viernes, 29 de enero de 2010

Perú. Más allá de los turistas: los pobladores del Cusco aún no reciben ningún tipo de ayuda

El panorama es desolador en Zurite, Yucay y Urubamba, a pocos kilómetros de Aguas Calientes, en donde ninguna entidad del Gobierno se ha hecho presente

Fotos: Daniel Nakasone Santivañez y Maricarmen Valdivieso


Hoy debe acabar el mal rato para los turistas varados en Aguas Calientes y Machu Picchu desde hace casi una semana. Sin embargo, los principales afectados con las inusuales lluvias torrenciales son los pobladores de los distintos distritos de la región Cusco, quienes aún no reciben ayuda alguna del Estado.Desde Urubamba, Maricarmen Valdivieso, de la ONG Nexos Voluntarios, nos envía imágenes del desastre natural y clama por ayuda para los damnificados. “En Urubamba se han caído las viviendas y hay gente sin ninguna pertenecia material ni alimentos. Similar panorama se vive en Yucay, Huayllabamba y Pacarbamba.”, indicó.

SIN VIVIENDAS NI ABRIGO NI ALIMENTOS

Daniel Nakasone visitó Yucay, un poblado de 5 mil personas e informó a elcomercio.pe que un 40% se ha visto afectado grave o moderadamente por el desborde del río Vilcanota. “El problema no es solo el río y el desborde, sino que cuando el agua se filtra, hace que las casas de adobe alejadas empiecen a humedecerse lo que las hace inestables y peligrosas para sus habitantes”, informó en su blog el Trotamudo Tartamundos.Por su parte, Elsi Acevedo Flores, una pobladora de Urumbama, nos informa a través de su cuenta en Twitter (@voxurubamba) que “después de más de 5 días de emergencia, los damnificados sigue sin recibir apoyo, no hay carpas, no llega el apoyo a Urubamba que prometió el Gobierno. ¡SOS!”, reseña.Acevedeo también informó que “los pobladores del distrito cusqueño de Zurite tuvieron que ser evacudos por el deslizamiento de cerros”.

Tomado de Blog RIDEI http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/item/86258

La historia del Cap and Trade (Subtítulos en español)

¿Qué decisiones tomaron los poderosos en Copenhaguen? Un video animado que explica el supuesto plan que salvará al mundo del calentamiento global.



PD: Para ver los subtítulos hagan click en el boton en forma de triángulo, y luego hacer click en la opción "activar títulos"

viernes, 22 de enero de 2010

Haití, ¿la nueva colonia de Estados Unidos?

Ante la masiva cantidad de soldados estadounidenses, no cascos azules, enviada a Haití surge la pregunta de si es realmente ayuda humanitaria lo que se desea brindar o si es más bien un interés de hegemonía el verdadero motivo.

Para despejar las dudas y aclarar el panorama conversamos con el analista internacional y capo Farid Kahhat quien nos explica cuáles podrían ser las verdaderas intenciones de Estados Unidos y su relación con el llamado capitalismo del desastre.



Tomado de: http://danae.lamula.pe/2010/01/22/haiti-%c2%bfla-nueva-colonia-de-estados-unidos/

domingo, 3 de enero de 2010

The real Avatar story: indigenous people fight to save their forest homes from corporate exploitation

James Cameron's newest film Avatar an alien tribe on a distant planet fights to save their forest home from human invaders bent on mining the planet. The mining company has brought in ex-marines for 'security' and will stop at nothing, not even genocide, to secure profits for its shareholders. While Cameron's film takes place on a planet sporting six-legged rhinos and massive flying lizards, the struggle between corporations and indigenous people is hardly science fiction.

For decades real indigenous tribes around the world have faced off with corporations—mining, logging, oil and gas—determined to exploit their land. These corporations, much like the company in the film, usually have support from the government and access to 'security forces', sometimes in the form of ex-military or state police. Yet unlike the film, in which the indigenous group triumphs over the corporate and military invaders, the real-life stories of indigenous tribes rarely end justly: from Peru to Malaysia to Ecuador their struggles continue.

Spears versus guns

In Avatar the indigenous tribe, called the Na'vi, use poison-tipped arrows to defend themselves against the guns, gas, and explosions used by the human invaders. Art imitates life: in June of this year, violence erupted in Peru as heavily-armed police clashed with indigenous protestors, some carried spears, others were unarmed.


The indigenous tribes were protesting nearly 100 new rules pushed through the Peruvian government—led by President Alan Garcia—that made it easier for foreign companies to exploit oil, gas, timber, and minerals on indigenous land. The violent skirmish that followed led to the deaths of 23 police officers and at least 10 indigenous people—with indigenous groups saying the government went to great lengths to hide/dispose of bodies to make it appear that fewer natives were killed. Bodies were allegedly dumped in rivers.

What is known is that 82 protesters suffered gunshot wounds and 120 in total were injured in the melee. Protesters say tear gas was used; in addition some say machine guns—shown in photos—were fired at them.

Just weeks after the bloody incident, Texas-based Hunt Oil, with full support of the Peruvian government, moved into the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve with helicopters and large machinery for seismic testing. A scene not unlike Avatar, which shows a corporation entering indigenous territory with gun ships. The seismic testing alone involves 300 miles of testing trails, over 12,000 explosive charges, and 100 helicopter land pads in the middle of a largely-untouched and unknown region of the Amazonian rainforest. The reserve, which was created to protect native peoples' homes, may soon be turned into a land of oil scars. Indigenous groups say they were never properly consulted by Hunt Oil for use of their land.

Many of the rules put forth by the government that led to the protest have since been determined unconstitutional, while Garcia has rescinded two rules. Still Garcia says—as evidenced from Hunt Oil—that he plans to move forward with controversial oil and gas development on tribal lands in the Amazon.
Areas of the region slated for development are also home to uncontacted Amazonian tribes. Garcia has repeatedly called into question the existence of any such tribes, though aerial photos recently showed uncontacted natives armed with spears near the area in question. The leases under protest are a part of the Free Trade Agreement signed by both the United States and Canada.

In the film the Na'vi are dismissed as "blue monkeys" and "savages" by the corporate administrator. Both the corporation and their hired soldiers view the Na'vi as less than human.

In Peru, President Alan Garcia has called indigenous people "confused savages", "barbaric", "second-class citizens", "criminals", and "ignorant". He has even compared tribal groups to the nation's infamous terrorists, the Shining Path.

There is no end in sight in the struggle between the indigenous people of Peru and government-sanctioned corporate power.

Decades of oppression in Borneo: violence, rape, murder

Across the world, another people are fighting to save their homes from corporate exploitation. The Penan people of Malaysian Borneo have suffered greatly from industrial loggers entering their ancestral home: not only has the tribe lost forest land and important tribal sites, including burial grounds, to bulldozers and chainsaws, but the Penan people have faced violence, rape, and even alleged murder.

The struggle began when industrial logging first appeared in the area in the 1980s and today shows no sign of abatement or resolution. In fact, a new threat has risen in recent decades as logged forests are swiftly turned into industrial oil palm plantations, excluding any chance of the natural forest returning after logging or of natives receiving their land back.

The Penan—some of whom live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the forest—have fought corporate loggers through lawsuits and road barricades. In turn they faced violence from Malaysian police and security forces hired by powerful logging companies. Some even fear for their lives. In 2008 longtime Penan chief, Kelesau Naan, was allegedly murdered for his long activism against logging on tribal lands. When his body was finally found—after two months—it was discovered that several of his bones were broken, leading the Penan to believe he was murdered for his opposition to the destruction of his tribe's traditional lands. Prior to this, two Penan activists disappeared mysteriously in the 1990s and Swiss-activist, Bruno Manser, who fought long and hard for Penan rights, vanished in the region in 2000.

Recently, Penan girls have come forward to say that they were raped, beaten, and sexually abused by logging employees. A 110-page report released this year by the Malaysian Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development has documented their stories, while a government team investigating the matter stated that at least eight allegations of rape or sexual abuse were "certainly true". Girls as young as ten were assaulted and raped, some becoming pregnant. The Penan girls, who receive rides to-and-from school by loggers, have said that it was common to be sexually abused during these rides. Yet a probe by the police into the matter went nowhere due to lack of evidence.
Just this month the rapes were dismissed by government official, James Masing, the Sarawak Minister for Land Development. The Minister told the BBC that in regards to the rapes the "Penan are very good story tellers. They change their stories, and when they feel like it."

Most recently, the Penan people have tried a new strategy to preserve their dwindling home. Seventeen tribes of the Penan declared a 'peace park' covering 163,000 hectares of their ancestral home in order to bring light to their situation and pressure the government to halt plans for logging in the area. The government refused to recognize the status of the peace park and logging is slated to continue.

Few indigenous people have faced more tragedy, despair, and humiliation over the past thirty years than the Penan.

The curse of oil

A battle of a different kind is ongoing in Ecuador. Oil giant Chevron is currently in a $27 billion lawsuit with Ecuadorian indigenous tribes for environmental damage caused by Texaco, a company acquired by Chevron in 2001. In court Texaco has admitted to dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste inside Ecuador's rainforest from 1964-1990. A court expert found contamination at every one of Texaco's former well sites, estimating oil damages 30 times larger than the infamous Exxon-Valdez spill and spanning an area the size of Rhode Island.

The case, known to some as the 'Amazon Chernobyl', involves 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorian plaintiffs. The toxic spill impacted six indigenous tribes, one of which has vanished entirely. The court has found that over 1,400 people have suffered untimely deaths from cancer due to contamination from the oil spill.

Despite these facts, Chevron has gone to great lengths to avoid reparations for environmental damage. In 2008 it was revealed that Chevron hired key political players, including former Senate majority leader Trent Lott and John McCain fund-raiser Wayne Berman to lobby United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab, members of Congress, and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to threaten suspending US trade preferences with Ecuador until the lawsuit was dropped. But the corporation's attempt to use US political power to disenfranchise 30,000 indigenous people failed.

Then this September Chevron released a video that it said proved Ecuadorian officials, including the presiding judge, were taking bribes on the case. However, the video turned out to be a fake: the business man in the video is in fact a convicted drug felon and another person in the video is an Ecuadorian contractor who has received payments from Chevron. Both the bribe and the bribers in the video were faked and others appearing in the video say the footage was heavily edited. Chevron denies that they were in any way involved in making the video.

The lawsuit has been ongoing since 2003 and a ruling has not yet been made. But Chevron has stated publically that even if it loses the case it won't pay any damages.

"We're not paying and we're going to fight this for years if not decades into the future," according to Chevron spokesman Don Campbell.

This year a documentary Crude detailing the struggle by indigenous people to hold Chevron accountable was released in theatres. Chevron's responded with a PR campaign to disparage the film-maker and the indigenous victims [Editor's note: Chevron's PR efforts included posting comments on mongabay.com articles].

No happy Hollywood ending

While the film Avatar ends with the indigenous aliens securing their home from corporate and military invaders, in reality that outcome is rare. Often these conflicts drag on for decades with the indigenous tribes, despite best efforts, tragically losing their home bit-by-bit. Forests are decimated, biodiversity lost, carbon released into the atmosphere, and the tribe is slowly weakened and destroyed from without, their culture and traditions attacked at the same time as their territory is knocked down.

Despite the repeated unjustness, rarely do these stories reach the mainstream media in the industrial world. Companies act with impunity, devastating forests and homes in part to feed the insatiable appetites of developed and emerging economies for furniture, oil palm, gas, and crude oil.

While Avatar is a fun, showy film that many may view as simple sci-fi entertainment, the film clearly alludes to struggles and injustices that one doesn't need to travel across the galazy to see, but are occurring right here on planet Earth.

Tomado de:

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1222-hance_avatar.html

Comisión investigadora de Bagua licuó información y testimonios


Tras leer el informe final de la Comisión Bagua, las 43 observaciones de Jesús Manacés y la hermana Maricarmen Gómez, y la apostilla del padre Ricardo Alvarez Lobo, la conclusión es que el documento es un instrumento a favor del Ejecutivo, no plural, que refuerza la versión oficial de lo ocurrido y contiene gran cantidad de imprecisiones de fondo y forma.

Al momento Mirko Lauer y Carlos Meléndez han comentado que el documento se convierte en un elemento para que continúe la disputa electoral, especialmente porque alienta la pugna entre el Apra y los nacionalistas que han sido acusados de soliviantar a los nativos el año pasado.

Sin embargo, tal punto de vista evita evaluar un asunto de fondo: la actuación del Gobierno y el oficialismo ante los hechos pendientes luego de la tragedia en Bagua del 5 de junio. Este informe final y las declaraciones de ayer del presidente Alan García son una pésima noticia acerca del rumbo del Estado peruano en su vínculo con las organizaciones amazónicas y el respeto a los derechos de los pueblos indígenas.

Lo más grave del informe final es reiterar la idea de que los policías no iniciaron el ataque la mañana del 5 de junio y que los nativos -que tomaron la carretera Fernando Belaunde exigiendo la derogatoria de decretos- fueron manipulados por intereses ’subalternos’ de ronderos, el Sutep, congresistas nacionalistas, actores internacionales y por religiosos.

En una entrevista con la religiosa Gómez Calleja, reclamó que testimonios clave recogidos por la Comisión no hubieran sido tenidos en cuenta para la versión final, como por ejemplo el de Lucio Roca, quien ayudó a cargar el primer muerto del 5 de junio, por un disparo de la PNP.

El informe dedica una gran cantidad de páginas a la cronología de los hechos anteriores al 5 de junio y en ella comete el error de no señalar las fuentes de información incluso cuando mezcla supuestos datos con juicios de valor: tal falta en un informe de investigación es grave, pues no hay referencias que permitan verificar sus afirmaciones.

Por ejemplo, indican que un par de comunicadores belgas de Catapa incitaron a los manifestantes a tomar medidas radicales en la Estación 6 (antes del 5 de junio) pero no sustentan dicha afirmación en un testimonio, grabación o documento (p. 42).

El documento es exhaustivo en recoger ciertas declaraciones pero, por ejemplo, no consigna las palabras del presidente García cuando hizo la distinción de peruanos de segunda categoría en alusión a la población que rechazaba los decretos legislativos.

El señalamiento a la supuesta responsabilidad del Sutep en la radicalización de la protesta en la selva tampoco es demostrado, el documento sólo indica que una gran cantidad de manifestantes de la Curva del Diablo eran profesores.

En la parte de recomendaciones, el informe rescata una propuesta que el ministro Aurelio Pastor difunde reiteradamente: la creación de casas de la justicia (p. 85).

Quizá uno de los pocos párrafos destacables por su precisión figura en la página 81, e indica que pese a que la PNP cumplió el operativo de acuerdo a lo establecido, hubo deficiencias como equipamiento limitado, falta de eequipos de comunicación, fiscales a destiempo,
menor número de efectivos que los necesarios, descoordinaciones de horario, falta de conocimiento sobre la forma de ser y combatitividad de los indígenas cuando defienden su tierra, entre otros.

Sobre las firmas
El informe final fue suscrito por Susana Pinilla, Pilar Mazzetti y Manuel Bernales, quienes actuaron como la voz del Gobierno o del oficialismo en la Comisión Especial de Investigación de los Sucesos de Bagua. El sacerdote dominico Ricardo Alvarez Lobo lo firmó también, pero agregó un documento adicional -bastante acertado- con señalamientos directos sobre las responsabilidades de altos funcionarios del Ejecutivo.

Por otro lado, los medios informaron desde el 29 los motivos para negarse a firmar por parte del coordinador de la Comisión Especial, Jesús Manacés, y de la hermana Gómez Calleja.

Otro miembro de la Comisión, el decano del CAL, Walter Gutiérrez, dijo el 23 de diciembre que renunció al grupo de trabajo el 9 de noviembre, aunque fuentes de la CEI indican que no hay un documento al respecto. En una nota de prensa indicó que ni desestima ni avala el informe final. Por tanto, de siete miembros de la Comisión, sólo tres lo respaldan en su totalidad, los más afines al Gobierno.

Más señales del Gobierno
Un documento elaborado por una comisión formada por resolución ministerial y sobre un asunto tan sensible, tuvo que haber cuidado al máximo la redacción de fondo y forma, pero éste no es el caso. Para mí, una señal más de la poca seriedad y agresividad con la que el Gobierno encara los asuntos pendientes con los ciudadanos de la selva está en los errores obvios a lo largo del informe final.

Por ejemplo, se refieren a un grupo ‘piromashco’ que no existe (sino mashcopiro), al grupo esheja (que debe ser ese’eja p. 9), nativos en asilamiento voluntario (en vez de aislamiento p. 37), la comunidad de Yamakaya (que es Yamakayat), indígenas kichuas y achuas (que debe ser achuar p. 65), la vase del Ejército (p. 61).

Uno de los peores párrafos por la forma tan sesgada en que se refieren a los indígenas aparece en la página 39, en las referencias al 13 de mayo 2009.

http://clavero.derechosindigenas.org/docs/Bagua-InformeFinalisimo.pdf (el informe final de la Comisión Especial para Investigar y Analizar los sucesos de Bagua)

Tomado de:

http://notasdesdelenovo.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/comision-investigadora-de-bagua-licuo-informacion-y-testimonios/