The Pan Amazon has a legacy of both violent and non-violent protest that dates from the onset of European colonization, through the Brazilian Empire and the Andean Republics of the nineteenth century, and is now a significant, often decisive, political tactic in the twenty-first century.

In the High Andes, rebellion is the legacy of a large Indigenous population and centuries-long resistance to domination by European and Creole elites. The first armed uprising was organized in 1542 by an Inca aristocrat, Túpac Amaru, but such action became more common in the eighteenth century, when peasants staged more than 140 protests against excessive taxes and forced labor, which culminated in the Grand Rebellion of 1780. Indigenous troops were essential in the wars for independence at Cuzco (1814) and Charcas (1825), and native uprisings roiled republican governments at Puno (1867), Huaraz (1885) and Chimborazo (1870).

In Brazil, Indigenous populations were exterminated, enslaved or geographically marginalized, but the exploitation of Caboclo peasants created a climate of resentment that led to the Cabanagem revolt between 1835 and 1840, while Afro-Brazilians fleeing enslavement established hundreds of autonomous Quilombola communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Subsequently, Acre was transformed by the migration of Nordestinos, who organized self-governing entities known as colocações that allowed them to avoid exploitation by local rubber barons.

A similar dynamic occurred on the Guiana Coast, where enslaved populations rebelled multiple times until slavery was abolished in Guyana (1834), French Guiana (1848) and Suriname (1863). The unwillingness of the newly freed Afro-Guianese to work for their former masters led colonial governments to transport indentured servants from India and the Dutch East Indies; these eventually organized unions and staged labor stoppages to improve their wages and working conditions.

These social phenomena reflected widespread resentment of the systemic inequality that defined the economic and governance systems of the twentieth century. Subsequent efforts to overthrow the entrenched social and economic system by Marxist insurgencies also failed, first in Bolivia (1967) and Brazil (1967–1974), then in Peru (1980–1999) and finally in Colombia (1970–2015).

Resistance strategies that adopted the non-violent tactics pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were more successful, but only when they adapted their application to the idiosyncrasies of the Andean Republics and the Brazilian federation. Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and, to a lesser extent, Colombia are all renowned for the ability of rural populations to blockade highways, disrupt commerce and threaten the survival of elected governments. These tactics were pioneered by campesino organizations protesting the unequal distribution of land and the slave-like conditions inherent in the latifundio system that predominated in the first half of the twentieth century.

In Brazil, unequal land distribution is the most salient feature of an inequitable economic system that has driven tens of thousands of landless peasants to invade the property of absentee landholders. Most social movements espouse the tactics of non-violence, but their leaders often exercise only limited control over a multitude of unruly and angry individuals, who react unexpectedly when confronted by security services willing to use armed force to end their acts of peaceful insurrection.

One of the best-known examples of peaceful protest began in 1976, when the newly formed Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Brasiléia organized a series of non-violent confrontations known as empates (literally a stand-off or tie) with land grabbers who were creating cattle farms in the rural workers’ communally organized rubber concessions. They succeeded, despite the 1988 murder of Chico Mendes, when the federal government recognized their territorial rights and created a system of extractive reserves (RESEX) in the 1990s.

This period was also consequential for the Indigenous movement, which launched its first civil rights campaign, the Primeira Marcha dos Povos Indígenas, in 1988. The goal was to pressure the Brazilian Congress, then convened as a Constituent Assembly, to enshrine in the Constitution the right of Indigenous people to territory and cultural autonomy. These non-violent campaigns succeeded, in part, because they attracted global media attention and support from international celebrities, as well as from Brazilians willing to embrace progressive policies after decades of autocratic rule.

Collective action and civil disobedience have also affected agrarian landscapes in Brazil, where affluent families and landless peasants compete for a diminishing asset: arable land. The Movimento do Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) was founded in 1984 following a turbulent decade in Southern Brazil, where landless farmworkers forcefully occupied vulnerable landholdings. Unsurprisingly, land conflict soon engulfed Amazonian settlement frontiers, particularly in southeastern Pará where government propaganda had attracted tens of thousands of Nordestinos. Upon arrival, they found the land already occupied by corporations and affluent families, who proceeded to exploit their poverty by trapping them in debt slavery. False promises and exploitation created a volatile environment ripe for civil strife.

Unhappy rural workers occupied dozens of fazendas or erected blockades to force authorities to respond to their petitions for free land. Land tenure disputes led to several high-profile massacres in the municipalities of Xinguara (1985), Marabá (1985) Tailândia (1993) Eldorado de Carajás (1996), São Félix do Xingu (2003) and Pau D’Arco (2017). Worse still, individual murders linked to land conflicts were, and remain, commonplace; they are seldom investigated, much less lead to an arrest, conviction and incarceration.

The landless peasant movement forced the government to establish dozens of INCRA-sponsored Projetos do Assentamentos, which are now home to tens of thousands of small farming families. These efforts have not satiated the demand for land, however, and families associated with the MST continue to invade private landholdings. In 2020, there were occupations, known as acampamentos, in Rondônia (13), Maranhão (12), Pará (11), Tocantins (5), Amazonas (4), Amapá (4), Acre (92) and Roraima (1). Notably absent from this list is Mato Grosso, a metric that reflects state authority’s ability to eject squatters before they become established, as well as the political power of affluent landowners intent on protecting their assets.

In Bolivia, labor unions associated with the mining industry were the first to deploy civil protest starting in 1919, a tactic that spread to Indigenous communities in the 1930s and 1940s, and eventually led to the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. This bottom-up revolution ended the latifundio system in the highlands and enfranchised Indigenous populations throughout the country. Nevertheless, the revolution was coopted by urban elites, who shared power with military regimes in the 1970s or ruled via coalitions of political parties until the mid-2000s.

Despite their newly minted political rights, campesinos and Indigenous peoples continued to be treated as second-class citizens, and governments only responded to their petitions for economic opportunity when they communicated via civic protests. The campesino movement was consolidated in 1979 into the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), which increasingly blockaded the country’s limited highway infrastructure as a bargaining tactic. Their demands have evolved over time, starting with an end of military rule in the late 1970s and later encompassing opposition to austerity policies and market reforms in the 1990s. Their demands have always included access to land and the formalization of land rights.

Highway blockades became a political tactic during the Guerra de Agua (1999), when both urban and rural populations protested against the proposed privatization of agencies providing water services. Similarly, the Guerra de Gas (2003) killed investor interest in pipelines that would have exported hydrocarbons via Chilean ports. Both phenomena triggered a wider debate about the privatization of national companies and the role of foreign corporations in the exploitation of natural resources. The fusion of highway blockades and electoral politics was completed when Evo Morales won the presidency and a congressional majority in 2005 that allowed him to change the constitution and re-found Bolivia as a plurinational socialist state.

Morales soon charted a course of action that brought him into conflict with lowland Indigenous communities opposed to policies that would distribute public lands to highland Indigenous migrants, now known as Interculturales. Rather than blockade highways, however, the lowland Indigenous nations, represented by the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB), voiced their demands for territory by marching peacefully from their territories to the nation’s capital (La Paz). Their tactics preceded the rise of Evo Morales by more than a decade, starting in 1990 when CIDOB organized the first of eleven marches, which typically occur when the Bolivian Congress is considering a change in laws that might impact their territorial rights. In 2011, their eighth pilgrimage to La Paz was organized to oppose the government’s plan to construct a highway through the middle of Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS). Rather than hear their petition, however, Morales sent police to intercept the marchers in a failed attempt to disrupt the lawful exercise of their civil rights. Ironically, Morales was forced to resign as president by a general strike and transportation blockade after he was implicated in a scheme to steal the general elections of 2019.

The use of blockades as a protest tactic spans the political spectrum, and the Comité Cívico de Santa Cruz, a conservative organization controlled by regional elites, has used transportation strikes over five decades to negotiate increasing levels of autonomy. Local governments, elected officials bound by law, now use illegal highway blockades to pressure regional and national governments for investment in roads, schools and healthcare facilities. In 2023, there were 146 highway blockades in Bolivia between January and August; their efficacy in obtaining results has obviated normal means for petitioning governments.

Peru is not unlike Bolivia, but rather than channeling popular discontent into (relatively) peaceful civil protests, the nation was engulfed by two decades of guerilla war in the 1980s and 1990s.  Prior to that violent era, Peru’s highland Indigenous people were represented by peasant organizations, which coordinated the actions of regional syndicates organized by local communities that leveraged centuries of Indigenous traditions in self-governance and resistance. The Confederación Campesina del Perú (CCP) was created in 1947 and played a major role in forcing the agrarian reform that was eventually promulgated by the military regime of Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1969. The CCP was joined in 1979 by the Confederación Nacional Agraria (CNA) in 1979, which promoted leftist ideologies during a constitutional government dominated by market-oriented political parties.

Both the CCP and the CNA were rendered irrelevant during the Marxist insurgencies of the 1980s and 1990s, when locally organized self-defense militias (Rondas Campesinas) were incorporated into President Alberto Fujimori’s successful strategy for defeating Sendero Luminoso and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA). The old-guard campesino federations recuperated some of their influence in 2000 when Fujimori learned that his nation was not willing to tolerate gargantuan levels of greed and graft, while the self-defense militias evolved into local civic groups that now coordinate their activities via the Central Única Nacional de Rondas Campesinas del Perú (CUNARC-P). All three federations periodically demonstrate their power by organizing national road blockades that paralyze the country.

Peru’s campesino organizations have broad political agendas, but they (apparently) have not addressed the specific needs of communities impacted by the mining industry, particularly the forced expropriation of land and the arbitrary appropriation of water rights. The Confederación Nacional de Comunidades del Perú Afectadas por la Minería (CONACAMI) was founded in 1999 to coordinate local-level protests against mining projects and was soon engaged in a public relations war with some of the world’s largest mining conglomerates. Perhaps its most successful action was to support an Indigenous woman who refused to sell her land to a mining company seeking to install a massive gold mine in the Cajamarca region. Civil protests, mainly highway blockades, have paralyzed billions of dollars in investment, including by Chinese firms unaccustomed to dealing with social and environmental issues. The ongoing social protests have placed the mining sector’s expansion plans in doubt and threaten the long-term future of the mining industry in Peru.

Agrarian reform and economic justice have long dominated the policy agendas of the Campesino federations in Peru, and their rhetoric often skews towards Marxist philosophies that emphasize class struggle. In contrast, ethnic identity and territorial control are the overriding concerns of the Indigenous communities in the Amazonian lowlands, which have also organized into two federations with (slightly) different philosophical approaches. The Confederación de Nacionalidades Amazónicas del Perú (CONAP) and the Asociación Interétnica para el Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP) essentially compete to safeguard the collective rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazonian lowlands. Both organizations were created during the same week in August 1980, and both seek to incorporate representatives from the self-governing councils of Indigenous communities (Comunidades Nativas) that have obtained, or are seeking, communal title to the lands surrounding their villages.

CONAP tends to leverage development opportunities by working with national and regional authorities, while AIDESEP has a more adversarial attitude and operates more like a non-governmental organization (NGO). Both federations will condone, or actively organize, acts of civil protest to further the goals of their constituencies. Both were involved in the Peruvian Amazon’s most notorious civil protest, when more than 1,000 men and women gathered near the town of Bagua in 2009. Their objective was to disrupt the operations of the Oleoducto Norperuano and block the only highway in that part of Amazonian Peru to protest policies that would have opened the Peruvian Amazon to international investment and, in their view, threatened communal property rights. Chief among their complaints was the abrogation of the legal requirement for the government and its development partners to obtain the ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) of Indigenous communities before implementing development projects that would affect their communal rights.

The policies were part of a strategy by President Alan García (1985–1990, 2006–2011) to catalyze economic growth via a free-trade agreement with the United States, which had taken effect in February 2009, and he dispatched several hundred police to end the highway blockade.  In the resulting armed confrontation, now known as the Baguazo, more than 200 individuals were injured while ten civilians and 23 police officers were killed, and one police officer remains missing and is presumed dead.

Fifty-three people, including the president of AIDESEP, were charged in connection with the violent incident. All were acquitted in a six-year trial that ended in 2017, when a judge ruled the accused were acting within their rights to protest against a crime against the environment. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2021. The Baguazo forced the government to table the controversial package of proposed laws that had triggered the protest. It also led to the passage of the Law on Prior Consultation of Indigenous or Original Peoples (2011) and a new Forest and Wildlife Law, which was debated not only in Congress but also through a prior consultation process in 2015. Importantly, the incident created a political environment that has undermined oil exploration and production in the Peruvian Amazon. Ironically, the free trade agreement itself was unaffected by the Baguazo and remains in place as of 2024.

In Ecuador, the use of civil protest also stems from the country’s history of Indigenous people’s struggles for land and water. Although local groups and associations were instrumental in forcing an agrarian reform in the 1960s, they did not fully exercise their political power until 1990, when the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) organized a national strike that shut down the country. This was followed by a peaceful march in 1994 by the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (CONFENIAE), which formalized its demand for territorial justice and an end to the flagrant violation of environmental norms by the petroleum industry. Since then, Indigenous organizations have relied on legal strategies to advance their fight to limit oil production in their territories. In August 2023, a national referendum on a measure to limit oil exploitation in Yasuní National Park, sponsored by a coalition of Indigenous and environmental organizations, was approved by an overwhelming majority of Ecuadorian voters.

Civil protests occur in Amazonian Colombia, but they pale in comparison to the decades of abuses linked to the civil war. The absence of the state, a central feature of that war, essentially precludes civic protest, for the simple reason that non-violent protests are useless in an environment dominated by war. Land conflicts in Guyana and Suriname are more often limited to political events, such as stolen elections or a demand for an end to an authoritarian government, and have not played a role in effecting change from a recalcitrant government, as they have in the Andean Republics.

Banner image: The recently logged Cerrado area in Brazil. Credit: Rhett A. Butler.

“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).

To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here and Chapter Five here.