“The Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) is a bold effort by the governments of South America to construct a new infrastructure network for the continent, including roads, waterways, ports, and energy and communications interconnections.Many of the projects seek to provide road and river outlets to ocean ports, with the goal of providing incentives to increase exports of primary materials such as soybeans and other grains, timber, and minerals. ” (from http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/latin-america/iirsa)

An integrated south America

Roads and rivers would be used to facilitate easier trade.
Dr. Pitou van Dijck, is stating in his article:
“The rise of China, however, not only contributes to Brazil’s export potential but may also jeopardize Brazil’s aspirations of becoming a platform for automobile assembly for the international market. Indeed, IIRSA’s plans for the construction of several transcontinental roads, linking the Atlantic side of the region with the Pacific, the so-called bioceánicas, not only facilitates Latin America’s export drive but may also contribute to competition in the regional market by emerging Asian exporting industries.”

amazonwatch.org is writing about one of the aspects of the IIRSA:
“The enormous Madeira River Complex, in the tri-border region of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil is one of the Integrated Regional Infrastructure for South America’s (IIRSA) anchor projects. It would transform the Madre de Dios-Beni-Mamoré-Itenez-Madeira river system into a major corridor for energy production and raw material export. The proposal includes the construction of four hydroelectric dams, most importantly the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in Rondônia, Brazil. Together, these two dams would produce a projected 6,450 megawatts of hydroelectricity, totaling eight percent of the Brazilian energy matrix. By comparison, this is equal to half of the electricity produced by Itaipu dam in the Brazilian state of Paraná, the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant.”
The article at amazonwatch.org goes in depth into the problematic of the projects, while the pictures in Dr. Pitou van Dijck´s article are pointing on other problems.

logging

A personally painful project for me is IIRSA´s project “Road Interconnection: Pucallpa-Cruzeiro do Sul”. This road would be cutting through virgin rainforest where many uncontacted tribes still live.

uncontacted tribes in the Amaxon rainforest, between Brasil and Peru

From an open letter to Mr. Luis Alberto Moreno, President of IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) from BIC (Bank Information Centre) October 2009:
“In Peru the proposed road will cut through the Isconahua Territorial Reserve, an area created by the regional government of Ucayali to protect indigenous peoples that are uncontacted or living in voluntary isolation. This region has also been designated, in recognition of its national significance, as the Zona Reservada Sierra del Divisor.”

The deeper I go into the jungle
the more tears I shed

No, I have not seen it myself. I have seen the future. I have seen the devastating results of the presence of Plus Petrol in the Amazon, Peru, Loreto

Published November 2, 2009 by NACLA Report on the Americas.

By Bill Weinberg / NACLA

After the indigenous uprising in Peru’s Amazon region in June, the country is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples, highland campesinos, and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima’s political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.

Yet there has been a high price in human lives, and only the most controversial of President Alan García’s legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru’s congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.

The southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios was the scene of considerable unrest during the past two years’ worth of protests. In early July 2008, regional government offices in Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital of Madre de Dios, were occupied for three days. The city was paralyzed as the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), an indigenous Amazonian organization, joined the regional campesino union in launching the general strike. Campesino demands for land titles were united with indigenous demands for territorial rights, while federations representing small miners, Brazil-nut harvesters, Puerto Maldonado moto-taxi drivers, and other sectors also joined the strike, uniting in an Alliance of Federations.

Then the regional government offices were burned down. It remains unclear who was responsible, but indigenous protesters were accused. More than a year later, the burned-out shell of the building still stands, its walls scrawled with graffiti. The words have been painted over in an attempt to obscure them, but they are still readable: “La tierra es del pueblo” (The land is the people’s) and “No se vende, se defiende” (We don’t sell out, we defend ourselves). Some 25 were arrested, and Jorge Payaba, a former president of FENAMAD, was beaten and hospitalized. His successor, Antonio Iviche, went into hiding for several days before the charges against him were dropped.

Now it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.

Hunt signed a contract with Peru’s government to explore within Lot 76 in 2006 and later brought in the Spanish firm Repsol as a half-partner in the project. The lot overlaps with much of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve as well as 16 titled native communities-including those 10 that are adjacent to the reserve and jointly responsible for managing it with the national government. Hunt’s exploration work calls for 18 seismic lines with 20,000 detonation points across the southern part of the reserve. This work is to be serviced by 166 mobile camps with heliports, as well a main base camp. FENAMAD said these activities are to take place in the most sensitive part of the reserve, near the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Río Madre de Dios.

FENAMAD’s Iviche, a traditional Harakmbut leader, said the oil project threatens the forests and waters of the reserve, which was established in 2002 for the use of local Harakmbut, Yine, and Matsigenka communities.

“Our communities have decided not to allow these activities in the communal reserve,” Iviche said, charging that Hunt is operating without the consent of the area’s native inhabitants, most of whom oppose the oil company’s presence. “They have never consulted with the communities.” Failing to adequately consult indigenous communities on land-use issues in their territories is a violation of both international standards and Peru’s constitution.

The Amarakaeri reserve was created following years of petitioning by FENAMAD-and a march in April 2002 by some 1,000 indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado. Each of the 10 communities bordering the reserve has its own range within it for hunting and gathering, but indigenous residents cannot enter the zonas silvestres, or wild zones-yet this is where Hunt is now operating.

Additionally, Lot 76 borders (or nearly borders, separated by a strip barely two thirds of a mile wide) two national parks. On the north, it borders, and slightly overlaps with, a State Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation. This was created along with the Amarakaeri reserve to protect “uncontacted” Matsigenka bands believed to be living in this zone.

On September 9, FENAMAD sought an injunction against Hunt’s exploration work before the Madre de Dios Superior Court of Justice, the equivalent of a local district court. Said FENAMAD secretary Jaime Corisepa: “We have to attack on every level, using the courts, but we are ready to defend our territory physically.”

In 2007, Hunt began holding “information workshops” at FENAMAD’s offices in Puerto Maldonado and at some of the communities bordering the reserve. Corisepa denies these were consultations, saying the company representatives were just “announcing what they were going to do.”

One community, Shintuya, has signed an agreement with Hunt to accept $30,000 in compensation for allowing the company access to its titled lands. There is a dispute as to whether the community approved this decision by the two-thirds vote required under Peruvian law.

FENAMAD said Hunt is required at a minimum to compensate the two communities whose lands it seeks to enter-Shintuya and Puerto Luz, at the eastern and western ends of the seismic lines, respectively-and the Amarakaeri reserve’s governing council, known as the Administrative Contract Executive (ECA). Hunt has no deal with Puerto Luz, and a tentative deal with the ECA is now in question.

“Laws are being systematically ignored by the company and the government,” Corisepa charges. “The Peruvian state has a hydrocarbon policy that violates the rights of indigenous communities. This is what the Amazon uprising was about.”

*

At a September 13 meeting at FENAMAD’s Puerto Maldonado office, leaders from the 10 communities bordering the Amarakaeri reserve met privately to hash out their position, then invited three Hunt Oil representatives to receive their declaration. The atmosphere in the small thatched-roof conference room was tense.

Three communities, Shintuya, Puerto Luz, and Diamante, dissented from the decision to issue a declaration opposing the project. Nonetheless, the joint statement from FENAMAD and the ECA opposing the Hunt-Repsol presence in the reserve demanded that “this decision be respected by the state as well as the said companies.”

Anoshka, a Harakmbut leader from the community of Masenawa who is also a popular singer on the local cumbia circuit, gave the most impassioned statement. “I plead with you from my heart to respect our desire,” she said, directly addressing the Hunt representatives. “A majority of our communities have decided no. The conflicts you are sowing among us will not succeed, but you are already causing damage to our communities.”

Speaking of the Amarakaeri reserve’s management plan ostensibly drawn up with input from the 10 communities, she added: “The master plan said the communities favor the oil company. This is a lie and we will never accept this.”

The master plan, drawn up by the government natural-resources agency, is strongly contested. Although the ECA signed off on it, many Harakmbut charge the communities were not informed of last-minute changes that afforded oil companies easier access to resource exploitation in the most sensitive area of the reserve. Also at issue is the plan’s “recommendation” that the ECA accept any hydrocarbon contracts that the state permits in the reserve.

FENAMAD is especially concerned about the status of the high jungle in the south of the reserve, near the border with Cuzco region, which protects the watersheds of several tributaries of the Río Madre de Dios that run through the reserve. FENAMAD argues that under Peru’s Water Law, this area should be a strict protection zone, which would bar resource exploitation there. Instead, it was reclassified as a zona silvestre, affording a lower level of protection.

Equally controversial is the environmental-impact study produced for the Hunt project by the Peruvian firm Demus. In April, Demus workers in the community of Barranco Chico were confronted by local residents armed with clubs, who chased them from their lands. FENAMAD challenged the impact study before the Mines and Energy Ministry as what Corisepa calls a “plagiarism”-basically a cut-and-paste job from earlier studies elsewhere in the Amazon. Nonetheless, the ministry accepted it in June.

Hunt workers may be the next to be physically confronted. At the end of the meeting, Iviche announced that if Hunt doesn’t withdraw from the reserve, the communities are prepared to carry out a desalojo-eviction.

*

Silvana lay, a forestry engineer who serves as Hunt’s director of environmental health and safety for the Lot 76 project, defended the company’s position in comments outside the meeting at the FENAMAD office.

“We weren’t going to come in until the master plan was approved,” she said. “We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We are working in the part where we are allowed to work under the rules that were put in the plan. The last thing we want is a dangerous situation for our workers or the communities.”

While the ECA did not have to sign off on the impact statement, Lay points out that public hearings on the study were held in the village of Salvación. “We held workshops with the communities on whose lands we are going to work, with the ECA invited.”

Lay insists that Hunt, in contrast to many resource companies in Peru, is committed to playing by the rules. “We have the [impact statement] approved. We have the master plan approved. We did workshops with the communities-all this before we started our work. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead-within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.”

She points out that the $380,000 offered in compensation to the ECA is nearly 25% of the Amarakaeri reserve’s five-year budget. It is now in question whether the ECA will accept this money. She said the $30,000 pledged to Shintuya is forthcoming, and that Hunt will stay off of Puerto Luz community’s lands until a compensation deal is finalized. Hunt’s overall budget for the exploration project is $17 million, she said.

Lay asserted that the Hunt contract is in the best interests of the communities. “They can use that money to police the reserve against illegal logging and mining. The illegal exploitation is the greatest threat to the reserve, while the media and government are checking up on us. We are a good opportunity for the reserve.”

FENAMAD attorney Milton Mercado rejects Lay’s portrayal. “The ECA has never signed any document allowing Hunt in the reserve,” he said. While the master plan allows oil exploitation in a general sense-with approval by the National Service of Protected Areas-it makes no reference to the Hunt contract. And this provision was added above the protests of the communities, he added.

“The only consultation has been with Shintuya and Puerto Luz,” Mercado said. Consultation is mandated by the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, to which Peru is a signatory. The principle is also enshrined in Article 6 of Peru’s constitution.

Mercado sees a hopeful precedent in a February ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru’s highest court, in a case concerning Lot 103-which includes the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, a high jungle that protects the headwaters of important rivers in northern San Martín region. Citing potential damage to aquifers, the tribunal ruled against a consortium including Repsol, Petrobras, and Occidental Petroleum, ordering a halt to exploration in the reserve until a master plan is in place.

FENAMAD’s case against Hunt likewise focuses on the issue of protecting aquifers. But Mercado points out that it is the first in the history of Peru to rest on lack of consultation with indigenous communities-and a favorable ruling would be precedent-setting.

*

Almost all of the Madre de Dios region is divided into hydrocarbon exploration lots. Sapet, a Peruvian venture of China National Petroleum, has a license for Lots 113 and 111-the former covering the Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and the latter actually covering the town of Puerto Maldonado. The company has pledged not to explore in the reserve, for the moment at least. Lot 157, on unprotected lands to the east of the large protected areas, is currently suspended following the “Petrogate” scandal, in which officials are accused of kickbacks in the granting of concessions to Norwegian company Discover Petroleum.

These medium-sized firms are clearly viewed as an advance guard for the industry majors, who mostly abandoned operations in the Peruvian Amazon because of instability in the 1990s-and who García openly hopes to woo back.

Shell Oil explorations in area in the mid-1980s took a grave toll in disease on the recently contacted Yaminahua people in the north of Madre de Dios, who now have a titled community in neighboring Ucuyali region.

A decade later, a consortium including ExxonMobil and Elf began exploration in Lot 78-covering nearly the same territory as the contemporary Lot 76. This lot was reorganized in subsequent years as the communities around the Amarakaeri reserve were being titled.

In addition to hydrocarbons, timber is being massively exploited in Madre de Dios, mostly by Peruvian firms for export to the United States and China. There are legal concessions on state land in the largely unprotected eastern half of Madre de Dios-as well as much illegal exploitation in the protected areas.

Gold is next in line in the local resource boom. Legal placer and dredge mining concessions operate on the region’s rivers. But illegal and highly destructive hydraulic mining goes on in pirate operations.

A hydroelectric project is pending on the Río Inambari, with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht likely to get the contract. The Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Brazil’s Atlantic coast with Peru’s Pacific is also under construction through Madre de Dios.

This matrix of development interests could make the frontier zone of Madre de Dios a very different place in a few short years-and many young indigenous people fear what the future will bring. Wili Corisepa, a young Harakmbut from Shintuya who works with FENAMAD, said: “In the time of the missionaries, in the time of the rubber, of the timber, and now the oil, they all lied to us. It is the same person wearing a different mask.”

Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report (ww4report.com). Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Copyright © 2009 NACLA

For a week I was preparing with prayers, candles, intensions… Daime work at the Barquinha of Dona Gabriel each day… Came the 27th, a Saturday before the Semana Santa and the entity Don Rafael was going to operate me. Finally I am going to heal the pain in my back which does not leave me alone ever since I had hernia of a disk two and a half years ago. It is normal that such treatments are done over 3 ceremonies (three 27th) but I had only one (two to come).

I did not know I was supposed to bring something to lie on, and sitting was never as difficult as it was that night.
I did not know what to expect… we were seven or eight people in a dark room, drinking daime and waiting. Are the mediums going to come in? Would They heal me?? Would Antonio (Toni), the medium with which Don Rafael works, come and assist me with Arruda and prayers?
Hour after hour, Glass after glass, we were left alone while there was a ceremony going on in the church. It was my appointment with Don Rafael, no one else. When an entity makes an appointment, he keeps it.
Sao Miguel was clearing the space and Oxalá passed by once in a while. I felt my light body being penetrated, stretched, snapped… like Iansa and Sao Miguel having a dance within me. Flashes of light, colours, patterns… but in fact, during the operation I did not feel much. I saw a saint/nun dressed in light purple healing the young man who sat opposite to me. After many hours, towards the end, I have seen a bent old man sitting beside me, and I assumed it was Don Rafael. A Preto Velho? (No, he is not Only, but perhaps he is As well).

Back at a friend´s house, after the treatment, I have touched the bed… my body was a baby’s body, one again. Nothing I could not do with my body. Not a thing I did not want to do. An amazing joy of existence filled me, the felicity of having senses. Diving deep into each tiny sensation; one finger touching another, feet crawling against ears, back moving against floor. Feeling each and every cell from within. Feeling each and every cell from without. Deep Vipassana. Deep gratitude for every pulse of the skin.
Deep sensing turns into seep sensation turns into sensuality. Baby is reaching puberty. Amazed by the perfection of my own body. Being allowed to touch and love and adore my own perfection without the disturbances that stopped me from doing so at the time.
Don Rafael gifted me with the teaching of self love, and the totality of self acceptance. Don Rafael gifted me with the memory of being newborn, and the choice to be in whichever physical memory I want to, the choice to let go of the armours, the protections I built during all stages of life when my vulnerability was met with roughness. Don Rafael showed me the choice of letting go and choosing to feel, The joy of feeling, The courage to be divine, The courage to hurt.
I felt without a safety net, without a bodyguard… but was I really? I had Sao Miguel with me. Somehow his presence mixed with the feeling of Greg and a great opening, sensuality and joy.
I couldn’t sleep, kept moving. The joy of moving- each movement is a blissful dance, a wholeness (yoga). Breathing, stretching, exercises became bliss once a gain.

I had received a Yoga/ Dance /Meditation routine.

And…

I met Don Rafael.
He was there that night- A teacher, a Friend, a lover, the guardian of the great mystery.

My back?
I have a choice now, to remember.

(For Greg who asked and I never answered)

On the 18th of February 2010, the Peruvian government signed an agreement to sell energy to Brasil for the duration of 30 year.

Inambari Dam is the first in a list of Dams that would be built to supply the energy to Brasil.

From http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com we learn-

“Both governments speak of a total of 15 dams to be built with Brazilian technology to meet the market. According to the minister of Mines and Energy of Brazil, Edison Lobao, this production could reach 20 thousand MW.

The Agreement for the Supply of Electricity to Peru and Export Surplus in Brazil that will last 30 years is ready and about to be signed.

Inambari be the first of these six plants already planned. A project economic and energy front. Until today the Peruvian Amazon had never seen any work of this size. Inambari will be the largest hydro plant in Peru, the fifth of South America, with its 41000 hectares of flooded area would form the second largest lake in the country, second only to the very lake Titicaca.”

Talking about numbers… Most numbers concerning the Dam are now on 46000 hectares of forest that would be flooded. The last number Brack gave about Mines forestation was 18000 Hectares… not that it makes it any better…
Bank Information Centre is giving us a further look into the horror-

“The Inambari Hydroelectric Center would be the largest in Peru and the fifth largest in Latin America, requiring an investment of 4 billion dollars, with an installed generation capacity of 2000 MW. The dam will be constructed under a framework agreement signed by the governments of Peru and Brazil in April 2009 for the construction of six hydroelectric dams in Peru. 　

The direct benefits to Peru would essentially be in the form of income from energy exported to Brazil. The bilateral agreement states that part of the energy would be for national consumption, however currently, no information is available regarding percentages of energy generated for export and energy for internal consumption.

Among the possible impacts of the project, according to ECSA Engineers, the company in charge of the EIA for the project, the dam’s reservoir would flood 161Km of the Interoceanic Highway as well as 65 communities in the departments of Puno, Cuzco and Madre de Dios that would have to be relocated and compensated. Additional impacts include those typical of dams in the Amazon, including affectation of flora　and fauna, interruption of fish migratory routes, impacts on the flow and navigability of the river, among others. The final EIA of the project is expected to be released by ECSA Engineers in early 2010. “

Bank Information Centre is giving much more details and maps, so do pay it a visit.

It is also telling us-

“There is a sole article concerning the environment is very vague: “Art.9 Sustainable Development. All activities within the agreement will be carried out respecting the sustainable use of natural resources and environmental conservation,…”　Previously, those responsible for drafting the agreement received a series of recommendations from civil society organizations and professionals, which were not included.”

Arequipa: miners speak of six dead and several disappearing
They demand that a high commision would be formed in manage of the situation.

The deaths of the 6 informal miners in Chala (Arequipa), occurred during the “indefinite strike”. The miners fear that the number of deaths would increase. According to the same demonstrators at least 6 others have disappeared.
(From Peru21 this morning)

The miners are taking to the streets of various cities, in reaction to the new Law by the minister of Environment, Antonio Brack whom On January 31, 2010, passed a law that forbids mining in different areas in Peru.

 
Around 1000 miners and their family have occupied the Plaza de Armas (the Square of Arms) of the jungle city Puerto Maldonado, Peru, today, the 4^th of April, at noon.

The miners taking to the streets of Puerto Maldonado is the first of, possibly, many days protest, in reaction to the new law by the minister of Environment, Antonio Brack whom On January 31, 2010, passed a law that forbids mining in several parts within the State of the Madre de Dios.

The law would force the mining into designated areas. Miners would have to form co-operative (become formal miners) and the ways they are mining would be controlled. They would have to perform certain tasks in order to restore the environment they have destroyed (“replant trees after they finish mining” I was told by a local writer, whose brother is a miner), and of course… they would have to pay taxes.

No more unofficial mining. No more small independent activities everywhere. The result such changes of would be that whole villages, placed on the “wrong” part of the map would be left without a source of an income. The new law, BTW, would do little damage, if not Much Good, to the major mining companies.

once upon a time there was a jungle ( mongabay.com )

According to the local newspaper Mi Fontera, Whose reporter´s voice and the voice of the minister are mixing in a confusing harmony, 18,000 hectares of jungle have been cut down for the sake of informal mining (gold) and 400,000 hectares of Jungle are contaminated with Mercury.

The Newspaper is quoting the minister (starting with a ´start quote´ mark but without a ´quote end´ mark),”The region of Madre de Dios is The region in the world with the highest bio diversity, something that the informal miners do not understand or just do not wish to understand.

the power of Love

The plan of the miners is to strike indefinitely until the government repeals the law, and the government has already said they will not drop the law. Once a couple weeks go by and no food is able to reach Puerto, inflation will take over and people will have to pay exorbitant prices just to eat and drink clean water.

Speaking of water, Madre de Dios has hardly any clean water, all is contaminated with Mercury from the gold mining (an interesting link about mercury contamination (and gold) from the journal Today´s Chemist http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/tcaw/10/i03/html/03willis.html . Another, more confusing blog is my own http://naturesong.wordpress.com )

And you drink it all in your ayahuasca, or is it aluminum from the pot the shaman uses?

Oil spillage in Louisiana

OIl Spillage in Loreto, Amazon rainforest, Peru

Dying man lying down, Loreto Peru (picture by Feconaco)

I was honoured and moved, to be able to join friends at the church of Reino do Sol, Sao Paulo, Brasil, on the 15th of March, singing Glauco´s hymns Chaveirinho (the little Key). The experience left many seeds in my heart, but as the internet is not stable at the moment (due to rain) I would only send this short note at this moment.

The murder happened on Friday morning, around 0100 (local time).

People started gathering at Céu de Maria on Friday 1400, singing the hinario of Mestre Irineu ‘O Cruzeiro’ with neither maracas nor music. Three Ave Marias were prayed between each hymn.

The ceremony ended around 0700 when the bodies were then transferred to a house of a friend.

The funeral ceremony started about 1000 on Saturday morning and Marco was buried 10..30.

Close friends are telling that Gauco had never before turn down anyone from a ceremony. he believed in the healing powers of the tea, and all though many people were without an interview (an official requierment in Brasil) he never have refused to give them tea. This is said to be the only time he had told someone to go and get a psychological treatment before he comes back to drink. Raoni called Carlos Eduardo (who confessed the murders) about once a week during the past 6 months, in order to inquire how the treatment is going on.

He then came to the house around 00.30 with a gun to his head threatening to commit a suicide. Gauco tried to talk him out of it. there was a conflict. Raoni came and got in the way. he shot Raoni 4 times and Gauco 4 times.

Glauco is very famous in Brasil for his work as a cartoonist. some of his works can be found at http://www2.uol.com.br/glauco/.

A month ago Glauco comforted a friend who mourned a death, “No worries, he is free and happy now”.