HAVANA TIMES – “The territory is of vital importance to us. It guarantees us life and the lives of our future generations; it gives us food and medicine, but the authorities want to destroy it,” Indigenous Amazonian leader Julio Cusurichi told IPS, denouncing the new reform of the “Forestry and Wildlife Law” recently approved by the Peruvian parliament.
In December 2023, two articles of this law – formally known as Law # 29763 – were modified to authorize measures he feels will damage the Amazon territories, already experiencing accelerated degradation from the deforestation caused by drug trafficking, logging, mining, and monoculture.
“Our existence is wrapped up in the territory, but they don’t respect it. We’re threatened by the illegal activities and by everything the government frames as “development,” said Cusurichi, speaking by telephone from Peru’s southeastern city of Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon department of Madre de Dios. The population of the area – estimated at 187,000 – are already living in a zone where extensive biodiversity exists side by side with illegal, and generally informal, mining activities.
Cusurichi, 53, is a member of the Shipibo tribe. In 2007, he received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his defense of the rights of the uncontacted indigenous tribes. He currently serves as treasurer of the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep).
Aidesep brings together nine organizations and 109 federations from the Amazon region, representing over 2,400 native communities that are home to 650,000 people in the Peruvian jungle. The tribal languages there have been classified into 19 linguistic groups.
Peru as a whole has a total population of 33 million and possesses the fourth largest jungle area on the planet. Over 60% of its territory is covered in Amazonian rainforest, rich in forest and animal species. Yet despite the indigenous people’s struggle to conserve the land, deforestation is advancing, and the recent parliamentary decision is a heavy blow.
“This law worries us, because it represents the interests of the large investors who wish to continue destroying the Amazon; it will trigger the massive invasion of our territories, and we’ll be left unprotected,” affirmed the Shipibo leader.
Among the eight countries whose territory includes part of the Amazon basin, Peru has the second largest tract of Amazon territory with 13% of the total – second only to Brazil with 60%. The Amazon jungle area covers nearly 302,318 square miles, 62% of the Peruvian territory, divided among six departments where 66 original tribes and subgroups live.
Indigenous peoples’ territories now face greater legal insecurity
On December 14, 2023, on the eve of the closure of the annual legislative period, a majority of the Peruvian Congress voted in favor of a change to the Forestry and Wildlife Law. Among other things, this “reform” suspends for up to three years, “the obligation to demand that the land remains forested as a requirement for granting valid land titles.”
It prohibits the granting of titles during that period in areas where the recognition, titling or expansion of native communities is in process; and in areas where the establishment of territorial reserves is being processed for peoples in voluntary isolation or undergoing initial contact.
It also establishes that private parcels wi
