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

• Author: Lexy Seedhouse,Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19857153
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19857153

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 228, Vol. 46 No. 5, September 2019, 111–127

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19857153

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

111

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and

the Law of Prior Consultation

Obstacles and Opportunities for Democratization and

Political Participation in Peru

by

Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti and Lexy Seedhouse

A study informed by long-term fieldwork with Amazonian and Andean indigenous

peoples examines their experiences of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and

Law of Prior Consultation. It engages with these efforts, which sought to address injustice

by creating a new pact between the state and its indigenous citizens, their various failures,

and the unintended opportunities that they have created for the political participation of

indigenous peoples and their representatives.

Un estudio basado en el trabajo de campo a largo plazo con los pueblos indígenas

amazónicas y andinos examine sus experiencias de la Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación

y la Ley de Consulta Previa de Perú, que buscaba abordar la injusticia creando un nuevo

pacto entre el estado y sus ciudadanos indígenas. Aborda sus diversos fracasos y las opor-

tunidades no previstas que han creado para la participación políticas de los pueblos indí-

genas y sus representantes.

Keywords: Extractivism, Socio-environmental justice, Indigeneity, Ashaninka, Peru

In this article we address the experiences of indigenous Ashaninka people in

the Peruvian Amazon with the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

and of Quechua (K’ana) people in the province of Espinar (Cusco) with Law

29785 on the Right of Prior Consultation for indigenous peoples, focusing on

the obstacles and opportunities these initiatives have presented for a transition

to a more democratic regime and wider political participation of indigenous

peoples. Our study contributes to current debates on socio-environmental

injustice and inequality as obstacles to the development of citizenship through-

out Latin America (see, e.g., Castro, 2006, for Mexico; M. E. García, 2005, for

Peru) and as a source of conflict between states and local populations in the

region over environmental issues (see, e.g., Martinez-Alier, 2002; Peet and

Watts, 2004). While recent texts on the challenges facing democratization in the

region do not consider socio-environmental issues as key aspects of these pro-

cesses (see Domínguez and Shifter, 2013; Hagopian and Mainwaring, 2005),

Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti is a Peruvian social anthropologist. He currently coordinates a

global comparative project on multi-stakeholder forums at the Center for International Forestry

Research’s hub in Lima, Peru. Lexy Seedhouse is a Ph.D. candidate in geography and Latin

American studies at Newcastle University’s School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.

857153LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19857153Latin American PerspectivesSarmiento Barletti and Seedhouse / Obstacles And Opportunities For Participation In Peru

research-article2019

112 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

antiextractivism conflicts have become an obstacle to democratization in Peru

in the past decade. This reached a turning point during the Baguazo, the violent

repression of indigenous protesters outside the Amazonian city of Bagua by

police during the national Amazonian strike of 2009.

Peru has been described as a country with a weak state that has failed to

integrate its multicultural population and guarantee all Peruvians the same

level of rights to political participation and influence in policy making (see

Burt, 2007). The expansion of protests over extractivism throughout Peru and

the way presidents Alan García (2006–2011) and Ollanta Humala (2011–2016)

have dealt with them have turned indigenous protesters into an internal enemy.

This is not just because of the clashes between protesters and the police in

antiextractivism-motivated protests but because of the kind of socio-environ-

mental justice that indigenous communities are demanding. Rather than open-

ing new avenues for political engagement and democratization, these demands

have identified them discursively as an obstacle to the mainstream discourses

of reconstruction of the state and the economy in the wake of Peru’s internal

war (1980–2000).

Although a focus on socio-environmental inequality and injustice as obsta-

cles to democratization is equally applicable to other contexts in Latin America,

in Peru justice concerns are subordinated to a macroeconomic emphasis on

extractivism. This emphasis, inherited from the economic reforms during

Alberto Fujimori’s (1990–2000) regime, is based on an understanding of devel-

opment and progress as economic growth. Governments have portrayed extrac-

tivism as the answer to poverty reduction, progress, and social investment1 and

to the reconstruction of a weakened state and public institutions after the inter-

nal war. Consequently, Peru’s top exports are copper ore (US$6.61 billion), gold

(US$5.67 billion), refined petroleum (US$1.67 billion), and refined copper

(US$1.53 billion), and ores and minerals combined make up over 50 percent of

the country’s exports (OEC, 2017). Yet, as is evidenced by the 139 ongoing

extractivism-related conflicts that have led to 50 deaths and more than 750

reported injuries during Humala’s administration (Defensoría del Pueblo, 2017),

economic growth in Peru is coupled with increasing social unrest. Analysts of

this context have revealed that there has been no significant improvement in

either economic poverty indicators (Alayza, 2009) or quality of life (Bebbington

and Hinojosa, 2011) of the populations directly impacted by extractivism.

Conflicts over socio-environmental injustice have taken place at different

levels, from local struggles over access to water to national indigenous strikes

against extractivism. Describing these conflicts as either environmental or

social is unhelpful because it ignores indigenous people’s ways of knowing and

engaging with nature and society. The cases set out here are about more than

just a fair distribution of goods or access to state programs. They have to do

with the recognition of indigenous peoples’ participation in politics and in

decision making about their future. Following the political theorist David

Schlosberg (2007), we envisage a conversation on socio-environmental justice

in which distribution, recognition, and participation are interrelated and inter-

dependent (see also Sarmiento Barletti and Larson, 2019).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Prior Consultation Law

were both introduced as symbols of political transformation that would seal a