The Amazon's Tiananmen: Peru’s “Bagua Massacre” Haunts the TPP

NOTE: I am not a big fan of Counterpunch, but this article is by Lori Wallach of Public Citizen and The Minister for the Environment of Peru- and both of these people, in my book, have a lot of credibility. So kudos to Counterpunch for publishing this because you can bet your last forlorn penny that no one in the MSM would touch it with a thousand foot pole. I want to add that President Obama isn't responsible for the mess in Iraq, but this? This he owns.


Five years ago last week, Peruvian police opened fire on indigenous people protesting the implementation of U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) terms providing new access to exploit their Amazonian lands for oil, gas and logging.

On June 5, 2009, Peruvian security forces attacked several thousand Awajun and Wambis protestors, including many women and children, who were blocking the “Devil’s Curve,” a jungle highway near Bagua, 600 miles north of Lima. The protestors were demanding revocation of decrees enacted to conform Peruvian law to FTA requirements.

Thirty-two Peruvians died in the infamous Bagua massacre and hundreds were wounded.

The FTA’s foreign investor privileges also allowed a U.S. firm to pressure Peru’s government to reopen a smelter that had severely lead-poisoned hundreds of children in La Oroya, Peru — a story revealed in a Bloomberg exposé. Outrageously, now the Obama administration is pushing for inclusion of the same extreme foreign investor privileges in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) it is negotiating with Peru and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.

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Thanks to WikiLeaks, we can now see that the U.S. government was urging Garcia on

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/13/perus-bagua-massacre-haunts-the-tpp/