The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Law of Prior Consultation: Obstacles and Opportunities for Democratization and Political Participation in Peru

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission: When Reparations Cannot Repair

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) set out to topple the government in May 1980, seeking to impose a Maoist-inspired “New Democracy.” The 1980 election that they chose as the date to start their war was the first one in which the majority of Peru’s indigenous population had been able to vote, during a transition from a military government to a civilian one. Although the Maoist movement’s initial platform of social justice and balancing inequality had some early support in various parts of Peru, Senderistas quickly turned violently repressive, leading to a war that caused almost 70,000 deaths and disappearances, with 75 percent of the victims being native speakers of an indigenous language (CVR, 2003a). Among these were 6,000–8,000 dead and 10,000 displaced Ashaninka people (Sarmiento Barletti, 2011). The war in the adjoining valleys of the Ene and Tambo Rivers, the heartland of traditional Ashaninka territory, caused the destruction of 51 of their 66 villages. The scale of the war and the circulation of stories about Sendero’s excesses instilled fear in Ashaninka groups, which have lived in a state of war even after the fighting ended. ⁴

In 2001, after Fujimori fled Peru, interim President Valentín Paniagua, urged by sectors of the national society, mandated the establishment of a Truth Commission. The commissioners were to address the causes of the war, “determine responsibility for human rights violations, and make recommendations that would promote sustainable peace and national reconciliation” (Theidon, 2010: 93). Months later, during Alejandro Toledo’s (2001–2006) government, the commission became a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As in other postviolence contexts, it was aimed at reformulating the social contract between the state and its citizens (see Minow, 1998; Wilson, 2001; 2003). However, although the commission has been considered a model of postconflict reconstruction (e.g., Freeman, 2007), it faced four problems that have had a negative impact on the way indigenous peoples have experienced it.

First, the commissioners included academics, lawyers, retired members of the armed forces, and religious figures but no indigenous Amazonian or Andean representatives. ⁵ Secondly, although the commission’s mandate included the naming of perpetrators of human rights violations, it had no power to prosecute the perpetrators or to force them to testify. Thirdly, the commission’s research phase and recommendations took place in the midst of a huge growth of extractive activity in the territories of populations like Ashaninka people that had been ignored by the prewar state and were victim-survivors of war. Finally, a reading of the Ashaninka section of the commission’s final report reveals deficient access to the testimonies of Ashaninka people and to the resources to record them. Only a few leaders were interviewed and fewer yet appeared at the public hearing in the Andean city of Huancayo. As a result, much of the material on Ashaninka people in the report comes from earlier sources or interviews with people living in urban areas. These interviews were greatly overshadowed by the testimonies of mestizos of the human rights violations committed by groups of Ashaninka militiamen. As a result of these processes, Ashaninka voices were underrepresented.

In his speech at the presentation of the commission’s report, Salomon Lerner, its chairperson, said that it contained “a double outrage: that of massive murder, disappearance, and torture and that of indolence, incompetence, and indifference on the part of those who could have stopped this humanitarian catastrophe but did not” (CVR, 2003b). However, the commission itself and the public hearings it held with victim-survivors of the war throughout the country presented the process of social repair and the mending of injustice it sought to address with further problems. First, although it became the first public stage for normally muted voices to narrate their experiences of violence and officially recognized the victim-survivors of the war, it did not provide them with solutions to their prewar or postwar problems (see Laplante and Theidon, 2007). Secondly, it highlighted the historical discrimination against the country’s indigenous populations that exists in government practices and leads to their exclusion from state services and national society more generally. This exclusion was also obvious in the ignorance and indifference of Peruvians in large urban centers of the magnitude of a war that took place in areas at a great physical distance from them and an even greater imagined one.

Confirming this reading of exclusion and ignorance, various sectors of Peruvian politics and national society reproached the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for what they believed was an exaggeration of the total number of casualties (between 61,007 and 77,552), for being too harsh on the armed forces and too lenient on Sendero, and for unnecessarily reopening wounds that needed closing. This stance was to be expected, since, apart from the work of the commission and the activism of human rights nongovernmental and grassroots organizations, there has been no concerted state-led discourse aimed at reconciliation. Instead, presidents have adopted slogans celebrating the unstoppable march of “progress,” maintaining that Peruvians must focus on economic reconstruction rather than on reopening old wounds to deal with the historical and structural inequalities that preceded and followed the war. Underlying official reconstruction discourse is a logic that links peace and reconstruction with development and progress (see Gianella, 2015). The state and the proextractivism sectors of society accuse those who oppose this logic—such as environmentalists or antiextractivism activists—of sympathizing with Sendero and thus acting against national security and interests (e.g., El Comercio, 2013).

The commission concluded that injustice and exclusion were part of the causes of the war and of the early popular support for Sendero in some areas where it capitalized on the local contexts of discrimination, economic poverty, dispossession, and structural injustice. To create a fairer postwar society and avoid future violence, it called for the inclusion of indigenous populations in political processes and the payment of economic reparations to the victims of the war (CVR, 2003a). Lisa Laplante and Kimberley Theidon (2007: 231) point out that, in the Peruvian context, “the implementation of reparations is critical to generating the recognition, civic trust, and social solidarity that are the foundation of a meaningful democracy.” From this perspective, reparations are crucially important for reconstructing the postwar social contract between the state and its citizens and thus of democratization. However, even if, following the commission’s recommendations, economic reparations were to be allocated to both individuals and communities, these too would raise many issues.

We believe that the failures of the Comprehensive Reparations Plan among some of the victim-survivor populations in Peru is partially a result of the absence of indigenous victim-survivors among the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s membership. In Peru as elsewhere, economic reparations were intended to contribute to “the reconstruction of the social and institutional capital, material and economic productivity of families and rural and urban communities” affected by the war (Suchkova, 2011: 13). In other words, the reparations payments sought a return to the life that survivors of war had experienced in the late 1970s. For most of the indigenous population, this meant a return to dispossession, structural discrimination, and limited or no access to state services. The reparations plan did not address the history of injustice that has continued through Peru’s extractivism-based postwar reconstruction agenda.

Importantly, while these reparations seek to address social injustice and the state’s recognition of its failure to protect its citizens during the war (see CVR, 2003a), they do not address socio-environmental injustice. For reparations to fulfill their role of rebuilding people’s trust in state institutions, there needs to be a baseline of trust to begin with. This baseline did not exist in the prewar relations between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian state. Some of our Ashaninka collaborators have been reluctant to accept reparations payments, which they see as an underhanded attempt to take their territory away and give it to extractive companies (see Sarmiento Barletti, 2016). This belief follows from an understanding of Sendero as having been sent by Alan García to destroy Ashaninka people and take over their territory. García’s first government (1985–1990) coincided with the appearance of the Maoist movement in their territory, and his second government (2006–2011) brought the growth of extractive concessions throughout Peru. Our Ashaninka collaborators experienced the increase in extractivism during his second government and his anti-indigenous discourse—most infamously in his “dog in the manger” ⁶ articles (A. García, 2007)—as a renewed attempt to take over their territory after having failed to do so through Sendero (see Sarmiento Barletti, 2016).

Currently, extraction concessions overlap half of all comunidades nativas (native communities), the titled territories in which most indigenous Amazonians in Peru live, and one-fifth of the protected natural areas in the Amazon (Huertas, 2011). That three-quarters of the Peruvian Amazon are zoned for concessions for the extraction of hydrocarbons is the most recent manifestation of the state-led dispossession in favor of foreign capital that has been taking place since the nineteenth century. In spite of their opposition, voiced through strikes, international campaigns, and the violent invasion of extraction camps, Ashaninka people in the Ene and Tambo Valleys are all threatened by extractivism and planned mega-dams. These valleys are flanked by extractive concessions (one of Repsol’s covers 8,800 square kilometers, 10 times the area of an average comunidad) and planned hydroelectric mega-dams in the Ene (Pakitzapango) and Tambo (Tambo 40 and Tambo 60). The Pakitzapango Dam alone is projected to affect 10,000 people by flooding 734 square kilometers belonging to 13 native communities (CARE, 2009).

This stance toward reparations is also based on our Ashaninka collaborators’ negative experiences of previous state postwar reconstruction plans. For example, the Program for Repopulation Assistance introduced in Ashaninka territory in 1995 became another tool for the legalized dispossession of their territories (Sarmiento Barletti, 2011). Some displaced Ashaninka groups returned to their territories to find that parts of it had been given to timber companies or to the thousands of Andean colonists who were moved to the Ene by the army. Others found that their communities now fell within extraction concessions as exploratory work for oil restarted in the Ene in 1996 and in the Tambo a year later. This extractivism-led dispossession has been furthered by the state’s delay in granting new titles or land extensions to indigenous territories.

From this perspective, war and violence never ended. For example, Chato, an Ashaninka man from the Bajo Urubamba Valley, compared his fear of extractivism to his fear of Sendero. His description reveals an experience of the war and extraction as a continuation of violence: “I used to be scared of [Sendero] killing my family and taking my children. But now, look at what’s happening. . . . I’m scared of the companies . . ., of dams. Where will we go? What will we eat? Where will our children grow up? We’ll just have to fight” (interview, Bajo Urubamba, 2009). In a similar vein, Ruth Buendia, former president of the Central Ashaninka del Rio Ene (Ashaninka Organization for the Ene River—CARE), has denounced these actions as “economic terrorism” (Atlantic, 2014). CARE (2009) has condemned the fact that even though Ashaninka people had actively contributed to Sendero’s defeat, “the government brings us new threats: the concession of our lands to oil companies and the construction of dams. We see these attacks on our territory as another direct attempt against our lives. . . . The government intends to exterminate us.” Ruth has called this “a past that won’t pass” (personal communication, 2009), describing a present in which politics is experienced as war by other means (see Sarmiento Barletti, 2015).

Reparations failed to address injustice and reconstruct relations between the state and its indigenous citizens because they did not address their prewar relations, including a history of dispossession and failure of the state to respond to indigenous territorial claims (see Bebbington and Hinojosa, 2011, on the latter). The Law of Prior Consultation was passed by President Humala in 2011 to distance his new administration from the way previous presidents had dealt with indigenous demands. The discussions around it promised an opportunity to address these relations and introduce legislation to tackle the historical dispossession of indigenous territories. However, this too was a missed opportunity.

The Law of Prior Consultation: When there are no Indigenous Peoples in the Andes

Given the lack of political will to tackle the historical and social inequalities that preceded and followed the internal war and the fact that many indigenous Amazonians viewed extractivism as a continuation of the violence of the Sendero years, the events in Bagua in 2009 were not surprising. As a result, Humala signed the Law of Prior Consultation rather symbolically near the site of the Baguazo after President García had vetoed it in 2010. Humala dismissed the rationale behind Garcίa’s veto, stating that the law would strengthen rather than weaken foreign investment in Peru because the government would be able to use consultations to reduce the risk of social conflicts that drive investors away (Gestión, 2013). According to an interviewee who worked for the Ombudsman’s Office, “this political gesture held a lot of symbolic significance . . . [as] Humala promised to take serious steps to engage with indigenous populations differently from his predecessors” (Daniel, interview, Ombudsman’s Office, 2014).

Following the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, the Law of Prior Consultation formally recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to be consulted prior to the enactment of legislative or administrative measures that directly affect their collective rights, cultural identity, quality of life, and development. The purpose of the consultation is to reach agreement between the state and indigenous representatives with respect to measures that may affect them directly. This agreement is to be achieved through intercultural dialogue that includes indigenous peoples in decision making and respects their collective rights. To carry out this consultation in a manner that respects the linguistic diversity of indigenous peoples, the process must have the support of interpreters trained in the subjects of the consultation and registered with the government.

The communities of Espinar (in the Cusco region) were interested in the discussions surrounding the implementation of the law because of the impact that the Tintaya and Antapaccay mines had on their everyday lives. The law had become especially relevant to their case because of the possibility of an expansion of Tintaya’s concession without consultation of the local population. During the 1980s, Espinar’s comunidades campesinas (the Andean counterpart to comunidades nativas) lost a total of 4,754.85 hectares of land to the Tintaya mine (CooperAcción, 2016). Oscar, a collaborator in Espinar, explained that this was due to pressure from the state, a perceived threat of servitude, and grand promises of development (Oscar, interview, Espinar, 2014). Initially, communities were enchanted by the prospect of economic development—promises that the mine would bring trade, jobs, and modernization. They soon recognized, however, that modern mining practices provide relatively few jobs and that those they do create are often of the “highly skilled” variety for which workers are brought in from abroad. Thus, most Espinarenses are excluded from the economic benefits of mining but continue to assume its environmental risks.

Although there has been mining in Espinar since the colonial period, the most significant impacts have occurred since the beginning of operations at Tintaya in 1985. Much conflict has arisen from Tintaya, which operated until 2013, and now Antapaccay (its extension and replacement), which began operations in 2012. There have been protests against the expropriation of indigenous land, the contamination of air and water, and a perceived lack of respect for human rights and sustainable development on the part of the mining companies. Tintaya has changed hands various times and is currently owned by Glencore, which now operates Antapaccay. Glencore has attracted criticism for reneging on its promises of development, carrying out operations without the legal permission of the communities, and attempting to polarize resistance (e.g., London Mining Network, 2014).

The announcement of the Law of Prior Consultation brought short-lived hope for Espinarenses of a new relationship with the state, as it quickly transpired that there were no adequate internal guidelines for implementing Convention 169, just as there had been no previous official implementation of any consultation process. According to one collaborator from the Ombudsman’s Office who was closely involved in the process, some of the indigenous organizations thought that the right of consultation ought to include a veto—that indigenous communities should have the final say as to whether a project went ahead on their territory or not. At the same time, proextraction voices that had supported García’s veto of the law thought that there should be no consultations at all, because what mattered most was investment in resource extraction (Bruce, interview, Ombudsman’s Office, 2014). ⁷

Yet, the main problem with the law’s implementation was that the state did not honor most of the initial agreements it had made with indigenous organizations and in some cases the policies adopted were unilaterally modified by the president and the council of ministers. This delegitimized the implementation process and the first consultation under the law and generated further mistrust of the state by the indigenous organizations (Angela, interview, Ministry of Culture, 2014). In fact, “this context generated a series of additional problems, since the indigenous organizations did not trust the state at all. Thus, any management norms or tools that were published back then were taken as a sort of attack on indigenous rights” (Bruce, interview, Ombudsman’s Office, 2014). The lengthy process of drafting regulations that ensued was problematic from the outset. In the end, it was decided that in the case of a disagreement over a legislative or administrative measure the state would proceed as planned but would adopt safeguards to promote the “quality of life of indigenous people [through the] improvement of their living and working conditions and their levels of health and education.” ⁸ These improvements were assessed and established by the state in detriment of the priorities and lived realities of the populations affected. In implementing the law the government dismantled the space for dialogue that the discussions leading to the law had created between the indigenous organizations and the state by opening up the possibility of a debate over the legitimacy of the law itself.

Another key issue for many of our Espinarense collaborators was the initial decision that the right to consultations would be recognized only for indigenous Amazonian peoples. Humala expressed this view in an interview by saying, “In the highlands there are mostly agrarian communities. . . . Indigenous communities are mostly in the jungle” (Reuters, 2013). The gist of the state’s argument was that there were no indigenous peoples in the Andes because Quechua-speakers often identify themselves as campesinos (peasants), are less isolated than indigenous Amazonians, and have experienced centuries of intermixing with nonindigenous people. This was seen as a victory for Jorge Merino, the minister of energy and mines at the time, as he sought to protect US$50 billon of investment in mega-mining projects in the Andes and future plans for concessions in the area between Cusco and Arequipa from having to conduct consultation processes (Juan, interview, Instituto de Defensa Legal, 2014). Espinar is located in this area, which has among the largest copper reserves in the world and is populated almost entirely by peasant communities.

The state also decided that the expansion of the area of any extractive block that had been granted before the passage of the Law of Prior Consultation would not need a consultation process. This was in spite of protests by indigenous organizations from all over Peru demanding that the law be retroactive, since Peru had ratified Convention 169 in 1994 and had taken more than a decade to implement it (see DAR, 2012). These decisions, made unilaterally by Humala’s government, delegitimized the whole process, generated further mistrust among the indigenous representatives, and broke the promise of socio-environmentally just interaction between the state and indigenous communities. Some Espinarenses were angered by their exclusion from the initial Database of Indigenous or Originary Peoples through which the state recognized those peoples’ right to consultation. One key collaborator told us that the law “has been and always will be a box-ticking exercise. The state will not listen to the indigenous population. The state betrayed us, Ollanta Humala betrayed us. . . . We are a mainly Quechua-speaking population. The K’ana nation existed long before the Republic” (Jorge, interview, Espinar, 2015). Espinarenses saw this exclusion as just another moment in a long history of moments in which the state appeared to be engaging in dialogue and listening to what locals had to say but that ended up as a new sinister control mechanism (Jorge, interview, Espinar, 2015). This mistrust of the state was already present both because Espinar was one of the most affected Andean provinces during the internal war (CVR, 2003a) and because of the history of discrimination Espinarenses had suffered. Indigenous communities regarded the state as simply a new and more powerful patrón (boss).

In Espinar, the struggle for land was a response to a history of grievances built on claims of ethnicity as much as class. This was not just a material struggle; land was one of the most powerful symbolic references of a history of dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Andes. Justice on questions of land had a profound meaning for peasants and catalyzed a new appreciation of their culture and of themselves as a people. Discourses consistent with Quechua understandings of land—as a key component of social life and one that cannot be bought or sold (e.g., Allen, 2002)—have been prominent in Espinarense antimining rhetoric since the 1980s. The antimining movement draws upon extensive kinship networks, invokes the territorial rights of Espinarenses as people of the preconquest K’ana nation, and continues to use Quechua, which most Espinarenses speak as their first language, in public meetings. Nevertheless, most Espinarenses identify themselves not as indígenas (indigenous people) but as peasants.

Given this context, we read the Law of Prior Consultation not as the turning point in indigenous-state relations that it was promised to be but as a continuation of state discrimination and legalized dispossession. The Database, which lists the indigenous communities that the state recognizes and that therefore (in theory) have the right to be consulted, has been widely criticized for its initial exclusion of many self-identified peasant communities. The law continues the trend of forced categorization of people as either “indigenous” or “mestizo,” part of the same regime of state racism that decides which expressions of indigenous identity are acceptable and which are to be dismissed. The categorization made during the agrarian reform of General Juan Velasco’s regime (1968–1975), when Andeans became “peasants” rather than “indigenous,” was used by Humala’s government to deny Quechua communities the right to prior consultation. For us, the barrier at issue is the state’s insistence on considering indigenous identity as an ethnic category instead of recognizing that, as an identity formation, indigeneity encompasses “historically-articulated hegemonic statements, practices and notions of class-race-gender-sexuality-geography-education-age-etc.” (de la Cadena, 2008: 344). Indigeneity is not just about ethnicity but must encompass factors such as language and culture, shared use of land, and self-identification. This point was made by Peru’s former deputy minister of intercultural affairs, Ivan Lanegra, in resigning over the law’s failings (Servindi, 2013).

The state appears to be using indigeneity as a category through which political participation can be obtained for certain groups at the expense of others. While citizenship was once achieved through the jettisoning of indigenous identity and the process of mestizaje (racial mixing), the reverse is occurring in communities such as Espinar, which has seen a resurgence in identification with its K’ana identity. The outrage at the exclusion of Andean communities from the “indigenous” category has in some cases formed a part of a move to reconnect with an indigenous identity that has long been suppressed. In the context of the the Law of Prior Consultation, “indigenous” is a far more powerful category than “peasant” or “mestizo,” since it can be employed strategically by Andean communities as a platform from which to gain access to their rights. This reclaiming of indigenous identities and recognition of their political power is occurring even in areas where indigeneity was not previously a field of political action. While in 2010 the antimining movement seldom used the discourse of the Pachamama (Mother Earth), five years later Espinar hosted the National Conference for the Defense of the Pachamama, and the language used locally shifted to reflect concepts of the Andean worldview such as the Pachamama and the Apus (mountain spirits). The convergence of these processes presents a historical political opportunity and allows individuals formerly classified as peasants or mestizos to (re)claim indigenous identities (de la Cadena, 2008; 2010) in order to acquire historically inaccessible rights.

A New Language for Representation

The struggle of indigenous peoples throughout Peru to pursue their own well-being agendas has become an obstacle to the state’s brand of progress. Their demands have become threats as they seek an approach to development that is not extractivism-based and that corresponds to their own life plans. These priorities for well-being are based on an understanding of the world that is commonly presented in state circles as incompatible with Peru’s “progress” or dismissed as “primitive animism” or “absurd ideologies” (A. García, 2007) propagated by left-leaning interests connected to Sendero or foreign government interests. The historian Paulo Drinot (2011: 180) has described these discourses as a “symptom of a particular politics . . . [that operates] through a primitive and essential fear” and reflects a particular configuration of governmentality in Peru. It is worth remembering that these tactics are not new in Peru; Fujimori employed a similar instrumentalization of fear throughout his regime to control the population and advance his agenda (see Burt, 2007).

These restrictions are in line with arguments from analysts like Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) and Charles Hale (2002) that in multicultural societies like Peru, indigenous peoples are recognized and their cultures considered equally valid only when they are “authorized Indians” (Hale, 2004), behaving within the limits of what is reasonable and conceivable to the ruling classes. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Prior Consultation Law may have been conceived in times of political will for a resolution to indigenous issues that sought to repair past wrongs, but the delivery of this promise has established limitations that have allowed indigenous peoples to enjoy only some rights at the expense of others.

Ashaninka people have been able to highlight their role in the fight against Sendero in the Independence Day military parades in which they have been invited to take part in Lima, marching with members of the armed forces, but they have been prevented from arguing their case against extractivism in terms of what the state owes them for their opposition to Sendero. The discourses of war put forth by the leaders of their political organizations are not just about victimhood (although they have also used this argument) but about heroes who gave their lives for their country and who have been mistreated by a state that wants to take over their territory (Joel Bardales, interview, Atalaya, 2009). In a similar vein, Espinarenses were initially excluded from their right to prior consultation as not “indigenous” enough because of the historical process of their integration into the societies that colonized them. In current state discourses, our collaborators are considered not rights-holders but enemies of the nation or ignorant masses moved by foreign interests when they oppose further extractive activity in their territories.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Law of Prior Consultation have failed because, contrary to the original intention of those who called for them and of many of those who worked through their processes, they have been deployed as tools to prevent further conflict and quell tensions rather than accepting indigenous peoples’ historical rights to territory. Instead of creating a new relationship of trust between the state and indigenous communities, they have been implemented through more of the structural racism that is engrained in interactions between the Peruvian state and the country’s indigenous population. However, despite their failings, they have opened up a new discursive space for the participation of indigenous peoples in Peruvian politics and conversations about their right to self-representation. These initiatives have, at the very least, armed indigenous peoples and their organizations with a language of different kinds of rights. Their failure has opened a new way into political participation as “unauthorized Indians” and created a process of reaffirmation of indigenous peoples in Peru, people who long had to abandon their indigenous identities to be able to achieve citizenship. Thus indigeneity has been reinforced as a tool for politics in Peru.

In the Ashaninka case, the communities of the Ene River Valley argued their opposition to the construction of the Pakitzapango Dam in cultural, political, and legal terms (CARE, 2009) that correspond with the recognition of rights that took place in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The state’s recognition of its failure to defend local populations from Sendero and guarantee the rights conceded to them by Convention 169 made it possible for them to put pressure on it to fulfill its responsibilities toward them as indigenous citizens. The Ashaninka movement against Pakitzapango was also built around the image of Ashaninka people once again sacrificing themselves to defend Peru and the future of all Peruvians just as they had done during the war.

In Espinar, various peasant communities, in coordination with nongovernmental organizations and the Viceministry of Interculturality, recently underwent a consultation process for the establishment of a Protected Natural Area in Tres Cañones, an area of great importance for its biodiversity and as the source of the Apurímac River. This consultation, along with Espinar’s inclusion in the aforementioned Database, has immense significance for the region because of the precedent it sets for future mining projects. For Espinarenses the Law of Prior Consultation is a mechanism established by the state itself to compel the state to meet their needs and ensure that their rights as indigenous peoples are respected.

These are examples of the transformation that the “indigenous” as rights-holders have experienced in spite of their persistent denial by right-wing sectors of Peruvian national society. Social movements spurred by the context created by large-scale extraction have helped transform “indigenous” from a category for modernizing policies into one for achieving citizenship. These movements, often grounded in local formations smaller than the nation, are backed by transnational indigenous movements that interpellate political groups even in countries where indigeneity has not been a field of political action (e.g., Indonesia [Li, 2000]). More locally, they have mobilized the “indigenous” category more explicitly than the movements of the twentieth century, which despite their significant impact did not succeed in vindicating their ethnic identity (Albó, 1991: 325; see critique in Greene, 2006).

Conclusion: What’s Next?

In this article we have proposed that there will be no real democratization and expansion of effective participation in Peru as long as the socio-environmental injustice experienced by our indigenous collaborators in the Amazon and Andes persists. Two of the key state-led initiatives for addressing this injustice, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Law of Prior Consultation, have failed because they did not address the history of dispossession and discrimination indigenous peoples have suffered, mostly at the hands of the state. Although these initiatives were conceived as transformational, they have ended up as tools for preventing social conflict and furthering the dominant economic agenda. Yet, their failures have led to an unintended strengthening of the indigenous movement in Peru and greater political participation. The continuation of this is key in the consolidation of democratic governance.

We have treated the commission and the law together because of the similarities in what they sought to address, in their failures, and in the unintended opportunities for political participation that they created. They provided indigenous citizens with both a language of rights and the knowledge that the state has particular responsibilities toward them. Therefore, despite their failures, they have led to a new consciousness of rights, political participation, and even cultural revival. Although there is still a great deal of reluctance among the political class to consider indigeneity as a category from which to do “real” politics (as opposed to making “cultural” demands), people like our Ashaninka and Espinarense collaborators have moved into the spotlight in Peruvian politics and caused a reconsideration of development projects that may signal greater influence. These are not reflections of paternalism but demands informed by the responsibilities toward them that the state has accepted since the war and that are now being made in name of all Peruvians with the support of nonindigenous movements. This highlights an approach to political participation based on a constant (and conscious) negotiation and renegotiation of the terms of their relationships with different external agents. We eagerly await developments in this regard, the further opportunities for political participation that they may create, and the emergence of the political will to expand interculturally based initiatives and offer these populations real participation in the decision making that affects their lives.