On November 17, 2009, German authorities arrested the head of the largest rebel force in war-torn eastern Congo, charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The rebel force, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), is at the heart of a war in Congo that has killed an estimated six million people since 1998 – the highest war-related death toll since World War II. While this arrest is a large blow to the FDLR and brings eastern Congo closer to peace, more effort must be made to stop the principle means by which the FDLR and other armed groups get the cash to keep the war in Congo going – namely the trade in minerals that end up in our electronic gadgets such as cell phones, laptops and iPods.

Germany has been home to Ignace Murwanashyaka for over a decade. The FDLR leader actively directed his rebel army’s military operations and strategy in Congo by phone. Murwanashyaka enjoyed a peaceful life in the city of Mannheim while his troops wiped out villages, turned children into soldiers and viciously butchered countless civilians in Congo.

Fighting between the FDLR and the Congolese army has forced nearly one million people from their homes since January 2009, and an estimated 7,000 women and girls have been raped. The FDLR is purposely killing civilians to punish them for perceived support for the UN- and US-backed Congolese army offensive. They regularly use rape as a key part of their war strategy to shock communities in mineral-rich areas. To finance its operations, the FDLR makes millions of dollars annually by taxing and trading minerals such as tin and coltan, which make their way to smelters in Asia and are then processed into electronic circuit boards in our cell phones and computers.

The FDLR is a 6,000-strong Hutu extremist rebel group. Many of its members participated in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. After the genocide, the fighters who would later create the FDLR fled westward into eastern Congo, where they’ve since terrorized the region and served as an excuse for neighboring Rwanda to repeatedly invade, occupy and plunder Congo’s minerals.

The regional war in Congo has left over six million dead. An estimated 45,000 people are currently dying every month. It is estimated that over 200,000 women and girls have been raped throughout the Congo’s long war.

Germany had arrested Murwanashyaka in 2006 and attempted to prosecute him for war crimes, but they abandoned the case due to lack of evidence. Allowing the FDLR leader to live freely in exile, however, was undermining Germany’s own investments in stability in eastern Congo. In addition to the millions of dollars in humanitarian and development aid Germany has provided Congo in recent years, Germany led the EU peacekeeping mission sent to help ensure peace during Congo’s 2006 elections, providing 780 soldiers and hosting the mission’s headquarters in Potsdam. During bloody ethnic fighting in northeastern Congo in 2003, Germany sent 350 soldiers to provide medical and logistical assistance to the French-led EU peacekeeping force known as Operation Artemis.

Murwanashyaka’s arrest was likely sparked by a recent series of articles on the FDLR leader and his role in the current fighting in Congo in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung. As the paper’s Africa editor, Dominic Johnson, explained prior to the arrest, “We hope that this investigation will contribute toward raising the profile of this issue in Germany and encouraging the German authorities to take appropriate measures. It is clear that any European effort to bring peace to Eastern DRC has to involve moving against leaders of armed groups operating from Europe with impunity.”

While Murwanashyaka is considered the chief ideologue and “supreme military commander” of the FDLR, other senior leaders continue to live freely in Europe and North America. The FDLR’s Secretary General, Callixte Mbarushimana, lives in France, for example, and French authorities are indicating that he has a right to act as the rebel force’s spokesman.

While Murwanashyaka was maintaining overall control of the FDLR and its operations, his removal is only one part of a wide-ranging strategy that is badly needed to end the horrors of this protracted war in eastern Congo. A paramount effort in this strategy must include tackling the international trade in minerals that the FDLR and other armed groups in eastern Congo use to get the funds to buy the weapons needed to massacre civilians and prolong the war. To succeed, we as consumers and citizens need to be key players in this effort. This involves encouraging our representatives in government to pass legislation requiring electronics companies to investigate and independently audit their minerals supply chains. This way, we can know if we are funding groups like the FDLR when we buy a cell phone or a laptop. While the US Senate and House of Representatives are currently considering such bills – the Congo Conflict Minerals Act and the Conflict Minerals Trade Act, respectively – more countries need to develop similar measures. Since the electronics industry has already spent roughly $6 million this year lobbying to water the bill down, we need to put pressure on electronics companies by writing and urging them to find out and make public where they get their minerals. We have a right to know if they are ultimately sourced from war-torn parts of eastern Congo.

Greg Queyranne, MA, is a Canadian researcher focusing on conflicts in central Africa. He can be reached at gregoryqueyranne@hotmail.com.

Salvador is a Mexican migrant laborer who works on a farm in southern Ontario. At first glance he is a small and unassuming man, but one conversation reveals that he is well-read, intelligent and speaks powerfully on world history, politics and philosophy. One day working beside him reveals a nearly unbelievable work ethic: he works at full speed all day every day.

Salvador told me about a farm he worked on in Manitoba. The Mexican workers were packaging vegetables one day and the boss’s dad (the retired farm owner) came in and starting kicking up a huge fuss about them being too selective with the quality of the vegetables: “Don’t throw that out,” “that’s perfectly ok,” etc. So they lowered the quality a little bit. A few days later, some of the orders got returned because the quality was too poor. The boss asked around wondering what had happened. An employee named Guillermo told him that the boss’s dad had instructed them to be more lenient with the selection. This got back to the dad, who pulled Guillermo into the lunchroom and beat the shit out of him. Guillermo did not fight back, and came out of the room with some serious damage to his face.

A few days later, Salvador was working out in the field. He was standing on a wagon that the boss was recklessly driving around and he fell off and broke his arm. Salvador was taken back to the bunkhouse, with no word about if or when he’d get to see a doctor. He sat waiting in agonizing pain with no access to painkillers. After four or five hours, he called the Mexican consulate, which is supposed to represent the interests of its compatriot workers. The consulate told him that he was there to work and instructed him not to cause any trouble. Salvador was incensed. He thought, “fuck this, we are being treated like animals out here, I’m calling the police.” And he did. He dialled 911 and asked for someone who spoke Spanish. He told them about his accident and lack of treatment. They said it didn’t sound like a criminal offence, but they could send an ambulance. He told them about Guillermo’s beating and messed up face. This was of more interest to them. They sent out a police cruiser and when the officers saw Guillermo and his bruises they arrested the boss’s dad. As sweet as this sight must have been, it was merely a temporary victory. Was there a trial? Was Guillermo’s testimony taken? No. Within a few days, both Guillermo and Salvador were back in Mexico. Guillermo swore to never return to this country. Salvador requested to switch to a different farm.

I spent the last four and a half months working and living with Mexican migrant farm workers on two farms in southern Ontario. Ten thousand Mexicans and over ten thousand other foreigners come to Canada each year to work on farms, in greenhouses and in food packaging plants. The story Salvador told me is not at all unusual, I heard many more like it.  

Before this summer, I didn’t even know that a migrant labor program existed. I didn’t know that workers are often provided inadequate housing, work in poor conditions and are frequently disrespected by their employers and other Canadians. I didn’t know that the rights guaranteed to Canadian workers are often glossed over and ignored in the case of foreign migrant workers and that despite paying the same taxes they are treated as an underclass.

But this is not my life. It was just my summer. I was merely an observer, a student. Conversation by conversation, I learned of the abuse, the horrendous conditions, the tyrannical bosses, the goals and dreams, the drive and determination, the unwavering positive outlook.

Mexican workers come to Canada for the incredible financial opportunity: daily wages can be as much as eight times higher than those in Mexico. Life for the poor in Mexico is somewhat desperate. The difficulty of creating better lives for their families is staggering – few can hope to give their kids a decent house, a good education, the opportunity to escape the hard-work/low-pay lives of their parents. In Mexico avenues out of this poverty simply do not exist. Canada is a way to get a leg up.

Mexicans also come because they are desperately needed. Many Canadian farms do not operate with Canadian labor. Farm work is incredibly unattractive to most Canadians: it is difficult, the hours are long and irregular and the pay is minimum wage. Furthermore, many of the benefits and rights that apply to all other workers in this country – overtime, holiday pay, paid breaks – do not apply to agricultural workers in many provinces. At most sizeable Canadian farms, Canadian workers probably hold managerial positions while temporary foreign workers do the labor. The way our economy and agriculture is set up, it would be impossible to grow our own food without migrant workers from Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, Thailand and elsewhere. When you “buy Canadian” produce you are probably buying food grown in Canada by foreign migrant laborers.

The Mexican migrant labor program, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), is a joint venture between the Canadian and Mexican governments. It is attractive to Mexico for alleviating unemployment and underemployment and bringing in money from Canada. It is attractive to Canada for providing the farm labor we cannot get at home. Mexican workers are supposed to have the same rights and get the same benefits as Canadian workers, but this is far from the case. 

Workers are frequently accommodated in substandard housing. I heard many horror stories: a 20-man house with one bathroom, one refrigerator and one stove; group showers; ten-by-ten rooms housing four people; bathroom lines so long that men resort to showering with the garden hose; improvised housing with no insulation. According to the SAWP contract, the housing provided by employers must pass an inspection, but it is unclear who is performing these inspections and what criteria they are following.

Farm work is by nature unsafe. This is especially problematic when you are a migrant worker who is eager to please and extremely hesitant to raise concerns for fear of being reprimanded or repatriated. When workers get injured, the solution is often to ship them back to Mexico where they are supposed to be able to receive care paid for by their health insurance. In practice, it is often very difficult or near impossible to collect insurance payments in Mexico and certain treatments are difficult to access, such as dialysis for severe pesticide exposure. Despite the fact they pay for Canadian health care with their taxes, Mexican laborers usually end up receiving far inferior care to what they would get in Canada or no care at all. My coworker Mauricio expressed the sentiments of many Mexicans: “Here, no one is valuable. You get sick, they send you back to Mexico and send another burro [donkey] to replace you.” The reality is that migrant workers are often treated as worthless, faceless, exchangeable beasts of burden – expected to do what they’re told and be grateful for whatever they get. Except in the most rare scenarios, they are treated as units of labor rather than human beings. 

In order to return to the same farm each season, Mexican migrant workers must be “named” by their Canadian employers. If they’re not named, they can be placed on a different farm and it is not uncommon for unnamed workers to miss a season or two while the Mexican Ministry of Labor finds a placement. The naming process is the cloud that looms over the migrant worker’s every action. If a worker is not named he could miss a season or two, which could wreak havoc on his family’s finances. When he returns to work, there’s no telling what kind of farm he could end up at. The naming process means that if the worker finds himself in a tolerable situation, it is in his best interest to cause as little trouble as possible to the employer and to only draw attention to himself for being a good worker. Any other attention is dangerous and puts his family’s economic security at risk.  

A few years ago, my coworker Mauricio landed on a farm with a problematic supervisor. The supervisor would switch the workers’ hours around to suit his own erratic schedule. Some days they’d work normal hours and others they’d work 2 p.m. until 3 a.m – they were completely at the mercy of the supervisor. Mauricio made a complaint to the Mexican consulate, which did nothing of any consequence. Mauricio’s boss did, however, get wind of the complaint and began to drastically reduce Mauricio’s hours. The farmer did not request Mauricio the next year, and told other farmers in the area to avoid employing him since he was a “troublemaker” and too “political.” The message is clear: never complain. This condition bleeds into every aspect of migrant workers lives. Most are hesitant to complain about poor living conditions or even to ask for something broken in the house to be fixed. They generally do not express grievances. They are often reluctant to see the doctor – partially because they don’t want to lose the wages that they would earn during the trip, partially because they don’t want to cause a hassle. To stick out is to put your family at risk: You get insulted, you swallow it; you get beaten, you deal with it; you get assigned a dangerous job, you do it the best you can. The onus of providing for your family outweighs the right to refuse dangerous jobs.

The whole experience of being a migrant worker is one of enforced humility. When you come to Canada, you are no longer in control of your life, no longer the head of a household, no longer your own man. You are a servant whose entire life is in the hands of the employer. Many men come to Canada and are not even aware of where they are on a map. They live where they are told, work when they are told, do what they are told. They are stripped of all independence and privacy and often subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

A real tyrant ran one farm a coworker told me about. Some of his favourite catchphrases were: “What the fuck are you doing? You animals! This is kindergarteners’ work! If you don’t want to work, you can go back to Mexico!” One day the boss threw a tantrum and one worker couldn’t take it. He threw what he was carrying to the ground, cussed out the boss and said, “you do it.” The boss called a meeting with the worker and a translator and told the worker that he was getting a warning: One more slip-up and he’d be on the first plane back to Mexico. The next day, the boss heard that the worker had said he didn’t have the balls to send him back to Mexico. Two days later, the worker was gone. His peers were not surprised and almost seemed to blame the worker. He had essentially broken a cardinal rule of migrant labor: Do not draw unnecessary attention to yourself, and do not under any circumstances have any conflict with the boss.

Mexican workers experience poor conditions, racism and assaults on their dignity in Canada, but their treatment at the hands of the Mexican government is not much better. To most members of the Mexican consulate and the Mexican Ministry of Labor, the Mexicans who come to Canada are simpleminded, childlike men who need to be told what to do and should be scolded for doing otherwise. The standard response when a worker calls to complain to the consulate is: “Don’t cause trouble. You’ve come here to work, so work.” It doesn’t seem to matter what the complaint is: an untreated injury, abusive supervisors or unfair practices. Other men have told me of ministry officials saying “Now, don’t go get drunk in Canada. You’re going there to work. You are a representative of Mexico in Canada, so don’t embarrass us.” The message to the workers is clear: “It’s not about you. It’s about the farms. If you aren’t grateful for the crumbs you work for, you can get the hell out. We care about you only in writing. You are a mule and mules are replaceable.”

Mexican workers in Canada are almost completely without allies. One of their few friends is the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW), the national farm workers’ union. The UFCW is one of the few groups dedicated to fighting for migrant workers. They are in an incredibly difficult position, however, because it is so dangerous for migrant workers to even talk about unionizing. It is very common for unionizing workers not to be requested the next year, or even to be sent back to Mexico prematurely. The governments of Ontario and Alberta have taken the position that farm workers do not have the right to unionize.

During my time on the farms, I developed a deep respect and admiration for many of my Mexican coworkers. They are humble and diligent men for whom self-sacrifice in the interest of their families comes instinctively. My friend Jacobo had been working in Canada for three or four years to complete construction of his house. He was almost done when he found out that his sister’s child had cancer. Jacobo finished his house, gave it to his sister’s family and began working to complete her half-finished house. You get the sense that this was not a difficult decision for him. His sister needed the house more, so he gave it to her. Plain and simple. I got to know men who have been coming to Canada for 10, 15, 20 years, working little by little to improve their lives in Mexico. Some of their children are lawyers, doctors, scientists, veterinarians, teachers. Their hard work has paid off but they don’t brag, they just keep working. A lot of Canadians think that because the Mexicans keep coming back every year, there are no major problems with the SAWP program. I disagree – the treatment many of them get here is despicable. It is not good enough to treat foreign workers as second-class, to have one set of rights for Canadians and another for Mexicans.

Few people even know that tens of thousands of migrant workers come to Canada every year. They might buy Canadian food, but they probably don’t know that it is grown by Mexicans and Jamaicans and Guatemalans. They don’t know who or what is behind the tomatoes, apples, broccoli and onions. They don’t know that a government-managed program imports workers from foreign countries and allows them to be treated like cattle. They don’t know about living in converted barns with no insulation in October and November. They don’t know about the crowded bedrooms, the leaking roofs, the broken kitchen appliances. They don’t know about the 30-minute bike rides to find a payphone to call home, the disrespect and racism on the streets, in banks, in stores. They don’t know about Western Union employees washing their hands with Purell after dealing with each Mexican worker, the very Mexican workers who keep them open by sending 80 percent of their paychecks home every payday. They don’t know about supervisors constantly checking men’s work, telling them to go faster, do better, telling them they better shape up or get shipped back to Mexico. They don’t know about 60, 70, 80, even 90-hour weeks. They don’t know about the stress of being separated from family for months at a time, of being in an all-male, high-testosterone environment. They don’t know about rich people in Mercedes Benzes coming to Mexicans’ houses and accusing them of stealing car parts. They don’t know about coming to Canada to work your ass off only to be treated as a threat, a criminal, someone to be avoided. They don’t know how hard it is to try to learn a few phrases of English when you only have a 6th grade education, how intimidating it is to try to communicate in a foreign land and foreign tongue with people who often do not have the patience to understand.

Canadians are largely ignorant of this reality, but we implicitly support it by buying Canadian produce, by electing governments that perpetuate it and by remaining quiet and unaware. It’s time to learn what’s going on.

Edward Dunsworth

The corporate media in the West have successfully manufactured the public belief that only the violence of non-state actors should be considered terrorism. It requires a great deal of mental discipline to deny the fact that any act perpetrated to instill terror can legitimately be considered terrorism. State terrorism is the use of military force and secret police tactics against domestic and foreign opponents of a state. State terror tactics have traditionally included outright invasions, air strikes, Special Forces operations, assassination programs, kidnappings, arbitrary imprisonments, extrajudicial killings, torture and the direct support of brutal regimes.

The Strategic Value of Maintaining Strife in the Middle East

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the US government has no interest in a genuine two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. The US government seems dedicated to supporting the normalization of permanent strife in the Middle East to justify their military and economic presence in the region. The established US record of supporting military dictators like Saddam Hussein and religious despots like the king of Saudi Arabia have consistently fostered discontent and resentment in the region. There is evidence reported in a January 2008 edition of the Ottawa Citizen indicating that the Muslim world does not hate the US for cultural reasons but instead deeply resents American interference in issues like the endless Palestinian/Israeli conflict. According to political scientists Peter Furia and Russell Lucas, “[we found] … no evidence that ordinary Arabs resent countries [the US] for what they are, and considerable evidence that they resent them for what they do.” This evidence contradicts George Bush’s facile claim that Muslims hate Western freedom so much that they feel obliged to destroy the secular world.

Occupation and the Continuing Erosion of Ever-Tenuous Palestinian Sovereignty

The seizure of Palestinian territory has traditionally been accomplished in intentionally stealthy increments. It started long before the creation of modern Israel following the annexation of Palestine in 1948. As Noam Chomsky describes in Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy: “Those familiar with the history of Zionism will recognize the method, dating back to the 1920s: ‘dunam [settlement] after dunam,’ arousing as little attention as possible.” The modern equivalent was expressed in the 1996 comments of then Israeli housing minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, when he described Israeli expansion into the West Bank: “I build quietly. My goal is to build and not encourage opposition to my efforts. What is important to me is to build, build, build and build some more.” The Israeli government, with full US support, has traditionally chosen this subtle and gradual path of seizing Palestinian lands and, perhaps more importantly, water resources. It continues to this day, generally with either US indifference or mild rebukes. This is the reality of what is euphemistically referred to as the peace process.

Peace is Possible

A two-state solution recognizing the mutual right to national self-determination is the only reasonable solution to the Palestinian/Israeli divide. Only the US government has the power and influence to generate this reality. Only the US has the military authority to ensure that established borders and agreements be respected. Only the US has sufficient influence over the United Nations to convince Israel to accept UN peacekeeping forces on its territory in a buffer zone between Israeli territory and Palestinian territory and to ensure a fair allocation of water and natural resources between Palestinian and Israeli.

Morgan Duchesney is a Canadian writer and martial arts instructor with an interest in social justice and international affairs. He has published work on the war in Afghanistan, Canadian democracy, the Canadian banking system and various martial arts topics. He holds an MA in Political Economy from Carleton University in Ottawa. Read the full text of this essay at honeybadgerpress.ca/articles.

George W. Bush’s final major presidential act in African military affairs was also the first military activity for the newly created US Africa Command, or AFRICOM. The unintended outcome of the AFRICOM-supported military action – “Operation Lightning Thunder,” which was carried out by Uganda, Congo and Southern Sudan – was disastrous for civilians: over 1,000 people were slaughtered in revenge killings by one of Africa’s oldest and most brutal rebel army, the Lord’s Resistant Army (LRA).

In November 2008, during his final days in office, President Bush personally authorized financial and logistical assistance for a coordinated attack on the LRA in northeastern Congo. AFRICOM assisted with Operation Lightning Thunder’s planning and provided a team of 17 advisers and analysts, intelligence, satellite phones and $1 million in fuel. Lightning Thunder sought to destroy the elusive LRA rebels’ central command center and to eliminate the group’s psychopathic and messianic cult leader, Joseph Kony.

The creation of AFRICOM reflected the Bush administration’s militaristic approach to foreign affairs. Declared fully operational on September 30, 2008, AFRICOM is America’s tenth unified command. Its declared role is to improve the Pentagon and other US government areas’ ability to collaborate with each other and with partners “to achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic growth can take place.” Due to African countries nearly unanimously opposing establishing AFRICOM’s headquarters on African soil, AFRICOM is currently based in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM has understandably generated considerable concerns that it will not only militarize US foreign policy in Africa, but that it will also further militarize one of the world’s most war-ravaged continents.

Despite three months of military activity and Ugandan troops on Congolese soil, Lightning Thunder was unable to effectively destroy the LRA or capture Kony. Since minimal planning was undertaken for humanitarian protection, Lightning Thunder led to a string of LRA retaliatory attacks on the local Congolese population. The 2008 Christmas Massacre saw the slaughter of hundreds of civilians, with subsequent revenge killings in Congo and Sudan over the following weeks resulting in a death toll of over 1,000. Furthermore, an estimated 200,000 people have been displaced since Lightning Thunder began.

Regardless of Lightning Thunder’s horrendous failure, the Obama administration cannot lose sight of the violence and destabilization that the LRA continues to inflict upon Central Africa. It is estimated that since 1986, the LRA has abducted 66,000 children and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, in addition to devastating parts of four countries: Uganda, Congo, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. International action against this vicious group is urgently needed.

As the head of the most influential country in the world, President Obama has an unmatched ability to lead and coordinate a multilateral effort focused on ending the LRA’s campaign of terror in the heart of Africa. The US and its African allies, however, cannot pursue a solely military solution to the problem. President Obama should be pressed to immediately appoint a special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, just as he has commendably appointed special envoys for Sudan, the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan. Parallel bipartisan bills introduced in the US Senate and House of Representatives in May – both titled “The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009” – would commit the Obama administration to develop a comprehensive strategy to disarm the LRA and to help rebuild communities devastated by its atrocities. Greater citizen pressure on the American president, senators and representatives is needed to ensure that an envoy is named and that these important bills are passed. America should also engage in increased collaboration with the UN’s peacekeeping force in Congo, exert tougher pressure on the government of Sudan to end its material support of the LRA, and increase non-military assistance to UN and humanitarian organizations working in the region.

After more than two decades of unmitigated child abductions, murders, mutilations and other horrors at the hands of the LRA, civilians in the region deserve a life of peace.

Greg Queyranne, MA, is a Canadian researcher focusing on conflicts in Central Africa.

The enduring conflict in Bagua, Peru between the government and indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon led to violent confrontations last month. Between 30 and 84 deaths were reported and more than 100 people were wounded when security forces used violence to try and stop a roadblock. According to the police, indigenous people fired at the policemen first. Representatives of different indigenous groups in the area contest this, saying they were only armed with their traditional spears. Most sources affirm that shots were released from police helicopters.

The stake of the conflict is the admittance of multinational companies to the areas in northern Peru, which is rich in oil, gas and minerals. For almost two months, more than 30,000 indigenous inhabitants of different provinces of the Amazon and the highlands protested the way in which the state and companies want to invest in the exploitation of natural resources. Indigenous people and farmer communities want to take part in the decision-making process about the development of the land.

Over the last two years, changing regulations have led to the removal of a large number of ecological and social restrictions on the extraction of resources – leading to much less restrictive legislation. This eases direct foreign investments developing mines and exploiting oil and gas in Peru. Indigenous people protested these changes by going on strike and forming roadblocks for 57 days.

On May 9, the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency in seven provinces of the Amazon, which means that “the constitutional provisions on freedom and security of persons and the immunity of accommodation are temporarily suspended, and that there is a ban on gathering.” Officially the government’s actions were to safeguard access to roads and airports and to prevent production losses due to the actions of the indigenous people. A few days later, however, it appeared to be nothing more than an alibi for using violence. Negotiations between the state and the representatives of the indigenous communities were ceased on May 15, after the indigenous people announced that they would continue their actions. The protest and the reactions of the government became grimmer.

The C169 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, set up by the International Labour Organization and ratified by Peru in 1994, obliges Peru to consult indigenous people in cases where the State or a company plans to exploit the natural resources in land occupied by indigenous people. This is not, however, a common practice in the Amazon forest. The biodiversity and the lives of indigenous people are at stake. The Sate and the companies involved – including the French oil company Perenco and the Spanish company REPSOL – push for a quick exploitation. In the worldwide context of a growing shortage of natural resources, the Peruvian Amazon forest is wanted for its potential profits.

Criticizing the indigenous people’s actions, President Alan García Perez said in a statement that “the State retains the ownership of sub-surface resources” and that “all Peruvian people have to profit the natural resources in the country.” The indigenous people do not claim ultimate ownership of the Amazon forest, but simply ask for a voice in the decision-making process in the development of the region. Alberto Pizango, leader of the umbrella indigenous people’s organization AIDESEP, explains: “we do not fight development, but we ask for development from our perspective.”

CATAPA, from Upside Down World: Covering Activism and Politics in Latin America, upsidedownworld.org.