After almost 20 years since it was first proposed, Peru’s government has finally established the Sierra del Divisor Occidental Reserve for indigenous people living in “isolation” in one of the remotest areas of the Peruvian Amazon. The exact number of people in the reserve is unknown and they have no regular contact with outsiders, including other indigenous people. Given their isolation - and therefore lack of immunological defences - any kind of interaction with anyone else is potentially fraught with danger, possibly leading to epidemics and even mass fatalities.
Hence the need for the new reserve, better known as the “Kapanawa Reserve”, which extends for just over half a million hectares, or 1.2 million acres, across Peru’s two largest Amazonian regions, Loreto and Ucayali. Its establishment follows an initial proposal by local indigenous federation Federación de Comunidades Nativas del Bajo Ucayali (FECONBU) all the way back in 2005, and a complex administrative process including, in 2019, official recognition by the government that there are indeed indigenous people in “isolation” living in the area, despite some obviously false claims to the contrary, and then, four years later, a state Multi-Sector Commission’s approval that the reserve should be created.
“It has been an historic process for Peru’s indigenous movement,” said FECONBU’s president Javier Macedo Gonzales in a video clip released by the regional indigenous federation Organización Regional de AIDESEP-Ucayali (ORAU) this week. “After 19 years this important reserve has been created and should guarantee the territories and lives of our brothers, the Kapanawas. I urge the Peruvian authorities - at the local, regional and national levels - to pay attention to what is happening there.”
Macedo Gonzales has been directly involved with the reserve since the very beginning, with the initial proposal made to the government during his first term as FECONBU’s president. He tells me he is “very proud, very happy” that it has been established, but emphasizes how important it is that the government - together with indigenous federations and other civil society allies - now ensures that the area is genuinely protected.
ORAU, which played a key role in the reserve’s creation too, issued a statement describing the 19 year process as a “long struggle by Peru’s indigenous organisations and allies” which has culminated in an “historic achievement.” The day before it was established, on 22 May, ORAU’s president Jamer López - together with the president of another regional indigenous federation, the Organización Regional de los Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente (ORPIO) - issued filmed pleas via Facebook targeted at Peru’s President, Dina Boluarte, and the Culture Minister, Leslie Urteaga Peña, urging them to do it.
“This wouldn’t have been possible without the leadership and courage of those indigenous leaders who, despite facing constant threats and risks to their lives, have defended the rights of the indigenous peoples in isolation,” ran a statement from ORPIO, which fought for the reserve too, particularly in the very final stages. “This isn’t just a victory for indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact, but for all human rights and environmental defenders in Peru. It’s a testament to the resilience and strength of indigenous communities and a reminder of the importance of protecting our ancestral territories.”
For national indigenous federation AIDESEP, which had supported FECONBU’s proposal from the mid-2000s onwards, “this advance in the protection of our brothers and sisters in isolation was made possible by our constant efforts and that of our regional and local affiliates. Now we must be vigilant to ensure that the Protection Plan is properly prepared and implemented.”
Not that various threats to the reserve don’t remain. As well as ensuring that a Protection Plan is written and put into action so that it actually means something on-the-ground, rather than just existing on paper, the reserve now finds itself overlapped by various pre-existing logging concessions. It was agreed in September 2023 by the state’s Multi-Sector Commission that those concessions should be re-located and excluded from the reserve, as in accordance with Peruvian and international laws, but there is no guarantee that will happen.
Moreover, Urteaga, the Minister who signed the Decree establishing the reserve, controversially told a Congressional commission in early May that it is “necessary to flexibilise the intangibility of indigenous reserves”, while a notorious legal loophole already allows oil and gas - or other types of - companies to operate in such reserves if natural resources there are declared in the “public interest.” For years AIDESEP et al have lobbied for that loophole to be closed, but so far to no avail.
In addition to all that, there is the ubiquitous threat of the drugs trade: coca grown for cocaine.
“The most important thing now is that the reserve is protected,” FECONBU’s Macedo Gonzales tells me. “We understand that there is illegal cultivation of coca inside the reserve and that it is expanding - and this concerns us very much because it’s putting the lives of our brothers in isolation at risk. That’s why we’re asking the government to prioritise protecting them.”