LIMA – Tribes and opposition leaders sharply criticized Peruvian President Alan Garcia on Wednesday for rejecting a law that would have given Indians more power to halt mining, oil and road projects on their native lands.
Congress had passed the law to try to calm tensions that have lingered since more than 30 people died last year in a clash between police and Amazon tribes. It was the worst violence of Garcia’s term.
Indigenous groups say Garcia’s drive to lure foreign investment to the rain forest will undermine their traditional way of life and speed up logging in the Amazon basin.
“It’s clear that Garcia doesn’t understand or respect the rights of native communities,” said Edgard Reymundo, a Congressman from the Bloque Popular political group.
By approving the bill, Congress was attempting to codify in local legislation parts of the U.N. convention on indigenous peoples, which Peru signed in 1994. It says that tribes must be consulted when governments plan projects on their lands.
But Garcia, who sent the law back to Congress just a few days before it is to go into a two-month recess on Friday, said the law went too far.
“The law approved by Congress goes beyond the U.N. convention because it doesn’t just include tribal communities in the Amazon but also peasant communities,” Garcia told reporters.
“So if you want to build a road or gas pipeline and the locals say ‘no,’ then there is no road or electricity.”
The law might tie the hands of future administrations and give some Peruvians more rights than others, he said. “Peru is for all Peruvians … and for there to be democracy we can’t place limits on future legislatures or governments.”
TRIBES COMPLAIN
The Andean country has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for much of the past decade, riding a wave of demand for its mineral exports, especially from China.
Garcia has lined up $35 billion in investments for Peru’s mining sector for the next decade and foreign companies are pouring millions more into its natural gas and oil sector.
“This law represented a critical opportunity for the Peruvian government to demonstrate that it is serious about resolving the kind of social conflict that led to the tragedy,” Gregor MacLennan of Amazon Watch, which works with tribes in Peru, said referring to last year’s deadly clash.
The tribes said Garcia is afraid they would hold up big mining or oil projects.
“This means the government can do what it wants on ancestral indigenous lands, even if tribes disagree with an extractive transnational company going into our communities to deforest Mother Earth,” Aidesep, a group representing dozens of Amazon tribal communities, said in a statement.
Opposition leaders in Congress said they might try to pass the bill again with such a large majority that it would not need Garcia’s support to become law. But they cautioned that the bill would likely be stalled until at least Aug. 15, when Congress returns from recess.
“It’s absolutely evident that Garcia continues to work for the economic interests that run this country,” said Daniel Abugattas of the opposition Nationalist Party. (Additional reporting by Dante Alva; editing by Chris Wilson)
