Bloodshed at the clash of two economic cultures

Hundreds of indigenous people from the Peruvian rainforest block the road into the forest. Soldiers line up to confront them. Waiting in the wings are multinational oil and mining companies with a plan to profit from the jungle. Tear gas is fired. Some of the indigenous people begin to run, others hold firm.  A few sink to their knees, pleading, as the first shots ring out.

This was last week in the Peruvian rainforest. Peru has struck a ‘free trade’ agreement with the US, dividing the rainforest into parcels of private property to lure investment into the region. President Alan Garcia is determined to make sure that it is enacted. The Amazon rainforest has been described as the lungs of the planet. The Western Amazon exhibits an extraordinary biodiversity. Some of its people have yet to encounter the wider world. And now they are coming. Roads will be built and, with the roads, will come the loggers. Rights to exploit more than 70% of the Peruvian rainforest are being sold.

Some have spoken out. Alberto Pizango, leader of a Peruvian human rights organisation, calls on the world to enforce UN conventions regarding indigenous people. He has just been charged with sedition, conspiracy and rebellion and has had to take refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy.

You can access first hand accounts of the struggle here

These happenings are not a surprise. They are part of an age-old struggle about land and ownership, which we have to resolve if we are not to destroy the planet.

About 3000 years ago there was a king called Ahab, who decided to expand his own territory and offered money for a vineyard to a man called Naboth. It sounds like a straightforward transaction to our ears. But Naboth and his family had worked his vineyard for centuries. They understood the land as given to them through the grace of God, not as simple property. They felt an intimate connection with this corner of creation that their ancestors had tended and knew and understood every plant and creature that lived there. Now this King just wanted them to swap it for another or accept money for it. In Naboth’s mind, this just did not make sense. It would feel like the land was being defiled. So he was killed.(1 Kings 21)

What this bibical person Naboth and the indigenous people of Peru share is an understanding about land as much more than a commodity. Eric Freyfogle describes an agrarian worldview that ‘respects the land and its mysteries, that honors healthy, enduring bonds between people and place, and that situates land users within a social order that links past to future’. In such thinking land often takes on the character of ‘the holy’ and inhabitants feel a duty to care for the land. Ellen Davis believes that we need to recover such an approach to the land. She says,

“The future of humanity may now depend upon our grasping this neglected notion of land possession based on care and applying it to every part of the globe.” (from Scripture, Culture and Agriculture by Ellen Davis)

A piece of research on the situation in Peru can be accessed here

Your comments.

There is a petition to sign in support of the Indigenous people here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/peru_stop_violence/?cl=250482319&v=3461

Quoting the page: 133,003 people have shown their support to the indigenous struggle. Help us get to 150,000

UPDATE: in response to the outcry, Peru’s legislature has just temporarily suspended two of the controversial decrees—the pressure is working - let’s keep it up!