Casement was sent by the British government to investigate crimes committed by British-registered rubber giant, the Peruvian Amazon Company. He found, ‘The crimes charged against many men now in the employ of the Peruvian Amazon Company are of the most atrocious kind, including murder, violation, and constant flogging’.

Thousands of Indians were enslaved and killed during the rubber boom. © W Hardenburg

Agents of the company rounded up dozens of Indian tribes in the western Amazon to collect wild rubber for the European and American markets. In a few short decades many of the tribes were completely wiped out.

Much of the detail of this horrific episode has been forgotten, but for the descendants of the rubber boom survivors, the reality of the continuing ‘rainforest harvest’ is impossible to ignore.

The uncontacted Indians seen in stunning new footage last month are likely to be descended from rubber boom survivors, whilst nearby another ‘rainforest harvest’ is being played out on uncontacted tribes’ land. Illegal loggers, driven by the high value of endangered woods, are pushing further into their remote forest homes.

US conservation organization, Upper Amazon Conservancy, documented illegal logging camps in areas inhabited by uncontacted Murunahua Indians just six months ago. Yet, according to a statement by Peru’s environment minister last week, the government has logging under almost 100% control. ‘Each mahogany tree that is chopped down today is georeferenced and controlled’.

UAC spokesman Chris Fagan told Survival International, ‘The minister’s statement is 100% incorrect. The majority of mahogany continues to be cut from Peru’s protected areas or from indigenous lands illegally, without adhering to proper management plans.’

New photos obtained by Survival International show uncontacted Indigenous people in never-seen-before detail. The Indigenous people are living in Brazil, near the Peruvian border, and are featured in the ‘Jungles’ episode of BBC1’s Human Planet.

The pictures were taken by Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, which has authorized Survival to use them as part of its campaign to protect their territory. They reveal a thriving, healthy community with baskets full of manioc and papaya fresh from their gardens.

The tribe’s survival is in serious jeopardy as an influx of illegal loggers invades the Peru side of the border. Brazilian authorities believe the influx of loggers is pushing isolated Indians from Peru into Brazil, and the two groups are likely to come into conflict.

Peru’s authorities have announced that they will work together with Brazil to stop loggers entering isolated Indigenous people’s territory along the two countries’ joint border.

This uncontacted tribe is likely to be descended from Indigenous people who escaped the atrocities of the rubber boom last century. For several decades they will have known about and have had access to metal goods, such as the knife and pan in the photo, acquired through inter-tribal trading networks.

A leading candidate for president in Peru’s April election “took his campaign” to Vancouver, reported the city’s leading daily. Earlier this month Alejandro Toledo — who served a previous term as president — met mining officials, investment bankers and journalists, telling them his government would improve the climate for mineral exploration and mine development.

“One of the reasons why I have interrupted my campaign,” Toledo told the press, “is that I wanted to transmit the message to potential investors — investors who are already involved in Peru, and who are potential investors, that we are interested in their investments.”

For some, Peru is a Canadian success story. Before 1990, no Canadian mining company operated in Peru. Now Canadian corporations dominate the country’s mining sector, operating a number of major projects. According to Bloomberg, “more than 200 junior mining exploration companies, mostly Canadian, are searching for reserves of crude oil, natural gas and other resources across the country.”

As an illustration of the size of Canadian mining investment in Peru, in late 2006 ScotiaBank announced plans to expand its operations in the country to do more business with mining clients. The Toronto-based bank is the third largest in Peru and only a small part of the $5 billion Canadian companies have invested in the country.

Where some see Canadian success, others see problems, at least for many Peruvians. “In Peru,” noted McGill University professor, Daviken Stuenicki Gizbert, “40 percent of conflicts involving local communities are over mining. The majority of the mining sector in Peru is Canadian.” In a short period in 2008 Canadian resource companies in Peru were responsible for a number of socially damaging events; an oil and gas company entered an area inhabited by a nomadic tribe that refused contact with the outside world; a mine destroyed pre-Columbian carvings; the government declared a state of emergency over fears that arsenic, lead and cadmium from a mine near Lima could pollute the capital’s main water supply.

In October 2008, Zuniga, the president of the Achuar indigenous group FENAP, told a local radio: “We, as indigenous people, reject the Canadian company Talisman. We do not want them working in our territory. We want the Peruvian state to respect us and the armed forces to stop helping the company.” In the Spring Achuar leaders traveled to Calgary to tell Talisman to stop drilling in their territory because it caused ecological harm and social conflict.

The world’s largest gold miner, Toronto-based Barrick, has also been embroiled in a number of conflicts in Peru. “Violent conflict at Barrick Gold’s Tierina in North Central Peru,” blared a 2005 Canadian newspaper headline, as the story reported two protesters killed. A year earlier Reuters reported “thousands of protesters angry at a court decision to waive a $141 million tax payment levied on Canadian miner Barrick Gold Inc. clashed with riot police in Peru’s central Andes on Monday, the latest in a run of anti-mining protests in the mineral-rich nation.”

The most high profile mining conflict in Peru took place earlier in the decade at Vancouver-based Manhattan Minerals $240 million project in Tambogrande, a small town in the north of the country. This open pit gold mine would have forced half of the town’s 16,000 residents to relocate while creating only a few hundred jobs. Godofredo Garcia Baca, a leader of the anti-mining opposition movement, was shot and killed under suspicious circumstances.

The federal government has supported many individual mining projects in the country and has worked to provide the industry with a profitable investment climate. Manhattan Minerals obtained its concession in Tambogrande six months after participating in a Department of Natural Resources trade mission to Peru and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) partnered with Barrick on a reforestation project near the company’s Lagunas Norte mine. In 2002 CIDA began a six-year $9.6 million Mineral Resources Reform Project to provide technical assistance and technological support to the country’s Ministry of Energy and Mines. At the end of 2008 CIDA added $4 million to the project and the agreement was extended until 2012. The official goal of the Mineral Resources Reform Project is “development of activities oriented to the consolidation of the institutional capacity of the sector, which means the services provided by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and to contribute to the generation of greater confidence in the Ministry and its regional offices.”

CIDA’s push to improve the prospects for Canadian miners through the Mineral Resources Reform Project warranted a visit in early 2008 by the minister of international cooperation. Embassy magazine reported: “Ms. [Bev Oda] … arrived in Peru meeting with the Latin American nation’s energy and mines minister, as well as Canadian and Peruvian mining companies and NGOs to discuss mining sector reform.”

Last year CIDA chose Peru as a “country of focus” and the federal government signed a trade agreement with Peru largely designed to improve the prospects for Canadian investors. According to Foreign Affairs, “an investment chapter in the Canada-Peru FTA [free-trade agreement] locks in market access for Canadian investors in Peru and provides greater stability, transparency and protection for their investments.”

In truth, the FTA — with environmental and labour safeguards that are “even weaker than NAFTA’s” — might be better characterized as subverting meaningful democracy. The FTA is designed to remove any future Peruvian government’s ability to change mining regulations or expropriate properties of Canadian companies.

For Canadian officials pushing the interests of mining companies Toledo’s visit to Vancouver was definitely a sign of success. But many Canadians may disagree. Instead of “success” they may see imperialism and Canada following in the U.S.’ footsteps.

Nary a single regime in the region, with the unique exception of Venezuela, has reverted the large scale privatizations of strategic economic sectors implemented by previous neo-liberal regimes in the 1990’s. In fact, the concentration and centralization of fertile lands has continued with no pretense of land or income redistribution on the policy agenda. While bankers, and investors, overseas and nationals, celebrate the economic boom and more importantly express their positive appreciation by investing billions in the region, leftist pundits claim to find a “resurgent left” and write of one or another version of 21st century socialism. In particular, many prominent and widely published Euro-American progressives and leftists intellectuals and pundits have badly served their followers and readers. Commentaries based on jet flyovers provide glowing reports of Latin America’s march to the left and national independence. Such accounts lack any empirical, historical, analytical or statistical foundation. Writers as diverse as Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Wallerstein, who have never conducted any field research below the Rio Grande at any time or for that matter consulted major investors reaping billions in today’s Latin America have become instant experts on the social and political nature of the regimes, the state of the social movements, and current economic policies. It seems as if Latin America is fair game for any and all Western leftist writers who can echo the political rhetoric of the incumbent regimes. No doubt this secures an occasional official invite but it hardly serves to clarify the most striking socio-economic features of the current crop of regimes in Latin America and their sharply defined development strategies.

A wealth of data based on extensive field interviews, statistical studies published by international development agencies, reports by economic consultancies and business and investment houses, as well as discussions with independent social movement leaders provides ample documentation to argue that Latin America has taken multiple roads to 21st century capitalism, not socialism or anything akin to it.

In fact one of the great success stories celebrated by the business press, is the marginalization of socialist politics, the general acceptance of “globalization” by the leaders of the political class (from the center-left rightward) and the de-radicalization of the intellectual/academic elite who wage battle against neo-liberal phantoms while providing populist legitimization for the politicians of 21st century … capitalism.

Twenty-First Century Capitalism: Continuities and Changes

Investors, speculators, multinational corporations and trading companies from Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East have, in recent years found virtue and value in the economic development policies pursued by recent Latin American leaders. In particular, they applaud the new found political stability and economic opportunities for long term, high rates of profits. In fact, Latin America is looked at as an outlet for profitable investments surpassing those found in the unstable and volatile markets of the US and EU.

Twenty-first century capitalism (21C) as we know its operations in Latin America overlaps in some of its major features with the multiple variants of 20th century capitalism. 21C has embraced the “open market” policies of the late 20th century neo-liberal model; it has, promoted agro-mineral exports and importation of finished goods similar to the early 20th century colonial division of labor. It has borrowed from the nationalist developmental strategy, policies of state intervention to ameliorate poverty, bailout banks, promote exporters and foreign investors.

As in most ‘late’ and ‘later’ developing capitalist countries, the state plays an important role in mediating between agro-mineral exporters and industrial capitalists (national and foreign) in some of the larger countries like Brazil and Argentina.

Unlike earlier versions of liberal and neo-liberal capitalists which, in the first instance dissolved pre-capitalist constraints on capital flows and later labor and welfare demands constraining capitalist exploitation, current heterodox liberal (or “post-neo-liberal”) regimes attempt to harness and co-opt labor and the poor to the new export strategy. In part, 21st capitalism, can pursue “free market” and welfare/poverty policies because of the favorable world market conjuncture of high commodity prices and expanding markets in Asia.

Increased activity by the state in regulating capital flows and “picking winners and losers”, promoting agro business over small farmers, exporters and large retail importers over small and medium producers and retailers – highlights the compatibility, indeed the importance, of state interventionism in sustaining the “free market” agro-mineral export model. While some sectors of capital complained about potential deficits and rising public debts resulting from increased state spending on poverty programs and in raising the minimum wage, in general most capitalist view the current version of “statism” as complementary and not in conflict with the larger goals of expanding investment opportunities and capital accumulation.

The ideologues of 21C have played a significant role in securing the legitimacy of the system, especially in its initial period, by projecting images and narratives of “anti-imperialism”, “twenty-first century socialism” and in the Andean countries a new “indigenous” variant of a “democratic and cultural revolution” (Bolivia). Given the heavy reliance on the extractive development strategies and the strong presence of foreign corporations in strategic economic sectors and on lands, in or proximate Indian territorial claims,traditional Indian rituals and symbolic representations, anti-imperialist rhetoric and charisma plays a key role in greasing the wheels of 21C, in the face of rebellious popular constituencies (especially in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia).

The paradox of putative “center left” regimes embracing the liberal ‘colonial division of labor’ in relation to the world market is to some degree obfuscated by the greater diversification of markets. “Coloniality” is identified with economic relations with the US while the new economic ties with Asia are presented as expressions of south-south solidarity and other such euphemisms, even as the latter mirrors the former in economic essentials. Nevertheless there are important political differences between the US and China, insofar as the latter does not engage in coups and clandestine operations and military interventions (at least in Latin America).

Key to the 21C model is social stability, preservation of the liberal democratic political framework and civil supremacy – all of which pits these governments against the US backed coups in the continent, including failed coups in Venezuela(2002) and Bolivia(2008) and a successful coup in Honduras (2009).

If US style militarism is a potential external destabilizing factor, the growth of narco-capitalism in the economy and state is a major domestic threat, now mostly concentrated in North America (Mexico), Central America, the Andean countries (Colombia). The dilemmas of 21C is how to balance between the destabilizing role of US drug agencies and the need to ensure “good relations” with all major trading partners-including the US.

The State of the State in 21C Latin America

Coming out of the crises and breakdown of neo-liberalism at the turn of the century, the state emerged with a stronger and more active role in the economy, particularly with regard to regulating overseas financial flows. Several regimes, increased the state’s role in revenue sharing with foreign MNC (Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela). Others partially or wholly nationalized a few troubled enterprises (Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina). Still others paid off their debt to the IMF, in order to end its “supervision” over fiscal and macro-economic policy (Brazil, Argentina). Most states adopted economic stimulus policies to reactivate the economy, reduce unemployment and accommodate some of the social demands of labor. All governments adopted policies designed to maximize income and revenues from the rising prices of commodities, by investing in and promoting the exploitation of agro-mineral production.

To cushion against future external economic shocks, the states adopted conservative fiscal policies, accumulating budget surpluses and increasing foreign reserves.

Not withstanding the expansion of the state’s role and its timely intervention to maximize benefits from world demand, it remains a subordinate partner to private capital. Even in Venezuela where several important industries were nationalized, state enterprises accounts for less than 10% of the GNP. Equally important the state and economy, public and private, is subordinate to a global “colonial division of labor” in which Latin America, exports agro-mineral products and imports finished goods. The emphasis on extractive industries, encourages large scale foreign investments, while stable, orderly, fiscal balance sheets, large scale foreign reserves and relatively high interest rates attracts financial capital.

The appearance of a strong state, however, is belied by several historical and structural factors. While some regimes purged a few of the top military and police officials from the previous dictatorships, there was not institutional transformation, including the process of recruitment, training and political reorientation. Moreover all governments continue to collaborate with and join in military exercises and training missions with US military advisory programs, with a notorious history of being the “schools of the coup-makers.” Equally dangerous to state stability, the new development strategy depends on and promotes business elites, who in the past sought out military officials and fomented coups, when and if they felt their profits or interests, were threatened.

The current stability of the Latin American states rests in part on potentially volatile commodity prices and demand, military institutions with many carryovers from the past and too many links to Washington coup-masters and a private sector willing to abide by the rules of democratic capitalism, as long as they continue to exercise hegemony over the society and economy.

Comparing the ‘Orthodox’ and ‘Heterodox’ Roads to 21C Capitalism

Considering the fact that, for now and the foreseeable future, none of the Latin American countries have any plans or projects to socialize the economy – with the possible exception of Venezuela – the key theoretical and practical issue is identifying the divergent roads to capitalist development. By origin, trajectory and social alliances we can identify ‘heterodox’ and ‘orthodox’ strategies, with some overlap at the margins.

The heterodox approach to 21C is sometimes dubbed “21st Century Socialism” by some of its local publicists, primarily by overlooking such commonplace considerations as the private ownership of the principle means of finance and production (banks, industries, mines, trade, plantations), the large scale influx of “hot money” in pursuit of bonds bearing high interest rates and low rates of royalty payments on the extraction of minerals and energy resources.

One of the keys to understanding the emergence of 21C is in its origins in the popular political upheavals and the ideological “rupture” with the previous “neo-liberal” epoch. The radical origins left an imprint in concrete measures adopted by the emergent regimes, the style of politics and the search for new sources of ideological legitimation.

By force of circumstances, namely the economic crises of neo-liberalism, the new “post neo-liberal” regimes adopted a series of populist measures to ameliorate poverty, reduce unemployment and reactivate the economy. All of these changes meant active state intervention to rectify the failures of the ‘market’, while seeking to secure the interests of the capitalist class. These measures were accompanied by a strong dosage of anti-neo-liberal rhetoric to accommodate popular rage against the inequities of the system. In some cases these changes were accompanied by a vague reference to “socialism” without central planning, public ownership or worker management. The trajectory of regimes pursuing the heterodox road began with populist welfare measures, which were gradually diluted over time as social pressures and unemployment diminished and re-activization took hold. By the end of the decade (2010), the post neo-liberal regimes turned more and more toward “developmental modernization”. The latter approach was driven by a high powered campaign to maximize private, especially foreign investment, especially in the high growth export sectors. The reordering of the post-neo-liberal state stopped well short of anything beyond replacing “neo-liberal” technocrats with others more attuned to the new heterodox leadership. For the most part, efforts were made for greater flexible accommodation of domestic and foreign social partners via conciliation of ‘moderate’ trade union and social movement leaders and the business elite.

The heterodox road to 21C has the good fortune to coincide with the world commodity boom and the good sense to put in place financial controls which softened and shorted the duration of the US-EU induced financial crash (2008-2010) and economic recession.

The ‘orthodox’ road to capitalist development was able to sustain the neo-liberal policies, through a harsh regime of repression, electoral chicanery and in some cases by outright terror, closing political space and precluding popular upheavals which might have led to heterodox policies. Prominent to the orthodox road was the rise and consolidation of a lumpen-bourgeoisie which brought in tens of billions of dollars in revenues from drug and other illicit activities which were laundered in the formal economy and provided a modicum of economic growth in certain sectors. While the heterodox model diversified trade and markets, with dynamic partners in Asia, the orthodox model remained wedded to stagnant US markets. Bilateral ties with US imperialism weakened domestic economic priorities and heightened public expenditures in non-productive (military) sectors.

The Divergent Outcomes of Hetero and Orthodox Models of 21C

The most striking differences between heterodox and orthodox economic performances is found in the striking growth, poverty reduction, and political democratization in Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina and until 2009 Venezuela and the social regression, economic stagnation, gross violation of human and democratic freedoms found in ‘orthodox’ Mexico and Colombia. Extreme violence characterizes rule by the political elites in the countries pursuing orthodox neo-liberal policies. In contrast there is a process of state consolidation based on relative open politics among the countries pursuing heterodox policies. There seems to be a strong correlation between economic growth, political legitimation, poverty reduction and the decline of state repression as a mechanism of political rule.

On the other hand there is a strong correlation between the growth and incorporation of large scale drug trafficking into the economy and polity, the reliance on violence and free markets to forcibly dispossess small holders and the increase reliance on corruption and force in the formation and maintenance of governing elites.

Heterodox models imply and practice the politics of social incorporation via capitalist welfarism, (non exempt from corruption and patronage) and tripartite consultation. Orthodox regimes operate through unregulated capital markets and its ruinous effects on small producers, public sector employees and wage workers.

The heterodox models, though drawing heavily on foreign capital, retain, cultivate and promote national capitalists linked to the domestic market and dependant on mass consumption. These sectors are not always opposed to periodic increases in wages.

The regimes pursuing orthodox strategy, heavily dependant on declining US markets and on large scale military and police expenditures, have lost out on the lucrative markets of Asia, the Middle East and other regions. Moreover, in the case of Mexico its structural dependence on an unstable tourist economy, declining immigrant remittances from an increasingly anti-immigrant US and petrol exports in decline due to negligent management, is a result of its early embrace of “free trade’ (NAFTA). The latter destroyed its diversified productive base and encouraged the turn to narco trafficking.

The result of the orthodox strategy of unregulated capital flows has two major negative consequences: it has led to the massive outflow of Mexican capital – licit and illicit – into the US, especially in real estate, bonds and stocks, depriving Mexico of investment capital. Secondly, the close links between Mexican and US finance, led to the transmission of the Wall Street financial crises impacting on Mexico’s financial and credit markets as well as its “real economy.” In contrast, in most of the heterodox economies, which had earlier suffered from close links to Wall Street, their tighter financial controls diluted the impact of the US crises on their economies.

Peru: A Hybrid Version of Hetero-Orthodox Strategies

Peru has experienced the high growth characteristic of the heterodox economies, while relying on ‘orthodox’ neo-liberal policies. It combines the extractive export model without the compensatory social welfarism and tripartite polices of the heterodox capitalist models. Peru has diversified its overseas markets – Asia is its principle export market – while embracing bilateralism and military ties with the US. It is a major drug producing and trafficking venue, but the drugs do not dominate the economy and political system to the same degree as Mexico and Colombia. While poverty reduction has not been pursued with the same vigor as Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, it has increased the consumer power of the urban middle classes, especially of Lima. While Bolivia pursues policies of symbolic representation, legal protections and political patronage to the Indian movements, Peru under Garcia, like Ecuador under Correa are more concerned about promoting investments from foreign owned mining companies as the vehicles for what they call “economic modernization” than respecting the claims of indigenous peoples.

High commodity prices, especially for industrial and precious metals, rising demand and large scale investments under conditions of limited nationalist opposition, allows Peru to sustain high growth, even as it neglects the welfare component of the heterodox model. There are indications of change. In the recent (2010) mayoralty election in Lima, a mildly center-left candidate defeated an orthodox neo-liberal, raising the possibility that the next regime may ‘modify’ the orthodox model toward greater “welfarism”.

Crises, Upheavals and the 21st Century Road to Capitalism

The crises of neo-liberalism generated a variety of political outcomes; with the possible exception of Venezuela, the popular revolts which took place in the immediate aftermath of the crises all led to capitalist outcomes, albeit sharply divergent ones. For the majority of Latin American states it meant a sharp increase in state intervention, even temporary takeovers of bankrupt or near bankrupt banks to save depositors and investors: a kind of “statism” by capitalist invitation (or obligation). The new statism became the bases for the emergence of 21st century capitalism. The “anti-neo-liberal ideology” articulated by its practioners befuddled impressionistic western intellectuals who saw it as a “new variety” of socialism or at least a “stepping stone” in that direction.

In historical perspective, statism, was from the beginning, a necessary first step toward the reactivation of capitalism. The apparently radical “first steps” were in fact the end game of the popular rebellions of the turn of the decade. Over time, especially with the economic recovery and the commodity boom, capitalism experienced a take off by the middle of the decade. Heterodox capitalism began to shed some of its distinctively several welfarist features in favor of a straight developmentalist perspective. Technocrats emphasized large scale long term foreign investments and “economic modernization.” This meant public-private investments in infrastructure, to accelerate the movement of commodities to world markets.

The sustained growth of the heterodox model put an end to the radical debate on globalization, by adopting it with a vengeance. The new argument between the heterodox and orthodox focused on how “globalization” could be harnessed to national growth and made to work for all classes via appropriate distributive mechanisms. In other words, the heterodox capitalists argued that greater global integration would deepen and increase the wealth available for social welfare. With the advent of adverse global conditions during the crises of 2009, intensified competition and a temporary decline in prices, the heterodox policymakers argued that global conditions prohibited increased social spending and wage and salary increases. With rapid economic recovery and the rapid rise in commodity prices by mid 2010, wage and salary tensions increased.

If the impetus for the onset of the new heterodox regimes was the crises of neo-liberalism, the subsequent economic success of the heterodox regimes set in motion the dynamic growth of powerful business interests seeking to refashion a more conservative rightist political configuration. The latter would reduce the wage and social welfare cost of the export sector. In effect the success of capitalist heterodoxy and its trajectory toward high growth based on large scale capital inflows has set in motion a shift to the right, including right wing political alternatives.

While important differences still persist between heterodox and orthodox roads to capitalism, the tendency is for these to diminish. The orthodox faced by the world recession resorted to greater state intervention to prop up the economy while the heterodox increased their pursuit of greater market shares by broadening their appeals to international investors.

As the Latin American countries move beyond the crises of 2008-2009, the improved economic performances, does not appear to correlate along the orthodox-heterodox axis. Slow recovery is most evident in Venezuela (heterodox) and Mexico (orthodox); while rapid recovery is evident in Brazil (heterodox) and Peru (orthodox). While one might cite Venezuela and Mexico’s dependence on the US market and Brazil and Peru’s links to dynamic Asian markets, we need also to analyze the internal class composition of each set of countries. The predominance of “rentier” elites in Venezuela and Mexico in contrast to dynamic domestic and foreign capitalists in Brazil and Peru may account for some of the differences in performances. Clearly identifying the ‘dynamic’ road to 21st century capitalist development is problematic and the outcome uncertain. The question of whether the commodity boom is part of a long or short cycle may be a determining factor in shaping the possibilities for the reappearance of authentic 21st century socialism.

The report says the logging ‘provides evidence that Peru is failing to uphold the environmental and forestry obligations of its 2009

Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US’ because ‘more than 80% of Peru’s mahogany (is) exported to the United States’. UAC’s report has been released just a month after the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled to Peru to meet President Alan Garcia and claimed, ‘The United States and Peru are working together to protect the environment.’

The report also reveals how loggers trick Peruvian and US authorities into believing the mahogany has been legally sourced. The logging ‘will continue until the US government unilaterally rejects questionable Peruvian mahogany,’ it says.

Illegal logging settlement inside the Murunahua Reserve for uncontacted tribes, south-east Peru. © Chris Fagan/Upper Amazon Conservancy

UAC’s report includes photos of a logging camp and cut mahogany in the Murunahua Reserve, which is supposedly set aside for uncontacted Indians’ sole use, in south-east Peru. It says that logging is ‘widespread’ in the reserve, and that a ‘vast network of logging roads’ used by ‘over a dozen tractors’ connects the reserve to a major Amazonian tributary.

The uncontacted tribes in the reserve ‘lack natural defenses against diseases brought from outsiders and are threatened by any type of contact,’ says the report. It also says the logging violates the ‘Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ (CITES), which aims to protect mahogany.

The Murunahua Reserve was recently made off-limits to oil and gas companies because of the threat exploration would pose to the uncontacted Indians living there.

“Democracy” shot me dead on an Amazon highway.
Now I have my own party, vote my way.
   Say it was them who attacked,
   say the police just fought back,
   say it was the Left who made them do it,
   say the Church put them up to it,
   say they didn’t know why they were there,
   say they were too stupid to care,
   and exile them to Nicaragua.
   Tell me lies about Bagua.

“Progress” shot me dead at the Devil’s Bend.
Now I earn money I’ve nowhere to spend.
   Say it was the US’s fault, not yours,
   say that was why you made the laws,
   say it was them who attacked,
   say the police just fought back,
   say it was the Left who made them do it,
   say the Church put them up to it,
   say they didn’t know why they were there,
   say they were too stupid to care,
   and exile them to Nicaragua.
   Tell me lies about Bagua.

“Development” shot me dead, left me there to bleed.
Now I see a doctor whenever I need.
   Say it was a crime to have protested,
   say they should all be arrested,
   say it was the US’s fault, not yours,
   say that was why you made the laws,
   say it was them who attacked,
   say the police just fought back,
   say it was the Left who made them do it,
   say the Church put them up to it,
   say they didn’t know why they were there,
   say they were too stupid to care,
   and exile them to Nicaragua.
   Tell me lies about Bagua.

“Peru” shot me dead, took me away in a bag.
Now I know how to die for a flag.
   Say you’ll do a thorough investigation,
   say you’ll give them compensation,
   say it was a crime to have protested,
   say they should all be arrested,
   say it was the US’s fault, not yours,
   say that was why you made the laws,
   say it was them who attacked,
   say the police just fought back,
   say it was the Left who made them do it,
   say the Church put them up to it,
   say they didn’t know why they were there,
   say they were too stupid to care,
   and exile them to Nicaragua.
   Tell me lies about Bagua.

In memory of all those who died.

The pipeline is being built to transport an estimated three hundred million barrels of oil from the depths of the northern Peruvian Amazon. The company makes no mention of the tribes in its report detailing the potential social and environmental impacts of the pipeline, despite the fact they could be decimated by contact with Perenco’s workers.

‘Failing to mention that they’re working on the land of isolated tribal people is just like what the British did in Australia: make the tribal people invisible so they can claim the land for themselves,’ said Survival director Stephen Corry.

Uncontacted Indians have left crossed spears across paths in northern Peru to warn outsiders to stay out. © Marek Wolodzko/Survival

Perenco’s report was recently made public on the Peruvian Energy Ministry’s website. It fails to mention that the pipeline would cut right into the heart of a proposed reserve for the uncontacted Indians.

The Ministry has responded by failing to approve Perenco’s report. It has asked the company to write an ‘anthropological contingency plan’, given the ‘possible existence’ of uncontacted tribes in the region.

The pipeline is projected to be 207 kms long and to connect with another pipeline already built, which will transport the oil all the way to Peru’s Pacific coast. Perenco’s report says it would affect the forest for five hundreds metres on either side.

High-ranking officials in Peru hope the pipeline will help transform Peru’s economy. Survival and many other organizations are lobbying Peru’s government not to build it.

Perenco’s report says that production is expected in 2013. The company, chaired by Oxford University graduate Francois Perrodo, has denied the existence of uncontacted Indians in the region, even though the previous company working in the region admitted contact with them was ‘probable.’

Alan García is no stranger to government-sponsored massacres. In June 1986, he ordered the military to bomb and shell prisons in the capital holding many hundreds of political prisoners protesting prison conditions – resulting in over 400 known victims. Later, obscure mass graves revealed dozens more. This notorious massacre took place while García was hosting a gathering of the so-called ‘Socialist’ International in Lima. His political party, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) a member of the ‘International’, was embarrassed by the public display of its ‘national-socialist’ proclivities, before hundreds of European Social Democrat functionaries. Charged with misappropriation of government funds and leaving office with an inflation rate of almost 8,000% in 1990, he agreed to support Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori in exchange for amnesty. When Fujimori imposed a dictatorship in 1992, García went into self-imposed exile in Colombia and later, France. He returned in 2001 when the statute of limitations on his corruption charges had expired and Fujimori was forced to resign amidst charges of running death squads and spying on his critics. García won the 2006 Presidential elections in a run-off against the pro-Indian nationalist candidate and former Army officer, Ollanta Humala, thanks to financial and media backing by Lima’s rightwing, ethnic European oligarchs and US overseas ‘AID’ agencies.

Back in power, García left no doubt about his political and economic agenda. In October 2007 he announced his strategy of placing foreign multi-national mining companies at the center of his economic ‘development’ program, while justifying the brutal displacement of small producers from communal lands and indigenous villages in the name of ‘modernization’.

García pushed through congressional legislation in line with the US-promoted ‘Free Trade Agreement of the Americas’ or ALCA. Peru was one of only three Latin American nations to support the US proposal. He opened Peru to the unprecedented plunder of its resources, labor, land and markets by the multinationals. In late 2007, García began to award huge tracts of traditional indigenous lands in the Amazon region for exploitation by foreign mining and energy multinationals. This was in violation of a 1969 International Labor Organization-brokered agreement obligating the Peruvian government to consult and negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants over exploitation of their lands and rivers. Under his ‘open door’ policy, the mining sector of the economy expanded rapidly and made huge profits from the record-high world commodity prices and the growing Asian (Chinese) demand for raw materials. The multinational corporations were attracted by Peru’s low corporate taxes and royalty payments and virtually free access to water and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates. The enforcement of environmental regulations was suspended in these ecologically fragile regions, leading to wide-spread contamination of the rivers, ground water, air and soil in the surrounding indigenous communities. Poisons from mining operations led to massive fish kills and rendered the water unfit for drinking. The operations decimated the tropical forests, undermining the livelihood of tens of thousands of villagers engaged in traditional artisan work and subsistence forest gathering and agricultural activities.

The profits of the mining bonanza go primarily to the overseas companies. The García regime distributes state revenues to his supporters among the financial and real estate speculators, luxury goods importers and political cronies in Lima’s enclosed upscale, heavily guarded neighborhoods and exclusive country-clubs. As the profit margins of the multinationals reached an incredible 50% and government revenues exceeded $1 billion US dollars, the indigenous communities lacked paved roads, safe water, basic health services and schools. Worse still, they experienced a rapid deterioration of their everyday lives as the influx of mining capital led to increased prices for basic food and medicine. Even the World Bank in its Annual Report for 2008 and the editors of the Financial Times of London urged the García regime to address the growing discontent and crisis among the indigenous communities. Delegations from the indigenous communities had traveled to Lima to try to establish a dialogue with the President in order to address the degradation of their lands and communities. The delegates were met with closed doors. García maintained that ‘progress and modernity come from the big investments by the multinationals…, (rather than) the poor peasants who haven’t a centavo to invest.’ He interpreted the appeals for peaceful dialogue as a sign of weakness among the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon and increased his grants of exploitation concessions to foreign MNCs even deeper into the Amazon. He cut off virtually all possibility for dialogue and compromise with the Indian communities.

The Amazonian Indian communities responded by forming the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP). They held public protests for over 7 weeks culminating in the blocking of two transnational highways. This enraged García, who referred to the protestors as ‘savages and barbarians‘ and sent police and military units to suppress the mass action. What García failed to consider was the fact that a significant proportion of indigenous men in these villages had served as rmy conscripts, who fought in the 1995 war against Ecuador while others had been trained in local self-defense community organizations. These combat veterans were not intimidated by state terror and their resistance to the initial police attacks resulted in both police and Indian casualties. García then declared ‘war on the savages’ sending a heavy military force with helicopters and armored troops with orders to ‘shoot to kill’. AIDESEP activists report over one hundred deaths among the indigenous protestors and their families: Indians were murdered in the streets, in their homes and workplaces. The remains of many victims are believed to have been dumped in the ravines and rivers.

Conclusion

The Obama regime has predictably not issued a single word of concern or protest in the face of one of the worst massacres of Peruvian civilians in this decade – perpetrated by one of America’s closest remaining allies in Latin America. García, taking his talking points from the US Ambassador, accused Venezuela and Bolivia of having instigated the Indian ‘uprising’, quoting a letter of support from Bolivia’s President Evo Morales sent to an intercontinental conference of Indian communities held in Lima in May as ‘proof’. Martial law was declared and the entire Amazon region of Peru is being militarized. Meetings are banned and family members are forbidden from searching for their missing relatives.

Throughout Latin America, all the major Indian organizations have expressed their solidarity with the Peruvian indigenous movements. Within Peru, mass social movements, trade unions and human rights groups have organized a general strike on June 11. Fearing the spread of mass protests, El Commercio, the conservative Lima daily, cautioned García to adopt some conciliatory measures to avoid a generalized urban uprising. A one-day truce was declared on June 10, but the Indian organizations refused to end their blockade of the highways unless the García Government rescinds its illegal land grant decrees.

In the meantime, a strange silence hangs over the White House. Our usually garrulous President Obama, so adept at reciting platitudes about diversity and tolerance and praising peace and justice, cannot find a single phrase in his prepared script condemning the massacre of scores of indigenous inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon. When egregious violations of human rights are committed in Latin America by a US backed client-President following Washington’s formula of ‘free trade’, deregulation of environmental protections and hostility toward anti-imperialist countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Obama favors complicity over condemnation.

After a fifteen-month trial, the presiding judge, Cesar San Martin, said, “The charges have been proved beyond all reasonable doubt.” The court found that Fujimori targeted various political opponents for kidnapping and assassination. Fujimori was also found guilty of killing fifteen people, including an 8-year-old boy, at a suburban Lima barbecue.

Earlier, Fujimori received a six-year prison term for ordering an illegal search. He still faces two corruption trials. He resigned from office while in Japan, which granted him political asylum because of his Japanese ancestry. In 2005 he left Japan for Chile, apparently to re-launch his Peruvian political career. He was detained there and extradited to Lima to face trial in 2007. Why did Fujimori abandon his Japanese safe haven? Was he deluded by a messianic belief that he could get away with anything, as he had for a decade as president?

The Lima judicial proceeding represents a major milestone, the first trial of a democratically elected head of state in his own country. It was also courageous, considering Peru’s violent past and Fujimori’s continuing popularity. His daughter is a member of the legislature and intends to run for the presidency in 2011. She has vowed to pardon her father if elected.

Equally courageous are the recent trials of Argentina’s former military leaders, who presided over the disappearances of up to thirty thousand Argentine citizens in the 1970s and 80s. In 2005 the government of President Nestor Kirchner removed legal protections that had shielded abusers of power from prosecution, allowing their cases to proceed.

Trials of former Argentine government officials accused of state-sponsored terror (kidnapping, torture and murder) have not simply stirred up painful memories. Trial witnesses have disappeared. Judges and prosecutors have been threatened with death unless the trials are stopped.

Apologists say the brutal tactics of the military regime were necessary to combat terrorist threats. That defense should chill the hearts of U.S. citizens, since that is precisely Dick Cheney’s rationale for the illegal kidnappings, torture and detentions without charge – our very own “dirty war” – that became U.S. policy in the Bush years.

Peru and Argentina understand that unless they identify and condemn the abuses of power committed by their own governments, their current and future regimes will lack legitimacy. “The past is not dead. It’s not even past,” as William Faulkner said. To pretend otherwise is to implicate current and future governments – of Peru, Argentina or the United States – in those crimes and abuses.

It took an outsider – a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzon – to indict the notorious Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Enabled by Henry Kissinger and the CIA, Pinochet took power in a bloody coup on September 11, 1973, murdering the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. The Chilean justice system was too cowed and compromised by Pinochet’s bloody reign of torture and murder to act against him, even after he left office.

Garzon’s indictment caused Pinochet’s brief detention in England in 1998. He was finally indicted in his own country in 2000, but died of natural causes at 91 in 2006 before he went to trial. Accused of assassinations, kidnappings, tortures, murders and drug trafficking, Pinochet told investigating judges: “I don’t remember, but it’s not true. And if it were true, I don’t remember.” (His words are reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s testimony during his Iran-Contra deposition.)

Garzon lamented that “justice was too slow,” in Pinochet’s case. Now he has written a 98-page complaint accusing former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other ex-Bush officials (John Yoo, William Haynes, David Addington, Jay Bybee and Douglas Feith) of constructing a system that allowed torture in violation of international law. Garzon accepted jurisdiction because several Spanish citizens at Guantanamo allegedly suffered torture. Will justice be too slow in this case too? Will Americans be content to let Spanish courts do their legal dirty work?

Congressman John Conyers recently released a report entitled: “Reining in the Imperial Presidency,” detailing a long list of possible Bush executive branch violations of the Constitution, human rights and the public trust. The Conyers report says: “The Attorney General should appoint a Special Counsel… to determine whether there were criminal violations committed pursuant to Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war powers, including enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance.” Conyers is very late with this, but better late than never.

As Mark Danner wrote recently in The New York Review of Books: “There is a sense in which our society is finally posing that ‘what should we do’ question. That it is doing so only now, after the fact is a tragedy for the country…” How big a tragedy? Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, noted earlier this month, that “the U.S. leadership became aware… very early on…that many of the [Guantanamo] detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value and should be released.”

But Wilkerson says that – after the incompetence the administration displayed during 9/11 and the Iraq invasion – Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were adamant that no more mistakes be admitted. “Moreover,” writes Wilkerson, “the fact that among the detainees was a 13 year-old boy and a man over 90, did not seem to faze either man…” Wilkerson waited seven years to reveal these realities, a shameful injustice. But it would be a far greater injustice never to reveal them at all. Does anyone doubt that a serious investigation of human rights violations by Gonzalez, Woo, Feith, Bybee, Addington and Haynes will lead to Rumsfeld and Cheney?

As Danner says, “…even as the practice of torture by Americans has withered and died, its potency as a political issue has grown. The issue could not be more important, for it cuts to the basic question of who we are as Americans, and whether our laws and ideals truly guide us in our actions or serve, instead, as a kind of national decoration to be discarded in times of danger. The only way to confront the political power of the issue, and prevent the reappearance of the practice itself, is to take a hard look at the true ‘empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years,’ and speak out clearly and credibly, about what that story really tells.”

On her April 7 blog post, the estimable Digby spells out the stakes: “It’s not just about ending these practices. By refusing to investigate them, and even actively invoking claims like the “state secrets privilege” to shield and avoid any possibility of a reckoning, the Administration implicates itself. Because they must use the same extreme claims of executive power, in some cases more so, to facilitate the cover-up… In failing to wrestle with this, or letting Spain do it for us, we lose ourselves.”

Concepts such as “respect for human rights” and the “moral responsibility” of the United States have not been heard in Washington since the Carter years. Their re-emergence in our national discourse is long overdue. Nixon-era cynicism and abuse of power multiplied in the smiley-faced Reagan years, then exploded under Bush and Cheney.

We must redeem our national soul before it is too late. Peru and Argentina have shown that, with sufficient political will, despite great risks, it is possible to face the truth. Without facing the truth, and all its implications, we can have no self-respect as a nation, nor can we hope to regain respect and credibility within the world community.

We cannot count on our spineless, complicit Congress to drive this issue. They could and should have done so years ago. Demanding accountability is a job for us, we, the people. Not just in Peru. Here too.