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Peru: Faced with threats, natives ask for weapons to defend their lands

Peru: Faced with threats, natives ask for weapons to defend their lands
Photo: PL

May 5 |

Two Amazonian indigenous leaders, whose territories and their own lives are threatened by drug traffickers and illegal loggers, ask the Peruvian government for weapons to defend their ancestral habitat.

The demand was presented to the foreign press by Yanet Velasco, leader of the Central de Comunidades de la etnia Asháninka del Río Ene (CARE) and Herlín Odicio Estrella, president of the Federación Nativa de Comunidades de la etnia Kakataibo, both located in the central Peruvian Amazon.

Yanet Velasco pointed out that drug traffickers and tree predators invaded areas of the territories of the 19 Asháninka communities that make up her organization, an invasion that included, she said, the murder of 20 Amazon defenders from various organizations since 2020.

It was recently announced the arrest of a suspected hitman who shot dead in April 2023 the leader Santiago Contoricó, of the Central Asháninka del Río Tambo (CART), in the region of Ucayali, bordering Brazil.

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This organization repeatedly denounced that Contoricó’s life was in danger because he was receiving constant death threats from drug traffickers, without the authorities providing him with protection.

“We do not trust the police, many of them are in collusion with drug traffickers, nor do we trust the officials of the regions of Junín and Huánuco, nor the prosecutors; there is no one to turn to,” said Kakataibo leader Odicio Estrella.

Faced with this situation, the natives decided to defend themselves by organizing themselves into indigenous guards against drug traffickers and other invaders of their ancestral territories.

To do so, they only have bows, arrows and some old shotguns, so for years they have been asking the Armed Forces to provide them with more modern weaponry, but they have not received any response.

The leaders even went to the United Nations to denounce the depredation and appropriation of part of their lands and also raised the problem with Peruvian parliamentarians, without finding a solution.

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They pointed out that drug and timber traffickers act in concert for the common interest of keeping native lands occupied or gaining them for their illicit activities.

As they need people to work for them and have economic power, the intruders promote the access of settlers from other regions and create fictitious population centers to legalize their presence in the habitat of the Amazonian nations.

Yanet Velasco highlights the fact that among these settlers there are criminals wanted by the police who join drug traffickers to grow coca leaf and produce cocaine, or carry out other activities such as contract killings.

They also use threats to pressure native inhabitants to also grow coca leaf, promote consumerism, and try to persuade young indigenous people to do the same in order to earn money.

The Asháninka leader pointed out that her people are interested in preserving the environment in the territory, maintaining their way of life and subsisting on fishing, hunting and the cultivation of food products, to which they add potentially exportable cacao, coffee and sesame plantations.

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But to do so, they need to preserve their communally owned lands, where drug traffickers establish clandestine airstrips to transport drugs to neighboring countries such as Brazil, the platform for shipments to Europe.

Their fight also faces erroneous policies, such as the maintained and already ceased policy of programs financed by the European Union and United States cooperation, which financed alternative crops to coca grown by colonists and promoted the granting of land titles to them on lands that are part of indigenous territories.

In addition, municipal governments build roads in the middle of the jungle, with the obvious purpose of facilitating access to drug traffickers and illegal loggers.

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The visit, which according to the specialized portal Jewish Insider will take place on Monday, comes amid pressure from Washington to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza strip.

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Israel has maintained its offensive in Gaza, in a resurgence of the conflict that has already lasted for more than a year and that leaves dozens of deaths daily.

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The US climate agency will lose access to key data for hurricane forecasting in July

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Initially, NOAA was going to lose access to the data from today Monday, but managed to extend the deadline since NASA, which was also going to be affected by the measure, requested an extension until July 31.

According to a NOAA statement, late on Friday, June 27, the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command received a request from Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, “to postpone the withdrawal and continue processing and distributing data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program until July 31.”

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The Argentine justice declares Milei’s measure that limited the right to strike unconstitutional

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The decision was made by the National Labor Court No. 3, which ordered to stop the application of articles 2 and 3 of decree 340/2025, considering that they violate constitutional guarantees such as freedom of association and the right to strike, established in the Constitution and in international agreements signed by Argentina.

The decree modified article 24 of Law 25,877, which regulates collective labor conflicts, and declared a long list of activities as essential, limiting the possibility of its workers to carry out union action measures.

Judge Moira Fullana, who intervened in the case, argued that the unconstitutionality is based on the fact that, at the time of the signing of the decree, the National Congress was in full function, so there was no justification of necessity and urgency that deserved to skip the legislative treatment of such modifications.

On June 2, Fullana had provisionally failed to suspend the application of this measure, in response to another precautionary measure, requested by the Association of State Workers (ATE).

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The Government also included in that list of essential services all branches of maritime and river transport, customs, immigration services and education at all levels.

The measure, originally included in an extensive decree of general deregulation of the economy signed by Milei shortly after its assumption in December 2023, had already been unconstitutional by the Argentine Justice at that time.

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