By Stefana Petrova
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1112&catID=9
Thursday June 11th 2009
In Peru, dozens of people have died following clashes between security forces and indigenous tribes protesting against oil and mining projects in the Amazon jungle. Since April, 64 tribal groups have halted development projects by blocking roads, waterways and oil pipelines across the Amazon, and the government has ordered the arrest of indigenous leader Alberto Pizango on a charge of sedition. Antonio Iviche Quique, a longtime indigenous rights leader and president of the Native Federation of Madre De Dios, describes why his people are fighting global corporations and the government of Peru to protect their land
Thursday June 11th 2009
Lead article photo
Native Peruvians protestors receive information in Bagua province, before being transported back to their villages. Photograph: Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters
My name is Antonio Iviche Quique and I’m 39 years old. I come from the Harakmbut people; my mother’s tongue is Harakmbut, I speak it, and my children also speak Harakmbut and a bit of the Ese’eja language, which is also native to these lands.
When I was a boy in the early seventies, our rivers were crystal clear. We went fishing a lot, the catch was good, and there was no scarcity in those times. We weren’t suffering.
The change that has come to our lands and what I have witnessed in my lifetime is devastating. The invasion that begun with the arrival of the colonizers to our native territories continues today by the modern national laws of Peru. The government has tailored a new legislation to accommodate free trade agreements with the US and Europe – and to allow even easier access to mining and drilling for oil on our lands. You know the result: the erosion of our forests and the loss of animal life. Our lands are now up for sale.
The transition into this industrialised society has been hard and it was even harder for my parents. I am the first generation of my people that has learned to speak Spanish and to be involved with the outside world. Before I was born, my parents lived in the jungle like other groups, with no contact with the outside. Their people were discovered by a Dominican mission and they were practically enslaved by the Dominican priests. My parents worked in the missions for many years, and in return they received rice, sugar, and whatever they needed for mere survival. But when I was three months old, my parents escaped and settled down in the community of San José de Karene, here in the Madre de Dios region where I continue to live.
I remember the great change I had to go through when I was taken away from my family and everything familiar and sent to school in one of the missions, so I could receive an education. I was introduced to the Catholic education system before I knew what education and studies meant.
I began contributing to the Native Federation of Madre De Dios when I was an adolescent, working to reclaim our people's rights and our lands and to protect them. Foreign companies have consistently been attempting to enter our lands, and our way of life is not understood, let alone respected. Our vision has always been – and still is – quite different from that of the gringos, the “blue-eyed."
There are white men who feel like us, those who care about the environment and human rights. But the majority of them only care about the so-called progress and about economic gain.
Ours is a vision that represents the forest. We respect the Mother of the forest, the Mother of the rivers, the Mother through whose wisdom we receive knowledge about healing. Our medicine comes from the forests. In other words, the forests contain knowledge about our wellbeing. Through that knowledge, our people have survived for thousands of years. This might be difficult to see with mercantile eyes, but for us the land is the fountain of life and survival.
The strikes and the social chaos that have erupted all over the Peruvian Amazon are in response to the government’s initiative to pass a new set of laws that would allow the opening up of our lands without consultation or warning, or making these decisions public.
When we analysed these laws we realised that our national forest heritage was going to disappear, that it would be categorised differently. The authorities declared that it was in the national interest to bring big investments and industrial companies to the Amazon.
According to these set of laws, all lands that are on the banks of rivers – many of our lands – would become property of the state and used for agriculture. The government believes we have too much land to ourselves, much more, they say, than what we need for survival. Even our waterways would be made available to foreign companies, according to the new laws.
But during the many weeks of uprisings, we have gained more confidence and shown that we will not give up defending our lands. Thousands of us have come out and are seizing roads, bridges, and highways, paralysing access of companies to indigenous lands, in an attempt to be heard by the government.
Although we are peaceful, the government has announced a state of emergency and proclaimed that we are in disobedience, so we can be incarcerated for protesting.
What the Peruvian indigenous people are saying now is loud and clear. I heard it myself when I was visiting different pueblos, and speaking to my indigenous brothers and sisters. They say, do not look down on us anymore. Don’t feel sorry for us.
We are now determined to reclaim our rights. And what if we have to give our lives? They have already been killing us with deforestation and contamination. We have already been dying from fishing and sustaining ourselves from rivers poisoned with cadmium. We are not afraid to sacrifice our lives. We will die to defend our lands. We want no more suffering, simply to live in peace.
If our voices were heard and our dreams came true, the safety and the wholeness of our lands and communities would be guaranteed, once and for all. Our indigenous pueblos would be granted the right to exist and no government would ever try to change that.
But this will only happen if the world takes notice and understands that the Amazon lands, the gardens of existence, are under occupation. The Amazon is an occupied land.
We feel responsibility for having permitted our forests to be contaminated and our lands to be invaded. We also feel that it is our duty to pass these lands to our children the way they were passed down to us from our grandparents and ancestors. We want our children and grandchildren to be able to sustain themselves through the forests like we have for thousands of years.
• Antonio Iviche Quique was speaking to writer and journalist Stefana Serafina
.JPG)
