BAGUA GRANDE, Peru (Reuters) – Peruvian troops searched for missing police and patrolled towns in the Amazon on Sunday after 60 people died in clashes with Indian tribes opposed to President Alan Garcia’s plans to mine and drill oil in the jungle.
Troops controlled the town of Bagua Grande, around 870 miles north of the capital Lima, after an overnight curfew was imposed to defuse the worst crisis of Garcia’s term.
An indigenous leader said 40 protestors were killed and the government said 23 members of the security forces perished in two days of battles over Garcia’s push to lure billions of dollars in foreign investment to the rainforest. Protestors say they are defending their ancestral home.
“The situation is normal at the moment, but we are continuing with patrols as a precaution,” said Major Jose Luis Santillan, police chief in nearby Bagua Chica, close to the stretch of highway known as “Devil’s Curve,” where 11 police died when they moved to break up a roadblock on Friday. Dozens of police were held hostage by protestors, but most were freed a few hours later. On Sunday, two were still missing.
“We are looking for the missing police and the weapons the indigenous Indians stole from them,” Santillan said.
Elsewhere, thousands of Indians with wooden spears vowed to dig in at blockades along remote Amazon highways and continue protests if government forces try to stop their demonstrations.
Garcia has accused protesters of acting like terrorists and attacking their own country, saying they may have been incited by foreigners. Garcia, who is a fierce critic of Latin America’s leftist leaders, did not specify who he meant.
But in the past, members of the Peruvian government have accused the leftist governments of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian leader Evo Morales of links to Garcia’s ultranationalist rival, Ollanta Humala.
“There is a conspiracy aimed at stopping us from using our natural resources for the good, growth and quality of life of our people,” Garcia said on Sunday.
“You have to ask yourself: Who stands to benefit from Peru not being able to use its gas? Who stands to benefit from Peru not finding any more oil?” Garcia asked. “We know who. The important thing is to establish the ties in these international networks which have emerged to foment unrest.”
RED TUNICS AND WOODEN SPEARS
Champion Nonimgo from AIDESEP, Peru’s leading indigenous rights group, said more than 40 protestors had been killed in the violence.
Protesters include women and children from the surrounding subsistence farming region, some dressed in long red tunics and headbands and holding traditional wooden spears. Families have set up tents of plastic sheeting along the roadside.
Analysts say Garcia – whose approval rating is just 30 percent – will likely have to fire senior Cabinet members, including the prime minister, and roll back investment laws to end the stand-off.
Indigenous tribes, worried they will lose control over natural resources, have protested since April seeking to force Congress to repeal laws that encourage foreign mining and energy companies to invest billions of dollars in rainforest projects.
The violence has highlighted deep divisions between elites in Lima and the rural poor, and threatened to derail the government’s push to further open Peru to foreign investors.
Garcia’s office has accused protesters of using methods like those of the Shining Path, a brutal insurgency that waged war on the state in the 1980s and 1990s, until its leaders were caught and holdouts went into cocaine trafficking.
(With reporting by Dana Ford and Carlos Alberto Quiroga in Lima. Writing by Simon Gardner)
