The Middle of the Fire: Field Report from Peru

The following is an open letter from Independant Peruvian Journalist, Juan Tincopa. He has worked for several years with Indigenous Peoples on land and resource issues.

June 14th, 2009

It is true that the families of the indigenous people that the government had killed took policeman as hostages, because they were scared and wanted to protect their own lives. The truth is that the government is totally responsible for the violence and that the Indian people had nothing to do with the other circumstances that happened, because the government started to shoot to kill Indians. THE REAL PROBLEM BEGAN WHEN THE government GAVE THE ORDER TO SHOOT AT PEOPLE’S BODIES. The police said that they are there to respect the order and law. Which law gives them the right to shoot people to kill?

Some policeman were shot, because some indigenous people had some military experience from their service as soldiers. They fought and took the police guns and used them for their defense. They were not terrorists. No Indian was armed. No Indian was prepared for violence. Everything became violent because the government planned this massacre and made the people desperate to survive.

What can you do? What can anybody do? When you are in the middle of shots fired and you don’t have chance to survive it without a fight?

This incident was planned by the government because they are extremely criminal and they don’t like that indigenous people have a reason and real rights by the law. That is the way that the government is looking for violence to justify the massacre and to crush the indigenous people before they take their lands.

You need to get information to the leaders of the Indian movement now. Nobody knows until now how many Aguarunas, indigenous people, were Killed by the police. I can only guess that it is probably between 50 to 200. The problem is that the police burned these bodies, put them in plastic bags, and dropped them into the rivers or into the jungle, and others were probably buried somewhere. Until now we don’t have any possibility to know how many were killed. It is impossible, but there were a lot. The indigenous people some times in many places don’t have IDs because they don’t need it for life in the jungle. Many of them doesn’t speak Spanish as well. Many of them are missing right now.

On the 7th, 8th and 9th of July, all labor and social organizations in Peru are going to strike. This is probably a big help to stop the government. I hope so. We need to pray and help for the peace. The government must understand that they can’t do the criminal actions again and again.

Every human in the world needs to help the indigenous people in Peru because they are performing right and lawful actions in defense of their home, and also in defense of the Amazon, that is the defense of the life and of the heart, the life and future for everybody.

I’m sorry, my English is not accurate and good, buy it is only my perspective.

You need to get information from Indian movement leaders; AIDESEP and CAOI. I know they don’t have powerful media ways to speak their truth, but we have to try to help. Every day that is coming we need to get together for this help. Next 25 of June we send to you the QAWAQ # 7 where we have some opinion about this conflict of our brothers.

We don’t think we can change the official media. They are liars and they are lying every day, but we can start to tell the truth. We don’t need to dispute small stupid things like if the Indians responded or not to violence. How you can imagine that it is impossible? That is the point, the government was looking for this reaction in order to have a pretext for the repression and to take away the rights of indigenous people.

The Indian case is their home, their peace and the peace for everybody. They keep their words after this massacre, and the government doesn’t stop and keeps trying to involve violence in this conflict.

We are peaceful people. But don’t tell me that everybody can stay quiet when the government starts to kill them. We are not looking for violence. We are not stupid, but, how can you control the situation in the middle of a fire? We need to tell the government: Stop to fire, stop to persecution, stop to massacres, stop taking away the homes of the Indians.

I hope you and you family are fine.

Juan Tincop