In this letter sent today to all member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) denounces the violent repression of the Indigenous movements in Peru, the racism shown by Peru’s president Alan Garcia, and the negative effects of free trade agreements on Indigenous peoples. I made an unofficial translation into Spanish and posted here.

Peru’s President Garcia Orders Use of Force Against Peaceful Indigenous Protesters

“This is the Amazon’s Tiananmen.”
- Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International, the only international pro-tribal peoples organization to have received the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, known as the 'alternative Nobel Prize', as well as the Spanish 'Premio Léon Felipe' and the Italian 'Medaglia della Presidenza della Camera dei Deputati'.

June 9, 2009

Dear Colleague:

I wish to draw your immediate attention to the violent repression of the indigenous social movements that is unfolding in Peru.

Since April of this year, Peru’s indigenous have mobilized in response to President Alan Garcia’s imposition of laws that would allow a barrage of logging, oil drilling, mining and agriculture activities in the Amazon rainforest where they live.

Garcia’s government was able to impose the laws under “fast track” authority he had received from the Peruvian Congress to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement.

For fifty-six days, about 2,500 indigenous people had been blockading the road between the Peruvian towns of Jaen and Bagua on a stretch of road called the “Devil’s Curve.” On Friday morning, some 600 Peruvian riot police and helicopters attacked a peaceful indigenous blockade outside of Bagua, killing twenty-five, and injuring more than 150. Eyewitness accounts indicate the police fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd.

The Peruvian indigenous community says at least forty people, including three children, were killed by the police this weekend.

President Garcia has unleashed violent repression aginst the indigenous. He has also denounced them and their movement in racist terms, saying that "They aren't first-class citizens," accusing the tribes of “barbarity and savageness,” and "elemental ignorance," as well as wanting to keep Peru in “a backwards, primitive state.”

Alberto Pizango, the leader of the national indigenous organization, the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, responded to the reports of unprovoked repression by saying, “I want to put the responsibility on the government. We are going to put the responsibility on Alan Garcia’s government for ordering this genocide. This is genocide.”

The situation facing these indigenous people is extremely grave. If the Garcia laws at issue are not repealed, these populations are likely to be dispossessed from their land and thereby robbed of their culture and their very identity. For them, cultural extinction may very well be a fate worse than death.

I urge you to pay close attention to this matter and consider the consequence for indigenous peoples if and when another “Free Trade” agreement is considered by this House.

Sincerely,

Raúl M. Grijalva
Member of Congress