You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.
—BENAZIR BHUTTO
MY FLIGHT WAS MEANT TO LEAVE THAT NIGHT, June 5, 2009. I was in Lima- Callao International Airport, checking my emails when I first got word. A massacre was taking place in the Amazon of northern Peru. I was stunned— the killing was only a few hours' travel away, and I had just made friends with some people who were probably being slain. Life carried on normally at the airport, with a surreal edge as scenes of the violence played out on the waiting- lounge TV s. I scrambled to write a quick article in English about what was going on, as the only news at the time was in Spanish.
The guilt was overwhelming. I had to leave Peru right at this moment of crisis. But money was tight, and I didn't have the capacity to buy another ticket. Yet an hour before I was about to board, my flight to Canada was canceled, and I knew then that I had to stay.
Behind the scenes, there had been an organization representing Peru's four hundred thousand Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, AIDESEP (Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana; translated in English, it means the National Organization of the Amazon Indigenous People of Peru). This group and its leader, Alberto Pizango, whom I had met the week before, were the prime targets of the government now because AIDESEP had led a two-month-long protest against the government. The night my flight was canceled, I got their address from their website, and the next morning, a cool and overcast Saturday, I showed up at the AIDESEP office. The office turned out to be a humble home behind huge gates—not what I had expected. When I entered, I waited in the reception area as people came in and out, talking of the violence in the Amazon their family members had witnessed. After explaining myself, they made me a place in the communications office and set me up to translate a few things into English and communicate with the English media.
Being at the office felt like being in the center of a storm. The day before, Alberto Pizango held a press conference, where he blamed that day's deaths of thirty-three people on the government. Shortly after, the government charged him with sedition, accusing him of being behind the deaths, and he disappeared. We learned a few days later he had been granted asylum in the Nicaraguan Embassy, but at that moment, we feared the worst. People in the office were worried the police might kick the door down at any moment, or that the jungle might erupt again into bloodshed.
It was important for me to try to figure out what had really happened. There were many contradictory accounts in the media—who had shot first, who in the government had ordered the military to stop a peaceful protest, even how many people were killed. The next day, though, I managed to get a phone number for a young Belgian lady who had witnessed the incident herself. She filled in many parts of the story that the news and government were withholding. There had been very few reporters in the area, and the media was only reporting the government version because most reporters wouldn't go into the jungle themselves.
We watched what the government was saying on television in the communications office, and it had us all scared. The president, Alan García, went on the air and accused the Amazonian peoples of being “savages, barbarians, and second-class citizens”—obviously racist remarks. He called them terrorists, saying they were stopping “our progress and our democracy,” as if they were not Peruvian, and said they were even controlled by “international communism” and foreign governments. I couldn't believe what was being said but felt as if the government might be trying to justify the use of more violence.
Meanwhile, we were getting more and more firsthand testimony in the office from people who had been there. We were all intent on making sure that the international media knew what was going on, so that the government of Peru couldn't resort to more violence. We also wanted to make sure international human rights and environmental groups knew about the situation and could respond and assist. I struggled to make a list of all the different organizations and media sources that I could and concentrated on sending out information.
After three days in the office, I was told that AIDESEP had prepared a delegation to go into the Amazon, and they wanted me to go along with them. They asked me to document my trip, write about it, and take pictures, while trying to figure out what exactly had occurred and what was still happening. The delegation included another Indigenous leader and members of the media.
The whole trip was a tense one, where we didn't talk openly about what we were doing. We flew from Lima to Chiclayo and drove overnight in a beat-up jeep to Jaén. Bagua, our real destination, was still under military curfew. It wasn't until the next morning that we proceeded directly to the Devil's Curve (La Curva del Diablo), just outside Bagua. This was where the violence had occurred, just a few days before. The district attorney had just completed his first investigation of the area, turning up little evidence.
For our quest, we were mainly looking for any evidence of missing persons. We had heard reports of fires on the mountain and that the police had taken a number of bodies into their helicopters and had been seen throwing them into the water. Five days had passed since the violence, however, and the military hadn't let anyone in the area until now, so there was much speculation that they simply sanitized the area. That day, we found nothing.
Attempting again to put the pieces of this puzzle together, we headed back into town the next day to talk to others who had been at the battle. Most people had already headed back to their communities long before, except for those unlucky enough to be stuck in the hospital. There, we found a number of vanloads of wounded, off to trek back into the jungle. All were young men, in such a rush that we could only get one person's story.
Inside the hospital, there were another five men who had been shot, a few of them multiple times. Four of them had been on the Devil's Curve, too close to the soldiers to escape their bullets. One older gentleman, accompanied by his wife, had been walking through town when the police there opened fire. They all wondered how the government could do this to them, for which we didn't have an answer.
We were forced to skip town to avoid the curfew, and headed back to Jaén for the night. The whole time, I was reminded to stay inconspicuous, as military patrols were out on every corner. That night I spent writing about what we had seen, responding to emails, and uploading photos.
A large part of my work was comprised of informing and updating various human rights, Indigenous, and environmental groups around the world, as well as international media. I felt this was crucial to help communicate what we were seeing and being told and to generate support for the Amazonian peoples.
The next morning, I was back at the Devil's Curve. Here, another search was already under way by local Indigenous leaders who wanted to see for themselves if there was any more evidence.
We chanced upon a family who happened to live on the side of the road. There was an older woman and her granddaughter Marilu, ten years old, who had witnessed the violence in their backyard. They recounted that after the initial violence subsided, police were going door to door, looking for any Natives who were hiding.
Forcing their way into the house, the police put a gun to the little girl's chest and demanded that her family reveal the whereabouts of anyone hiding. The family told them to leave them alone, that they weren't hiding anyone. This warranted the policeman to ask his commander if he should just shoot them. A simple response saved their lives: “No, let's go.” Marilu showed us the tear gas canister and spear she had discovered in her backyard—the first pieces of evidence we found.
We spent some more time scouring the mountains. Much of it was burned now, but we called out anyway, just in case there had been any survivors overlooked. After hours in the hot sun, we had to give up, partially happy not to make any gruesome discoveries but dismayed that we were no closer to having any more information. That's when we knew we weren't going to learn any more from the mountain. We needed to go into the jungle.
We started off at the crack of dawn in a packed station wagon. At one point, we got stuck in thick mud, but we got out and pushed our way free with the brute force of our bodies against the vehicle. We winded our way on the sides of mountains covered with tropical forests, following alongside one of the Amazon River's tributaries.
Hours later, I arrived at the community of Wawas, which we had to take a boat to enter. I got out of the boat and hiked through dense jungle to meet the family of Felipe Sabio César, who had been killed in the violence. His mother brought us to see his wife and five children, one of whom was born the day before he died. Family members told of how he had become a respected leader of the community through radio broadcasting and by serving as a translator, volunteering on the protest lines. I felt alone sitting there with the widow, Violeta, who wore her pain on her face. I hadn't expected this moment and wasn't sure now what to say, except offer condolences and make sure his story was shared with the world.
I went down to meet with a few others who had been shot in the violence. I wanted to hear why they had been protesting in the first place and what happened to them.
The Peruvian government had signed free trade agreements with the United States and Canada and changed its laws to let mining, oil, and forestry companies come in. Immediately, Indigenous groups recognized it was their land the companies and the government were after. When their demands to have some of the laws changed fell on deaf ears, they decided to protest. For two months, they had shut down the highway near the Devil's Curve and blocked access to some oil facilities in the jungle.
About fifty people from that community had participated in the protests from the beginning, concerned about what the laws would do to their forests and water. They knew that climate change was a big problem and claimed they were acting to protect the environment for the rest of the world. As much as it was a matter of protecting their rainforest, it was also about protecting their culture.
Many people told us that the rainforest was their grocery store, pharmacy, school, life. They didn't see why the government or any company should be allowed to take away their land and pollute it—especially since they had never given up their rights to the land. But all I could do was agree and take notes.
In the end, more than thirty thousand people participated in the protests. They told us that the morning of the violence, the police hadn't come to talk but to shoot and kill. Many had to flee higher into the mountains to escape; others headed into Bagua, where there was more shooting. They had decided to stand up to protect the forests that cannot speak for themselves, and were shot for it.
Down the road a few hours, we next arrived in the community of La Curva. There we met with the family of David Jausito Mashigkash, who was only nineteen when he was shot and killed in the mountains. David had recently returned to his region to study nursing, after having been gone eleven years to attend school. His cousins and a few others from the community had gone to the protest, and David joined them soon after graduating.
The morning of June 5, he had gone with a few others to find out who was coming down the mountains to see the protestors. Some people had thought that they might be another group of Indigenous supporters. Instead, it was the police. That was the last time his cousins saw him alive.
The family was still visibly mourning, and I felt somewhat intrusive to be there, as a dozen family members were gathered in remembrance at the bamboo house in which he had lived. At the same time, they were also glad to have David's story told. When we talked to others in the community, they felt betrayed that the government hurt its own citizens—especially when they had made an agreement to peacefully remove the blockades. A number of them were even military veterans who had fought for Peru against Ecuador before, and were even more hurt. They were not angry at the government officers that had been sent and were only doing their job, but rather with the government itself, which could have avoided all bloodshed if they just decided to talk first.
Before sundown, we made our last trip to a community called Nazareth, to meet with Solomón Aguanash, president of the Regional Strike Committee. He was in charge of negotiating with the government during the protest and gave us the most authoritative version of events.
He told us of an agreement between armed forces and Indigenous groups to take down the barricades on June 5. This agreement was negotiated the night before, where Solomón had met with the top military commander in the region.
Instead of sticking to the agreement, police, helicopters, and armored carriers began an eviction of sorts, ignoring pleas against violence. In the confusion of people fleeing or even trying to defend themselves with spears, many were shot and lay wounded on the battlefield. While eighty-five people were still missing after the incident, some returned to their communities after the battle; some were gone forever.
When questioned about the reasons for the protest, Solomón replied:
We do not accept the kind of “development” that the president offers us, because it is not sustainable, and it threatens the Amazon rainforest. If the government insists on sidelining us, we will no longer block roads but will instead draw our own limits.
Our territory is our market, our mother. Everything we need for our survival is in the rainforest. That's why we are defending it with our lives. The struggle will continue until the laws are gone. What happens next is up to the government.
He was referring to the many laws passed by the government to open up the Amazon to foreign oil and mining operations.
That night, we were lucky to find a hotel room in a small Amazon town that even had Internet. The next morning, we took off for Station 6, the oil facility in the heart of the rainforest that was another site of violence. We somehow got very lucky, as we passed through a number of military checkpoints and they never asked for ID. However, we were disappointed, arriving at Station 6 hours later.
We got there, finally, but the military troops who now ran the station refused to talk to us. Even worse, they got angry when I tried to take pictures, saying it wasn't allowed. We drove off, frustrated that we had come all that way for nothing.
When we were on our way back out of the jungle, our driver noticed an oil spill on the side of the road. We got out of the car and quickly found some people from the neighboring community who were also wondering what was going on. Gobs of oil, like a river of black, pooled in puddles on the side of the road. We managed to follow the oil stream up a hillside, which had been recently cut down. Scrambling to the top, the other photographer and I discovered all the trees had been cut down, and the ground was covered in sheen.
We had found ourselves in the middle of an old-fashioned oil spill. Not far away, a crew worked on an exposed oil pipeline, as lots of young men picked up contaminated vegetation and tossed it into garbage bags. They stopped for a bit when they saw us but went back to work. A security guard by the pipeline spotted us. I worked quickly to get some photos and document the spill.
The security guard came by, telling us not to take photos. The other photographer began negotiating with him, distracting him. I got some more photos, but he had called in the military. Soon, a few soldiers arrived to tell us it was illegal to take photos, waving machine guns around. Intimidated, I slowly came down the hill, where there was now a group of about thirty local villagers who had come by to see what was happening.
The villagers were very concerned about the oil pipeline leaking into the river and contaminating their source of food and water. Like us, the company and military wouldn't tell them what happened, or even what company they were from. The soldiers seemed to be working for the company, even doing their media relations for them, telling us we would have to direct any questions to their headquarters, a headquarters they wouldn't name. The villagers were distraught, and our chance visit would be their only way to let the world know.
The issue of oil companies going into the Amazon didn't seem so theoretical anymore. The whole time, community members had been sharing their fears of oil companies coming in, taking away their land, and poisoning them. And now, here it was, happening before our very eyes, almost unbelievable that it was so real, plainly in front of us.
This is why the people had started their fifty-five-day protest. It seemed they had very good reasons to want to protect their homes, families, ways of life. In total, more than thirty thousand people in the Amazon had participated in the protests, including communities like Bagua. With the news of what really took place, people around the world rallied to the cause, and in Peru, thousands of people marched in the streets against the government. In the end, the protest was successful, and the government backed down on many of the laws in question after huge domestic and international pressure was placed on Peru.
For me, after helping spread the word of what happened, I soon had to return to Canada. Being back at home, I sometimes felt a lot less useful, but I kept in contact with Peru and did many speaking events and media interviews about the massacre, continuing to tell the world what happened. It was important to share this story in Canada, as many of the mining companies in the Amazon are Canadian. And with Canada recently signing a free trade agreement with Peru to secure access to formerly remote areas, communities like the ones I was in have become expendable.
The case of Peru really challenges me to consider how the things we value and the way we live have an impact around the world. That will be the defining challenge of our generation, and this is the message that many Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon and beyond are bringing to the world. Whether we as people are able to come together and deal with our crises—of racial violence, environmental justice, and climate change— will depend on our relationships with each other and our only home, planet Earth.
We are in a time where profound transformations of relationships are needed. What we need to do is consider how all our actions, every day, can contribute to the world we live in. We are all connected, and it's time we started living like it.
Considering this myself, I went back to Peru almost a year later. Many of the Indigenous communities were still suffering from the wounds inflicted, people were still in jail, Pizango was still in exile. Today, their biggest threat isn't from oil, however. It is from a Canadian gold-mining company trying to invade their territories. In the future, their real threat will continue to be from a world indifferent to their survival and the survival of our planet.
PHOTO BY SHADIAFAYNE WOOD
Ben Powless continues to support Indigenous Peoples across the world through his work with the Indigenous Environmental Network and freelance reporting.
PHOTO BY BARBARAVEIGA
Thirty-eight