14.
Indigenous Andoas Uprising

Defending Territorial Integrity and Autonomy in Peru

ana isla

This chapter addresses the social and ecological catastrophes caused by fossil fuels extraction activities by examining a 2009 court case that was part of the aftermath of a 2008 uprising in Andoas town of three Indigenous groups living adjacent to three river basins: (a) the Achuar in Corrientes River; (b) the Quichua in Pastaza River; (c) the Urarina in Tigre River. Andoas is located in Loreto, Datem del Marañon province, Peru. This chapter continues the analysis presented in an earlier article in Capitalism Nature Socialism (Isla “Eco-Class-Race”) that examined land privatization and regional Indigenous responses to it. It focused on the defence of the commons by the Awajun-Wampis Indigenous people in Bagua Province, Peru, and the bloody attack of President Alan Garcia’s administration against Indigenous commoners. The 2009 article established a context of regional civil disobedience within which Indigenous populations from the rainforest rose up against oil production by Pluspetrol Norte s.a. (Pluspetrol) operations as they began to experience life-threatening conditions in their ecosystem and subsistence economies. This confrontation marks a significant moment in the battle for livelihood and the dispute over the Commons.

In this chapter, I argue that Indigenous labour, resources, and territories in the rainforest are the new sources of accumulation within the global state and “green” capitalism re-launched in the face of ecological crisis. I look at the role of the neoliberal extractivist Peruvian state, working under the banner of sustainable development, as a political instrument associated with violence. In particular, this instrument has involved the process of dispossessing Indigenous peoples from Corrientes, Pastaza, Tigre, and Maranon rivers of their homes and their hunting grounds, and destroying the livelihoods of the communities living near petroleum concessions known as Blocks 1AB and 8, as their territory and economy go unrecognized or invisibilized. I use the concept of territory (water, forest, traditions, cosmovision, etc.) as a place of dispute, which is linked to use value or livelihood provisions for Indigenous communities and to exchange value or profit for oil corporations. I argue that Indigenous people’s existential requirements for subsistence and needs for reproducing their provisions has been the source of their empowerment and of their resistance. I also look at the ecological crisis introduced by oil production on the Indigenous peoples’ territories, first by Occidental Petroleum Corporation, and later by Pluspetrol Norte s.a. Based on these interactions, I use the concept of ecocidal (in)action of the Peruvian state to include the violation of human and Earth rights of the land of marginal populations.

Through a detailed review of these gridlock situations, first I present ecofeminist critiques of capitalism. Critics have underlined “enclosure” (Federici) and “housewifization” (Mies) as part of the working of patriarchal capitalism, which is a system that maintains relationships of domination and subordination in general and men’s domination of women in particular. I then apply these insights to analyze the Indigenous Amazonian human condition before oil production and the role of the neoliberal extractivist Peruvian state. Here I highlight the preparation of Peru as a member of the global state, after the Earth Summit in1992, and the use of the law as an instrument of dispossession. I document a war against subsistence, understood as a livable economy, by examining: (1)how oil fields have gone hand in hand with encroachment on Indigenous people’s land, water, and health; (2) how subsistence confiscation resulted in the incorporation of Indigenous people into discriminatory and poorly paid jobs; (3) how a protest against poor wages placed Indigenous people into the Judicial Court in Loreto in 2009; and (4) how the Court Verdict recognized Indigenous people’s collective rights in opposition to state criminalization. I conclude with an ecofeminist view of the court case, and provide grounds to characterize the ecocidal (in) action of the Peruvian state.

ecofeminist critics to capitalism and sustainable development

I have chosen the ecofeminist subsistence perspective because this perspective argues that it has been possible to sustain the illusion that economic growth is a positive and benign process because the costs have been borne primarily by what has been devalued: the bodies of women, peasants, Indigenous people, the so-called underdeveloped world, and nature.

Silvia Federici, in Caliban and the Witch, argues that capitalism produced a new sexual division of labour, in which women’s position in society as providers was redefined in relation to men, to become wives, daughters, mothers, and widows, all of which “hid their status of workers, while giving men free access to women’s bodies, their labour, and the bodies and labour of their children” (79). With the advent of capitalism, women’s reproductive labour was placed at the service of an international system of accumulation, women’s wombs became public property, and they were forced to function as an instrument for the reproduction of labour and the expansion of the workforce, the common territory of men and the state. In this sexual division of labour, women and those bodies that are feminized were forced into a state of reproductive labour—used as a resource, devalued, dependent, and deviant.

Maria Mies, in Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, argues that when women, peasants, and Indigenous people are described as “closer to nature,” they are made exploitable—their bodies and labour power are free for the taking. Mies uses the term “housewifization” to capture the process whereby hitherto productive (life sustaining) work is captured, confined, devalued, and put to use in support of “real” (monetized) production, in effect as a free subsidy. The division of labour into reproductive (subsistence, supplemental, housewife) labour and productive (income-earning, breadwinning) labour is necessary for capitalism to function (102). Mies presents a detailed case for understanding this division as existing on a world scale via colonialism, in much the same way that it exists in families and households. The labour and bodies of racialized peasants and Indigenous people in the Global South are appropriated and objectified by white industrialists by means of violence and forced dependency.

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, in Ecofeminism argue that the “good life” and freedom are possible when people and nature are not separated, since it is the inhabitants’ subsistence know-how that helps to conserve the conditions of life by valuing sufficiency and autonomy while recognizing the necessity of life being in harmony with the natural world: “It is this kind of materialism, this kind of immanence rooted in the everyday subsistence production of most of the world’s women (and Indigenous people) which is the basis of our ecofeminist position” (19).

the indigenous amazonian human condition and the role of sustainable development

Before 1971, the authority of the Peruvian State in the rainforest was minimal, and for the Indigenous people and bosquecinos almost inexistent. Jorge Gasche and Napoleon Vela, researchers from Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana (iiap), produced a concept of sociedad bosquecina (bush people) for those living in the Amazon rainforest where society and nature are still considered one sociological unit. They argue that labour for bosquecinos (women and men) is a multitask activity that relied upon learning several techniques of fishing, hunting, gathering and transformation according to the seasonal rhythm of the climate (i.e., winter versus summer), hydrology (e.g., widening waters in the rainy season versus narrowing in the dry season), and biology (e.g., seasons of fruition, fattened animals, fish spawning, and fish schools). This labour is characterized by enjoyment and community cooperation, as bosquecinos are free to organize their activities as they please: as an exercise of solidarity according to social rights and obligations; as activity founded on reciprocity with family members, friends, and other community members; and that was grounded in the appreciation of a respected community authority who was believed to be able to influence the forces of nature through “visions,” “conversations,” and “healing.” In this chapter, I use the terms Indigenous people and bosquecinos interchangeably as both of them live in the forest and from the forest.

The rainforest sociological unit of society and nature, described by Gasche and Vela, started to change in 1971,when fossil fuel extractive corporations backed by the military government of Juan Velazco Alvarado (1968-1976) granted permission for oil exploration on large tracks of Indigenous territories. However these changes accelerated under the extractivist model when states were given responsibility for sustainable development, understood as economic growth, by the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992 (Isla, The “Greening”).

Guided by globalized institutions, such as the World Bank, Alberto Fujimori’s administration (1990-2001) came up with a number of laws and policies to enclose and privatize Indigenous land that violated the Peruvian Constitution. Fujimori’s Constitution of 1993 eliminated the inalienable character of Indigenous communal land; removed the imprescriptibly character of perpetual right; and seized the land, arguing abandonment. At the same time, Indigenous women became victims of Fujimori’s Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program (Lizarzaburu). As part of the global states, the agenda of “democracy” centred on the voting process was incorporated into the Constitution. In 1993, Fujimori’s administration also ratified the ilo Convention 169. The Convention requires that Indigenous peoples be consulted about activities that may take place in their territories and either approve or reject them. In 1995, the Convention become law and obtained constitutional status; however, it was never incorporated into national legislation. Furthermore, criminalization of the poor by the Peruvian state is recorded in The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2003.

The Johannesburg Earth Summit of 2002 transferred responsibility for sustainable development to corporations and their shareholders. As a result, in Peru, Alejandro Toledo’s administration (2002-2006) ignored Convention 169 and furthered Indigenous land privatization to accommodate corporations, particularly Odebrecht (“Diez grandes proyectos”). By 2004, under The Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (iirsa), his administration created conditions for infrastructure investments to facilitate the transport of Brazil’s merchandise en route to the world market. Along the “imaginary” railway lines, Toledo imposed the system of forest concessions to change the use of the land for developing monoculture and cattle ranching in the rainforest. This decision has made bosquecinos’ logging activities illegal by requiring them to buy a permit, which they cannot afford. Thus, bosquecinos who do not have access to forest concessions or live far away from them have been criminalized (Alvarez).

Allan Garcia’s two separate terms of office advanced land privatization and the criminalization of protest. His first administration (1982-1986) executed 300 inmates accused of “terrorism” while his second (2006-2011) exacerbated conflicts on Indigenous land such as the one in 2008, in Andoas (the case examined in this chapter), and in 2009 in Bagua (Isla, “Eco-Class-Race” 22). In an attempt to justify Indigenous land privatization required by Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (ptpa), on October 28, 2007, President Garcia wrote an article titled “El Perro del Hortelano” [“The Syndrome of the Gardener’s Dog”]. Here he likened Indigenous people (and bosquecinos) to mad dogs who have resources they neither exploit nor allow anyone else to exploit. By 2008, Garcia nullified the consultation process in communal lands in order to sign oil and mining contracts. Further, he expanded the system of concessions and changed the use of land, from forest to agricultural projects to support the ethanol production of Dionisio Romero’s corporation. But, forced by international concern for Indigenous peoples’ rights, in May 2010, his administration approved the Law of Prior Consultation (lpc) of Convention 169.

Ollanta Humala’s administration (20011-2016) signed and approved the regulations for lpc in 2011. The Regulations were going to clarify how the consultation with Indigenous peoples should take place, to what extent the result bound the state, and who were considered Indigenous peoples. However, these concerns have never been implemented. Instead, the regulation only defines who were not Indigenous people (Ruiz). Furthermore, his administration created Law No. 30230, which modifies the expropriation law, sets tax measures, and simplifies procedures and permissions for the promotion and encouragement of capital investment. Title iii of this Law establishes the ownership of domain in favour of business interests, above the ancestral rights of Indigenous peoples (Tovar et al.). In addition, as Humala is a retired military officer, his government has produced new political instruments of repression, exclusion, and domination, such as Law 301511 that grants impunity to military and police personnel in cases of violation of human rights, and Law 10952 that authorizes the Armed Forces to intervene in conflicts without the declaration of a state of emergency.

Since 1990, the extractivist economic model of Sustainable Development, based on the exploitation of oil, minerals, and crops for biofuel production, has led to increased environmental conflicts in Peru. Table 1 shows the high percentage of active socio-environmental conflicts since 2009. The Ombudsman Office for the Prevention of Conflict and Governance argued that economic growth linked to resource extraction/exploitation that takes place near or within community common land has led to such conflicts. It indicated that the majority of the country’s conflicts were related to socio-environmental factors (Mendoza).

Table 1. Active Socio-environmental Conflicts in Peru

	Total conflicts	Active socio-environmental conflicts
2009	284 (November)	129 (46%)
2012	227 (December)	164 (72%)
2014	212 (November)	138 (65.1%)
2015	210 (June)	141 (67.1%)

Source: Defensoría del Pueblo (2009, 2012, 2014, 2016).3

Resistance comes from the Indigenous time-tested “art of the good life,” which is grounded in an understanding that humans depend on functioning ecosystems to sustain themselves, and that fragile ecosystems require large territories and healthy forests in order to reproduce and maintain healthy populations of millions of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and insects. Indigenous people know that a sick forest (fragmented and deforested) or a contaminated river, means hunger and misery for humans as well as for all animals and plants.

indigenous achuar uprising: the backstory to the dorissa act

In 1971, Peru’s state oil corporation, Petro-Peru, together with the Occidental Petroleum Corporation of the United States operating in Peru (Oxy), signed the exploration concession in Block 1AB, in Achuar territory. By 1972, Oxy had drilled Blocks 1AB and 8. By the end of the 1970s, the North-Peruvian Oil Pipeline connected the Achuar territory with the Bayovar Refinery on the Pacific coast. Between 1999 and 2001, Blocks 1AB and 8 were sold to Pluspetrol Corporation s.a. (Martinez et al.), then sold to Pluspetrol Norte s.a., owned in partnership with the Korea National Oil Corporation, Daewoo International Corporation, and sk Energy.

The petroleum concessions granted in Blocks 1AB and 8 and the subsequent activities exploiting them affected four Indigenous ethnic groups. Table 2 presents these ethnic groups (Achuar, Quichua, Urarina, and Cocama) and the contaminated river basins they have occupied for hundreds of years (Corrientes, Pastaza, Tigre, and Marañon Rivers). However in this chapter, Block 8, Indigenous Cocama from Rio Marañon, is only marginally included as the main actors in Andoas uprising were those in Block 1AB.

Table 2. Ethnic Groups and Rivers where Pluspetrol Norte S.A.

Blocks 1AB and 8 are located

Ethnic Group	Rivers	Population	Percentage
Block 1AB Achuar	Rio Corrientes	10,919	23.6
Quichua	Rio Pastaza	19,118	41.3
Urarina	Rio Tigre	4.854	10.5
Block 8 Cocama	Rio Maranon	11,307	24.4
Total		46,198	100

Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica (2009)

In 2003, the Achuar community in Rio Corrientes rose up against Pluspetrol after such heavy metals as lead and cadmium were found by the regional Ministry of Health in the drinking water, rivers, ecosystems and in the blood of the people. Contamination in Block 1AB was documented by Martinez et al. (5). Despite the fact that official documents had identified petroleum activities as the source of the contaminations, neither the governments nor the corporation took any action. As a result, in 2006 for two weeks, Indigenous Achuar stopped production of 40,000 barrels of oil per day. This uprising, led by Federación de Comunidades Nativas de Corrientes (feconaco) [Federation of Native Communities of Corrientes River], pressured the central government to reach an agreement—the so-called Dorissa Act4—between feconaco, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Health, the Regional Government of Loreto, Pluspetrol, and the Ombudsman. In the Dorissa Act, one of the points approved was to initiate a process of remediation (involving the cleaning up of the exposed pools where waste oil and extremely toxic drilling mud were deposited) and reforestation.5 This is the telling case examined in this chapter .

subsistence confiscation: indigenous people in poorly paid jobs

Background

To fulfill the process of soil remediation and reforestation in oil-contaminated areas, Pluspetrol contracted the services of Graña & Montero (g&m), a Peruvian corporation. By 2007, 24 Indigenous communities living around the contaminated rivers were incorporated into discriminatory and exploitative salary work in soil remediation. Here is how it happens: Every month g&m employed between four and five young men from each of the twenty-four communities. They received less than usd$100.00 per month; and as g&m hired each community member for only one month, each worker and their family had 100 dollars to live for the entire year.

In March 2008, Indigenous workers, who used to live by hunting, fishing, gathering and slash/burn agriculture, stood up for their rights to live as temporary paid workers. The following account is based on my notes from an interview at the local jail in Iquitos with John Vega, Clever Cruz, and Marco Polo Ramirez (Isla “Eco-Class-Race” 37). They claimed that Indigenous workers complained about their situation to the 24 “Apus” or community leaders who, according to Indigenous custom, are consulted before any activity is carried out in the community’s territory. After listening to the workers’ complaints, the Apus set up an agenda to negotiate with the management of Graña & Montero (g&m) with the objective of securing better wages for their members. The Apus decided on the meeting location, and sent a request to meet with g&m administration.

At the first meeting, set in Titayacu-Andoas village, the g&m authorities did not show up. Instead, the area was policed as the government intervened to prevent the meeting. At the second meeting, this time in Nueva Jerusalen-Andoas village, three negotiators from g&m attended. The Apus proposed that the $100 paid to the Indigenous workers was not enough to live on and requested that each Indigenous worker should earn at least usd$800 as they have to live for an entire year without any other income. The company representatives rejected the proposal. At the third meeting, no g&m negotiators arrived. As these “meetings,” initiatives for better wages failed, the workers, with the support of their communities, planned an occupation of the Pluspetrol Norte installations. The day of the occupation was decided and each community from the three river basins—Pastaza, Corrientes, and Tigre—planned the takeover of the Pluspetrol Norte installation in their respective jurisdictions.

the event

The following information is drawn from my notes from the proceedings of Court Iquitos, Peru, Sentencia de la Sala ii, de la Corte de Iquitos, which I attended during my sabbatical year in 2009. The trial took seven months and two days, beginning in February and concluding in November (with breaks in the court proceedings).

Here is what happened: On March 20, 2008, more than 1,000 workers, community members, women (including the wives of the protesting workers) and children, and Apus congregated at an abandoned airport in Andoas town. They hoped to discuss their issues with any invited institution interested in helping to resolve the problem, such as Graña & Montero or Pluspetrol, the government, or the ombudsperson. Women and men participated together in the occupation, as all were upset by their deteriorating living conditions resulting from the oil economy. With oil spills and water contamination, they had lost their traditional economy based on common grounds. Several of their young children were dying from contamination while their teen-aged children were forced to sell their bodies to oil workers as prostitutes. Women’s active participation was concentrated on organizing food and sleeping arrangements to meet survival needs, as they prepared themselves for a long occupation.

In Table 3, the first column provides the town name and the second column is the name of the Pluspetrol’s installation occupied by the protestors.

Table 3. Pluspetrol installations occupied on March 20, 2008

Towns	Installations
Jerusalen	Pluspetrol Dorissa
Antioquia and Sauqui	Pluspetrol Jibarito
12 de Octubre	San Jacinto encampment
Andoas	Titayacu, and Los Jardines,
El Porvenir	Airport
Huararay	Airport

In addition, from Capihuari Sur, one of several Pluspetrol installations, the rebels demanded from the regular, full-time Pluspetrol oil workers the use of three pickup trucks. These trucks were used to transport community members from their towns to the abandoned airport that the Indigenous people and their families had occupied.

On March 21, 2008, the police arrested 20 men driving and riding in the three Pluspetrol pickups. Many of these riders were not directly involved in the protest but rather were hunting in the forest with single-shot weapons and ammunition. In the rainforest, single-shot weapons are viewed as instruments essential for the survival of hunter/gatherer peoples and therefore do not require legal permits. These individuals caught rides in the back of the pickups as they returned from hunting. The 20 arrested men were taken to Pluspetrol installations where a standard-sized metal shipping container was used as a detention center. In total, 53 men were arrested in different circumstances including an eleven-year-old boy and a priest, Jose Noa. They were held in the closed, airless and severely hot metal shipping container for three days. Some were beaten during this three-day ordeal.

At about 12:30 p.m. on March 22, 2008, armed police violently attacked the airport occupiers in Andoas town. In this encounter, Indigenous men resisted, resulting in three protestors injured, one killed, and three “disappeared.” There is no report on what happened to the Indigenous women and children. During the police raid and rampage, one police officer was also killed. On March 23, at about ten a.m., a police unit stepped into the home of Saulo Sanchez Rodriguez, later suspected of being responsible for the death of the police officer, and conducted him to a Pluspetrol shipping container. Afterwards, Pluspetrol “prisoners” were taken by air to jail in Iquitos (362 kilometres away) where local people and the Catholic Church intervened to rescue them or bail them out. Of the 53 people arrested, four young Indigenous men were accused of police assassination and terrorism and kept in jail.

Following the events described above, the state decided in 2009 to take 26 Indigenous people to Court in Iquitos on the charges described below. The state ignored the fact that the Indigenous defendants, living on subsistence or as temporary salaried labourers, were not familiar with money and cities. Further it ignored their travel and living arrangements in the city. As a result, the Indigenous defendants lived in grim conditions.

the 2009 andoas court case: social crime of the state

Beginning in 1990, the Fujimori administration, in organizing the global neo-liberal Peruvian state, formulated a policy of criminalization of social protest, meaning that civil rights guaranteed in Article 1 and 2 (e) of the Political Constitution (wherein “Every person has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty”) have been suspended, and security forces have responded to protestors more violently. Furthermore, during Garcia’s administration, in 2007, the Congress approved Legislative Decree 982, where Article 20 declares the Armed Forces and the National Police as exempt from criminal liability during the carrying out of their duties and the use of their weapons in standard procedures causes injury or death.6 It is a legally binding international instrument that deals specifically with the rights of Indigenous and tribal peoples (ilo). As a result, there is an open conflict between the central government and Indigenous communities.

This antagonism was expressed in the Andoas court case. In February 2009, Indigenous men were charged by the Prosecutor’s office, representing the Public Ministry. Some of the defendants were the hunters who happened to catch a ride with the protestors. Others were active participants in the strike. Table 4 presents the seven charges against the defendants.

Table 4. Defendants accused of seven violations of the law

1	Disturbance against Pluspetrol
2	Violence
3	Aggravated robbery against Pluspetrol and Graña& Montero
4	Illegal arms possession against the Peruvian state
5	Resistance to authority
6	Aggravated assault
7	Aggravated homicide against Jaime Reyna Ruiz

At the beginning of the case, the Prosecutor’s office affirmed that “the uprising was organized by four young men (John Vega, Jose Fachin, Clever Cruz, and Marco Polo Ramirez), who were born and raised in Iquitos city, and only ‘pretending’ to be native, while forwarding their own interests in the name of the native community.” The prosecutor also accused “Saulo Sanchez, of killing a police officer on 22 March.” The prosecutor requested between eight-and twenty-year jail sentences for the hunters and other participants for firearm possession, civil reparations of usd$1,736 each, and a 25-year jail sentence for Saulo Sanchez with civil reparations of usd$ 8,680.

Four lawyers, hired by Organización de Pueblos Indigenas del Oriente (orpio), defended the twenty-six accused. They argued that due to the criminalization of the protest, the prosecutor was unable to see that the goal of the occupation was to find solutions to the discriminatory wages imposed by the enterprise Graña & Montero (g&m), and to find grounds for an agreement with Pluspetrol, similar to the Dorissa Act in Rio Corrientes.

Defence lawyer Jorge Tacuri pointed out that the protest had followed normal procedures before his clients occupied the abandoned airport; that the occupation was organized, with a formal request to the enterprise g&m, Pluspetrol, and the Ombudsman; that the occupation was known by all community members and was not a chaotic action, as Pluspetrol’s lawyer argued. He also argued that the Prosecutor could not prove the accusations, since four individuals could not persuade more than a thousand people from three different river basins to go to an abandoned airport. Further, lawyer Walter Cambero, defending the hunters, argued that according to the videos presented by the police—Dirección de Operaciones Especiales (dinoes)—none of the accused resisted the police authority; consequently, he requested the handing back of the firearms to the hunters, who urgently needed these tools in order to feed their families. Lawyer Victor Alva also called for Saulo Sanchez to be declared not guilty of killing the police via the application of the principle indubio pro reo (innocent until proven guilty), because there was no evidence to convict him for committing the crime. In summary, these advocates requested that the case be dismissed because there was no evidence to convict the defendants of any of the seven charges.

As the court case continued, all of the defendants described the daily activities of their lives, and linked their responses to the destruction of their provisions (fish, meat, fruits) and their subsistence economy due to oil contamination. During the proceedings, the lawyers from the defense requested an assessment by Iquitos-based anthropologist, Jorge Gasche of iiap, on the motives of the accused rebels. The court accepted the request and here, I present portions of an unpublished transcript of the anthropological assessment provided to me by Jorge Gasch on December 15, 2009:

Daniel Dahua Mayna was born in Titayacu, Pastaza River, a Quichua community. He does not speak Spanish, never left his territory, and never went to school. Close to Titayacu, the Northwest oil canal was built within 300metres of his house. He protested against oil contamination as his closest family members died with stomach pain and bloody diarrhea. Further, he was a hunter, fisherman, and agriculturalist, but his hunting products had a bad taste, were rotten, and poisonous. In order to hunt and fish he has been walking for days to the border with Ecuador.

Jose Fachin Ruiz was born in Vista Alegre, Quebrada Santa Barbara, Tigre River. He lives in Andoas and speaks Quichua and Spanish, and went to high school in Iquitos. He wrote a Quichua dictionary and produced a video on oil contamination for the ngo Red Ambiental. He worked for Graña & Montero once, but decided not to work there anymore due to a hostile environment where Peruvian mestizos and foreigners humiliate local workers. He recognized his participation in the uprising and described the protest as a way to show their fatigue with abuse. He used to hunt, fish with a hook, and make canoes to sell to community members, but these activities have become difficult due to oil waste from around thirty abandoned and shutdown wells. Water has a bad odour, and it cannot be consumed. He stated: “Our watersheds [San Antonio, Montano and Yanayacu] have been contaminated as well as our wildlife. Many children have died vomiting and with diarrhea. Despite this tragedy, there is no water available to the community. There is only one artisan well, which is not enough for all community members; therefore people are forced to drink from contaminated rivers.”

Martin Rober Cubas recognized that he went to the airport and had driven one of the pickups to distribute food among the demonstrators. He was aware that the occupation was due to inadequate and discriminatory wages and oil contamination. However, he said, he was not armed as the police indicated. Instead he pointed out that the police forced him and other “prisoners,” as they were being held in Pluspetrol’s container, to hold or carry their hunting rifles in order that the police could take pictures of the prisoners. These pictures were distributed to the media and used to accuse the Indigenous protestors of being terrorists. Martin recalled that after the pictures were taken, he was beaten.

Miguel Zuniga, 68, did not participate in the strike. He maintained that he did not know about the strike. He asserted that on March 20, 2008, he went hunting. At dawn on March 21, upon arrival from the jungle, he found two young men driving a pickup truck, and they offered him a ride to town. He jumped into the vehicle, without having any bad feeling because in the past the enterprise’s drivers had invited him to ride with them. He said, “Nobody told me that the vehicle had been used for other reasons. I learned about the strike only when the police intercepted the vehicle, arrested the occupants, and conducted the car occupants to Pluspetrol installations. Once there, I and other community members were pictured carrying hunting rifles. But let me say,” he added, “I was not assaulted physically by the police. However, after three days of detention, the police forced me to sign an incrimination letter in Spanish, despite the fact that I told them that I am illiterate.”

Following the anthropological assessment, the court invited all regional organizations to show evidence of contamination by Pluspetrol. For instance, ngo Red Ambiental presented a video with serious evidence of oil contamination of the people and of the land. The court also invited Jose Noa, a Catholic priest who was jailed and tortured in a Pluspetrol container, to present his testimony.

The final remarks in the court proceedings started with Pluspetrol’s lawyer who expressed disagreement with the anthropological assessment that identified habitat destruction as central in the uprising. He argued that the anthropologist did not explain how Indigenous traditions excused the event. Further, he maintained that, “the accused used Pluspetrol contamination in their favor, even though this was not the cause of the uprising.” He recognized, however, that it was true that several denouncements of the contamination had been filed at the Prosecutor’s office; but no one, he remarked, had been able to prove that Pluspetrol polluted, thus there was reasonable doubt with respect to the contamination. In addition, he challenged the audience, even if this were the truth, that those arguments were not justifications for the uprising.

Dr. Walter Cambero, defending the hunters, argued that the Prosecutor’s Office violated the Peruvian Constitution, where people are declared innocent if there is no evidence of judicial responsibility; that on March 20, the hunters did not participate in the uprising; that they did not participate in taking the three pickups; and that the same police detained the hunters on the same day, in the same place, and at the same time. “Why,” he asked, “would they steal a pickup since they do not know how to drive? In addition, where can a pickup go in Andoas? Nowhere, because there are no roads.” Then he remarked, “They could not have participated in this protest organized on March 22, 2008 because they were imprisoned inside a Pluspetrol container. Treaties on international human rights recognize that corporations have a legal obligation to prevent harm to the fundamental right to life, and that governments have the legal obligations to defend its citizens’ rights.”

The final remarks of the defendants are also presented. Here I cite three statements from those who were included in the anthropological assessment:

Now, the enterprise Pluspetrol wants to condemn us to jail time, but 40 years ago oil production had already sentenced us to death. We cannot confront oil destruction by ourselves. This is a call for all people of the planet to maintain our Amazon as the lungs of the world.

—Defendant Martin Rober Cubas, November 27, 2009

If I am condemned to jail, I will be proud because it was as a result of defending my territory. But, I also demand sanction for the enterprise, and for the Fiscal [prosecutor’s office], which has been used as an instrument of the enterprise.

—Defendant Daniel Dahua Mayna, November 27, 2009

The fact that I do not dress up as an Indigenous man, does not obliterate my indigenous identity. I am the son of a native woman and man from Andoas who sent me to Iquitos to get an education and a profession to avoid living from scraps, as my people are living now.

—Defendant Jose Fachin Ruiz, November 27, 2009

court verdict: recognition of indigenous people’s collective rights and critiques of the state by the judicial system

On November 27, 2009, Judge Carlos del Pielago, in association with Judges Rosa Peláez and Roxana Carrión, charged the State prosecutor with incompetence. The judges’ statement reads, “the State is not paying attention to the claim of the Indigenous people and ribereños (those living on river banks). Consequently it ignores their rights to land use and occupation where they have been living for hundreds of years, and disregards Indigenous peoples’ rights to be heard, as mandated by the Constitution and international treaties. Moreover, the State Attorney and the local Prosecutor acted inadequately in reporting on what happened. During the oral examination the prosecutors released modifications to their complaint.7 Therefore, indubio pro reo [when in doubt, decide in favour of the accused] is the reason to absolve the accused of the seven supposed crimes.”

In delivering their verdict, the judges showed thoughtfulness and sensitivity. Judge Carlos Del Pielago, the Chair of the Court, offered an exemplary public process on how to proceed in cases where Indigenous people are involved in social conflicts. Consequently, the judges:

1. Relied in their deliberations on international agreements, such as, the International Labour Organization (ilo) Convention 169, Article 9, which states that on penal issues, authorities and tribunals must take into consideration the tradition of the communities, and Article 10, which maintains that a sanction must take into consideration the social, economic, and cultural characteristics of the communities involved. And it accepted the defence’s proposal that Indigenous people must be judged in their own languages.

2. Accepted the report produced by the Loreto Ombudsperson, which showed that Amazonia’s Indigenous communities are judicially in a vulnerable position, and in need of protection of their fundamental human rights as well as their territorial rights. The report said “there is a need to defend one of the most fundamental rights, the right to land, in which indigenous people develop their livelihood, hunt, fish, and produce agriculture. All of these rights are based on relations of reciprocity, and linked essentially to conservation and development of their cultural identity.” The Ombudsperson’s report linked community and ecology as the reasons that underpinned the struggle.

3. Valued the Amazon Catholic Church’s pronouncements during the strike, which stated that: “The Church values Indigenous peoples’ respect of nature and love for mother earth as source of food, commons, and humanity.”

4. Signaled globalization as causing the devastation of the forest and its biodiversity through depredation and greed that put in danger the livelihood and the habitat of millions who have been forcefully evicted onto useless land or to live in miserable conditions in big cities. Further, the decision indicated that it is public knowledge that rivers are contaminated with lead, heavy metals and toxic substances as a result of mining (formal and informal), and irresponsible oil extraction. Globalization has brought not just exploitation and oppression, but a new social exclusion of those living in the rainforest.

The verdict concluded:

We (three Judges) take on the view of our judicial authority, who said regarding the criminalization of the social protest that we draw attention to what we witness daily—the incapacity of the State to give solution to the claims formulated by low or no income social sectors and groups. That instead of solving the exclusion problems, the State has responded with criminalization and persecution of social activists, involving the Judicial System in issues outside of its competence—social conflicts. We do not accept becoming instruments of persecution of the poor. We are judges with sensibilities who evaluate the impact on the victim, the prosecuted, and society. We remark that social conflict forces us to be cautious in order to avoid the criminalization of poverty, and the protest of Indigenous communities and their membership. We must be careful to avoid trimming down rights that need the maximum protection.

Following the verdict, Pluspetrol’s lawyer decided to bring an action for annulment of the verdict by the Supreme Court. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the judgment of Sala ii, Iquitos Court.8

my assessment of the court case using an ecofeminist perspective

From the ecofeminist perspective, Petro-Peru, the government oil corporation, and Pluspetrol, a private corporation, have enclosed for oil production, the territories of Achuar, Quichua, Urarina, and Cocama. Meanwhile, Graña & Montero’s corporation has treated Indigenous people as housewives, as if there is no real value attached to their labour, so they do not have to be equitably remunerated, or remunerated at all. Consequently, the State prosectuor criminalized the Indigenous people.

First, the prosecutor overstated the case and generated a false hypothesis to dichotomize the relationship among the defendants, by separating Indigenous people who were born and raised in Iquitos and spoke Spanish from those who were born and raised in the town of Andoas. From this dichotomy, the prosecutor intended to legally dispossess the Indigenous identity of the four defendants, and requested them to be bound by Peruvian law; while, the “real Indians,” who live in the jungle, should be bound by cultural tradition. By generating this false hypothesis, the prosecutor gave four individuals, schooled in the city, the role of key instigators and terrorists, to explain the labour uprising on March 20, 2008.

Second, the prosecutor separated the act of rebellion, as a result of the devaluation of their labour from the enclosure and destruction of their habitat. However, the prosecutor ignored the high cost to nature and society by the degradation of the ecosystem, the fact that oil contamination had been altering land use, and that extractivism had interfered with Indigenous people’s survival by destroying their subsistence economy. Pluspetrol oil production has freely appropriated nature, diminished natural zones through contaminated soils, devoured forest, and increased emission of carbon dioxide. All of this was done at the expense of Indigenous people living in Corrientes, Pastaza, and Tigre. In addition, oil production begat oil spills along rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands, degraded pristine land and flooded healthy forests, and transformed the land into a massive, hellish oilfield with more than 150 wells, over 1,000 kilometres of road, and a pipeline network threatening the local communities. Moreover, the prosecutor discounted the fact that oil spills and so-called “down well water” laced with toxins had already sparked several rebellions in Rio Corrientes among the Achuar community, which resulted in the 2006 Dorissa Act discussed above. Further, the prosecutor disregarded the fact that toxic chemical pollution had already killed several Indigenous people and their children and that at the time of the uprising, bereaved communities were in mourning.

Third, the prosecutor replicated historic colonial cultural stigmatization by stating that the Indigenous people were manipulated, that they lacked understanding of what they had done. This ideology of the ignorant native being led into mayhem failed utterly to acknowledge that Pluspetrol’s destructive oil production methods were central to the uprising, and a key contributor to the violation of the rights of present and future generations of Indigenous peoples, as well as countless non-human residents of the river basins. Moreover, the prosecutor ignored the fact that Pluspetrol participated directly in the violation of Indigenous human rights when it provided the container with no lavatories, no food, and no water, where the police of Dirección de Operaciones Especiales (dinoes) beat and tortured some of the prisoners during three days of illegal internment. Further, the prosecutor ignored Article 46 of the Peruvian Political Constitution, which states that, “No one owes obedience to a usurper government or to anyone who assumes public office in violation of the Constitution and the law. The civil population has the right to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order. Acts of those who usurp public office are null and void.”

Fourth, the prosecutor claimed compensation from the defendants, whose self-sustaining and autonomous economy was destroyed, and whose work, like that of the housewife, was not seen as legitimate labour. Absurdly, the prosecutor tried to penalize Indigenous community members when requesting money as reparation, knowing that these community members earned usd$100 annually. By proposing monetary reparation, the prosecutor effectively passed a death sentence on the culture of Indigenous people living in a quasi-non-monetized economy. Indigenous communities were never going to have the ability to raise money to pay reparations.

ecocidal (in)action of the peruvian state

Despite of enclosure and territorial destruction substantiated during the legal proceedings, violence against Indigenous territory continues. The ecocidal (in) action of the state results from many elements of the extractive industry and the absence of sanctions against corporate crimes. A Peruvian ngo, Convoca, documented more than 1,000 environmental reports shelved during the four administrations discussed here. It revealed hidden reports of systematic oil contamination in soils and open areas, inadequate management of organic and solid waste, and lack of environmental management permits obtained by oil corporations. In Loreto from 1999 to 2011, for example, Blocks 1AB and 8 operated by Pluspetrol Norte s.a. and Pluspetrol Peru Corporation s.a. have incurred nineteen instances of oil contaminations that governments overlooked. Most of the archived reports, 686 out of 832, occurred during the government of Allan Garcia.

In September 2011, as the area experienced a water emergency and as incidents of oil contamination continued to pile up, a letter was sent to President Humala by the four Indigenous groups living in the area where Pluspetrol operates. The letter states that for four decades, the Pastaza, Tigre and Corrientes Rivers have been polluted by toxic water from oil production while the Marañon River was contaminated by a series of oil accidents. It also stated, a deficient and decaying pipeline had created havoc among those communities. As Pluspetrol’s contract was ending in August 2015, the Humala’s government accepted the Indigenous people’s request for “the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the environmental and social impacts in the affected rivers due to oil activities in North Amazonia” (Congreso de la República 6).

A Parliamentary Commission (pc) of four members was nominated. The pc was accompanied by a member of Organismo de Evaluación y FiscalizaciónAmbiental (oefa) [Organism on Environmental Evaluation and Fiscalizatio], and a journalist from La Republica newspaper, Jonathan Castro. In July 2013, the commission reported that in Andoas, Rio Pastaza, there were several water bodies destroyed by oil contamination, specifically:

1. Shanshococha, a lake, was abandoned and left in 1995 by the U.S. based Occidental Petroleum Corporation (opc). Supposedly, Pluspetrol, which bought the assets and liabilities of opc between 1999 and 2001, was to clean up such toxic lakes but never complied with the required remediation. As this problem became public in 2015, The Guardian reported that, “Members of the Indigenous Achuar tribe from [Corrientes River] the Peruvian Amazon have won an undisclosed sum from Occidental Petroleum in an out-of-court settlement after a long-running legal battle in the U.S. courts” (Collyuns).

2. Ushpayacu, a lake, apparently badly “remediated” by Pluspetrol. The oil spill originated from layered barrels that were stacked and overflowed close to swamps and lakes.

3. San Jacinto town, Rio Tigre, experienced another oil spill due to corroded barrels and pipelines.

4. Marsella, a lake, an oil-spill site badly covered with soil, leaves, and declared remediated by the State, despite an inadequate clean-up.

The Commission concluded that the impact of hydrocarbon activities in Amazonia not only degrades biomass and biodiversity, but as the territory is an integral part of the universe of Indigenous peoples, it delivers a body blow to culture, social organization and spirituality, thus precipitating multidimensional negative effects that threatens their existence (Congreso de la República 12-13).

On July 4, 2012, journalist Jonathan Castro summarized his examination as follows:

1. Corrientes River oil contamination continues in Choroyacu, where an oil carrier sank and is now covered with leaves and fallen trees. Part of this oil spill was recovered and then abandoned in 50 corrosive barrels, only covered with plastic. The rain washes the oil spill toward river basins and becomes a permanent cause of contamination; and

2. Marañon River had “bad faith reparations” (blocked out the impacted area, and/or use of toxic dispersants designed to sink the crude oil below the surface of the river) where five thousand five hundred (5,500) barrels of crude oil spilled in 2000, while in 2010 another 500 barrels was added. There is not an account of spills before 2007.

Humala’s government disregarded the Parliamentary Commission’s Final Report. Instead it advanced the cause of the extractive industries by eliminating the requirement that oil companies conduct and publish detailed Environmental Impact Studies (eis) of the seismic exploration in oil and gas concessions, and introduced the possibility that companies could submit a more expeditious eis. The new procedure takes approximately 35 days for approval instead of 150 days. As a result, this new regulation regime allows corporations to submit a less rigorous study of protected areas, fragile ecosystems, Indigenous reserves and conservation areas (Garcia 2). In addition the “fast-track” approval process eliminates even a faint possibility of meaningful consultation with affected communities, amongst which Indigenous peoples are most represented.

To add insult to injury, Pluspetrol Norte s.a. was hoping to get a contract renewal in August 2015, giving the corporation access, yet again, to its expired concession. Strong Indigenous opposition against Pluspetrol’s contract renewal was expressed. They called the renewal illegal, outrageous, and an infringement of their rights (“The misleading art”; “Piden no renovar”). They also insisted that before any oil contract restoration occurred, prior consultation with the entire community must take place because these areas have been declared in states of emergency due to oil contamination. In 2015, despite all Indigenous opposition to oil extraction, Block 192 (the former Block 1AB) was granted to Pacific Stratus Energy, a subsidiary company of Canadian Pacific Exploration & Production Corporation. In 2016, there were ten oil spills from PetroPeru’s pipelines (Pipeline NorPeruano) which directly affected the people of the departments of Loreto and Amazonas who ended up drowning their cultural wealth in a sea of impotence, frustration and resignation. As a result, the Peruvian indigenous communities and bosquecinos were left without water, fishing, agriculture, cassava, banana, cacao, maize, land or dreams. Furthermore, these communities were left with bronchitis, diarrhea, warts, headaches, vomiting, crying, hunger and a great deal of hopelessness (Fermin).

conclusion

This chapter argued that capital accumulation comes not only from waged labour but from the bodies of the un-waged and from nature. It has shown that the Peruvian states’ articulation with the global state, led by the United Nations Earth Summits, has exacerbated the political practice of exclusion and domination of the rainforest Indigenous communities in Peru. Here I have shown how the state has the land and hunting grounds, and deprived of self-sufficiency and autonomy the Achuar, Quichua, Urarina and Cocama Indigenous people living near Blocks 1AB (now 192) and Block 8. As a result, they were obliged to sell their labour for almost nothing in service of hydrocarbon spill soil remediation on Pluspetrol oil field production sites organized by Graña & Montero Corporation. Indigenous people’s labour on these projects has been “housewifized,” meaning indentured servitude, near enough to slavery. However, in 2008, these communities actively resisted the exploitation of their labour and nature and unveiled the state’s crimes in the Judicial Court in 2009.

Indigenous people in the rainforest of Peru are at the forefront of preserving the health of the forest in order to continue a centuries-old subsistence economy that depends on a healthy ecosystem (forest, rivers, watershed, and air) that maintains basic nature (flora, fauna, and fishery). Their struggle to protect their own forest-based economies against the extractivism of sustainable development with all its intense destruction is a critical element of the global fight against climate change and for the elaboration of post-oil economies. Ecofeminists have long argued for wider recognition of the unwaged work of women household workers, peasants, Indigenous people and nature itself. This invisible “housewifized” labour is essential to the process of capital accumulation and thus has enormous power to simultaneously interrupt the destructive path of industrialization and re-route humanity towards an alternative civilization, one based on the Commons.

Update: Currently, the Peruvian ex-presidents named in this chapter—Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), Alan Garcia (2006-2011) and Ollanta Humala (2011-2016)—are under investigation for money laundering, as Odebrecht, a construction corporation from Brazil, paid them bribes in offshore accounts. Meanwhile, Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to jail for twenty-five years for crimes committed during his mandate.

Note: The methods used to research this chapter were a literature review, information from an article published by Isla (“Eco-Class-Race”) in Capitalism Nature Socialism, interviews, and observation of courtroom proceedings in 2009. The study’s limitation is a lack of physical inspection of the Indigenous territory in Blocks 1AB and 8.

endnotes

1Decreto Legislativo 30151: Establishes the use of weapons by the police and army (online).

2Decreto Legislativo 1095: Sets rules for employment and use of force by the armed forces in the national territory (online).

3Defensoría del Pueblo, Reporte de Conflictos Sociales N° 69, 2009; Reporte de Conflictos Sociales N°106, 2012; Reporte de Conflictos Sociales N°129, 2014; Reporte de Conflictos Sociales No. 171, 2016. Lima, Peru (online).

4Dorissa Act, 2006. Acta que complementa y precisa los acuerdos subscritos entre las comunidades indígenas del Rio Corrientes–feconaco, el Ministerio de Energia y Minas, el Ministerio de Salud, el Gobierno Regional de Loreto, la Empresa Pluspetrol Norte S.A., y la Defensoria del Pueblo. Signed at Dorissa, Loreto, Peru (online, accessed October 2009).

5For more information on reforestation, see Congreso della República, Informe Final.

6Decreto Legislativo 982: Amends the Criminal Code approved by Legislative Decree No. 635 (online).

7Dr. Victor Alva, lawyer for the man accused of aggravated homicide, asserted:

•The police officer that supposedly recognized Saulo, as someone who shot the police, had contradicted himself. The police was unable to explain the colour of Saulo’s pants, as well as unable to bring forth any witness.

•Ballistics did not find remains of blood or any organic element of the victim in the clothing of the accused. The atomic absorption spectroscopy proved that Saulo had lead in his clothing, but not antimony and barium, two elements needed to prove that he was the shooter.

•Another man apprehended at the same time as Saulo said that they were held around 10:00 a.m. (and the crime occurred at 12:30 p.m.) but the police registered their arrest at 1:00 p.m., without reason.

•During the investigation, ten new suspects surfaced as possible shooters.

•The Act of Reconstruction or review of evidence from the crime scene, involving three prosecutors and a colonel, confirmed that the now dead police officer was wounded in the backyard of Maria Dahua Betuna’s house and not at the abandoned airport as the police stated.

8“Sentencia del Tribunal Constitutional,” 2011. exp. No. 0022-2009-pi/tc (online, accessed July 2012).

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