Santa Rosillo: An Amazonian Community Fighting Illegal Logging and the State’s Neglect

By Hugo Anteparra

Edition: Gonzalo Torrico (Convoca) and equipo CONNECTAS. 

“This tree is almost the only one standing, the others have been stolen,” an enraged Quinto Inuma explains, he is the community’s apu (indigenous leader). According to him, the necessary claims have been filed in the General Attorney’s Office Specializing in the Environment and in the Ecological Police. But it has not made a big difference. Fallen trees keep appearing, even though the authorities have inspected the area and have drafted minutes.

In the last twenty years (2002-2021) the San Martin region has lost more than 394,000 hectares of primary moist forest, according to data by the Global Forest Watch. Although the deforestation peak took place in 2012 (with 37,900 lost hectares), the registered losses have fluctuated between 14,000 and 21,000 hectares ever since. In 2021, the figure was 17,500 hectares. The SPDA (Peruvian Society of Environmental Law) says that illegal logging generates an economic loss for Peru that exceeds 200 million dollars annually. 

Illegal pillage is constant, but also planned. That is what the photographs taken in the jungle by this outlet show. In the forest of Santa Rosillo, some trees have red marks in them: a sign that they will be cut next. Some marks represent a threatening gun. 

“During the patrolls we conduct, we find two letters in red: V and H, next to the image of a gun painted in the trunk of the tree. That is a warning not to access a cleared area. This means that they could attack us. But we are not afraid and we will continue watching over our forest to preserve it for future generations,” Quinto Inuma says.

How much legal and illegal logging is there in San Martin? It is uncertain. But official figures give some indications. Concrete data reports that in the region (at least since 2019) there is a correlation between the annual loss of primary forests and authorizations to transport loads of timber. 

After different requests for information, Convoca.pe and CONNECTAS had access to the data of the forestry waybills issued by the government of San Martin between January 2019 and July 2022. These documents are used to transport timber from authorized extraction areas in the forests to the markets, and they allegedly certify the timber’s legal origin. In 2019, registered shipments of timber coming from the forests of San Martin amounted to 7,334 m3. But 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, had a record amount of timber transportation (in spite of the two months of mandatory confinement): 30,588 m3 of this material were registered.

In 2021, the figure was 29,730 m3 and in 2022 (between January and July alone) the authorized figure was 14,614 m3.

The forestry species that is extracted the most from the forests of the San Martin region, year after year, is the Cedrelinga cateniformis, also known as tornillo. This is the exact same tree that the Quechuas found cut down in their territory. According to the same documents, the regional government of San Martin authorized the transportation of 28,291 m3 of this resource. 14,300 m3 of Micrandra spruceana, also known as higuerilla, were extracted in the same period, making it the second most exploited.

Nevertheless, the information in the waybills is oftentimes forged or the logs of protected tree species evade authorities’ checkpoints throughout the journey. 

Patrolling the Forest

While officials, legislators, police officers and inspectors fail to protect the Amazon, the community of Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu have taken over these functions amidst threats and attacks against their life. 

The Inuma brothers and the group of patrollers of the native community of Santa Rosillo patrol this place using uniforms with military colors. State representatives seldom come here, but those who do visit often are the mestizos. That is the name given by natives to migrants who don’t have a Quechua background but who have set up in their territories to grow crops – and they have already started imposing their rules. People in the community warn that they conduct illegal logging and welcome foreign illegal lumberjacks, especially from Loreto; and that they are looking for new areas to extract forest resources. 

The community of Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu has witnessed the deforestation with the arrival of the mestizos who have cleared the forest to grow crops. A report by the regional government of San Martin states that between January 2020 and January 2021, forest deforestation in the community amounted to 139.19 hectares, attributed to the beginning of the agricultural activities. According to the Quechua, many chacras (small plots of land) located on cleared land are destined to illegal coca crops.

“Excessive deforestation was evinced. According to the analysis, in 2019 it amounted to 36.91 hectares and in 2020 to 73.84 hectares,” the official report reads. Likewise, the document reports the appearance of a clandestine landing strip, which was built between October 2020 and August 2021. That is how drug traffickers arrive in the place.

For this feature, we visited the area neglected by the authorities, harassed by illegal lumberjacks and drug traffickers. In fact, we witnessed what the Quechuas have to endure every day.   

On October 10th, in the morning, after several hours of patrolling, several shots were heard in the patrollers’ camp led by the Inuma Alvarado brothers. After realizing nobody was wounded, Quinto understood it was a threat. The apu was soon warned via telephone call   that they were being followed by around 25 mestizos, they had heard that the indigenous patrol was inspecting an area after it had been cleared and they were furious about it. The Quechua patrollers had to pick up their things quickly and leave due to safety concerns. 

Quinto Inuma asked his patrol to make their way through the virgin forest to avoid a dangerous confrontation. After an hour of strenuous physical work (at 35ºC), the patrollers were able to recover and get water. When they returned to Santa Rosillo, one of the mestizos who lived there insulted them and warned them never to go back to the cleared lands. “People need to know why they are photographing the plots of land. This is our land too. You don’t own it. May this be the last time you mess with us,” he said. He has been identified as Manuel Pezo Villacrez.

Days later, Geobosques, the satellite monitoring app of the Ministry of the Environment, confirmed that twenty hectares had been illegally logged in the area in the last week of September and the first of October 2022. 

Violent episodes have occurred before. The brothers Quinto and Manuel Inuma, as well as other members of Santa Rosillo, have been physically attacked and have received death threats – as it is stated in the claims they have filed in the Public Ministry. Despite persistent risks, the Quechuas press on defending their territory.

“The jungle is our source of life and riches,” says Manuel Inuma, former community leader. “Trees are being cut down almost every day. And with it the wild flora and fauna of the area are being wiped out. In the future, what will our kids eat? That is why we are fighting against the illegal lumberjacks,” he states.

Out of Place

The logging business is so thriving (and the State’s neglect so big) that mafia groups of lumberjacks have started building their own infrastructure to transport the illegal goods. This year, they built a dirt road located in the valley of the Chipurana River, it starts in San Jose de Yanayacu (in the northeast of San Martin) and ends in Tierra Blanca, in the Loreto region. Locals say that the dirt road was built months ago by illegal lumberjacks.

Satellite images of the MAAP (Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project) confirm the short existence of this dirt road, which obviously does not exist in the official road maps of Peru. In fact, when we told him about it, engineer Gerardo Caceres Bardalez, Manager of the Regional Environmental Authority of San Martin in the 2018-2022 term, claimed that he was unaware of its existence. 

“We don’t authorize the construction of roads. That area has boundary issues with Loreto, so if it is there it is because it was built illegally,” he remarks.

What happens in the routes that are in need of monitoring? The timber that is transported through San Martin crosses six police jurisdictions and three forestry checkpoints. Nevertheless, the roads of the region lack supervision. Oftentimes, the presence of inspectors and regional officials is not enough to verify if the species transported in the trucks match those that are reported in the forestry transportation guidelines.

For instance, in the checkpoint of Corral Quemado in the Amazon (located in the northeast of San Martin), this year authorities have only taken part in three inspection operations with three trucks that were loaded with illegal forestry species that had previously been through  San Martin. This shows that all of the checkpoints located in the road San Martin failed in the inspection of these trucks.

The facts prove that the inspection of illegal timber in the region is passive. We requested the report of interventions undertaken by the regional government between 2017 and 2022; yet the information provided only reported operations on “abandoned” findings, i.e., sawmills with timber that had been left behind and not on operational sawmills. Overall, 495 findings of illegal shipments were logged. The years with the highest amount were 2019 (150) and 2020 (107).

Waybills are not the only documents that are forged in this system to launder illegal timber. In fact, corruption begins in the stocks of timber concessions and in other extraction authorizations, deep in the Amazon forest. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) decided in 2019 that the inspections conducted by forestry agents in areas of illegal extraction have led some of these officials to sign off on fake data pertaining to the amount of available forestry resources. The agents are appointed by the SERFOR (National Forestry and Wild Fauna Service), an agency of the national government in charge of auditing the sustainable exploitation of these natural resources. 

The review of the CIEL of the Forestry Management Plans, documents delivered by the concessionaire and co-signed by the agents, evinced that in 2017 there were at least thirteen agents (of 162) who had signed off on documents that inflated the real amount of available wood by at least 40%.

Forging the number of trees in the Forestry Management Plans allows using the waybills to transport larger quantities than the concession is allowed. This surplus comes from elsewhere. That is how illegal timber enters the legal circuit, blended in with shipments that are supported with documents of a formal concession. When police officers or inspectors request the waybills to drivers, there is no way they can corroborate that the information on the waybill is forged. 

In his version, Mario Torres, the leader of planning in the Operations Office of the Regional Environmental Authority of the government of San Martin in 2022 (liable for the guidelines and the inspections), claims that an insufficient budget is the reason why the operations are not conducted in the roads. According to him, between January and August 2022, the entity was only allocated 100,000 soles (26,300 dollars) to undertake operations against illegal logging in illegal sawmills and in roads. The money isn’t enough, he assures us that each intervention costs 15,000 soles on average (3,900 dollars).

According to the portal of Economic Transparency of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the regional government of San Martin has a budget item called “Forests with effective control and surveillance” from 2022. Despite having an allocation of 1,686,000 soles (443,000 dollars) in 2022, the agency only executed 24.3% of that amount by November 16th. They must have rushed because by the end of the year, the execution reached 81.2%. 

To no avail, we reached out to Mario Torres again (he worked for the regional government until December 31st, 2022) to ask him what he had spent those public resources on so quickly, while he was in office he excused himself and said he couldn’t meet with us. 2023 started with a change in the political management of the regional government (a cycle of four years). The new administration has not been able to provide explanations, officials consulted claim they still don’t have access to the system.

In that regard, Jose Anicama, advisor of the Directorate of OSINFOR (Supervision Organization of Forestry Resources), an inspection agency of the central government, admits that regardless of the budget constraints of regional governments, there is also a problem in their management capacities. In recent years, the budgets of those agencies have grown considerably, in general, but not the budget that is allocated to environmental causes. “It is true that they are getting more budget each year, but there is a serious management issue that hinders the budget to be strategically managed, thus the regional government mismanages the money aimed at forestry and fauna resources.” 

Indeed, while the total budget allocated in 2017 to the regional government of San Martin was 1.3 billion soles (351,000,000 dollars), the figure rose to 2 billion soles in 2022 (535,000,000 dollars). Yet the figures of the budget item called “sustainable competitiveness and exploitation of forestry resources and wild fauna” have not followed the same growing trend. And in fact, by mid November 2022, only 48% of the 6.9 million soles (1,800,000 dollars) had been executed. Nonetheless, in just six weeks, it was executed with unusual promptness and by December 31st, expenses that had been reported in the first eleven months of the year had almost doubled; 2022 came to an end with 88% of the executed budget. 

The new officials of the regional government who took office on January 1st explain that they will audit all of the contracting processes of the previous administration. It is the least they can do. The prior regional governor, Pedro Bogarin Vargas (2018-2022), was arrested three weeks ago by the National Police and he faces an investigation for allegedly being part of a criminal organization and for having engaged in acts of corruption. 

The lack of budget is not only evident in the regional government, it is also seen in the precarious logistics of the  General Attorney’s Office Specializing in the Environment of San Martin. Convoca.pe and CONNECTAS had access to a document signed by the provincial prosecutor Hector Jesus Vera Santamaria on November 21st. In it, he requests environmentalist and businessman Ivan Rojas Garcia for “support” to provision him with a driver and a vehicle to attend a fiscal verification procedure in the province of Bellavista. Everything was arranged by prosecutor Nilton Ventura Castillo.

We contacted Rojas, and he stated that he had lent his vehicle 23 times, free of charge, this year.

OFICIO N°1616-2022 by Comunicaciones CONNECTAS on Scribd

Why won’t the General Attorney’s Office use its own resources to conduct their operations? Upon questioning for this feature, the General Attorney’s Office sent a brief written response about what had happened. It didn’t comment on the lack of resources and stuck to the version of prosecutor Nilton Ventura. However, the letter clarified that “this situation was not illegal” and that Rojas had lied about the amount of times he had provided this support. The General Attorney’s Office assured that the request of November 21st, 2022 had been the only one “given the impossibility to get the support of the municipality in the area.”

Nevertheless, we were able to confirm that Rojas has letters in his possession that he says have been forwarded to the General Attorney’s Office. The second most recent is dated November 15th, 2022, it also says “VERY URGENT”.

Constant Danger

Indigenous leaders of Santa Rosillo are already beneficiaries of the Ministry of Justice’s protection mechanism for human rights champions (Mecanismo Intersectorial de Proteccion de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos), in place since 2019. The system focuses on protecting the life and integrity of people who are at risk and whose situation has been confirmed by the Ministry. That is the case of Manuel and Quinto Inuma. The former was beaten and kidnapped in a dungeon in 2018. The latter was badly hurt, with injuries in his head and body in 2021. Since they are covered by the mechanism they are entitled to guarantees for their protection, but things remain the same. 

Despite the fact that their situation has been officially acknowledged, community members complain about the insecurity in the area. Even though their lives are in danger, it is common for environmental champions in the country not to get the guarantees that have been promised to them. In 2022, the Ministry of Justice only allocated 40,000 soles (10,500 dollars) to execute this mechanism – the money was quickly spent on consulting services. In other words, the budget is not adequate nor realistic to guarantee the integrity of individuals that await protection. 

“Currently we have seven families in the Sierra that have claimed land to build their houses,” the Quechua leader Quinto Inuma warns. He remarks that municipal authorities are to blame for these invasions, because they haven’t fulfilled their request to provide title deeds to community lands. “In order to subdue the community, they are bringing in more migrants. But we are confronting these invaders.”

Lawyer Cristina Gavancho Leon, legal counsel to the native community of Santa Rosillo, states that they have repeatedly requested the National Police to inspect the affected areas. However, she adds, agents reply that they are unable to go because the area is very dangerous – security is a matter of concern because drug trafficking has taken over the area. 

“If the Police and the prosecutors refuse to go, try to picture the level of risk for the apus. They are fighting this scourge on a daily basis,” Gavancho says.

Why are the guarantees for the leaders of Santa Rosillo held up? We were interested in the version of Edgardo Rodriguez, Director of the Human Rights Office of the Ministry of Justice, so we contacted the press officer of the agency. By the time this feature was published, we hadn’t received a response to our request for an interview. 

“Apparently, they are not taking it into consideration,” says Gavancho, referring to the fulfillment of the protection protocol.

On the other hand, if authorities continue to sit back and do nothing, the damage will also affect the ecosystems. “The absence of control and inspection policies, corrupt officials and the scant promotion of economic alternatives that enable illegal activities are harmful for the natural riches and the ecosystems of the forests,” says Marco Isminio, an agricultural engineer who specializes in exploitation of natural resources in San Martin.

For instance, in their constant patrolling the Quechuas have discovered that the creek and river sources that supply the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve (one of the world’s most biodiverse areas), which is located in the neighboring area of Loreto, are in the areas of San Martin which are being destroyed. 

“The river sources that originate in the Cordillera Azul National Park could dry up in the following years, causing irreversible damage to the Amazon. We hope authorities take into consideration this warning to stop migrants from plundering our forests,” apu Quinto Inuma warns.

This is not just an empirical statement. Jaime Huamanchumo, an engineer who specializes in hydrological resources, confirms that deforestation directly affects water decrease in the rivers. “It is important to avoid it and to begin reforesting areas that are barren to generate conditions that increase the amount of water,” he says. According to him, more trees means better rain conditions and water reserves.

In fact, one of the areas that has been affected the most is the valley of the Chipurana River, an area that is crossed by the new dirt road used by lumberjacks to transport illegal timber. This river source is the main water source in that part of the Peruvian Amazon. Huamanchumo claims that unless measures are taken, there will be water sourcing issues shortly in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve. 

“The river used to be mighty. Now it dries up because of the wood that is being plundered in the river source – the tornillos, our immense trees,” regrets the leader Manuel Inuma, who has witnessed the loss of forestry resources of Santa Rosillo – year after year.

“We want to leave a good memory for these kids that are being born. If we don’t defend the forest and the State won’t listen, where will we go?” says Manuel. “What do our kids require? They need food, water and clothes. That is what we fight for. The forest is our market, it is our pharmacy, our home. We live off it and we live in it.”

Paper 

The attacks happen on different fronts, including the Congress of the Republic. Inside the Parliament, a project is being pushed to change the Forestry Law. The Law has been approved in its first instance, the Agrarian Commission; and if it passes, the Ministry of the Environment would no longer be competent in the process to delimit forestry zones (areas in which wood resources may be exploited, agriculture can be practiced, etc.) The new zoning agency would be the Ministry of Agrarian Development. Several national and international institutions have cautioned that with these modifications, the risk of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon would escalate, seeing as they could turn forests into agricultural zones. 

“We ask that the environmental authority, which follows an approach of conservation, also has a say in the process,” says Cesar Ipenza, an expert in environmental law and public policy. “The Agrarian Commission insists on ‘starting over with a clean slate’ and on getting the Ministry of the Environment out of the way and getting their say in the zoning role, they also intend to define which are the forests of permanent production,” he urges. 

The bill, driven by the political legislators of Peru Libre, Alianza para el Progreso and Accion Popular, still has to be signed off by the Commission of Andean and Indigenous Peoples before being debated by Congress in plenary sessions.

Quinto Inuma does not believe in authorities, not even at regional level. He says the regional government has contacted the community, but that the documents presented and the claims filed have been set aside. “The State is not helping us. It benefits unlawfulness instead of  legality,” he regrets.

His lawyer, Cristina Gavancho Leon, remarks that, to date, the Regional Environmental Authority of San Martin has not filed any claim at administrative level against those who are illegally and indiscriminately cutting down the forests of Santa Rosillo. This is a pressing concern for the Quechua. 

“OSINFOR has never been here, despite the fact that we still report our information by all means possible, we disseminate our reports in print, on the radio, on the internet… but no one responds. That is what bothers us. We are helpless. We need title deeds for these 23,000 hectares,” Quinto Inuma alleges. A title deed on the forest would allow the community to legally defend their land.

Where are the Police and the General Attorney’s Office? There have been two recent timber seizures in the area, the apu declares, but they have never notified the community as the aggrieved party to manifest themselves and move on with the claims against the illegal lumberjacks – so far, they are unharmed. “That is why they laugh at us, because the authorities are not painstaking about their work.”

Esta investigación fue realizada por Convoca y CONNECTAS, dentro de ARCO, con el apoyo del International Center for Journalist (ICFJ), en el marco de la Iniciativa para el Periodismo de Investigación en las Américas.