Fernando Belaúnde y el bombardeo a los nativos mayoruna Por Silvio Rendon

Mayoruna

Durante el primer gobierno de Belaúnde los nativos Mayoruna fueron bombardeados y ametrallados por la Fuerza Aérea del Perú:

El presidente Belaúnde ordenó personalmente a la Fuerza Aérea del Perú bombardear y ametrallar las aldeas de tres de los cuatro clanes de los indígenas mayoruna (matsés) del río Yaquerana. (...) El bombardeo de los indefensos hombres, mujeres y niños matsés fue presentado por la prensa nacional como una acto de heroismo de los pilotos de la fuerza aérea peruana luchando contra los brutales salvajes que se oponían al progreso del país. La verdad detrás la propaganda de los medios era que los indígenas mayoruna estaban en el camino de algunas pocas compañías madereras nacionales y transnacionales (Traducción: SR)

Esto lo cuenta Stefano Varese en “Witness to Sovereignty: Revisiting the Latin American Indigenous Peoples’ Ethnopolitical Movement” (un fragmento en pdf aquí) (pase de taquito de FR):

President Belaúnde had personally ordered the Peruvian Air Force to bomb and machinegun the villages of three of the four clans of Mayoruna (Matsés) Indians of the Yaquerana river. The fourth clan at that time was living across the border in Brazilian territory. The bombing of defenseless Matsés men, women and children was presented by the national press as an act of heroism of Peruvian airforce pilots fighting against brutal savages that were opposing the progress of the country. The truth behind the media propaganda was that the Mayoruna Indians were in the way of a few national and transnational timber companies. In 1970 my wife Linda Ayre and I traveled to the Mayoruna territory and interviewed the survivors of the bombing. An older woman who could speak some Spanish told us the details of the attack by the Peruvian Air Force. The Mayoruna people had developed survival techniques that included teaching dogs not to bark when ordered to, cultivate small chacras (polyculture plots) in different hidden spots of the rain forest, and establish shorter periods of itinerant horticulture in order to avoid to be detected by Peruvian mestizos . The older women could afford to be ironic in telling us that most of the bombs of fragmentation were exploding in the canopy of the forest and not on the ground. In my short research I could determine, contrary to the opinion of the evangelical missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics who were attempting to christianize them, that the Matsés-Mayoruna were not an isolated group of non-contacted Indians, but rather an indigenous group that had escaped from Spanish colonial oppression and sought refuge in the depth of the eastern Amazon region of Peru in the 17th century by traveling more than 800 kilometers from their original territory in the lower Huallaga river. My denounce did not even deserve an answer or an explanation from President Belaúnde’s government nor did the Matsés-Mayoruna received ever an official apology.

(...) On October 9, the military revolution expropriated and nationalized the oil fields, equipment, and installations of the International Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Some time later it became public knowledge that the IPC had helped the Peruvian Air Force to develop a type of Napalm bomb that was used against the Matsés-Mayoruna and the socialist guerrilla insurgency of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

Pero bueno, el autor de "La conquista del Perú por los peruanos", Fernando Belaúnde, es un patricio de la democracia peruana, no importa cuánta gente fuera masacrada en su primer gobierno, y no sólo en la selva. Volvió a gobernar por el voto popular, y en su segundo gobierno hubo más masacres, que no evitaron que siguiera siendo un patricio de la democracia peruana. No parece que será el único...

En la actualidad las cosas no han cambiado mucho. Continúan los enfrentamientos sangrientos entre madederos y nativos. Ver:

Amenaza de genocidio en Loreto
José Álvarez Alonso Semanario Kanatari - Iquitos julio 2004

Y son los nativos los que se siguen llevando la peor parte....