The Amazon covers 60 percent of the nation’s territory with approximately 77 million hectares. As a result of its varying altitudes, the Peruvian Amazon is home to an exceptional biological diversity. It is valuable in cultural, scientific and scenic terms. As a result, there is a great deal of interest in conserving large tracts of the Peruvian Amazon. Today, 20 percent of this vast territory is under some form of natural protected area (ANP) status, with nearly 11 million hectares corresponding to titled native communities, and 2.8 million hectares set aside as territorial reserves for indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

Given that their practices have a relatively low impact on the forests and water resources, Amazonian indigenous peoples play an important role in conserving natural areas set aside for protection. The presence of native and riverine communities near the ANPs has also contributed to slowing colonization and the deforestation that normally accompanies it.
There are more than 300,000 indigenous peoples, belonging to 59 ethnic groups and 15 linguistic families, inhabiting the Peruvian Amazon.

Amazonian indigenous peoples and territory

Territorial defense is the primordial task for Amazonian indigenous peoples, because it is the source of their physical and socio-cultural survival, as well as their future. Indigenous territory is understood as the totality of a people’s habitat, both geographic (what is above and below the soil, and water) and cultural. In the area of culture, indigenous territory covers the space in which people’s culture is grounded and reproduced. It encompasses different world views and local perspectives, and is vital for ancestral links that give strength and provide social and cultural cohesion to the group. In the Amazonian world view, territory is considered a collective good that is interdependent with nature. All plants, animals, mountains, rivers, lakes, waterfalls and other bodies of water are considered sacred spaces and enjoy respect as sources of vision quests and spiritual strength.

This broad concept of indigenous territory, which goes beyond the merely geographic, is recognized the ILO’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples:

“(...) governments shall respect the special importance for the cultures and spiritual values of the peoples concerned of their relationship with the lands or territories, or both as applicable, which they occupy or otherwise use, and in particular the collective aspects of this relationship.”

“The use of the term lands in Articles 15 and 16 shall include the concept of territories, which covers the total environment of the areas which the peoples concerned occupy or otherwise use.”

Over the past few decades indigenous peoples have had to develop different adaptation and change strategies in order to survive in adverse conditions created by economic, political and socio-cultural subordination. For example, 95 percent of indigenous peoples have links to the market economy in varying forms and degrees.

In the area of politics, indigenous peoples in Peru have organized over the past 40 years to achieve the legalization of their territories. Today, there are approximately 50 ethnic or inter-ethnic federations grouped together in regional organizations and affiliated with national organizations. The organizations have been involved in a constant process of political projection at the regional, national and international levels, developing political discourses and ways of relating to the state and civil society to put forth proposals for their development linked to national development.

Titling native communities

The Native Communities Law of 1974 recognized for the first time the right of Amazonian indigenous peoples in Peru to collective property of their territories. This recognition, however, was limited to the lands around settlements. The 1977 Forestry and Wildlife Law prohibited titling of lands with forestry resources found within native communities, reserving them for the state. This was a frontal attack on the right of Amazonian indigenous peoples, because their economy depends in great measure on extensive use of forests and nearly all of their territories could fall into the category of areas apt for logging, meaning that they would not form part of indigenous property.

The Peruvian Constitution recognizes the existence of native communities even when they are not formally registered in the Public Registrar. They must be registered, however, if they want to obtain property titles. According to the Law of Native Communities (Art. 11 of the constitution), the state provides property titles to lands apt for farming and cedes use to communities in lands apt for forestry work.

The process of titling communities is extremely bureaucratic and slow, and is not a priority for the Peruvian state. In the meantime, farming, forestry, hydrocarbon and mining activities are expanding in indigenous territories where titles are pending. Indigenous communities receive support from indigenous organizations, NGOs and international cooperation agencies to address this problem. There are a number of difficulties with titling, including the state’s lack of a registry of native communities and the fact that the decisions about awarding titles and/or concessions to third parties are made in the centers of power, whether Lima or the regional capitals, without proper fieldwork.

Approximately 155 native communities still need to be titled and five reserves, in an area covering 1.9 million hectares, need to be created. There are no exact numbers with respect to riverine communities, because the majority of these communities do not have property titles. According to calculations based on information gathered by the IBC, these populations occupy around 4.13 million hectares of territory. In total, indigenous and riverine populations have title to or possess around 15.7 million hectares, or 25.8 percent of the Peruvian Amazon.
Native communities and natural protected areas

There has been a noticeable expansion since the 1980s of national protected areas as a strategy for conserving tropical forests as a result of the spiraling deforestation in the Amazon Basin. The National Protected Natural Areas System (SINAMPE) was created in 1990 and the 1997 Natural Protected Areas Law established three kinds of protected areas: areas of indirect use and greatest levels of protection (national parks, national sanctuaries, historic sanctuaries); areas of direct use with lower levels of protection (national reserves, scenic reserves, wildlife refuges, communal reserves, protected forests and hunting grounds); and areas in an undefined category (reserve zones). The system of protected areas at the national level, which is administered by the SINAMPE, includes these 10 categories. In addition, the same law establishes the foundation for the creation of regional and private conservation areas that are not managed directly by the SINAMPE.

The creation of the ANPs has not always been welcomed by local populations, mainly because of the imposition of protected areas over their traditional territories, which implies restrictions on the use of resources. Seven of the 21 protected areas were created over territories inhabited by indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Another nine were created on territories used traditionally by indigenous peoples and border native communities have been recognized and titled. In nearly all of these cases, the parks and reserves were created in the capital, located on the Pacific Ocean, with boundaries drawn based on poor quality maps drawn by conservationists and government employees with little or no basic knowledge on the indigenous peoples and colonizers living there. There were almost no attempts to verify the existence of local populations and even less effort made to consult them about the process. Another problem for the populations whose territories are incorporated into the SINAMPE is that their traditional activities become illegal, subject to repression from park rangers and the environmental police. They are no longer allowed to carry out traditional forms of life and the small-scale extraction they have been involved in for decades. This has led to tension and conflicts in the majority of natural protected areas.

Current situation of indigenous peoples

The major challenge for Amazonian indigenous peoples today is accepting the transformations of modern life, and the benefits that these may offer, while at the same time conserving their ethnic identities and cultural values. Indigenous organizations say that the only way this can be done is if they have legal rights to the territories secured, as well as an institutional capacity that lets them govern and sustainably develop the areas under their dominion. The issue in the Amazon is not just about the environment, but also political and social conditions.

Globalization and the expansion of markets have significantly expanded the agriculture frontier, affecting primary forests in the Amazon basin. At the same time, indigenous territories and indigenous rights are vaguely established, which means that they are constantly impacted by the increase in urban infrastructure, indiscriminate logging, and hydrocarbon and mineral extraction. More than 25 percent of the Peruvian Amazon has been divided into hydrocarbon and mineral concessions, and many of these lots are superimposed on native communities, territorial reserves and natural protected areas. Given that anything under the ground legally belongs to the state, communities are forced to grant easements to extractive industries so that they can exploit resources.

There is enormous pressure for access to natural resources, especially wood, which is generally exploited illegally. This illegality feeds a change of corruption that involves even the communities, weakening their communal structures. In addition, the state is very weak, creating a climate of disorder governed by the law of the fittest. Indigenous peoples in this context have been building local, regional and national organizations over the past few decades with the goal of defending their territories, natural resources and cultural identity.

Roads continue to be built and with them come immigration and an extension of the agriculture frontier. There is strong pressure from settlers on the eastern slopes of the Andes who are invading indigenous territories, especially those with titles pending.