Here's a link to a new English language blog set up by the people who live around the mining projects of Dorato Resources (DRI.v) in the Cenepa region of far northern Peru, part of the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range. In the linked blog you'll find out what locals really think about the Dorato project.
Before you go there (and you should), if you're expecting to click to a badly drawn and emotion-ridden argument then think again. Theirs is not some fly-by-night protest blog that rails against society without any studies or research to back it up. I've looked through the case put forward by the Awajún-Wampi peoples in this blog this morning and it's backed up by official documents, well thought out arguments and (although the grammar goes slightly offkey here and there) a good and level-headed voice in the English language. It documents the way in which their rights have been ignored, the lies told by Dorato and the deceptions of the Peruvian government as it pushes an growth at all costs agenda.
So if you really want to know why DRI.v isn't welcome in its corner of Peru and how the government of Peru is riding roughshod over people's rights in order to push through its drill-baby-drill policy in one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, go visit the site for yourself.
Before you go there (and you should), if you're expecting to click to a badly drawn and emotion-ridden argument then think again. Theirs is not some fly-by-night protest blog that rails against society without any studies or research to back it up. I've looked through the case put forward by the Awajún-Wampi peoples in this blog this morning and it's backed up by official documents, well thought out arguments and (although the grammar goes slightly offkey here and there) a good and level-headed voice in the English language. It documents the way in which their rights have been ignored, the lies told by Dorato and the deceptions of the Peruvian government as it pushes an growth at all costs agenda.
So if you really want to know why DRI.v isn't welcome in its corner of Peru and how the government of Peru is riding roughshod over people's rights in order to push through its drill-baby-drill policy in one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, go visit the site for yourself.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"Our war is a defensive one. Peruvian Company Aphrodite (sic) and its owner Dorato Resources Inc., the Canadian corporation which desires to exploit our natural resources without respecting our rights and our lives, says to their shareholders and to the public that Dorato “has excellent relationships with the local community”. Not only good but “excellent”... But from our place, we the Awajun and Wampis peoples have a totally different view."
".....the Peruvian Government decided to explicitly and systematically favour extractive activities to the detriment of both the conservation of natural resources, as well as the rights to life and health of the indigenous populations that inhabit these areas, without providing any technical or legal arguments justifying its change in position regarding the compatibility of the mining activities with these ecologically vulnerable areas.
"The Organization for the Development of the Border Communities of El Cenepa (ODECOFROC) has submitted on August 4, 2009 -and recently has updated on February 17, 2010- a request for “Urgent Action” to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), demanding that the Peruvian Government provide the international community with an explanation regarding its racist and discriminatory conduct to the detriment of the Awajún and Wampís peoples living in the border District of El Cenepa, near the Condor Mountain Range."The indigenous peoples have lodged this request with CERD due to the existence of an ongoing official policy to partake in socio-economic exclusion and discrimination, which is manifested through a variety of aspects and in a particular very conflictive context"
"The Cordillera del Cóndor forms part of the traditional land of the Awajún and Wampís peoples, as recognized by the Peruvian government on repeated occasions, including the process in the framework of which the proposal to create the Ichigkat Muja National Park was defined. Nevertheless, the State proceeded to reduce its area in order to accommodate the mining sector, introducing an intolerable risk on the land of the Awajún and Wampís peoples in a clandestine manner."