The Incas grew 5,000 different varieties of potatoes in the Andes when the Spanish arrived in 1532.

 
(Note: updates follow the article below)
Peru to expel British ‘Tarzan agitator’ Paul McAuley
Missionary told to leave after helping Amazon tribes resist incursion of oil, gas and mining firms into the rainforest
By Rory Carroll
The Guardian
July 2, 2010
Peru has ordered the expulsion of a British missionary who was dubbed a “Tarzan agitator” for helping Amazon tribes to […]

A pool of oil in Lago Agrio, an Ecuadorean town in the Amazon where Texaco is accused of having dumped millions of gallons of contamination in local rivers and lakes in order to save the company money. Chevron later purchased Texaco, and has inherited Texaco’s legal troubles
Disaster in the Amazon
By Bob Herbert
June 4, 2010
BP’s calamitous […]

 
A group of Waorani Indians in Ecuador with blow pipes

( Note: At a time when oil is gushing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico, despoiling one of the richest ecosystems in the Americas, another oil company, Perenco, moves closer to building an oil pipeline through one of the remotest areas of the Amazon, in northern […]

 
Global Ad Campaign For Peru’s Uncontacted Tribes
Survival International
May 5, 2010
An ad supporting Peru’s last uncontacted tribes is appearing in publications around the world in a bid to stop Peru’s government allowing an oil pipeline to be built through the Indians’ territory…

The Bolivian ski resort of Chacaltaya, stranded like a beached whale once its 18,000-year-old glacier disappeared permanently in 2009
(Note: Since the early 20th century, glaciers around the world have been retreating, presumably as a result of humans burning greater and greater quantities of oil and coal, rampant deforestation, and the raising of livestock, which create […]

Police arrest a woman who was demonstrating against the arrest of Mapuche Indians involved in a land dispute in Valparaiso, Chile, about 75 miles northwest of Santiago. Dozens of protestors marched through downtown Valparaiso on Dec 13, 2007 to pressure the government to release five Mapuche Indians. The Mapuche had been holding a hunger strike […]

 
December 23, 2009
On Monday, Brazil decreed nine new indigenous reserves covering 51,000 square kilometers (19,700 square miles) of the Amazon rainforest, an areas larger than Denmark or Switzerland, reports the AFP…

 
Survival International: Call for Napalm Bombing of  ‘Savages’ in Peru’s Amazon Wins “Most Racist Article of the Year Award”

Peruvian Times
September 2, 2009
An article implying that Peruvian natives should be bombed with napalm has been named by London-based Survival International as the ‘most racist article’ published in the last year by the mainstream media.

 
Native Protestors at the entrance of Yurimagua, in the northern Peruvian Amazon
Blood at the Blockade: Peru’s Indigenous Uprising

NACLA (May-June 2009)
Gerardo Rénique
On June 6, near a stretch of highway known as the Devil’s Curve in the northern Peruvian Amazon, police began firing live rounds into a multitude of indigenous protestors – many wearing feathered crowns and […]

Groups say Peru oil project threatens Indians
The Associated Press
January 26, 2009
LIMA, Peru: The development of a remote oil field in Peru’s Amazon jungle could threaten the survival of isolated Indian communities in the region, an Indian rights group said Monday.
This month, Peru’s Finance Ministry approved plans submitted by Anglo-French oil company Perenco SA to […]

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