Peru Plans to Abolish Iconic Amazon Indigenous Reserve, NGO Claims

[Judi Lynn]

Peru Plans to Abolish Iconic Amazon Indigenous Reserve, NGO Claims
Written by David Hill
Friday, 19 September 2014 16:31

Plans are afoot to abolish a reserve for vulnerable indigenous peoples in Peru’s Amazon in order to exploit massive gas deposits and facilitate Christian evangelization, according to a report by Lima-based NGO Perú Equidad - Centerfor Public Policies and Human Rights. The report, La Batalla por “los Nanti,” argues that Peruvian state institutions, gas company Pluspetrol, and the Dominican mission have adopted a series of behind-the-scene tactics intended ultimately to “dissolve” or “extinguish” the reserve.

Established in 1990, what is now called the Kugapakori-Nahua-Nanti and Others’ Reserve (KNNOR), is officially intended to protect the lives and territories of indigenous peoples living in what Peruvian law calls “isolation” and “initial contact.”

Although almost 25 percent of the KNNOR has been included within a gas concession run by Pluspetrol for over 10 years, Perú Equidad believes the reserve now stands to be abolished altogether in order to facilitate operations in the concession as well as open up new areas outside of it. Pluspetrol’s concession, called “Lot 88”, includes the San Martín and Cashiriari gas fields to the north and south of the River Camisea. The Camisea gas project, as operations are known, is Peru’s largest ever energy development scheme.

“There is an obvious strategy to dissolve the reserve, which will mainly benefit Pluspetrol,” the report reads. “State sectors interested in expanding the gas frontier are participating actively. So too is the Dominican mission, for which the reserve is an obstacle to missionizing.”

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5052-peru-plans-to-abolish-iconic-amazon-indigenous-reserve-ngo-claims

[dipsydoodle]

1. Tragic

Just tragic.

[Judi Lynn]

2. And who the #### gave religious people permission to stomp all over these people, also.

Too many things in this world just don't add up.

[Enthusiast]

3. This is horrible.

I don't know which is worse, the gas extraction or the Christian evangelization.

[ReRe]

4. The big stick theory has got to be put to rest once and for all...

The stick that Buckminster Fuller told us about back there at the beginning of time. Uncivilization marches on. Backwards. I wish they would just leave them people alone to live how they want. Reminds me of this beautiful child you shared last week, Judy Lynn:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=891764

[Judi Lynn]

6. You're so right. Technology, materialism evolved, the human spirit degraded wildly, too often.

It's not a good situation when the most deteriorated among us are managing our planet.

You're so right about the stick.

Also reminded of Teddy Roosevelt's worship of power when he said "Walk softly, and carry a big stick."

Sad, isn't it?

We can hope, somehow, that little girl and her people will survive without trauma, but the chances aren't good, are they? It was good to see that little face again. Thanks.

[newfie11]

5. well that sucks

A case of big money and religion coming together

[Judi Lynn]

7. They've been entertwined for a very long time, haven't they?

I learned from someone's post years ago at D.U., about the missionaries John D. Rockefeller used so long ago, and it stuck. They've truly worked hand in glove with money interests throughout, apparently.

From "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins, Berret-Koehler
Publishers, San Francisco, 2004:

" For instance, he (Jaime Roldos, assassinated former president of Ecuador)
accused the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an evangelical
missionary group from the United States, of sinister collusion with the oil
companies. I was familiar with SIL missionaries from my Peace Corps days.
The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had in so many other countries,
under the pretext of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.

SIL had been working extensively with the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon
basin area, during the years of early oil exploration, when a distubring
pattern emerged. Whenever seismologists reported to corporate headquarters
that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of
oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people
to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would
receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment and missionary-style
education. The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil
companies.

Rumors abounded that SIL missionaries used an assortment of underhanded
techniques to persuade the tribes to abandon their homes and move to the
missions. A frequently repeated story was that they had donated food
heavily laced with laxatives--then offered medicines to cure the diarrhead
epidemic. Throughout Huaorani territory, SIL airdropped false-bottomed food
baskets containing tiny radio transmitters; receivers at highly
sophisticated communications stations, manned by U.S. military personnel at
the army base in Shell, tuned in to these transmitters. Whenever a member
of the tribe was bitten by a poisonous snake or became seriously ill, an
SIL representative arrived with the antivenom or the proper
medicines--often in oil company helicopters.

During the early days of oil exploration five SIL missionaries were found
dead with Huaorani spears protruding from their bodies. Later, the
Huaoranis claimed they did this to send SIL a message to keep out. The
message went unheeded. In fact, it ultimately had the opposite effect.
Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered men, toured the United
States, appearing on national television in order to raise money and
support for SIL and the oil companies, who she claimed were helping the
'savages' become civilized and educated.

SIL received funding from the Rockefeller charities. Jaime Roldos claimed
that these Rockefeller connections proved that SIL was really a front for
stealing indigenous lands and promoting oil exploration..." (pp. 142-43)

More:
http://t74009.science-economics-progressive-economists.sciencetalk.info/forwarded-from-jim-craven-t74009.html

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
S.I.L. , Wikipedia:

Criticism[edit]

The organization's focus on language description, language development and Bible translation, and the missionary activities carried out by many of its field workers, have been criticized by linguists and anthropologists who argue that SIL is in essence a missionary organization, and that by aiming to change indigenous cultures, they exacerbate the problems that cause language endangerment and death.[23][24][25]

It has also been alleged that the Summer Institute of Linguistics cooperated with the American government during the Cold War, supporting counterinsurgency efforts in different Latin American countries, as well as the work of U.S. corporations working to displace indigenous populations from exploitable land resources.[26][27] One book, "Thy Will Be Done" by Colby and Dennett claim that the SIL collaborated with Nelson Rockefeller in conducting surveys, transporting CIA agents and indirectly assisting in the genocide of tribes in the Amazon basin.[28] In the 1981 book "Is God an American" a group of anthropologists described the work of SIL in Latin America and Africa, arguing that it was contributing to ethnocide of indigenous groups by supporting government policies of cultural assimilation.[24][29]

SIL did not consider these accusations valid, rejecting their involvement in ethnocide, because they claimed that efforts to change cultural patterns is not equivalent to destroying cultures, and because all their work is based on voluntary participation of indigenous peoples.[30][31][32] SIL also argue that in fact are actively making endangered languages less endangered by promoting them within the speech community and providing mother-tongue literacy training.[33][32]

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_International

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Of course, the other abuse goes all the way back to the seizure of the New World by Europeans. Accounts of how the Native Americans from the tip of Chile to the North of Canada have suffered such astonishing abuse, with NO ONE to turn to for help, NO ONE on the horizon to intervene on their behalf, would break any real human heart in a trillion pieces.

The native citizens who were in the Americas already were most certainly not the "savages."

[newfie11]

8. America has done such horrible things to people in other countries.

Thanks for posting this. Yet here in America this is ignored and Chavz & Correa become the bad guy.
That doesn't even include the horrific things done in this country because of the color of someones skin.
Yet these type of atrocities are still going on today by this country and the greedy oligarchs are making more money.
Most people don't know the Lakota on Cheyenne River Res got free heating oil from Chavez. I worked there for 8 years and don't know how that came about of if it is still going on.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Before the oil deal went through, Democratic Representatives and Senators, with leaders of tribes,

went to the oil companies, and asked them for discounted rates for their poor citizens who would be having trouble with their winter heating bills. They were shown the door, handed their hats, sent on their ways.

That's when they asked Citco, Venezuela for help, and Hugo Chavez offered to help with dramatic price discounts for the winter.

~ ~ ~

DU'ers have been discussing the oil which has gone to US Native American tribes .........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014861987

[newfie11]

10. Thanks for that link

I had not seen it. I was on the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, mostly.

I don't know what Cheyenne River would have done without the free oil.

And I wondered why people here in America hated him so.
Wish there were more like him.

[ReRe]

11. Capitalism, the savage

The opposite of civilization. And if anyone on this planet actually act or dare to think in a civilized manner, or in a defensive manner to protect one's way of peaceful living upon the land, the savage appears with its advance group: racist evangelistic missionaries.

Wasn't the use of religious missionaries a 20th century tactic, to propagandize or soften the peoples before the capitalists swooped in to ravage their natural resources?