Before dawn on Friday, June 5, an estimated 650 Peruvian National Police and Special Forces officers attacked several thousand Awajun and Wambis indigenous people at their roadside blockade on the Fernando Belaunde Terry highway. 

 

The Awajun and Wambis indigenous peoples had been participating in a general strike called to demand the Peruvian Government repeal a series of laws and executive orders that would allow the government to make it easy to grant indigenous lands to multinational oil, mining, and energy corporations. A Peruvian congressional committee declared several of the laws to be unconstitutional, but President Alan Garcia and his APRA party (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) have repeatedly blocked congressional debate that would vote to revoke the laws.

The broad coalition of Amazonian indigenous peoples fighting the laws called a general strike on April 9 and has since been carrying out well-coordinated acts of civil disobedience throughout the region.