Remembering Brian

As the very catholic Peruvians were celebrating the Holy Week, especially starting from Thursday, I didn’t see much of my colleagues at the office. But the positive side of the celebrations was that both the Peruvian family I’m living with and the owner of the office invited me to dinner. This way I was able to eat some typical fish dishes the people prepare at home and I managed to safe some lunch money on Thursday and Friday. Also on Friday evening there was a big procession in the streets, with little statues and relics being carried around and people carrying candles. The only thing that’s a bit unfortunate is that there aren’t any chocolate eggs on Easter-day.

Most important news of the week however was the verdict in the trial against Alberto Fujimori. The former Peruvian president was sentenced this Tuesday to a jail term of 25 years, as he was found guilty for the abduction of a journalist and a businessman and the killings by a death squad in the early nineties. At the height of the civil war, with Sendero Luminoso threatening to take over power in Peru, Fujimori took drastic measures to fight the insurgent movement, curbing democracy in the country dramatically. Many Peruvians accuse him of fighting a dirty war against the rebels in which death squads were allowed to operate freely. One of those death squads was responsible for the killing of 15 people during a raid on a barbeque in Lima and for the the assassination of 9 university students who were lifted from there dormitory beds. On the other hand there are also a lot of Peruvians who still support him as he was able to save the country from economic collapse and managed to arrest the most important leaders of Sendero Luminoso, which is now confined to some remote areas in the Andes region. Fujimori’s daughter Keiko is scoring very high in opinion polls lately, especially in Lima, and she already announced that if she gets elected in the next presidential elections in 2011 she will pardon her father immediately, but the Iquiteños I spoke with don’t think she will gather enough support on national level.

At work we finally moved to our new office, which is located in the same house but is remarkably bigger than the old one. This will be necessary as in the near future a lawyer will come to work here to assist us in the case of the petroleum exploitation in the Alto Putumayo. It’s three years now since the Peruvian state sold an area compromising the Secoya and Kichwa communities to the Brazilian oil company Petrobras. As the indigenous people weren’t consulted before the agreement was made it was in fact illegal, so since then our organization had organized some workshops at the Putumayo and Napo rivers to inform the communities about the advantages and disadvantages of petroleum exploitation in the region. In the end the both the Secoya and Kichwa people living there decided they don’t want to risk the future of their families by allowing this kind of pollution in their living environment. This is why the Asociación Putumayo Perú has made an agreement with Solsticio Perú, an organization that provides legal support to indigenous peoples, to help the communities in the judicial procedures that are to follow.

Hasta luego,

Jeroen