After what many are calling a soft coup on December 7, Peru has been living in political chaos and experiencing violent protests that have killed at least 22 people. In this turmoil, lawmakers in the country’s congress are quietly trying to pass a bill into law that would strip “uncontacted” Indigenous people of protection and dismantle existing reserves created for them. The bill proposes to modify a 2006 law protecting Indigenous peoples in “isolation” and “initial contact” – those living with little or no contact with the outside world – to halt the creation of new reserves and eliminate existing ones, of which there are seven in Peru’s Amazon. The proposal, put forward by Jorge Morante, a little-known lawmaker, is backed by six lawmakers from Fuerza Popular, the party of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. It proposes transferring the power to establish reserves for “isolated peoples” – from Peru’s ministry of culture to regional governments in the Amazon. It also appears to be backed by a group of powerful businessmen in Peru’s northern Loreto region who have financed a campaign using local television, social media and public events, to deny the existence of “isolated peoples”. All of this is while there is abundant documentary evidence of the existence of up to 25 isolated groups living in the country’s Amazon rainforest. “I’ve never seen such a nefarious bill in 30 years working for the protection of isolated Indigenous peoples,” said Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist working with Orpio, the Indigenous federation in Loreto. Peru’s umbrella Indigenous federation Aidesep said passing the bill “would cause genocide”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/23/peru-indigenous-protections-bill?CMP=share_btn_tw