I began a short series of diaries yesterday with a look at the Amazon: Amazonia: Through Children’s Eyes. Today I’d like to share a horror story that almost no one sees–at least, not in the United States. Even living in Miami, where Univision rivals Faux as the primary news source, I was surprised to learn of the war between Peru and Ecuador from students.
Here’s the official story:
A longstanding territorial dispute between Ecuador and Peru erupted in fighting on January 26, 1995, in the remote, rugged jungle mountains of the Cordillera del Condor, where a stretch of border had never been clearly marked and where deposits of gold, uranium, and oil supposedly lay.
Peru reported losing several warplanes and almost 50 soldiers; Ecuador’s official toll was about 30 dead and 300 wounded, but the casualties on both sides most likely were greater.
Certainly they were…because the defenders of the rainforest from the oil czars were indigenous people, and they don’t count, do they? Their opponents were aided by CIA advisors, your “tax dollars at work.”
The war threatened to re-ignite in 2002. Here’s how John Perkins described the situation: (from Confessions of an Economic Hitman):.
…yet, in Ecuador, the situation was very different. This war would not require the U.S. Army, for it would be fought by a few thousand indigenous warriors equipped only with spears, machetes, and single shot, muzzle-loaded rifles. They would face off against a modern Ecuadorian army, a handful of U.S. Special forces advisers, and jackal-trained mercenaries hired by the oil companies…In December, 2002, oil company representatives accused an indigenous community of taking a team of its workers hostage; they suggested that the warriors involved were members of a terrorist group, with implications of possible ties to al-Qaeda…The oil workers…had trespassed on lands where they were not allowed.
In the end, the people of the forest went on a hunger strike in protest.
Here’s the Bush game of fear and fear-mongering again. Oppose the profits, and you are labeled a terrorist.
The “war on terror”, identified in Amnesty International’s annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and “neo-liberal” globalisation. In the United States “there is a perception of indigenous activists as destabilising elements and terrorists,” and their demands and activism have begun to be cast in a criminal light, lawyer José Aylwin, with the Institute of Indigenous Studies at the University of the Border in Temuco IPS
Echoes of that war still filter through the forest. Last year in Ecuador, I heard constant comments about (with emphasis) Peruvians. (We were in the Galapagos, and many of those comments were about fish poaching.) This year, we heard as many about Ecuador–not overtly angry or aggressive, but the shoulder-shrugging sort of nuance that indicated that the trouble we’ve sown is still germinating there.
On BoomanTribune and other sources we read about great ideas and massive schemes. It’s rare that we take the time to zoom in on their effects on little people with great hearts. But take the time today. Go to Google Earth. Hit Iquitos, Peru. Zoom down and scan…look at the areas that are cleared. That’s your tax dollars at work. As we rode the Amazon and Napo this weekend, we saw many blocked channels into the forest, evidence of the damage being done. But only from a satellite can you see the real impact.
The World Bank makes loans it knows can’t be repaid, for massive, overpriced infrastructure projects that will never be built but will profit cronies. In order to pay the interest on the debt, countries must make concessions to oil and logging companies owned by other cronies (or perhaps, the same ones.) No one who matters can see the damage…The people, and the birds and beasts, and the trees lose.
If this scenario makes you want to pray, think again. Tomorrow’s diary discusses the role of “missionaries.”
(Crossposted at DailyKos)