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Monday Morning Movie : Voces Soy Andina

6:45 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Media| Movies| Peru| TV| dance · 4 Comments

26 Oct 2009

The more I think about the series Latino in America, the more comments I read here and on other sites, and the more I seek out real lives of Latinos and Latin Americans. Who needs cable when I found another documentary in the PBS Voces series, Soy Andina.

What really resonated with me about this film was how the young Peruana went to Peru and struggled with being confronted about her identity. Because she was born in the United States, she was viewed as gringa not as the Peruana she felt she was. This was done through exploring the folkloric dances of the “home of her heart”.

Capitalist Globalization Targeted Children in Peru

6:39 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Peru| Violence · Comments Off

23 Jul 2009

When we wrote about some of the violence happening in Bagua, Peru, we were clear that the neolibleral economic policies that have been choking Latin American countries and their communities were at the heart. It the struggle over control of land and life, anyone who is seen as a threat is targeted, even children.

“I was watching the helicopter….I saw it…I was scared…the bullet hit me here…when it came there was nothing…that’s what it seemed like…there was nothing….it came like this….it hit me here…..there was a lot of blood….some of my blood was on a woman…a bit of my blood was on her….I’m scared that they fired…I don’t want them to shoot at me…because I don’t want to suffer….for my mother…”

Via / Inca Kola News

Meanwhile in Peru, More Oil Drilling in the Amazon

6:09 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Peru · 2 Comments

7 Jul 2009

With the digital age fostering short term memory and not connecting any dots, it’s easy to focus only on Honduras and forget the recent violence in other parts of Latin America.

Hardly a month since 30 plus Indigenous people from Peru were killed by police for protesting the exploitation and violation of their homes (we’re not talking about some mythical rainforest land, people live there), Peru has approved an oil drilling project in the Amazon for an Anglo-French company.

The project, located on land inhabited by two tribes of uncontacted Indians, is believed to be Peru’s biggest oil discovery in thirty years. The company, Perenco, a major gas supplier to the UK, has in the past denied any uncontacted Indians live there.

Until recently, Perenco had been blocked from entering the area by local indigenous protesters. With help from Peru’s armed forces, the company managed to break through the blockade on at least one occasion.

High-ranking figures in Peru’s government hope that Perenco’s project will transform the Peruvian economy. While protests against the company were taking place, Perenco’s chairman, Francois Perrodo, an Oxford University polo blue and scion of one of the wealthiest families in France, met Peru’s President Garcia in Lima and pledged to invest $2bn in the project.

Perenco intends to build new platforms and wells involving airlifting in, amongst other things, 42,000 sacks of cement. It admits that ‘contamination of soil’, ‘contamination of water’ and the flight of game and birds are possible consequences of its work

Via / Survival

23 Dead in Bus Accident in Peru

8:24 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Latin America| Peru| World| society · Comments Off

3 Jul 2009

978307

Some very tragic news out of Peru today: at 23 people have died and 50 have been injured in a head-on collision between two buses near Lake Titicaca. AP reports:

The morning crash occurred in the Santa Lucia district, about an hour’s drive from Lake Titicaca high in the Andes, a Puno state highway police officer told The Associated Press by phone.

The officer requested anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the crash.

Emergency crews said there could be as many as four more people still trapped in the wreckage, the officer said. Fourteen of the dead were identified, all of them Peruvians.

Unfortunately, as Peruanos know, this kind of thing is quite common. In January of this year, a bus fell 500 feet off a cliff, killing 30 passengers and injuring 20 more. According to the BBC, in 2008, at least 875 people were killed and more than 5,000 injured in this type of accidents in Peru.

Via / Google News

Image via 20 Minutos

Peru Repeals Two Land Laws at the the Core of Deadly Attacks on Indigenous

8:15 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Peru| Politics · Comments Off

19 Jun 2009

peruindigenous-300x2001 Yesterday Peru’s Congress overturned two laws at the heart of the violence between the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and Peruvian police.

The vote to throw out legislative decrees 1090 and 1064 could delay foreign investment in mining and energy projects in the rain forest, and may prompt Peru and the United States to reevaluate clauses of their free-trade pact. [ID:nN06294730]

President Alan Garcia issued a series of decrees last year under powers Congress gave him to implement the U.S. trade deal and create a framework to regulate investment in the Amazon.

But after deadly violence, he backtracked and asked Congress to overturn two of the most divisive laws, although others remain in effect.

I haven’t sat down to read a comprehensive list of all the laws that impact this region and the people living there, pero I am more interesting in seeing which laws remain in effect and how those will be used. I came across this piece from Foreign Policy in Focus that puts the situation in a more global Latin American context as well as linking the laws in Peru to the imperialist idea that free trade agreements are “gifts” from the first world to the third world. A real interesting read.

Via / Inka Kola News

Peruvian police accused of massacring indigenous peoples in Peru

3:00 pm By la Macha · Peru · Comments Off

11 Jun 2009

A great interview from Democracy Now! about the incidents in Peru and the U.S. role in shaping the violence:

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Peruvian President Alan Garcia defended the police actions and lashed out against the deaths of the policemen. He blamed, quote, “foreign forces” for the violence and spoke of a, quote, “conspiracy” to stop his government from exploiting natural resources.

PRESIDENT ALAN GARCIA: [translated] These death mongers would like the world to denounce hundreds of natives being killed. But what has been found are dozens of police with their throats slit. That’s the truth when one talks of the facts of these deaths. And you might ask why they are our police deaths, if they are the one who are armed. The explanation for all of this, you come to understand, is a will for dialogue on the part of these humble policemen, who had no desire to fire their weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: Peruvian President Alan Garcia defending the police actions against indigenous protesters last week. Over the weekend, Garcia, a free trade advocate, said 40,000 natives did not have the right to tell 28 million Peruvians not to come to their lands. Anyone who did so, he warned, would lead Peru into, quote, “irrationality and a backwards primitive state.”

Since April, indigenous groups have opposed new laws that would allow an unprecedented wave of logging, oil drilling, mining and agriculture in the Amazon rainforest by blocking roads, waterways and oil pipelines. President Garcia’s government passed these laws under “fast track” authority he had received from the Peruvian congress to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement.

Friday’s clashes followed a governmental decision to reject congressional attempts to overturn some of the laws.

More reports from Peru

2:40 pm By la Macha · Peru · Comments Off

11 Jun 2009

peruprotests via favianna

I was told that the indigenous people had “tortured, gutted, and violently killed the police men they had captured the day before, slicing their necks and in at least one case cutting their eyeballs out.” You can also read about this in some of the Peruvian papers, such as El Comercio.

These accounts were not mentioned neither in the NY Times article, nor the BBC one, and so its validity is in question. (Of course the framing for both articles is centered on the police and not on the protestors themselves, also victims of violence) It seems that this piece of the story is either made up or being exagerrated to readers into a general sentiment heading in the direction of “Those Savages Must Be Stopped!” In other words, the “savagery” is described as being perpetrated by the indigenous people, when in actuality, it is the Peruvian military that is committing the “savagery,”, with their guns, tear gas, and tanks; backed by big oil and logging companies, and by the “free-trade-loving” president Alan Garcia himself. Not to mention how “savagely” the Amazon land is being destroyed day by day by the oil profiteers, nor how these companies are destroying the bio diversity of one of the most important regions for planet earth.

This type of fear mongering is to be expected when you are the president of a country that just signed Free Trade Agreements with China and Canada. He even went as far to call the resisters “terrorits.” Ben Powless, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario and blogger with Rabble.ca, writes:

“Garcia declared the Indigenous elements to be standing in the way of progress, in the path of national development, wrenches in the gears of modernity, and part of an international conspiracy to keep Peru down. In a troubling statement on the resemblance of the Indigenous protestors to the infamous Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) armed insurrection, Garcia seemed to imply the Natives were a band of terrorists as he stood in front of hundreds of military officers in a nationally televised speech. He continued to decry the Indian barbarity and savagery, and called for all police and military to stand against savagery.”

Peruvian Minister of Women Resigns

7:29 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Controversia| Peru| Politics| Women · Comments Off

10 Jun 2009

cvildosof The Peruvian Minister for Women,
Carmen Vilodoso (pictured), resigned yesterday for unspecified “political reasons” which everyone is taking to mean the violence against Indigenous communities.

The resignation happened after Peruvian Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas made a presentation before the Peruvian Congressional Defense Commission that blamed the violence on Peruvian Jungle Inter-ethnic Association (AIDESEP) leaders.

Via / Prensa Latina

The role of U.S. in Peru clashes

5:41 pm By la Macha · Environment| Peru| Violence| economy · 3 Comments

9 Jun 2009

peruindigenous Being in the U.S. affords me certain privileges, namely allowing me to be unaware of how laws of the U.S. affect citizens in other countries. I knew on some level what the fighting in Peru was about (corporate versus indigenous nations versus Peruvian government), but of course, the role of the U.S. is so hidden from people in the U.S., we don’t see it until we are told.

From msnbc.com:

The strikers’ demands are the same as those of the protesting Indians: that Congress revoke laws to promote oil and natural gas extraction, logging and large-scale agriculture on traditional Indian lands. Garcia decreed the laws to comply with a new U.S.-Peru free trade agreement.

“We don’t get anything from this huge exploitation, which also poisons us. We’ve never seen any development and my community lives in poverty,” local Aguaruna leader Mateo Inti told The Associated Press in Bagua, the scene of Friday’s violence.

They also want Garcia and his Cabinet prosecuted for the bloodshed, which they say also killed 30 Indians. The government puts the civilian death toll at nine — outraging the Indian leaders who accuse police of burning and hiding more bodies.

“We’re not taking even one step back. We haven’t lost this fight,” protest leader Daysi Zapata said.

In a two page article, there is one sentence that details what all this has to do with the U.S.–or in other words, how U.S. style capitalism is killing people a world away from the U.S.–or, in other words, how people in other countries learn to “hate” the U.S.

Or, more bluntly, people don’t hate the U.S. because we’re ‘free’ and because of our ‘rights,’ they hate us because we create economic structures that destroy and violate their land, communities and peoples–all in the name of protecting and defending our ‘rights.’

On a tangent, this is what makes me think that maybe “ethnic media” has some legitimacy. I cringe at the name “ethnic media,” but if it is the only media that is attempting to do something as simple as explain what U.S. trade agreements are doing to the world–then maybe I can get over the name a lot faster than I thought I could.

Corporate media should be ashamed of itself.

Interview With Peruvian Quechua Congresswoman Hilaria Supa

7:25 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Blogs| Peru| Politics · Comments Off

9 Jun 2009

Last month I wrote about how Peruvian Quechua Congresswoman Hilaria Supa was under attack in Peru, with her Indigenous identity being attacked as a deficiency in her work.

Carlos in DC, who generally dislikes me and VivirLatino for claiming Latino identity, had the opportunity to interview Supa when she was here in NYC speaking at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. In the three part interview Carlos asks Supa about Indigenous identity, the value of the Coca leaf, and the attacks on her from the mainstream Peruvian press.

You can see the entire three part interview here.

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