Of course, I was in Peru to cover this deepening existential conflict. But I thought I was in for more of the slow burn that characterizes the degradation of the forest and the human rights of its defenders. Instead, I was caught in the middle of an explosion that feels more and more like the beginning of a revolution.
I call my buddy Ricardo Perez of Amazon Watch for his take. “You really have to understand that the Peruvian indigenous people have never had any state working for them,” he says. “They know they have to fight for everything they have. This has been the case for the last 500 years.
Every battle they win is only the latest battle for this place. If they lose, it is the last one. Nothing could restore what thousands of years of fecundity created if the oil industry gets in here, it will ruin one of the last and greatest forests on the planet. Lucas, the president of his village, rides the entire way with a towel over his face because he’s freezing and he can’t handle the wind with his fever. But as soon as we reach the village he trudges up the trail with purpose. He starts to tell a tale that is familiar to anyone who regularly observes the oil and gas industry and their penchant for destroying paradise. “Petroperu’s pipeline began leaking underground,” he says. “That’s when the trouble started.
Ricardo knows that the entire world depends on who wins the fight for the Amazon, and so we can’t lose. And yet these fights are chronically underfunded and ignored. Even though he works with a 30-member team at Amazon Watch, compared to the oil industry which has virtually unlimited money and power, they are fighting on a shoestring budget.