…Peru’s lawmakers are weighing a vote on crucial legislation, which, if passed, will declare large areas of pristine Amazon rainforest off limits to drilling and mining projects—a clear showdown between Big Oil and corporate mining interests and the rights of Indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Peru’s Congress was expected to vote on the draft bill Thursday, July 2. But the proposal did not make it into the legislative agenda, prompting questions about whether corporate dollars are pulling the strings behind the scenes. The proposed amendment has revived bitter decades-old social divisions in the country, where Indigenous populations continue to live without access to basic services and have for decades demanded sovereign rights over native territories. The draft bill seeks to close loopholes in the existing legal framework (PIACI law) which have allowed the oil and gas, logging, and mining industries to extract Amazonian natural resources for decades. At the heart of these modifications is the protection for Peru’s uncontacted Indigenous peoples who live in voluntary isolation. Under the proposed legislation no new contracts for extraction will be awarded in reserves where uncontacted Indigenous people live. Peru’s Ministry of Culture estimates around 7000 such uncontacted people live in five Amazonian reserves. They are considered one of the most vulnerable groups facing the current COVID-19 pandemic. There’s another proposal in the works to establish five additional protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon. The oil industry, which includes state-owned Petroperú, has publicly expressed its dismay at the move and warned lawmakers against passing the legislation, saying it will jeopardize the existing contracts and may drive up the gas and electricity prices…