CEDIA

The LD 1015 reduces the quantity of votes to decide about the communal territorial property, from 2/3 of all the members of the community to a half from the presents in a assambly. Photo: Timpía Native Community Assembly. (09/10/2005)

PRESS RELEASE
CEDIA-CP-23-20080617

Executive should have asked the communities

The Centre for the Development of the Amazonian Indigenous People (CEDIA because its abbreviation in Spanish) pronounce its opinion against the Legislative Decree 1015, made by the executive arm of the Government on the 20 May 2008, which reduces the quantity of votes by the community members to decide about the communal territorial property in the communities from the high mountain and jungle regions.

CEDIA thinks that the LD 1015 will destroy the Peruvian communities from the high mountains and jungle regions in the long-term, because it attacks the geographic element that supports the existence of the communities. Thanks to this ancestral territorial property of the communities, the Peruvian identity has been safeguarded through the centuries, and this property has became the sociocultural essence of our identity and has been respected even the times of the Spanish ambition, surviving more than 500 years.

With this Legislative Decree, just the half of the presents members in a communal assembly can decide about the territorial property of the entire community, so only a small minority can decide about something that affect all the members of the community. This LD is an attack against any democratic approach to decide about communal goods and is doubting about the customary law recognized on the international trades signed by Perú, which are based on the idea that the communal property exists before the modern States.

On the other hand, responding to the Prime Minister, Jorge Del Castillo, who affirm that the communities should not be treated with overprotecting as to look after children, because they have enough capacities to decide, with a simple majority, about their communal property in an assembly; CEDIA thinks that if the reality is like Del Castillo thinks, so the executive could had asked to the representative organizations of the communities if they want or not this legal change. So, the executive should not made Legislative Decrees like the LD 1015 without consult to the representative communal organizations, because that way attack the autonomy of the communities respected by the Political Constitution of Perú, and the communities have the enough capacities to express their opinion trough their organizations.

It is for this reason that until this moment, the organizations have expressed their opinions against the LD 1015, because anything cannot justify that a Government, by means of hurried laws, favours the plundering of the communal properties and the extinction of a system that has survived for centuries.

It is important to say that the survival of the native and peasant communities from the high mountain and jungle depends completely of their territories, and the weakening of the laws that protect this property can make that millions of people do not have ways to survive and can generate a very big social problem.

PROCESSES

CEDIA demands that the Parliament exercises its right to control the process of the Legislative Decree 1015, through the regular way in the Constitution Committee.

As well, CEDIA asks to the Constitutional Tribunal to pronounce as fast as it can, according to law, about the unconstitutionality lawsuits sent by the People’s Advocate and by a group of more than 30 parliamentarians.

At the same time, CEDIA demands that the Agrarian Committee and the Andean People Committee decide and publish their resolutions about the Bill of Law 2440, which tries to revoke the LD 1015.

Finally, the Centre for the Development of the Amazonian Indigenous People warns about the problems that can be generated until the process to repeal the LD 1015 finish completely, according to the warnings made by organizations and experts.