The National Council of Directors of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), in the name of its 1,250 affiliated Amazonian indigenous communities, 53 federations and 6 regions, addresses our indigenous brothers and sisters from the coast and mountains; our compatriots; national and world public opinion and Peruvian State authorities to manifest the following:
1) Recently public attention has focused on an issue which for Amazonian indigenous peoples, in particular our Machiguenga, Yine and Nahua brothers and sisters and indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation is a subject with a long history. The presence of oil companies in the Camisea River Basin and other tributaries of the Urubamba River dating back to the 1980s has resulted in the disappearance of 70% of the Nahua population; the almost total disappearance of fish from many rivers and streams due to the destruction of spawning grounds; the presence of thousands of migrants and all types of tradesmen prepared to pillage the forests without recognizing that the forest is the patrimonial territory and source of life of indigenous peoples of the zone; the de-structuring of indigenous communities and the loss of highly important knowledge about biodiversity, precisely in this so-called “Era of Knowledge”; violent contacts with peoples in voluntary isolation who have been infected with diseases to which they have no defenses; the destruction of thousands of hectares of primary forest which can no longer be restored.
2) Many institutions and the State are concerned because international financial entities have postponed the granting of loans to the companies that have carried out everything we have described in point 1). These institutions and the State, however, cannot close their eyes, as the companies do, in the face of this human and ecological disaster. They cannot do this because they have to account primarily to global public opinion and to history. These international financial entities, launching pads for economic globalization and the homogenizing globalization of communications and cultures, have to account to the world for the destruction of one of the most important ecosystems on the planet and the only source of absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere.
3) We Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon have always demanded before the Peruvian State our ancestral rights, in particular over our territories; rights that precede the Constitution of the Republic of Peru, of which we play a part as founding members and as the cultural source of our pluricultural, pluriethnic and plurilingual nation. These rights, including that of prior consultation regarding any project on our territories, have been laws of the Republic since the ratification of ILO Convention 169 in Peru, according to R.L. 26253 of 1993; and have been advanced in the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4) Is a proposal for “national development” made over the dead bodies of so many indigenous children just? Is gas so important that the companies and their allies should be wiling to liquidate the largest rainforest on earth and indigenous peoples’ knowledge about Amazonian megadiversity? Is this what they call “sustainable development”? Is this human development? Can there be human development without humans as a center point?
The sad example of this is found in our Achuar brothers and sisters from the Corrientes River (today a dead river) and from Pastaza, after oil company operations in Block 8; in our Huaorani brothers and sisters, annihilated by oil exploitation in Ecuador; in our Nanti brothers and sisters from Camisea itself, where epidemics have affected the majority of the population.
5) Peru’s indigenous peoples have made two fundamental proposals: firstly, the profound reform of the Peruvian Constitution to include rather than keep excluded indigenous peoples and their rights; and, secondly, the creation of a State institution at the highest level to address and resolve all the problems of indigenous peoples. In addition, we have demanded in all tones of voice that hydrocarbon companies leave our territories, because they are destroying our possibilities for sustainable human development. We have indicated that there should be no concessions given in the territories of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and that in organized indigenous territories prior consultation must be implemented.
6) In the context of this new Peruvian State, which is superior to the Criollo State of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, indigenous peoples are prepared to uphold our own vision of development, understood by our peoples to mean “development with identity”. In the context of this autonomy and free determination, Amazon indigenous peoples will know how to chose our priorities and our allies and we will defend our rights by whatever means necessary.
Lima, August 7, 2003
