Document Type
Capstone Project
Abstract
COMARU (Consejo Machiguenga del Río Urubamba) is an indigenous organization that promotes the rights of thirty native Amazonian communities in the face of the Camisea Project, a massive natural gas extraction project. The state has consistently ignored negative health, environmental, and cultural impacts from five spills that have occurred in the natural gas pipeline, and the communities the right of consultation granted to them in the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169. This paper, using interviews with Machiguenga community members and COMARU leadership in addition to political ecology scholarship, analyzes the success of COMARU’s politicized and depoliticized strategies. Through the use of four criteria, it determines that while the organization needs to make several changes to how it operates as a change agent, it is generally successful due to its ability to navigate unequal power structures within Peru and genuinely listen to the voices of the communities.
Recommended Citation
Harrington, Casey Shannon, "Machiguenga Mobilization in the Peruvian Amazon: An Analysis of COMARU as an Effective Change Agent" (2010). Geography Capstone Projects. 1.
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/geogcapstones/1
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