“Santiago Manuin, tireless defender of the Amazon rainforest, succumbs to COVID-19” – 2 July 2020

 …Santiago Manuin, one of the most celebrated defenders of Peru's Amazon rainforest and the leader of the Awajún tribe, whose vast and besieged territory spans the country's mountainous northern region along the Ecuador border, died on Wednesday of COVID-19. He was 63. Manuin devoted his life to defending his tribe and their ancestral land, which in recent decades had endured illegal gold mining and logging, persistent threats linked to narco-trafficking and state-sanctioned oil and gas operations…In 2009, Manuin nearly died defending Awajún territory after he was shot eight times by Peruvian security forces. The incident, referred to as "the Bagua Massacre," occurred when police fired on thousands of Awajún and Wampis tribespeople who were blocking a jungle highway to protest a U.S.-Peru trade agreement that would've opened up land in the Amazon for gas, oil and lumber extraction…A stoic champion for his tribe of more than 50,000, Manuin rejected the commodification of the Amazon's natural resources, which are deeply woven into the Awajún cosmovision. "For the Westerner, the Indigenous person is an impediment to development because we refuse to destroy the land. That's why they label us anti-development," he said. "Indigenous peoples are not anti-development. We protect the forest and live for the forest. Our spirituality is tied to it. We don't need to go to the largest churches to pray. We pray within this natural world. We live in this plenitude"…In 1994, Manuin won the international Reina Sofia Prize for his defense of the Amazon, and in 2014 he was awarded Peru's National Prize for Human Rights for a life lived in service of Indigenous peoples and the rainforest…At least 9,800 in Peru have died from the novel coronavirus, which has devastated tribes in the vast Amazon region as extreme poverty, limited access to health care and communal lifestyles incompatible with social distancing have left them particularly vulnerable…