Some Kichwa members wept as they described to AP the hardships of losing access to the land. Unable to clear trees for farmland and sandwiched between protected areas, they relied on an overfished river for food and said they could no longer afford to educate their children.
Peruvian authorities had argued in legal filings that the community didn’t object to the park’s creation in 2001, nor raise complaints during a mapmaking workshop two years later.
But Del Socorro Torres Sánchez ruled that the Kichwa’s rights had been “violated several times” when the park was created without prior consultation. That the Kichwa didn’t request consultation “does not exonerate the state from its obligation to carry it out,” she wrote, adding that attaining Indigenous consent “is not a formality to be overcome.”
Her ruling ordered park rangers to allow the Kichwa full access to the forests. It also implied the Kichwa might share in the money raised from carbon credit sales, ordering Peru’s parks authority Sernanp to “comply with the right of the native communities … to benefit from conservation activities in their territories.”
Del Socorro Torres Sánchez said Puerto Franco had not benefited “one iota” from the huge proceeds of the conservation project, even though Kichwa guardianship had helped sustain the forests.
Cell phone service in the park region is patchy, and attempts to reach members of the Puerto Franco Kichwa by phone were unsuccessful.
The Forest Peoples Programme, a nonprofit that has advocated for the Kichwas, said the first ruling had set a precedent for Indigenous tribes across Peru. FPP’s Matías Pérez Ojeda del Arco described the appellate court’s tossing it out as a “clear judicial irregularity,” and called on the Peruvian authorities to investigate.”
Grández, of Pontifical Catholic, argued that the lower court’s ruling should stand going into that appeal.
“If I were (Judge Sánchez), I’d say my sentence holds until the appeals court reviews the substance,” he said. “Right now, the community still has a ruling in its favor.”
The Peruvian government did not respond to several requests for comment.
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Mitra Taj, a journalist in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.
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