Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sobre Mario Palacios - CONACAMI
Sobre Mario Palacios - CONACAMI
Deborah Poole is
Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Her
recent publications
include A Blackwell
Companion to
Latin American
Anthropology
(Blackwell, 2008).
30
courtesy of conacami
By Deborah Poole
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010
Peruvian Andes that have suffered from the chaotic and disorderly expansion of mining in recent
years. In Peru, mining is a crucial activity for the government in that it represents 64% of the countrys exports.
However, although the state celebrates mining as an activity
that is crucial for maintaining exports, it never talks about
the negative effects that mining has on our lives. Mining
generates not only environmental contamination but also
greater poverty; it affects social relations within communities; and it leads, in many cases, to the actual disintegration of communities. It also jeopardizes resources that are
necessary for the development of communities, like water
and land, by degrading or contaminating them. Faced with
this, CONACAMI is responding as an organization to defend our territories and the natural resources of Peru.
CONACAMI is basically an organization of communities that works in 16 of the countrys 24 departments.
There are around 6,000 communities in Peru, of which
3,200 suffer the negative effects of mining. CONACAMI
has almost 2,000 Andean community affiliates. Beyond
that, however our work also draws on the diversity of
Perus social movement. For example, we are constructing a strong alliance, a process of unity with indigenous
organizations from the Peruvian Amazon. In this sense,
CONACAMI and the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) are organizations that have led the struggle in both the Andes and the
Amazon. We greatly respect the work of AIDESEP, an organization that has been carrying on very effective work in
the Amazon since the early 1980s. In the Peruvian Andes,
however, indigenous political organizing is more recent.
Perus neoliberal political process bases its economy
on extractive industries. This political process brings not
only the free market, but also free access to natural resources, free investment, and above all the looting of our
resources. So our ancestral communities, many of which
have territorial titles that date back 300 or 400 years to
the colonial period, are today suffering from the expropriation, dispossession, and dissolution of their territories,
not only because of the actions of the mining companies,
but also because of the state itself and the governmental
policies that are being applied in Peru. This is a politics
of expropriation that dissolves or liquidates communities.
And within this politics of extermination of communities,
the rights of ancestral, originary, or indigenous peoples
are not recognized.
In these last years, however, as a result of pressure,
struggle, and resistance from both Andean and Amazonian communities, the Peruvian state has recognized the
existence of the International Labor Organization Con-
vention 169 (ILO 169). Although Peru signed this international convention 15 years ago, the state has continued
to deny us our rights, as indigenous peoples, in every
conceivable way. But the indigenous struggle has finally
forced the state to recognize that this convention does
have normative value as a binding international convention. It was the indigenous uprisings of 2008 and 2009
that forced the state to recognize these rights.
Today in Peru we are debating a legislative proposal
that would implement our right to prior consultation,
as provided for in the text of ILO 169.1 They are also
debating a Law of Indigenous Peoples. I think these are
important elements to achieve the recognition of indigenous rights in Peru, because these are rights that have
been dismissed or denied ever since our lands were first
invaded and colonized. But the proposal put forward by
CONACAMI and the indigenous movements goes well
beyond this question of rights and the defense of our own
territories and natural resources. We are fighting because
humanity itself is lost in a way of life that is marked by
forms of accumulation and by the destruction and contamination of Mother Earth. These tendencies have increased in recent years because neoliberal capitalism is
putting humanitys very survival at risk. In Peru, for example, we are experiencing in a particularly dramatic way
the effects of global climate change.
For us, it is not just climate change, but rather a climatic
crisis that manifests itself in the frosts, hailstorms, torrential
rains, droughts, floods, and landslides that we are enduring in the Andean region. These climatic changes, which
reduce agricultural production and introduce new diseases
that we never before knew, are directly affecting our way of
life. Humanity must think carefully if we are to avoid in the
next decades a crisis that could lead to our own extinction.
The indigenous movement has taken up this challenge to
construct, during the past 20 years, a political proposal
that is also a proposal for life, a project of lifeel buen vivir.
This project, which translates in Quechua as allin kawsay or
in Aymara as sumah qamana, is composed of various parts:
It encompasses a new vision, a new way of seeing, that is
1. O
n May 19, the Peruvian legislature passed the Law of Prior
Consultation to implement rights guaranteed in ILO 169. President Garca refused to sign the bill, arguing that indigenous
communities are not juridically recognized subjects and that
the law would give indigenous peoples veto power over the
nations development initiatives. The governments actions,
which were supported by Perus Constitutional Commission
on July 15, have met with vigorous opposition from indigenous
organizations, including CONACAMI, as well as from the
Peruvian Ombudsmen (Defensora del Pueblo).
31
n June 19, a barge belonging to the Argentine transnational Pluspetrol spilled 400 barrels of oil into the
MaranRiver in Perus northeastern Loreto department.
The day after the spill, the Peruvian governments Bioactive
Substances Laboratory tested the river waterwhich the
Cocama and Achuar peoples depend upon for both water and
fishand found very high levels of oil. It was practically all
petroleum, said chemical engineer Vctor Sotero, of the governments Peruvian Amazon Research Institute.1
Even though the extensive contamination had been
reportedto the central government, Minister of Energy and
Mines Pedro Snchez seemed to suggest that the many lives
and the complex environmental systems it had destroyed
were not important, when he declared on national television
that the Maraon spill involved a very small amount of oil.
When compared with what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, he concluded, it should not be a cause for alarm.2
The Maraon spill was certainly much smaller in absolute terms than the estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of
crude oil that British Petroleum dumped each day into the
Gulf of Mexico for almost three months. 3 But scale is not
an issue in environmental disasters that destroy complex
ecological and riverine systems, and deprive the humans
who depend on those environments for food, water, and a
future for their communities. Snchezs comparison does,
however, speak clearly of the Peruvian governments attitude that environmental disasters are acceptable collat-
32
eral damage for the millions of dollars that mining generates for Perus elite.
Indeed, the Maraon spill was just the latest example in a
long series of environmental disasters that have accompanied
Perus boom in mining, logging, and oil. Less than one week
after the Maraon spill, the Caudalosa Chica companys zinc
and lead mine in the southern region of Huancavelica dumped
more than 550 tons of tailings containing cyanide, arsenic,
and lead into rivers that provide the sole source of drinking
and irrigation water for more than 40,000 Peruvians. 4 Again,
the government of President Alan Garca responded with a
series of denials, dismissals, and disclaimers.
One of the biggest challenges facing indigenous peoples
in Peru, and throughout the Americas, is the unregulated
expansion of these industries and the resulting contamination of land and water. The Garca government has granted
oil, lumber, and mining companies territorial concessions and
leases to almost 75% of the Peruvian Amazon. Of these, the
vast majority (58 out of 64 leases) are located in indigenous
territories. Garcas government has also refused to implement rights of prior consultationor any of the many other
rights accorded to indigenous peoples in International Labor
Organization Convention 169, which Peru ratified in 1993 and
signed into law in 1994.
Because natural-resource extraction directly affects both
nature itself and those forms of community and social life that
seek harmony with the earth, it has served as a catalyst for the
cred cred
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010
33
notes
40
of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2007; reprint, London:
Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
7. Tamara Pearson, The Insidious Bureaucracy in Venezuela: Biggest Barrier to
Social Change, Venezuelanalysis.com, May 17, 2010.
8. Mark Weisbrot, Venezuelas Recovery Depends on Economic Policy. See also
Weisbrot, Venezuela Is Not Greece, The Guardian (London), May 6, 2010.
9. S ee Federico Fuentes, Venezuelas Economic Woes? ZNet, May 23, 2010.
10. Weisbrot, Venezuelas Recovery Depends on Economic Policy. I have substituted the figure of 3.7% for Weisbrots 3%, since the former is the figure given
in Simon Romero and Andrs Schipani, Neighbors Challenge Energy Aims in
Bolivia, The New York Times, January 10, 2010.
11. On inequality see the report by the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America (briefing paper, 2009), 1112. Quotes from The Economist, Power Grab: Another Bolivian
Nationalisation, May 8, 2010, and Juan Forero, Chile Race Reflects Broad
Regional Trend: Growing Preference for Free-Market Centrists Seen in Latin
America, The Washington Post, January 17, 2010. On the implicitly (or explicitly) negative meaning of nationalization and Chvezs name in the U.S. media,
see particularly the articles in the November/December 2006 issue of Extra!.
12. The Washington Post,Bolivias Rift: President Evo Moraless Attempt to Impose Venezuelan-Style Socialism Is Literally Splitting the Country (editorial),
May 6, 2008.
13. Romero and Schipani, Neighbors Challenge Energy Aims in Bolivia; cf.
Romero and Schipani, In Bolivia, a Force for Change Endures, The New York
Times, December 6, 2009.
14. The Economist, The Explosive Apex of Evos Power: Bolivias Presidential
Election, December 12, 2009.
15. Juan Forero, Despite Billions in U.S. Aid, Colombia Struggles to Reduce Poverty, The Washington Post, April 19, 2010; ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin
America, 1112.
16. Forero, Chile Race Reflects Broad Regional Trend.
17. Alexei Barrionuevo, Chilean Vote Is another Sign of Latin Americas Fading
Political Polarization, The New York Times, January 20, 2010.
18. Jackson Diehl, Buying Support in Latin America, op-ed, The Washington
Post, September 26, 2005.
19. Prez-Stable, Chvez Snubs Colombia.
20. Corporacin Latinobarmetro, Informe 2008 (Santiago, Chile), 38; Informe
2009, 9596. For additional analysis, see Kevin Young, US Policy and Democracy in Latin America: The Latinobarmetro Poll, ZNet, May 26, 2009, and
The 2009 Latinobarmetro Poll (blog), ZNet, December 15, 2009.
21. See Young, US Policy and Democracy in Latin America, n. 1.
22. Charles Eisendrath, The Bloody End of a Marxist Dream, Time, September
24, 1973, quoted in Devon Bancroft, The Chilean Coup and the Failings of the
U.S. Media (unpublished manuscript).
23. Joanne Omang, The Revolution Comes First: The Sandinistas Are AllowingNicaraguas Economyto Collapse, The Washington Post, October 6, 1985.
24. Flora Lewis, One Step Forward, The New York Times, February 5, 1988.
25. Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, 4th ed.
(Westview Press, 2003 [1981]), 95, 129; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S.
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage Press,
1995), 302.
26. Hunger, desperation and overthrow of government: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory to Assistant Secretary
of State for Inter-American Affairs Roy Rubottom, April 6, 1960, in Foreign
Relations of the United States, 19581960, vol. VI: Cuba (Washington: US
Government Printing Office, 1991), 885. Making the economy scream: Handwritten notes of CIA director Richard Helms, Notes on Meeting With the
President on Chile, September 15, 1970, in Chile and the United States:Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 19701976, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book no. 8.