At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Isolated indigenous people living in the Peruvian Amazon are being exposed to disease and social disruption due to forced contact with workers from the $1.4 billion Camisea Gas Project, Pluspetrol of Argentina, and Hunt Oil of Texas. The 1.1 million acre Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve is the home of the Nahua, Nanti, Matsigenka, and Kirineri peoples, estimated at a population of 1,000 to 2,000 people. These peoples live in isolation from Peruvian society and have minimal contact with other indigenous populations.

On June 28 a meeting was held in Quito, under the title of “International Forum: The Impacts of the Spraying of Crops, Typified as “Illicit Activity”, and the Armed Conflict. Responses of the Indigenous Amazon Peoples of the Boundaries”. Amazonian indigenous peoples from Ecuador, Colombia, Perú and Brazil met to discuss a joint proposal for defending their traditional ways of life and environment in the face of Plan Colombia. The proposal will be addressed to their respective governments and to the United States in the coming months.