Bolivian indigenous groups are protesting the government’s plans to build a road through the TIPNIS National Park meanwhile the government claims that 80% of the indigenous population supports the construction.

“The Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos road project isn’t going to pass through the TIPNIS,” said indigenous leader Fernardo Vargas. “As long as we are alive and in defense of our habitat, the road will not go through the TIPNIS, it will pass through somewhere else.”

Vargas explained that there is a “global strategic alliance forming with indigenous people in Brazil and Ecuador to join forces against the violation of human rights, environment and biodiversity.”

“Throughout the continent, people are trampling on indigenous rights, territories and environment,” he said.

Vargas did not rule out the possibility of an international march to Washington D.C. where the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) headquarters is located. The Bolivian indigenous groups are preparing a petition to the IACHR.

“We want to show the government that we are not alone,” he said.

The Bolivian government conducted a consultation with the indigenous groups of TIPNIS announcing that the road’s construction is “green” and will include bridges that pass above the trees. Local and international groups are questioning the reports.

A commission of the Catholic Church and a human rights NGO evaluated the report and received complaints about irregularities in the indigenous consultation.

Defender of the Pueblo, Rolando Villena, said “The query was made unilaterally, without coordination and support of indigenous nations and only from an authoritarian perspective.”

President Evo Morales has been trying to resolve issues with the indigenous population over construction in TIPNIS National Park since the beginning of this year.

The Bolivian minister of Public Works, Vladimir Sanchez, announced that he has already consulted 32 of the 69 indigenous communities over the construction of a highway that will run through Isiboro-Secure nature reserve, known as Tipnis, where the communities reside. The other 37 communities will get to vote over the construction of the highway at the beginning of September.

The Public Works minister said that after asking the 32 tribes, all 32 rejected the intangibility law in Bolivia, finally saying that they were in agreement to accepting the construction of the road through their Amazonian land. Minister Sanchez said at a press conference that the only community to still completely reject the idea is San Miguelito, who are firmly against the road “entering the heart of the Tipnis”.

The intangibility law is a ruling put in place by Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, to protect the nature reserves and indigenous peoples who live in them. The law was put into place in order to promote co-existence with nature as opposed to destruction.

When the law was passed, the indigenous tribes seemed to be in aggreement with it. “The intangibility is a means to preserve the most fragile ecosystems of our territory and national park, to preserve sacred areas and to ensure the land stays permanently sacred now, tomorrow and forever,” said Fernando Vargas, president of the Subcentral Tipnis, an organisation that represents 64 indigenous communities in the area.

The law was a finalised response to the eighth indigenous protest against the construction of the highway last October. After the law was put into place, the ninth indigenous march against construction arrived outside Bolivia’s executive buildings this past June.

Although Minister Sanchez remembers the protest, he claimed that the indigenous communities and the state have come to a consensus over the matter. Minister Sanchez reassured the people that even if there was not a law, the indigenous communities would have been included and informed in the building process.

The last protest occurred on the 15^th August, according to the BBC, where an estimated 500 Amazonian natives marched against the highway’s construction.

The proposed highway is to connect the highland city of Cochabamba and San Ignacio de Moxos in the lowlands. The project also hopes to connect Brazil’s south Amazon with ports in the Pacific coast. The project is being done by a Brazilian company.

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, remains an advocate of the highway saying that it’s important for national integration and that environmental precautions will be taken.

However, environmentalists and indigenous activist say that the road will mean more illegal logging as well as increased coca production.

BOLIVIA – President Evo Morales is meeting this week with indigenous Amazon basin lowland residents from Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) to discuss the plans for a controversial highway that would run through their homeland, compromising both themselves and the fragile ecosystem there.

Protestors have set up in a university gymnasium, which is being used as a temporary accommodation for around 1,000 natives who walked over the course of two months from Trinidad to La Paz to protest a highway through their ancestral homeland.

Observers with the Organization of American States and the Union of South American were also present at the meeting. The discussions are aimed at asking the 33,000, predominantly indigenous, residents if they want a highway that would cut through their reserve.

The project made headlines in June when escalating tensions boiled over into a violent six-day riot. This led the Bolivian government to acknowledge they had committed “several errors” in the project and prompted the talks.

Talks will last for a month with results expected in two months, officials said. Morales’ government is eager to carry out the highway project, which is being funded with US$ 332 million by Brazil. It is to link with a network of highways linking the landlocked country to both the Pacific through Chile and the Atlantic through Brazil.

Initial suggestions to divert the highway around the reserve have been deemed too expensive and pressure to call of the project entirely has been progressively escalating since last year.

A major concern about the impact of the road is its potential to accelerate deforestation, which has been significant since waves of colonization began arriving to TIPNIS area in the 1970s. A study of the project by the Program for Strategic Investigation in Bolivia (PIEB) concluded that the road would markedly accelerate deforestation in the park, leaving up to 64% of TIPNIS deforested by 2030.

A technical report submitted by the Bolivian Highway Administration (ABC) established that the direct deforestation caused by the road itself would only be 0.03%. Similarly, President Morales has spoken of a 180-hectare deforestation, an area equivalent to a rectangle 180 km long and 10 m wide.

According to the Associated Press, Amazon natives fear that landless Andean Quechua and Aymara people from the Andes mountains, Bolivia’s main indigenous groups and Morales supporters, would use the road to flood into the area and colonize their land.

The Bolivian government acknowledged ​​committing “several errors” in the conflict with indigenous activists who oppose the construction of a highway that divided the natural reserve of Tipnis. The conflict had caused tensions between both parties to escalate significantly at the end of June.

According to EFE, the Spanish-language news agency, Government Minister Carlos Romero said that the main mistake was allowing “growing conflict” by not having “worked in a timely manner” in consulting the communities living on the indigenous territory.

“The State did not help reach an early consensus about the construction of a road and the possible line that it cut through the territory,” admitted Romero in a meeting with international media.

The minister said that the conflict escalated in 2011 when hundreds of indigenous activists marched from the Amazon to La Paz.

EFE also states that Romero said the government should have investigated the road prior to its construction and that the situation had become a political discussion about indigenous rights.

Romero´s mea culpa was followed by his staunch defence of the road project. He said that it would allow the State to develop and help control the region so that coca growers and loggers did not take over the reserve.

Negotiations over the controversial road project are still underway.

Just after a period of riots due to conflicts between the government and police officers in Bolivia, which was resolved today with the signing of an agreement, the 9^th  Indigenous Territory and Isiboro Sécure National Park (Tipnis) March arrives to La Paz.

About 300 activists began the 620km, month-long march to La Paz through the Amazon forest in April, but news sources say there is now a group of about 1000 protestors in the city.These protestors demand that the government cease all plans to construct a highway that would traverse the Tipnis territory and would connect the central region of Cochabamba with the Amazon region of Beni, and also demand that the government revoke the law of ‘previous consultation.’

After protestors marched in 2011 along the same route to negotiate with President Evo Morales, they were met with a victory: the government passed Ley 180, which prohibited the construction of this highway. Nevertheless,  after a counter-protest this year made up largely of pro-government indigenous activists and coca-growers who are in favour of the construction, Morales signed a new ‘previous consultation’ law.  Through this law, the government collects information and the opinions of residents living in the area that would be affected by the construction in order to decide if they should resume the project.

The Tipnis protestors in La Paz today are demanding that President Morales revoke this law, saying that it violates the previously passed Ley 180 and that it is being used as a way to bribe indigenous communities in the Amazon region into agreeing with the construction project.

The press, as well as government officials, had expressed fears that the Tipnis activists would join forces with the protesting police officers in order to destabilise the government and even attempt a coup d’état, but leaders of the Tipnis march have repeatedly denied such efforts. In an interview with El Diario, Bertha Bejarano, president of the March Committee, insisted on the willingness of Tipnis activists to dialogue peacefully with the government and stated that “we have never said anything about wanting to bring this government down, perhaps [government officials] are just fearful because of their own actions, because they know our demands are legitimate…our struggle is not to be confused with the police issue, we are in solidarity with them, but we are not formally united to their cause.”

The Bolivian Legislative Assembly drew up a bill today to address the ongoing dispute between two indigenous groups over the aborted construction of a road through the Isidoro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).

The drafted bill was approved by a commission consisting of representatives of the Bolivian Legislative Assembly and a sector of TIPNIS representatives.

The new regulations will grant the 63 communities that inhabit the area the right to prior consultation on the nature and limits of the TIPNIS.

However, the bill “will not repeal nor abolish the Tipnis Short Law 180, that was sanctioned and promulgated last year,” said the president of the Chamber of Senates, Gabriela Montaño.

The legislative amendments come in the wake of a campaign of more than four million protesters in La Paz. The demonstrators called for the government to resume construction of the 185-mile highway through the indigenous park.

Bolivian president Evo Morales revoked the Tipnis Short Law 180 in October 2011, following a high profile anti-road campaign.

Pro-road protesters argue that the 185-mile highway through the national park would bring much-needed economic development. But the Confederation of Bolivian Indigenous Towns (Cidob) fear that the imposition of the road would trigger irreversible ecological and social damage.

The mayor of the natives of the TIPNIS, Gumercindo Pradel, confirmed today that the Bolivian town will have “access to the work we have carried out with the Legislative Assembly in a transparent manner”.

The so-called Short law sets out the declaration of the Tipnis as an area of ecological preservation and historical habitat of the indigenous towns of Tsimane, Yucaré and Mojeño Trinitario, whose protection and conservation are of paramount interest to the Bolivian state.

The indigenous sectors that have been marching for over a month in defence of the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) presented new demands to the Bolivian Government. The country’s authorities stated that the protesters make negotiations difficult.

The minister of the Presidency of Bolivia, Carlos Romero, said the protester’s new demands “complicate the dialogue and negotiation”.

Amongst their demands, the indigenous populations point out that hydrocarbon activities should not be developed in the natural reserve, which is responsible for 90% of the Bolivian gas export.

Despite that, they threatened to stop any new gas and oil activity in protected areas of the country. In addition, the marchers want to be consulted in accordance with the State planning. Minister Romero explained that if that indeed happened, all the big projects that are supposed to fulfil the governmental National Plan of Development would be subjected to the decision of one organization.

On the other had, the Bolivian politician argued that the demands of the indigenous groups are motivated by political interests.  For that reason, Romero called out to the protesters to depoliticize their speech.

Since 15^th August about 600 Bolivian indigenous have marched to La Paz in protest of the construction of an interstate that would go through the TIPNIS.

The Bolivian Government has tried in countless opportunities to install roundtables with the indigenous protesters. To debate, the protesters are demanding that their 15 part platform be complied with.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar