These are people whose rights have been betrayed in favour of an unsustainable economic logic and foreign interests.I had been working in an industry that was being roiled by digital disruption. Branderburg and Orzel’s film is a welcome voice in the struggle to counter narratives that demonise indigenous peoples as obstacles to development. The film sets up this context for an audience new to these issues, but also presents material to help foster an informed discussion about extraction in Peru. When Two Worlds Collide reveals this side of Peru’s economic boom. Where will we go? What will we eat? Where will our children grow? We’ll just have to fight again. But now, look at what’s happening (…) I’m scared of companies (…) of dams. I used to be scared of the Shining Path killing my family and taking my children. In that piece I cited an Ashaninka man who compared his fear of the Shining Path, to his fear of extractivism: In 2015, Global Witness reported that nine activists, including seven indigenous activists, were killed in Peru that year amid disputes over extraction sites.Īs I have previously written, my indigenous Ashaninka collaborators in the Peruvian Amazon are living in a continuum of violence that links Peru’s internal war and the imposition of extractive activity in its wake. The leaders of these protests are being arrested and tried for crimes of rebellion and sedition, and are also pressured by legal and illegal private interests. Protests are tackled with legal responses that suspend constitutional rights within an area, acts that were passed to expedite the war against Sendero Luminoso, otherwise known as Shining Path, a Communist militant group in the country. Protesters have become internal enemies, described by sectors of the government as green terrorists. The film’s narrative centres on Alberto Pizango, an indigenous Shawi man who served as the President of AIDESEP, Peru’s national indigenous Amazonian organisation, in the run up to the events at Bagua.Īs When Two Worlds Collide shows, Peru stokes the volatility of the context created by this economic agenda by dealing with anti-extraction protests as threats to national security. Although siding with the indigenous movement, Branderburg and Orzel present different voices within the debate that ensued in Peru, ranging from Garcia’s ministers to the father of a policeman that died that day. When Two Worlds Collide, a new documentary directed by Heidi Branderburg and Mathew Orzel, examines indigenous activism in Peru by focusing on the events that led to, and the aftermath of, the lethal clashes between indigenous protesters and policemen in 2009 outside the Amazonian town of Bagua. Bagua, Conga, Las Bambas, and Pakitzpango have all become important sites of protest, local extensions of global calls to rethink our engagement with natural resources. These are people who have historically been allowed little say in the conversations that define their future, and that of their territories. Yet, this growth strategy has led to dozens of social conflicts around current and proposed extraction sites throughout the country.Īlthough these protests have different motivations, most activists are locals whose lives have not been significantly improved to offset the impact of gas and oil works or mining activity. Peru boasts one of the world’s fastest growing economies, largely dependent on the extraction of natural gas and oil from the Amazon, and of a long list of minerals from the Andes.
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