Protests by Peruvian indigenous rights groups turned violent last week as a clash between police forces and protesters left more than 50 dead in the town of Bagua.

On Friday, hundredss of Indians took to the streets of the northern Peruvian city in traditional garb, vowing to physically block developers from entering their ancestral homelands. Violence erupted as Peruvian President Alan Garcia ordered government forces to enforce a curfew in the Bagua region, which has been the center of the native rights protests since they began last April.

According to preliminary reports, police forces shot into crowds of peaceful protesters from helicopters. Garcia claims, however, that the Peruvian police forces were simply retaliating to protester aggression. More than 20 police officers were killed during the protest crackdown, including 11 who were attacked while removing a blockade from a remote jungle pass. A number of police officers were stabbed with wooden spears or had their throats slit (via The Wall Street Journal).

The protest was the bloodiest in a string of demonstrations aimed at preventing the government from selling off parcels of the Peruvian Amazon for development by international energy companies. The months-long protests were sparked by trade agreements with the United States– signed in the final days of the Bush Administration–that opened up wide swaths of the Peruvian jungle for mining and oil drilling. Despite Garcia’s claims that the government controls all of the Amazon territory, native rights groups have been up in arms over what they perceive as an intrusion into longstanding communal land systems. An international movement has galvanized around the Indian struggle in Peru. American protesters (including TakePart blogger Q’orianka Kilcher) have called on President Garcia to restore land rights to the native population.

The protests place President Garcia in a precarious political situation, as he attempts to honor free trade agreements with the US while grappling with a 30 percent approval rating at home. Although Garcia has repeatedly claimed that opening up the Amazon territory to foreign investors will improve economic conditions across the entire nation, the protests have exacerbated the social divide between the elites in Lima and the indigenous population. In order to maintain legitimacy in light of the protests, Garcia is expected to make some major changes in his cabinet, though he is unlikely to give into protesters’ demands. Garcia has likened the protesters to terrorists and said that they may be receiving support from abroad. Members of the Garcia government have linked indigenous rights groups to the leftist leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.

photo credit: RyoAce’s Flickr photostream (creative commons)