Amazon Indians challenge Peru over land

Reinforcements sent to conflict zone
Hundreds of police reinforcements were sent to the conflict zone, where protesters let food and gasoline through a blockade on the highway linking the jungle cities of Tarapoto and Yurimaguas.

Spokesman Fernando Daffos of Perupetro, which runs the only pipeline pumping oil from Peru's jungle, said officials expected crude to resume flowing to the coast Tuesday. Protests halted the flow in late April.

The Indians have not, however, disrupted the Camisea natural gas pipeline that supplies Lima from fields in the southern interior run by a consortium led by Argentina's Pluspetrol and Texas-based Hunt Oil Co.

Garcia's rhetoric on the violence has drawn charges of racism in a country where the European-descended ruling class has long belittled Indians, who account for nearly half Peru's 28 million people.

Garcia has expressed outrage at the Indians' "barbarity" and "savagery," noting that at least seven of the slain officers were pierced with spears and some had their throats slit. Indians opposed to Garcia's pro-development policies either suffer from "elemental ignorance" or are under the sway of foreign agitators, he said.

Nelson Manrique, a Catholic University political analyst, said Garcia is trying to "deliver the Amazon to multinationals."

Garcia's first presidency ended in 1990 with hyperinflation and an unresolved conflict with fanatical Shining Path insurgents. Then a leftist, Garcia had alienated Wall Street by defaulting on foreign loans.

Opening land to oil exploration
Now he is a free-market champion who is opening vast tracts of jungle to oil exploration by companies including France's Perenco SA, Spain's Repsol-YPF and U.S.-based ConocoPhillips. Large-scale exploration has yet to begin, however, and Peru remains a net importer of oil.

Zavala said Peru has declared "untouchable" the land of 400,000 people in the Amazon, and insisted the legislative decrees "don't affect in any way the property of the Indian peoples."

But Inti, the Aguaruna leader, said Indians fear that isn't true — and ask why they can't get titles to prove their ownership.

"My community has been asking for land titles for 25 years," Inti said. "And we only have 2 square kilometers registered."

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