Troubles are mounting for Dorato Resources (DRI.v) as the company's mushroom politic tactics with local comunities in the Cenepa region of northern Peru are now backfiring. Word is that locals are going to make a formal protest march against the prescence of DRI in the area in March (i.e. next month), which is already being likened to the protest by the same Awajún-Wampi protests in Bagua Peru that ended up last year in full scale conflict and dozens of deaths of both police officers and protestors.
This Cenepa area is remote as remote can be. If you don't have the backing of the locals in an isolated area of Amazon basin jungle then you are simply asking for trouble by going in and exploring. DRI.v does not have support of locals, as simple as that, and all the edicts passed down from an office in Lima aren't going to help the company geologists when they're taken hostage yet again (or perhaps even worse next time...these people are evermore mad at being ignored and they're a warrior race, too).
Here's a translated extract from this article in Peru's La Republica this week that gives more background.
This Cenepa area is remote as remote can be. If you don't have the backing of the locals in an isolated area of Amazon basin jungle then you are simply asking for trouble by going in and exploring. DRI.v does not have support of locals, as simple as that, and all the edicts passed down from an office in Lima aren't going to help the company geologists when they're taken hostage yet again (or perhaps even worse next time...these people are evermore mad at being ignored and they're a warrior race, too).
Here's a translated extract from this article in Peru's La Republica this week that gives more background.
Zebelio Kayap, President of the Organization for the Development of Frontier Communities of Cenepa, said two weeks ago that the Awajún-Wampi indigenous communities are tired of not receiving any sort of answer from the officials sent by the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
"We have asked them why they gave authorization for the entry of the Afrodita mining company (subsidiary of Dorato Resources) and why they gave out concessions in the Cordillera del Cóndor region when we had already signed an agreement with Inrena (Peru's official national parks authority) to create the 152 hectare Ichigkat Muja park. This was then reduced without respecting the signed document", said the leader, after noting that the Cordillera del Cóndor region is a valuable territory for the survival of indigenous natives and is also sacred as it is the home of the venerated Cerro Kumpanam mountain.
The natives of Cenepa reaffirmed their position: demand that the State complies with the act of creation of the national park area agreed upon and then delegates its vigilance and administration to locals. They also ask for the Cenepa mining concessions to be revoked due to non-compliance of consultancy rights established by the convenio OIT 169 as well as the withdrawal of the Afrodita and Dorato mining companies.
The indigenous natives of Cenepa do not recognize Afrodita's environmental inpact study, not only because the public consultancy audienced were held outside of the Cenepa region but also becuase they have decided to reject all extractive activities in the frontier zone.