Whose side are you on? That question might be asked of a number of Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deeply enmeshed in a political crisis unfolding in Peru, where dozens of protestors and police officers were killed in demonstrations last month organized by indigenous groups over land rights.

At the heart of the violence are competing visions for how the country should embrace free trade, privatization, and resource exploration in its Amazon region, which is rich in oil, natural gas, and timber. In early 2008, Peruvian President Alan García engineered the passage of two controversial laws that opened the way for resource extraction in parts of the country’s Amazon region, home to 400,000 people. The laws were enacted in part to meet the requirements of the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement passed in 2006 with broad-based support in the U.S. Congress. Indigenous leaders maintained that the laws violated their constitutionally guaranteed rights to Amazonian land and was a threat to their way of life.

In April, indigenous groups began a two month-long protest of the controversial laws, blocking roads and engaging in violent confrontations with police. The protestors received support from international NGOs, most notably the UK nonprofit Survival International (SI), which characterized the conflict as the “Amazon’s Tiananmen” and has called for oil companies in the region to immediately halt operations. According to SI, its protests “are not only directed at governments, but at companies, banks, extremist missionaries, guerrilla armies, narrow minded conservationists or anyone else who violates tribal peoples’ rights.” A similar campaign was launched by San Francisco–based Amazon Watch, which lobbies against “mega projects” in the Amazon, such as “pipelines, power lines, roads, dams, and waterways,” many of the infrastructure projects that most economists agree are prerequisites to rural development.

Western NGOs prefer a romanticized caricature of indigenous groups as isolated, pristine, and vulnerable to abuse by external forces.

The protests and campaigns have shaken the government. In response to public outrage, president García fired seven of 16 ministers from his cabinet and requested the resignation of his Prime Minister, Yehude Simon. Peru’s congress repealed the two natural resource laws, buying the country a temporary calm. Nevertheless, president García’s approval ratings have fallen below 21 percent and public frustration continues to grow over rising unemployment and diminished economic growth rates in the face a worldwide recession.   

Peru’s Development Challenges and Achievements

Over the years, NGOs have proven a powerful force at the negotiating table in South America, lobbying for environmental preservation and indigenous rights. But while these activist, Western NGOs appear to represent the interests of Peru’s underprivileged groups, they may in fact inhibit the country from making the tough domestic compromises that will lead to a sustainable national development strategy—one that benefits both the urban poor in Lima and other growing cities, and the indigenous poor of the Amazon.

International NGOs are often far removed from the daily development challenges faced by Peru and its political leaders. About 40 percent of the country’s 30 million people live below the poverty line, with a disproportionate amount of the nation’s poor living rurally. Nevertheless, Peru has made significant economic progress in recent years, growing more than 4 percent per year from 2002 to 2006 and 9 percent in 2007 and 2008. Peru’s rapid expansion has cut the national poverty rate by about 15 percent since 2002. Also, the country has decreased child mortality rates from 33 per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 21 per 1,000 live births in 2006.

Many of the problems in the Amazon originate not from supposedly exploitative multinational corporations, but from a lack of economic opportunity and access to basic services such as healthcare and education.

The country has also made progress on key Millennium Challenge Corporation indicators, such as improved civil liberties and increased primary education for girls. According to the World Bank, “Peru’s economy has ranked among the best performers in Latin America . . . The impact of such strong growth on employment and incomes has expanded beyond Lima and resulted in significant reductions in poverty rates.” These advancements are attributable in part to rising commodity prices during the presidency of Alejandro Toledo and solid economic policies that opened the country to international trade and investment. While Peru has a long way to go to achieve its long-term development goals, its forward progress is noteworthy.

Helping or Hurting? The Role of NGOs in Peru’s Development

As Peru’s leaders carve out a national development strategy, international NGOs often promulgate a development model that is antiquated. The use of the word “tribal” by organizations like Survival International is telling. The organization’s website, replete with images of freshly painted natives quoted as saying, “the outsiders are bad . . . I prefer to stay in the jungle,” offers a portrayal of people living in the Amazon that miss the complexity of their relationship to modernity.

Peru’s indigenous groups have in fact been in contact with the “developed” world for a very long time. They regularly choose to embrace technology, formal education, and modern healthcare. Yet Western NGOs ignore these facts, preferring a romanticized caricature of indigenous groups as isolated, pristine, and vulnerable to abuse by external forces. This portrayal dismisses the economic challenges faced by indigenous groups and makes businesses and corporations seem like mere predators. It also unfairly lumps Peru’s democratically elected government—whose Supreme Court sentenced former President Alberto Fujimori on July 20 to seven and a half years in jail on charges of embezzlement—with corrupt and authoritarian leaders from across the developing world, marginalizing its carefully crafted economic policies designed to reduce poverty.

Peru has made significant economic progress in recent years, with more than 4 percent growth per year from 2002 to 2006 and 9 percent in 2007 and 2008.

Ultimately, many of the problems in the Amazon originate not from supposedly exploitative multinational corporations, but from a lack of economic opportunity and access to basic services such as healthcare and education. Glossing over these problems by invoking exotic notions of indigenousness will not help Peru reconcile issues of land use.  

Fortunately, there is a way forward for Peru. Following the government’s mishandling of the protests, Peru’s congress extended an olive branch by repealing the controversial laws dealing with increased natural resource exploration. There is now at least a chance for a healthy dialogue about the future and the economic importance of extractive industries in the country. Within the coming weeks, the government is expected to sit down with the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Amazon, or AIDESEP, the umbrella organization of indigenous groups that first called for protests in April. AIDESEP is staffed by indigenous Peruvians, understands the tensions between cultural preservation and development, and can authentically represent the interests of people in the Amazon. According to AIDESEP’s vice president, Daysi Zapata, “We want to initiate a transparent dialogue so that the demands of the indigenous people can be heard.”

The two sides are likely to find that natural resource exploration in limited parts of the Amazon is compatible with the region’s cultural values and environmental preservation. In other cases, they will need to weigh the benefits of resource extraction and free trade against these other important considerations. These will be difficult and sometimes painful decisions, but ones that ultimately should be made by Peruvians in dialogue with one another. It is time for foreign-based NGOs to step aside and let Peruvians decide for themselves.

David Peyton is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute and program manager of Global Governance Watch, a joint project of AEI and Federalist Society.

For more information about NGO transparency and accountability issues, visit NGOWatch.

Image by Darren Wamboldt/Bergman Group.