Tag Archives: Peru

by | May 7, 2013 · 9:00 am

Peru deputy minister resigns as Humala rolls back indigenous law

May 4 2013. Source: Reuters

A key Peruvian official tasked with implementing a law to give indigenous groups more rights has resigned to protest efforts by President Ollanta Humala’s cabinet to roll back the law to protect mining investments.

Deputy Culture Minister Ivan Lanegra, who confirmed his resignation on Saturday on Twitter, was upset the government decided to exclude Quechua-speaking communities in the mineral-rich Andes from being covered by Peru’s “prior consultation law,” a number of sources told Reuters.

That law gives indigenous communities the right to shape natural resource developments that affect them, but does not allow them to veto projects.

Still, mining companies in one of the world’s top minerals exporters were worried the law would slow new projects by making community approvals more difficult. Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining, Political Repression

Tagged as , ,

by | April 26, 2013 · 1:00 pm

Federation of small farmers in Peru attacks REDD: “No REDD projects! No carbon trading!”

By Chris Lang, April 26, 2013. Source: redd-monitor

2013-04-26-113053_897x760_scrotOn 19 April 2013, the Federation of small farmers of Madre de Dios in Peru (Federación Agraria Departmental de Madre de Dios – FADEMAD) produced a statement titled “The threats over us continue”. The statement raises serious concerns about REDD and related initiatives that are developing in the region.

The lowland Amazon forests of Madre de Dios in south-east Peru are amongst the most biodiverse in the world. But REDD schemes to preserve the forests of Madre de Dios and Peru are coming under increasing criticism. In February 2013, AIDESEP (Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon) wrote to the Forest Investment Programme warning that REDD in Peru “will lead to an increase in emissions from deforestation”.

Also in February 2013, the Federation for Native Communities of Madre de Dios (FENAMAD)released a statement demanding greater accountability in forest and climate projects in Peru, including the Forest Investment Programme.

A draft copy of the Forest Investment Programme (FIP) Plan for Peru, dated 15 March 2013, is available here in Spanish (pdf file, 2.5 MB). The FIP in Peru is funded by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. The draft of the FIP Plan focusses on the Peruvian Amazon and aims to address the causes of deforestation, improving forest governance and involving civil society and the private sector. The draft describes REDD as “a very promising tool to support the efforts of the country in this process of change, fundamental to face deforestation and forest degradation”.
Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Forests and Climate Change, Greenwashing, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD

Tagged as , , , ,

by | April 12, 2013 · 4:30 pm

Peru antimining protestors set fire to Yanacocha, Minas Conga mining project

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project really didn’t want to run something by Fox Business news, but this story is too important.  It seems as though the mining industry in Peru is beginning to show signs of weakness against massive, organized public opposition.

-The GJEP Team

By Ryan Dube, April 11, 2013. Source: Fox Business

Antimining protesters vandalized parts of property owned by gold mining company Minera Yanacocha in northern Peru, the company said Thursday, highlighting the challenges the firm continues to face in developing its $5.0 billion Minas Conga copper and gold project.

Yanacocha said about 400 protesters on Wednesday entered part of its property near the El Perol lake in Peru’s Cajamarca region. The company said the protesters burned a container and pipes. It said it evacuated its personnel and removed its machinery for security reasons.

A spokesman from Yanacocha in Cajamarca said the property is part of the concession of Minas Conga. Organizers of the protest were reported as saying by local media that the demonstration was against the development of Minas Conga. Efforts to contact the organizers were not immediately successful.

About 150 protesters continued to occupy the property late Wednesday. A spokesman for Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM), which has a majority stake in Yanacocha, told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday that all of the protesters have now left the property.
Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Actions / Protest, Corporate Globalization, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining

Tagged as , , , ,

by | April 9, 2013 · 10:30 am

Peru: Disappearing glacier sounds climate alarm

Note: Soon enough, there won’t be anyone – or thing – left to say “I told you so.”

-The GJEP Team

April 6, 2013. Source: World War 4 Report

A new study published in Science finds that a critical glacier in the Peruvian Andes has shrunk to its smallest extent nearly since the end of the last Ice Age. Ohio State University glaciologist Lonnie G. Thompson is studying plants that have been recently exposed near Quelccaya Ice Cap, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet, located 18,000 feet above sea level (straddling the border of Cuzco and Puno regions). Chemical analysis of plants exposed by melting several years ago showed them to be about 4,700 years old, proving that the ice cap had reached its smallest extent in nearly five millennia. In the new findings, a thousand feet of additional melting has exposed plants that lab analysis shows to be about 6,300 years old. Thompson said this indicates that ice that had accumulated over approximately 1,600 years melted back in no more than 25 years.

Researchers consider the ice cap to be a ”Rosetta Stone” of climate change over the past millennia, boasting clues to anomalous weather in 1789 that might have caused food shortages that helped spark the French Revolution. Thompson’s team has “archived” samples of the ice in refrigerated storage, lest the glacier disappear entirely. But the dramatic shrinkage of the glaciers has grim implications for the people of the Andean nations. The coastal zone west of the Andes, home to two-thirds of Peru’s population and 80% of economic activity, receives just 2% of the country’s fresh water. Lima is considering a $500 million project to drill a tunnel through the Andes to bring in water from the Amazon basin to the arid coastal zones. “How much time do we have before 50 percent of Lima’s or La Paz’s water resources are gone?” researcher Douglas R. Hardy asked the New York Times. (Countercurrents, April 6; The Week, UPI, Daily Mail, April 5; NYT, April 4; Quelccaya Ice Capblog, CRONUS-Earth Project)

Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Latin America-Caribbean, Water

Tagged as , , , ,

by | April 3, 2013 · 12:00 pm

The bones tell the story: The search for Peru’s missing

By Jo-Marie Burt, March 30 2013. Source: Al Jazeera

The Cabitos military trial in Ayacucho is investigating war crimes from the country's troubled past and looking into the disappearance of what is estimated to be approximately 15,000 people. Photo: Jo-Marie Burt/Al Jazeera

The Cabitos military trial in Ayacucho is investigating war crimes from the country’s troubled past and looking into the disappearance of what is estimated to be approximately 15,000 people. Photo: Jo-Marie Burt/Al Jazeera

In Peru last week, forensic anthropologists revealed that for the first time, they had confirmed the identities of three individuals who had been disappeared by government forces during that country’s internal armed conflict. During the 1980s, hundreds of people were detained, brought to the Los Cabitos military base, brutally tortured, and were never seen or heard from again.

In 2009, forensic anthropologists searching for the disappeared in Los Cabitos had unearthed the remains of more than 100 people. Virtually all the remains show signs of torture and execution-style deaths. Until now, none of those bodies had been identified.

Using DNA matching between the recovered remains and samples from living relatives of the victims, thePeruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) was able to determine that two of the bodies belonged to individuals who were reported by relatives to have gone missing in the Los Cabitos military base in 1984, and the third in 1985. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Political Repression

Tagged as , , , ,

by | March 28, 2013 · 1:30 pm

Latin America, China, and resource extraction

China’s exploitation of Latin American natural resources raises concern

By Jonathan Watts, March 26 2013. Source: The Guardian

A view of the Toromocho copper project of the Chinese company Chinalco in Morococha, central Peru. Photo: Leslie Josephs/Associated Press

A view of the Toromocho copper project of the Chinese company Chinalco in Morococha, central Peru. Photo: Leslie Josephs/Associated Press

Amazonian forest cleared in Ecuador, a mountain levelled in Peru, the Cerrado savannah converted to soy fields in Brazil and oil fields under development in Venezuela’s Orinoco belt.

These recent reports of environmental degradation in Latin America may be thousands of miles apart in different countries and for different products, but they have a common cause: growing Chinese demand for regional commodities.

Continue reading here

Ecuador auctions off Amazon to Chinese oil firms

By Jonathan Kaiman, March 26 2013. Source: The Guardian

Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China‘s insatiable thirst for energy.

On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups.

Continue reading here

Peru declares environmental emergency in its rainforest

By Dan Collyns, March 26 2013. Source: The Guardian

Peru has declared an environmental state of emergency in a remote part of its northern Amazon rainforest, home for decades to one of the country’s biggest oil fields, currently operated by the Argentinian company Pluspetrol.

Achuar and Kichwa indigenous people living in the Pastaza river basin near Peru’s border with Ecuador have complained for decades about thepollution, while successive governments have failed to deal with it. Officials indicate that for years the state lacked the required environmental quality standards.

Continue reading here

Leave a Comment

Filed under Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Forests, Forests and Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining, Oil

Tagged as , , ,

by | March 26, 2013 · 12:00 pm

Peru: New anti-mining struggle in Cajamarca

By Bill Weinberg, March 24, 2013. Source: World War 4 Report
Photo: Peru21/Reference

Photo: Peru21/Reference

National Police troops attacked hundreds of campesinos in the Valle de Condebamba of Peru’s northern Cajamarca region in a March 11 protest against the mineral operations of Canadian-owned Sulliden Gold Corporation. Cajamarca’s regional government issued a statement saying the march was peaceful and had been attacked arbitrarily, leaving eight campesinos injured, including a pregnant woman. The protest, in Cachachi district, was organized by the rondas(self-defense patrols) of Cajabamba province.

Regional president Gregorio Santos Guerrero accused the central government and especially Interior Ministry of using the National Police to punish communities that reject mineral operations on their lands. “Every project that attacks the life and the health of the people, attacks the natural resources, is unviable,” Santos said.

A paro (civil strike) against the mineral project is now underway in the Valle de Condebamba, with two key bridges blocked. Sulliden Gold Corporation recently acquired new lands adjacent to its current mine at Shahuindo by buying out the neighboring concession of Peruvian-owned Vikingo. It is now seeking approval to expand operations at the site, which straddles the border of Cajabamba and Cajamarca provinces. (See map.) (Andina, March 13;Cajamarca Regional Government press release via Celendín Libre, March 11)

This marks a second stand-off over mineral development in Cajamarca region, following the long struggle over Newmont Mining’s Conga project.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actions / Protest, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining

Tagged as , , , ,

by | February 15, 2013 · 9:00 am

Struggle for land and water in the Andes

By Bill Weinberg.  Source: WW4 Report

P1010127

March 22, 2012 World Water Day march at the Conga site. Photo: Bill Weinberg

In what has become an emblematic struggle against government plans to open peasant lands to mineral interests throughout the sierras of Peru, local campesinos continue to hold strikes and protests in the northern region of Cajamarca—in defiance of a state of emergency and a heavy presence of army and National Police troops.

The months-long campaign to halt the mega-scale Conga gold mine high in Cajamarca’s alpine zone—which Colorado-based Newmont Mining hopes to develop with Peruvian partners and investment from the World Bank—cost five lives last July 3 and 4, when government troops opened fire on protesters in the rural towns of Celendín and Bambamarca. The youngest of the fallen was only 17 years old.

At issue are four highland lakes that would be destroyed at the site where Newmont hopes to develop the giant pit mine. The company proposed to replace the lakes with new artificial reservoirs, and says this will not affect the underlying watersheds. But in an aridifying region, the local campesinos pledged they would not allow the lakes to be destroyed. When President Ollanta Humala was on the campaign trail last year, he promised to put an end to the project; upon taking office in July 2011, he promptly reversed his position and started backing it.
Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Cochabamba, Commons, Corporate Globalization, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining, Political Repression, Water

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 11, 2013 · 9:00 am

Gas company targets protected Manú park in Peruvian Amazon

By David Hill, February 11 2013. Source: The Guardian

Pluspetrol's Pagoreni-B gas well, part of the Camisea project in the Amazon jungle near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP

Pluspetrol’s Pagoreni-B gas well, part of the Camisea project in the Amazon jungle near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP

An energy company is eyeing up the gas reserves of a national park in the Peruvian Amazon whose biodiversity Unesco says “exceeds that of any other place on Earth” and is home to indigenous people who have no regular contact with the outside world, leaked documents seen by the Guardian show.

The revelation about Manú national park follows rumours and reports circulating in Peru that the government will create a gas concession bordering or including parts of the park, but which have not been publicly confirmed.

The document, Research Plan for Geological Exploration and Surface Geochemistry in the Manú National Park and its Buffer Zone, was written by Lima-based consultancy Quartz Services for company Pluspetrol, which operates an existing gas concession in the region, Lot 88, known as the Camisea project.

“It’s shocking. This is the first time we’ve seen evidence for plans to expand hydrocarbon activities into Manú,” said anthropologist Daniel Rodriguez, who has worked with Peruvian indigenous federation Fenamad for years. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Biodiversity, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Forests, Forests and Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Latin America-Caribbean, Oil, Water

Tagged as , , ,

by | January 30, 2013 · 3:00 pm

Brazilian landless leader assassinated, new mobilization against Peruvian mining project

January 26 2013. Source: WW4 Report

Brazil: Landless leader assassinated

MST_logo_RGB_300dpiSugar-cane cutter Cícero Guedes dos Santos, a leader of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro state, was shot dead by unknown gunmen Jan. 26 as he was riding his bicycle home from work. The attack came near an abandoned sugar plant which MST members have occupied amid a legal battle between the landless and the heirs of its deceased owner. A judge ruled last year that the plant and its lands of some 3,500 hectares were “unproductive” and should be expropriated. The heirs are appealing the decision. The MST, who had occupied the land for six years before being evicted by police in 2006, launched a second occupation in November.

The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) says threats on the lives of land activists in Brazil have jumped from 125 to 347 between 2010 and 2011, although the actual number of killings related to land conflicts fell slightly in this period. (BBC News, Exame, Brazil, Jan. 26)

Peru: new mobilization against Conga project

Jan. 12 saw a new mobilization in the northern Peruvian city of Cajamarca against the pending Conga mining project, with some 1,000 local campesinos and their supporters filling the Plaza de Armas with music, banners and slogans. Participants accused the Yanacocha mining company of “intending to privatize” the region’s water resources, and of being complicit in the “criminalization of protest.” Residents of the community of Baños del Inca proclaimed their readiness to occupy La Shacsa, a nearby mountain within Yanacocha’s active concession area, if the Conga project moves ahead. The march was convened by Wilfredo Saavedra, leader of the Cajamarca Environmental Defense Front. (Servindi, Jan. 15)

In neighboring Lambayeque region on Jan. 25, hundreds of comuneros (communal peasants) from the villages of Incahuasi and Cañaris clashed with police when they attempted to march on the local conession area of Candente Copper to protest mining operations they say are moving ahead without the communities’ approval. Segundo Narva, president of the Cañaris Natural Resources Defense Front, said National Police troops fired tear gas on the marchers as they peacefully approached the concession area.Two protesters were seriously wounded by blows to the head. (Perú21, Jan. 25)

The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog on Jan. 23 made note of further evidence of a growing climate crisis in the Andes, citing a new paper published in The Cyrosphere journal (PDF), which found that glaciers throughout the tropical Andes have been melting in the last 30 years at a faster rate than at any time since the peak of the “Little Ice Age” 300 years ago.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actions / Protest, Food Sovereignty, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining, Political Repression

Tagged as , , , ,