According to research from the Munden Project, more than 40% of Peru's total land area has been given over to mining, logging or oil concessions. Peru's economic development has been driven by a huge expansion in its natural resource sector. In the meantime, they have sold concessions on Ashéninka land. Local and national bodies have found ways to hold up the process by layering on zoning regulations and dragging out mapping initiatives.
The Peruvian government has an international legal obligation to give titles to indigenous communities like Saweto, but the process has stalled for decades. Diana Rengifo flew to New York to attend the ceremony. On November 17, the community of Saweto was presented with the Alexander Soros Foundation Award for its contribution to conservation. Over the past decade, Chota and his companions had articulated to an international audience that putting the forests in the hands of the indigenous communities, who have a long-term stake in their survival, is the most effective way of keeping them standing.
Research from Stanford University estimates that those forests store nearly 17bn tonnes of above-ground carbon, more than three times the US' annual emissions. Peru, which in December will host the 20th 'Conference of the Parties', where leaders will attempt to thrash out a new deal on carbon emissions, has nearly 75 million hectares of forest. The Amazon is a globally critical sink for carbon dioxide, and its survival is vital to international efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change. "If we had titles, we could have kicked the loggers out." "If we had the title, this would never have happened," says Julia Pérez, Chota's first wife, who is eight months pregnant. In this house, funded by ProPurus, a local rights group, they have achieved a kind of stability, and they are intent on getting justice for the killings and demanding that the state finally gives them the legal rights to their land. They are now crowded into a small wooden house set back from a dirt road in the backstreets of Pucallpa, under constant police guard. Since they left Saweto in the aftermath of the killings, they have been shunted from place to place, surviving on charity. She now lives in a safe house in Pucallpa. She holds a picture (R) that her husband took of illegal loggers. IN HIDING: Ergilia Lopez is the widow of activist Edwin Chota, who was one of four activists killed in September. Their widows and children are now camped in Pucallpa, without the means to pay for the six-day boat trip to Saweto to reclaim the bodies, honour their dead and elect their successors. No one from the Ashéninka community doubts that it was the same loggers who paid for the murders. It was a brutal conclusion to a 12-year battle for the legal title to their land, which they believed would finally grant them respite from the illegal logging that is destroying their ancestral forests. The men's remains have only been partially recovered, and are awaiting DNA identification.
Their bodies were dismembered and scattered into the forest: a mode of murder that recalled the atrocities of Peru's Dirty War. As they reached a "tambo" – a shelter in the forest – they were ambushed and executed. In September, four activists who were from the Alto Tamaya-Saweto Ashéninka indigenous community – Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Francisco Pinedo and Leoncio Quinticím – were returning on foot through the Amazon from a meeting with another community close to the Brazilian border.
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