El pueblo unido nunca sera vencido

The People's Summit started today. It is being held in a Lima University in the north of the city. Arriving at the campus we were greeted by a crazy colourful mix of lots of people and lots of causes…participants and organisers, setting up stalls, waving banners, registering, conducting interviews and flyering each other.


Once things got going, the morning was taken up with a long inauguration ceremony with lots of thank-yous and welcomes and a general scene setting. All the presenters were in agreement about the inequality and suffering caused by neoliberal polices and free trade agreements and gave impassioned speeches about the need for alternatives and the urgency to unite to fight for ‘other possible worlds’. They were also adamant that the summit was not an ‘anti-summit’ or counter summit as it has been labeled in the press, but a positive gathering to allow repressed voices to be heard and offer alternatives and solutions.


The speeches were followed by a ceremony by indigenous ceremony by people from different indigenous nations – including our partner Abrahan Salazar from MICC, the indigenous movement in Cotopaxi, Ecuador.

The audience was lively and passionate, frequently bursting out with chants and waving flags and banners: ‘ La Selva no se vende, la selva se defiende’ ( The jungle’s not for sale, the jungle should be defended’, ‘El pueblo unido nunca sera vencido’, (united we will never be defeated).

After the long complicated process of feeding over 2000 people, the real summit began with 10 simultaneous sessions taking place every 2 hours throughout the university with a bewildering range of topics including climate change, tools for women’s inclusion in social change, sexual and reproductive rights, migration and human rights, agro industries investment in free trade agreements, and workers rights. I went to the Permanent People’s Tribunal to hear Progressio partner organisation Accion Ecologica present the case against Repsol.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal was apparently set up in 1979 as an international opinion tribunal, to examine and judge complaints of human rights violations submitted by the victims themselves or groups representing them. This session of the tribunal is focused on the actions of European multinationals in Latin America.

Today in the afternoon the panel of judges from 8 countries in LAC/ EU and two indigenous nationalities heard testimonies on the extractive industries including against the British mining company Majaz Monterrico Metals because of their activities in Peru. Members of communities presented their accusations of lack of transparency, illegal presence on community land without the populations consent, repression of protest and dissent (leading to two deaths and many injuries), defamation of critics and the creation of a climate of fear.

The government, they said, is complicit in backing the company “the government does not listen to us. We ask the judges to hear us and find the company guilty,” one witness said. The case is well known in Peru and our partner organisations Guarango and Peru Support group have both worked on it – Peru Support Group’s recent report gives more information on the issue.

There were then testimonies from Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador against the Spanish multinational oil company Repsol. Alejandra Almeida from Acción Ecológica (an envirnonmental organization from Ecuador who we are working with on illegal logging) presented the environmental, cultural and social damage caused by the company in the Yasuní national park including water and soil pollution, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, displacement of communities, cultural destruction, dividing communities with conflicts, health impacts and the militarization of communities.

She said the company had turned the Huarani people who were once proud owners of a rich biodiverse forest into practically being beggars, dependent on food handouts, and concluded by asking the judges to find Repsol guilty of creating an enormous ecological and social debt.

The tribunal moved on to testimonies against the company Botnia and abuses and environmental damage caused by their plantation/paper factory in Uruguay. When the tribunal closed for the day, the evenings cultural activities began. I decided to face the maze of road diversions and road works and try to get home.