Peru:
Resistance to the Romero oil palm group
The forest is not for sale!
The forest must be defended! This is the clamour in the district
of Barranquita, Province of Lamas in the San Martin region. The
property rights acquired by the inhabitants of the hamlets in
the Caynarachi river basin, located in the Peruvian Amazon, over
the land they work have been violated. These people have been
real guardians of the forest, looking after -on their own plots-
its immense wealth in flora, fauna and water resources.
In spite of this, in mid-2006,
the State allocated 7,000 hectares to the Agropecuaria del Shanusi
Company, a member of the Romero group, for the establishment
of monoculture oil palm plantations that had been declared of
national interest. There are hundreds of landholders (posesionarios)
who have been waiting for years for the land tenure deeds. They
are being denied these deeds under the excuse that the company
has requested the land and that the inhabitants have only worked
a small area – because they are conserving a lot of primary
forest!
The company started the work
of preparing the land by deforesting practically the whole area
to establish a monoculture oil palm plantation. According to
the Servindi news agency (1), at the end of 2009, the company
hurriedly built “a track for vehicles, crossing the whole
piece of land known as Palmas del Oriente, extracting non-metals
from the Lorocache hill, diverting the course of streams, drying
up some water courses springing from the Lorocache hill and taking
over an enormous lake called Cocha Muerta, where they have put
up a ‘Private Property’ sign.
All this has been done without the legal authorizations from the
relevant government bodies and, in addition, a large amount of
timber has been removed.”
Hundreds of labourers are working
with chainsaws, machetes, axes and tractors, helicopters overfly
the area and security personnel guard it. “There are over
50 chainsaw operators and thugs carrying out actions in the forest.
Barranquita is ready for an uprising and could become the next
Bagua,” (see WRM bulletin 142 for details on the Bagua
uprising) warned the mayor of the San Martin region, César
Soria, who denounced that the owners of the companies have left
hundreds of hectares of land devastated and water courses filled
in by the work of tractors and other heavy machinery, displacing
communities and compromising their free passage. (2)
Making use of a new citizen’s
arrest law, the company devastated the peasant farmers’
crops and housing in addition to mistreating and arresting some
of them. According to Servindi, one of the peasant farmers was
imprisoned for a month and is still under subpoena.
All these manoeuvres have forced
some inhabitants to sell their lands and leave, but mass protests
have also taken place. In 2008, the residents of Barranquita
filed for precautionary measures to avoid one of the Romero Group
companies (Agricola de Caynarachi S.A.) from entering the area.
Protected by Law No. 653 for the promotion of investment and
without prior consultation with the communities, by Ministerial
Resolution No. 255 – 2007, the Government allocated the
company 3,000 hectares known as “Palma de Oriente,” for
the industrial production of oil palm. This involved paralysing
the development plans undertaken by the Barranquita Coordination
Board for the Struggle against Poverty (Mesa de Concertación
de Lucha contra la Pobreza de Barranquita) in addition to affecting
primary forest and the boundary lines of various Barranquita
annexes located on the banks of the Caynarachi river. (3)
The company’s activities
devastated communal forests and violated the peasants’
rights in the communities of the District of Barranquita. The population
is demanding the granting of property deeds and the cancellation
of the contract established with the company for the allocated
area.
On 7 January, the indignation
of the peasant farmers in the area over the violation of their
rights and the destruction of the district’s primary forests – the
few left in the region – led to a great march and demonstration.
The Barranquita Resistance Committee expressed its protest against
the Romero Group and against the concessions granted by the central
Government and reaffirmed “its option to defend its citizens’
rights and the environment and all its biodiversity; no company
shall enter its territory without prior consent.” (4)
(1) “Peru: Denuncian
crimen ecológico del Grupo Romero en Barranquita, bajo
Huallaga, San Martín”(Ecological crime committed
by the Romero Group in Barranquita, baja Huallaga, San Martin)
, by Barranquita Resiste, 23 December 2009, Servindi, http://www.servindi.org/actualidad/20681
(2) “Autoridades y dirigentes de Barranquita anuncian protestas
para proteger sus bosques” (Authorities and leaders of Barranquita
announce protests to protect their forests), Inforegión,
4 January 2010, http://www.inforegion.pe/portada/45514/autoridades-y-dirigentes-de-barranquita-anuncian-radicalizacion-de-protestas-para-proteger-sus-bosques/
(3) http://barranquitaperu.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
(4) Mobilization of leaders in San Martín, 7 January 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu7SQBwc-lQ&feature=youtube_gdata
