Did so many lives have to end so the government would realize that the laws were wrongly made?

“Did so many lives have to end so the government would realize that the laws were wrongly made?” With this question the new leader of Peru’s indigenous protestors protesters cautiously welcomed the news that was announced by Prime Minister Yehude Simon, that the two principle laws to promote massive sales of the Amazonian jungle to oil and gas companies will be repealed.

This is not however the end of ths struggle. If Peru’s indigenous population wants to protect itself, its way of life, its ancestral lands and with all that, what remains of the vast Peruvian Amazon that is to our planet as a lung to our bodies, then the fight must continued. The outright imperialist attitude expressed by Alan Garcia and his government on the future of the rainforest means that whilst this or any other similar government grips on to power, the jungle simply is not safe.

Peru urgently needs a Green government that would be capable of understanding, respecting and defending the real importance of the Amazon rainforest for our planet and ultimately for us, and would therefore not pursue short sighted policies of destruction and extraction. Only a Green government could balance the need for economic progress and the advancement of prosperity in a nation so desperately stricken with poverty, with the urgent need for ecological and social sustainability.

Where the people have flirted with small-g green parties, such as Nueva Amazonia in the San Martin region, the results are limited and mixed. Regional and local government in Peru finds itself highly resricted in its movement, and must conform with not just national law, but even policy. Peru’s current brand of fake decentralisation does not serve the democratic will or need of local people. Regional government are legally obligated to endlessly pursue a policy of “economic growth” and environmental concerns are secondary.

Only a Green members of congress, government and ultimately, the presidency will be able to effect real change. This may be some time off yet. In the meantime, the current government’s policies of ignorance will be challenged and resisted. When President Garcia in 2007 published an article entitled ‘el Perro del Hortelano’, lit. the Dog in the Manger, making reference to a Spanish saying, which loosely translated goes: the dog in the manger neither eats nor let’s others eat. This article began the central government’s attack on the rainforest, and came with the support of the new Environment Ministry, still headed by hypocrite Antonio Brack.

Alan Garcia accuses the native inhabitants of the rainforest, some of whom live in deliberate isolation with little outside contact, of failing to play their part in Peruvian society by exploting the “millions of hectares for lumber that lie idle”. He attacks the communal ownership of land by native tribes and accuses them of laziness and scrounging off of the state. After the horrific massacre committed by his government at Bagua on June 5th, he went on to describe the native people’s as ‘not first class citizens’ and argues that Peru should not be held up by a minority group or their human rights.

Progress cannot come at any price. Garcia accuses the indigenous people and their supporters of deceitfulness, and seems utterly convinced that their communistic strategies are being orchestrated by the government’s of Venezuela and Bolivia. Peru has today recalled it’s ambassador in La Paz. Whilst the current forms of the Law of the Jungle may be about to be repealed, surely it will not be long before Garcia comes up with another scheme to snatch the oil and lumber from under the noses of the people of the Amazon.