’s indigenous population range between 15 percent and 40 percent, so to grow politically, groups must move beyond an agenda defending the Amazon and forge ties with unions, environmental groups and peasant associations.

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Peru moves to ease Amazon crisis

Peru’s government is set to send a bill to Congress revoking land laws that led to deadly clashes between police and indigenous protesters in the Amazon.

The move follows talks between the government and indigenous leaders on ways of easing tensions after more than 30 people died earlier this month.

Amazon Indians say the laws will open their lands to drilling and logging.

Peru’s Prime Minister Yehude Simon, who has led the talks, has said he will step down once the dispute is settled.

“I will leave as soon as everything has calmed down, which should be in the coming weeks,” Mr Simon told Peruvian radio on Tuesday after meeting indigenous leaders.

He said the government would send a bill to Congress on Wednesday asking for a repeal of the laws which would have allowed mining, oil and gas exploration and other economic development in the Amazon rainforest.

Indigenous people say they want to be consulted on development

The government had to know how to listen, Mr Simon said, insisting that the reversal of policy would not put at risk Peru’s free trade agreement with the US.

Mr Simon offered to end a state of emergency and curfew in the region, while Amazon leaders indicated they would end their blockade of a main road if the decrees were overturned.

Thousands of indigenous people have been blocking roads, rivers and fuel pipelines since April to force the government to repeal the laws which they say were introduced without consultation and would open their lands to foreign exploitation.

Violence erupted on 5 June when security forces moved to end the blockades near the town of Bagua, more than 1,000km (600 miles) north of the capital, Lima.

At least 34 people, both police and protesters, died in the clashes, officials have said, although indigenous leaders say more than 50 people were killed.

Safe passage

Peruvian President Alan Garcia has said that developing parts of the Amazon are part of his investment programme to tackle widespread poverty.

He has repeatedly argued that all Peruvians should benefit from the country’s natural resources not just the people who happened to live in the areas concerned.

“We have to open up a space for reconciliation, peace and hope,” Mr Garcia said in a statement on Tuesday.

But he indicated that he intended to move ahead with his development policies based on free trade and foreign investment.

“Time will show that those who reject something today will be the first to ask for it in the future because they need development, investment and a better life,” he said.

The government has meanwhile granted safe passage to an indigenous leader to travel to Nicaragua, which has granted him political asylum.

Alberto Pizango took refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy after being accused of sedition, conspiracy and rebellion.

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Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru’s Amazon

Faced with a simmering crisis over dozens of deaths in the quelling of indigenous protests last week, Peru’s Congress this week suspended the decrees that had set off the protests over plans to open large parts of the Peruvian Amazon to investment. Senior officials said they hoped this would calm nerves and ease the way for oil drillers and loggers to pursue their projects.

But instead, indigenous groups are digging in for a protracted fight, revealing an increasingly well-organized movement that could be a tinderbox for President Alan García. The movement appears to be fueled by a deep popular resistance to the government’s policies, which focused on luring foreign investment, while parts of the Peruvian Amazon have been left behind.

The broadening influence of the indigenous movement was on display Thursday in a general strike that drew thousands of protesters here to the streets of Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and to cities and towns elsewhere in jungle areas. Protests over Mr. García’s handling of the violence in the northern Bagua Province last Friday also took place in highland regions like Puno, near the Bolivian border, and in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.

“The government made the situation worse with its condescending depiction of us as gangs of savages in the forest,” said Wagner Musoline Acho, 24, an Awajún Indian and an indigenous leader. “They think we can be tricked by a maneuver like suspending a couple of decrees for a few weeks and then reintroducing them, and they are wrong.”

The protesters’ immediate threat — to cut the supply of oil and natural gas to Lima, the capital — seems to have subsided, with protesters partly withdrawing from their occupation of oil installations in the jungle. But as anger festers, indigenous leaders here said they could easily try to shut down energy installations again to exert pressure on Mr. García.

Another wave of protests appears likely because indigenous groups are demanding that the decrees be repealed and not just suspended. The decrees would open large jungle areas to investment and allow companies to bypass indigenous groups to obtain permits for petroleum exploration, logging and building hydroelectric dams. A stopgap attempt to halt earlier indigenous protests in the Amazon last August failed to prevent them from being reinitiated more forcefully in April.

The authorities said that nine civilians were killed in the clashes that took place last Friday on a remote highway in Bagua. But witnesses and relatives of missing protesters contend that the authorities are covering up details of the episode, and that more Indians died. Twenty-four police officers were killed on the highway and at an oil installation.

Indigenous representatives say at least 25 civilians, and perhaps more, may have been killed, and some witnesses say that security forces dumped the bodies of protesters into a nearby river. At least three Indians who were wounded said they had been shot by police officers as they waited to talk with the authorities.

“The government is trying to clean the blood off its hands by hiding the truth,” said Andrés Huaynacari Etsam, 21, an Awajún student here who said that five of his relatives had been killed on June 5 and that three were missing.

Senior government officials repudiate such claims. “There is a game of political interests taking place in which some are trying to exaggerate the losses of life for their own gain,” said Foreign Minister José García Belaunde.

He said the ultimate aim of the protesters was to prevent Peru from carrying out a trade agreement with the United States, because one of the most contentious of the decrees that were suspended on Thursday would bring Peru’s rules for investment in jungle areas into line with the trade agreement.

“But,” Mr. García Belaunde insisted, “the agreement is not in danger.”

Still, the government’s initial response to the violence seems to have heightened resentment. A television commercial by the Interior Ministrycontained graphic images of the bodies of some police officers who were killed while being held hostage by protesters. The commercial said that the killings were proof of the “ferocity and savagery” of indigenous activists, but an uproar over that depiction forced the government to try to withdraw the commercial.

The authorities are struggling to understand a movement that is crystallizing in the Peruvian Amazon among more than 50 indigenous groups. They include about 300,000 people, accounting for only about 1 percent of Peru’s population, but they live in strategically important and resource-rich locations, which are scattered throughout jungle areas that account for nearly two-thirds of Peru’s territory.

So far, alliances have proved elusive between Indians in the Amazon and indigenous groups in highland areas, ruling out, for now, the kind of broad indigenous protest movements that helped oust governments in neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia earlier in the decade.

In contrast to some earlier efforts to organize indigenous groups, the leaders of this new movement are themselves indigenous, and not white or mestizo urban intellectuals. They are well organized and use a web of radio stations to exchange information across the jungle. After one prominent leader, Alberto Pizango, was granted asylum in Nicaragua this week, others quickly emerged to articulate demands.

“There has been nothing comparable in all my years here in terms of the growth of political consciousness among indigenous groups,” said the Rev. Joaquín García, 70, a priest from Spain who arrived in Iquitos 41 years ago and directs the Center of Theological Studies of the Amazon, which focuses on indigenous issues.

“At issue now,” he said, “is what they decide to do with the newfound bargaining power in their hands.”

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Peru’s history paved with gold

The first thing that happened was, I got scammed.

It was stupid, of course. But it seemed so sensible to pay the smiling uniformed man at the cruise port $10 down on a $24 taxi fare. He put me into a taxi to Lima and shut the door.

“Turn on the air-conditioning!” he shouted to the taxi driver in English as we drove away.

Funny thing was, the driver spoke only Spanish. And when we got back, he demanded $40. The first guy? Long gone with my $10.

“He was dishonest,” a port official later explained, stating the obvious. “That happens a lot.”

Welcome to Lima, a rollicking city where people and treasures may be genuine — or not.

There is no better illustration of the duality of Peru’s capital city than its two most famous private museums — the Gold Museum (Museo Oro del Peru) and the Larco Museum (Museo Larco).

Both are big tourist favorites. Both have gorgeous collections of Peruvian gold. But that’s where they part company.

The sleek Larco Museum has an estimated 5,000 gold objects and 40,000 pieces of pre-Columbian pottery. Begun in 1926 by collector Rafael Larco Herrera, the museum is meticulously curated. It’s also renowned for erotic pottery from pre-Inca days.

Across town, the Gold Museum was started in 1924 by collector Miguel Mujica Gallo, who amassed a huge array of stunning gold objects that he bought from tomb robbers in northern Peru. Located in the wealthy Monterrico district, the museum’s treasure trove is displayed in a basement that has a bit of a mildew smell. No English labels are posted.

I visited both museums. And loved both. And later found out that in 2001 authorities discovered the Gold Museum was exhibiting up to 98 percent fakes.

Are visitors to the Gold Museum now seeing truth or fiction?

“I know that the museum has made an effort to identify any fraudulent material since the scandal. But I don’t know details,” says Mark Aldenderfer, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona and an expert on Peruvian antiquities.

Peru’s government tourism agency, Visit Peru, describes the Gold Museum in its literature this way: “Now notorious . . . the museum was reopened with an assurance that all pieces now on display in its huge basement are bona fide, but the confusion is yet to be completely cleared up.”

However, Gold Museum spokeswoman Claudia Rengito Gracey says that even before the scandal, efforts were made to root out fake pieces accidentally bought by founder Gallo in his later years. The museum employs archaeologists and conservators to authenticate the gold now on display. Even the museum’s biggest detractors “fortunately have not been able to discredit the great quality of the pre-Columbian pieces” the museum owns, she says. The Gold Museum was the most-visited in Lima last year.

Gold makes men do crazy things. That’s why the real thing, when you see it, is so valuable. Gold fever helped Peru’s Incas rise to dominance in the 1400s. It’s why the Spanish invaded and melted down Inca treasure into gold bars. It’s why Peru’s poor still scratch out flecks of gold in the Andes, even though they have to extract it with a poisonous mercury wash. Indirectly, it’s why guys rip off tourists at cruise ports.

But centuries before that, Peru’s ancient jewelers created major bling from all the gold they found around them.

Long before the Incas, they made heavy gold bracelets and breastplates. Jeweled crowns and ceremonial cups. Masks of pure gold and silver that still glitter today as they did nearly 2,000 years ago. Funeral objects to smooth the journey to the other world.

By AD 300-500, their artisans were even smelting gold, doing inlay and complicated designs, creating treasures for their kings, trading for emeralds in what is now Colombia and lapis lazuli in what is now Chile.

Gold was the father, the sun, which they worshiped. Silver was the mother, the moon.

Even now, the necklaces look so gorgeous any actress would be thrilled to wear one at the Academy Awards. The gold looks so soft you want to touch it.

And it’s real.

At least, I think it’s real.SEARCHING FOR GOLD MUSEUMS

Here are Central and South Americas’ best known gold museums. All of these contain pre-Columbian (earlier than the 1500s) gold.

Peru

Larco Museum (Museo Larco): In Lima’s Pueblo Libre neighborhood, it has a well-labeled main hall with gold, silver, pottery and textiles. Nearby is a storeroom open to the public containing tens of thousands of pieces of painted pottery, plus a second building with Mochia erotic pottery. (Bolivar 1515, www.museolarco.org; entrance fee $9.60)

Gold Museum (Museo Oro del Peru): In Lima’s tony Monterrico suburb. Upstairs is an amazing collection of armaments from medieval to modern days. Downstairs is the gold collection, but there are no English labels. (Alonso de Molina 1110, Monterrico, www.museoroperu.com.pe; entrance fee $10.50)

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Places to see in Peru

Traveling in Peru is one of the most worthwhile experiences that you can have in your life. Peru is home to many amazing and exciting destinations. From its lush rainforests to the high peaks of the Andean mountains, Peru certainly has a lot to offer its tourists.

Tourist Spots in Peru

There are so many places that you can visit in Peru. You can check out Cusco, the Land of the Incas. You can visit Puno and Lake Titicaca, Choquequirao Peru, Nazca Lines and the Royal Tombs of Sipan. The Kuelap Fortress, Manu National Park, Paracas National Reserve, and Colca Canyon in Arequipa might interest you. All these travel destinations offer you beautiful sights and activities that you will surely enjoy.

Peru Travel Information

But before traveling to Peru, you have to look into some travel information first. Of course, one thing to consider is visa requirements. If you are from Australia, the European Union, or North America, you do not have to get a visa to visit this country. But if you are not from those regions, you have to go past the immigration office to get a stamp put into your passport that states the number of days allowed for your stay.

Aside from the visa, you should also look for traveling accommodations. Lots of hotels and restaurants can be found all over Peru. Before traveling, it is best to book in advance so that when you arrive, you will not have to look around for a good place to stay. If you want to save there are plenty of inexpensive hotels and restaurants available in Peru.

And lastly, since you are a tourist in the place, you have to know the address of your country’s embassy or consulate in case something happens. If you are planning to stay in Peru for a long amount of time, it will be best if you register with your country’s embassy.

Peru travel can indeed become a worthwhile experience. Just make sure that you keep these important things in mind before traveling in order to have a more hassle-free stay.

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