Indigenous Leader Alberto Pizango is Running for President of Peru in 2011 Elections

Alberto Pizango, the most important Indigenous leader in Peru, has announced today that he will run for President in the 2011 elections.

Photo Reuters

Pizango led the 2008-2009 peaceful uprisings of Native peoples, against the Alan Garcia administration’s free-trade policies, and special decrees intended to privatize Indigenous lands benefiting oil, mining and lodging corporations.

Segundo Alberto Pizango Chota (his full name) announced today his presidential bid at the historical “Bolivar” hotel in Downtown Lima, a former meeting place for Peru's oligarchy. Pizango is running with the Alianza para la Alternativa de la Humanidad (APHU) or the Alliance of the Alternative of Humanity, the first Indigenous political party in Peruvian history.

Alberto Pizango is the president of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) the biggest Indigenous organization in Peru, which organized the protests of Curva del Diablo (Bagua) that were repressed by the Peruvian government, causing the massacre of hundreds of civilians and policemen.

After the Bagua massacre, Alan Garcia administration pressured the Judiciary of Peru to arrest Pizango, blaming him of the violence. The Amazonian leader fled to Nicaragua as a political refugee. In May 2010, Pizango returned to Peru along with AIDESEP leader Daisy Zapata and Indigenous leader and actress Q’orianka Kilcher. He was arrested immediately but after international support he was released from prison, but he is under investigation.

The candidacy of Pizango has been speculated for months, and he accepted to run after the Apus (leaders) of more than 1,300 Native communities supported his candidacy. His candidacy could be a rising surprise in these elections, even after the media in Lima has portrayed him as a “social agitator” and a violent man who is financed by foreign groups – especially from Venezuela and Bolivia.

Presidential possibilities in Peru

Peru has seeing two decades of right-wing governments with free-trade, neoliberal economy policies. This has resulted in the increasing inequality, corruption and organized violence and crime. Social unrest in Peru is growing and there is an obvious need for political change. The conservative establishment of Lima is very afraid of such possibility, and they are promoting with its mostly-manipulated media and press of Peru, candidates that would continue the same policies.

There are three main candidates of opposition in Peru; the most influential so far is the nationalist Ollanta Humala. There are rumors of failed attempts of Humala to join efforts with Pizango and the leftist anti-mining Catholic priest Marco Arana. So far, the three of them are running separately, which might weakening the progressive movements in Peru, while benefiting the candidacies of pro-Wall Street rightists Keiko Fujimori and Lima’s Mayor Luis Castaneda.

With the announcement of the candidacy of Alberto Pizango, there are two main possibilities: that either Ollanta Humala or Marco Arana support him, or he will run alone. His grass roots base is strong and decided, they see Pizango as the “leader of the Amazonian Indigenous resistance” against a State that kills Peruvians in order to protect foreign corporations’ interests.

Pizango announced his candidacy a day after the conservative pro Wall Street think-tank Americas Society / Council of the Americas, awarded Alan Garcia in New York “in recognition of his economic and social accomplishments in his 2006 to 2011 term of office.” Alan Garcia violent repression of social movements has killed at least 118 civilians protesting his policies, and he had recently appointed a Banker and member of the richest family in Peru as the new Economy minister.

Meanwhile in Cusco, local Indigenous peoples have blocked all access to the city, in support of the protests against an irrigation project from the Garcia government, intended to benefit the private agribusiness, ignoring the demands of the Andean farmers. So far one man has been killed and several are injured, after the Peruvian police repression. This conflict is one of several that are happening in Peru, which the international media calls "the water wars".

Alberto Pizango is running with a platform that includes among its main objectives, the defense of the environment, our Mother Earth.

VIDEO: The return of Alberto Pizango from exile in May 2010

(Recorded by Q’orianka Kilcher and her mother Saskia)

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