Ah, good old martial law. They also used it to bring down pakistan. While the West stood idly by and supported it. Same old, same old in Peru. The military is killing protestors. Let this be a leeson to us, the only people who can take away your freedoms is your OWN military!! History has proven this. -------------------------------------------- Peru: Blood Flows in the Amazon By James Petras June 12, 2009 "ICH" -- - In early June, Peruvian President Alan GarcÃa, an ally of US President Barack Obama, ordered armored personnel carriers, helicopter gun-ships and hundreds of heavily armed troops to assault and disperse a peaceful, legal protest organized by members of Peruâs Amazonian indigenous communities protesting the entry of foreign multinational mining companies on their traditional homelands. Dozens of Indians were killed or are missing, scores have been injured and arrested and a number of Peruvian police, held hostage by the indigenous protestors were killed in the assault. President GarcÃa declared martial law in the region in order to enforce his unilateral and unconstitutional fiat granting of mining exploitation rights to foreign companies, which infringed on the integrity of traditional Amazonian indigenous communal lands. Alan GarcÃa is no stranger to government-sponsored massacres. In June 1986, he ordered the military to bomb and shell prisons in the capital holding many hundreds of political prisoners protesting prison conditions â resulting in over 400 known victims. Later obscure mass graves revealed dozens more. This notorious massacre took place while GarcÃa was hosting a gathering of the so-called âSocialistâ International in Lima. His political party, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) a member of the âInternationalâ, was embarrassed by the public display of its ânational-socialistâ proclivities, before hundreds of European Social Democrat functionaries. Charged with misappropriation of government funds and leaving office with an inflation rate of almost 8,000% in 1990, he agreed to support Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori in exchange for amnesty. When Fujimori imposed a dictatorship in 1992, GarcÃa went into self-imposed exile in Colombia and later, France. He returned in 2001 when the statute of limitations on his corruption charges had expired and Fujimori was forced to resign amidst charges of running death squads and spying on his critics. GarcÃa won the 2006 Presidential elections in a run-off against the pro-Indian nationalist candidate and former Army officer, Ollanta Humala, thanks to financial and media backing by Limaâs rightwing, ethnic European oligarchs and US overseas âAIDâ agencies. Back in power, GarcÃa left no doubt about his political and economic agenda. In October 2007 he announced his strategy of placing foreign multi-national mining companies at the center of his economic âdevelopmentâ program, while justifying the brutal displacement of small producers from communal lands and indigenous villages in the name of âmodernizationâ. GarcÃa pushed through congressional legislation in line with the US-promoted âFree Trade Agreement of the Americasâ or ALCA. Peru was one of only three Latin American nations to support the US proposal. He opened Peru to the unprecedented plunder of its resources, labor, land and markets by the multinationals. In late 2007, GarcÃa began to award huge tracts of traditional indigenous lands in the Amazon region for exploitation by foreign mining and energy multinationals. This was in violation of a 1969 International Labor Organization-brokered agreement obligating the Peruvian government to consult and negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants over exploitation of their lands and rivers. Under his âopen doorâ policy, the mining sector of the economy expanded rapidly and made huge profits from the record-high world commodity prices and the growing Asian (Chinese) demand for raw materials. The multinational corporations were attracted by Peruâs low corporate taxes and royalty payments and virtually free access to water and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates. The enforcement of environmental regulations was suspended in these ecologically fragile regions, leading to wide-spread contamination of the rivers, ground water, air and soil in the surrounding indigenous communities. Poisons from mining operations led to massive fish kills and rendered the water unfit for drinking. The operations decimated the tropical forests, undermining the livelihood of tens of thousands of villagers engaged in traditional artisan work and subsistence forest gathering and agricultural activities.
The profits of the mining bonanza go primarily to the overseas companies. The GarcÃa regime distributes state revenues to his supporters among the financial and real estate speculators, luxury goods importers and political cronies in Limaâs enclosed upscale, heavily guarded neighborhoods and exclusive country-clubs. As the profit margins of the multinationals reached an incredible 50% and government revenues exceeded $1 billion US dollars, the indigenous communities lacked paved roads, safe water, basic health services and schools. Worse still, they experienced a rapid deterioration of their everyday lives as the influx of mining capital led to increased prices for basic food and medicine. Even the World Bank in its Annual Report for 2008 and the editors of the Financial Times of London urged the GarcÃa regime to address the growing discontent and crisis among the indigenous communities. Delegations from the indigenous communities had traveled to Lima to try to establish a dialogue with the President in order to address the degradation of their lands and communities. The delegates were met with closed doors. GarcÃa maintained that âprogress and modernity come from the big investments by the multinationalsâ¦,(rather than) the poor peasants who havenât a centavo to invest.â He interpreted the appeals for peaceful dialogue as a sign of weakness among the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon and increased his grants of exploitation concessions to foreign MNCs even deeper into the Amazon. He cut off virtually all possibility for dialogue and compromise with the Indian communities. The Amazonian Indian communities responded by forming the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP). They held public protests for over 7 weeks culminating in the blocking of two transnational highways. This enraged GarcÃa, who referred to the protestors as âsavages and barbariansâ and sent police and military units to suppress the mass action. What GarcÃa failed to consider was the fact that a significant proportion of indigenous men in these villages had served as rmy conscripts, who fought in the 1995 war against Ecuador while others had been trained in local self-defense community organizations. These combat veterans were not intimidated by state terror and their resistance to the initial police attacks resulted in both police and Indian casualties. GarcÃa then declared âwar on the savagesâ sending a heavy military force with helicopters and armored troops with orders to âshoot to killâ. AIDESEP activists report over one hundred deaths among the indigenous protestors and their families: Indians were murdered in the streets, in their homes and workplaces. The remains of many victims are believed to have been dumped in the ravines and rivers. Conclusion The Obama regime has predictably not issued a single word of concern or protest in the face of one of the worst massacres of Peruvian civilians in this decade â perpetrated by one of Americaâs closest remaining allies in Latin America. GarcÃa, taking his talking points from the US Ambassador, accused Venezuela and Bolivia of having instigated the Indian âuprisingâ, quoting a letter of support from Boliviaâs President Evo Morales sent to an intercontinental conference of Indian communities held in Lima in May as âproofâ. Martial law was declared and the entire Amazon region of Peru is being militarized. Meetings are banned and family members are forbidden from searching for their missing relatives. Throughout Latin America, all the major Indian organizations have expressed their solidarity with the Peruvian indigenous movements. Within Peru, mass social movements, trade unions and human rights groups have organized a general strike on June 11. Fearing the spread of mass protests, El Commercio, the conservative Lima daily, cautioned GarcÃa to adopt some conciliatory measures to avoid a generalized urban uprising. A one-day truce was declared on June 10, but the Indian organizations refused to end their blockade of the highways unless the GarcÃa Government rescinds its illegal land grant decrees. In the meantime, a strange silence hangs over the White House. Our usually garrulous President Obama, so adept at reciting platitudes about diversity and tolerance and praising peace and justice, cannot find a single phrase in his prepared script condemning the massacre of scores of indigenous inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon. When egregious violations of human rights are committed in Latin America by a US backed client-President following Washingtonâs formula of âfree tradeâ, deregulation of environmental protections and hostility toward anti-imperialist countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Obama favors complicity over condemnation. James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. In 1973-76 he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. He received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
Yeah, and Bush would have sent the new Pinochet more weapons. And yes, I do know Pinochet was strongman of Chile, not Peru
This is rather funny because the World Bank has been always supporting Monroe Doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_doctrine and never gave much shit about indigenous people in practice.
You beat me to it. I'm still surprised that none of the resident Jew-haters have yet to start a thread about that cat-killing asshole in Florida and his <i>Jewy</i> sounding name.
Yup. According to some here, every problem known to mankind is either due to Jews, Israel or the USA. China, Islam, dictatorships, North Korea, Iran, Palestine, etc. are shining saints clothed in white.